Chapter 2

"And then Sakura set off some crazy trap and totally caught Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto finished his heavily embellished story with a dramatic flair of his hands, mimicking an explosion. Sakura concealed her laugh by taking a sip of water. Dinner had been a lively affair thus far, Sakura had elected to let Naruto tell the story of their first day as genin, with Sasuke occasionally volunteering his perspective. They were all seated at the dinner table, with Mikoto and Kushina at the head and foot of the table. The two older women had watched the theatrics with amused expressions. After Naruto was finished they both turned to Sakura.

"Anything you'd like to add Sakura-chan?" Mikoto asked, speaking for the two of them.

"Well I certainly didn't catch Kakashi-sensei," she began to defend their teacher. "He was just impressed by our team work and the plan we made, so he gave me one of the bells." Sakura finished her statement, carefully avoiding any mention of her teammate's idiocy. She should've known better than to try and slip anything past Mikoto though.

"So Sakura was the first to pass then," Mikoto stated with an innocently devious grin. "And how did you boys take that?" She questioned, somehow always knowing when they were trying to hide something.

You'd think after fifteen years of failing they would just give up and come clean from the beginning Sakura thought bitterly. Outwardly she just sighed and made eye contact with Sasuke not wanting to be the one to spill the proverbial tea on their behavior. He nodded back and took it upon himself to explain. He started with a brief explanation of what they saw when they entered the forest, and ended with the punishment he'd faced. He left out the genjutsu that caused the whole mess, probably not wanting to make excuses which he knows his mom hates. "I behaved like an ass and was punished for it." Sasuke muttered quietly after he'd finished the story, holding his mother's gaze determinedly.

Before she or Kushina could say something to the honest retelling and self-assessment Naruto sheepishly added, "So did I," while scratching the back of his head.

Sakura had been angry before, but now that the two were under their mother's scrutinous gazes, she felt the need to protect her stupid brothers. "Kakashi-sensei also put them under a genjutsu and showed them me getting hurt when they first saw us," she added, giving the women the excuse Sasuke had left out. "That's why they behaved so irrationally to begin with."

"No." Sasuke deadpanned now looking at her, "That excuses Naruto, but I was acting like I was better than you and deserved more recognition when it was your plan to begin with." He was clearly unhappy with his past actions, "Don't defend me, I got what I deserved." Sakura had no idea what to say to that, but she felt warm knowing he was truly sorry for his words.

"And we will talk to both of you about your distrust in Sakura later," Kushina cut in, deciding to move the conversation back to celebratory. She looked at Sakura, "I'm proud of you for being able to set up such a complicated trap that quickly." She grinned at Sakura and gave her a congratulatory thumbs up.

"Thanks mom," Sakura said, almost naturally. It had taken years of Kushina and Mikoto telling her to refer to them as her parents for her to feel comfortable doing so. It wasn't that she didn't think of them as her mothers, but she felt guilty, like she was taking them away from their actual kids. She'd voiced her concerns to the boys once, Naruto had laughed and Sasuke had called her, 'dumber than Naruto.' So she'd finally given in and started calling them, mom and mother, refusing to go back to calling them mommy like she had when she was very young. "And I got to use some genjutsu and the poison that we were working on," she said, turning to face Mikoto.

Mikoto smiled proudly at her daughter, "You're growing up to be a very resourceful ninja Sakura, if only your teammates would think to ask their Jonin mothers for help more often." She added a small chide at the end, before standing and walking to where Kushina was seated.

At Naruto and Sasuke's chagrined expressions Kushina continued, "Sparring is important boys," they both turned to look at her. "It helps you sharpen old tools and techniques, as well as think of new way to use them."

"But so is learning new techniques and styles," Mikoto picked up. "In your cases, maybe it's time to work on something in addition to taijutsu and ninjutsu." For years Sasuke had been working on ninjutsu and Naruto had been dedicated almost entirely to taijutsu, those were the two categories where one of them held an obvious advantage. It was smart of their parents to flaunt her success in diversifying, Sakura thought. Now they might actually listen and expand their training a bit.

Kushina and Mikoto were perfect partners especially when it came to retrievals and ambushes. Kushina would lay a complex trap with a combination of physical elements, barrier jutsus, and funinjutsu. Then Mikoto would use genjutsu and poison to give the monstrosity teeth. Sakura respected them greatly and trained with both women as often as she could.

"Yeah!" Naruto exclaimed, "I'm totally ready to learn some of dad's jutsus!" Kushina almost managed to conceal her wince at the mention of her husband, but Mikoto saw and put a comforting hand on her back.

She was quick to recover though, "Maybe we'll start with a simple wind jutsu." Seeing Naruto's crestfallen face she amended, "After all, remember when you snooped through your dad's scrolls and taught yourself how to make shadow clones?"

Naruto's ears and cheeks burned red and Mikoto started openly laughing. "And then you made a hundred but didn't know how to dispel them or control them and they ran chaos through the streets," she tried to say in a lighthearted voice but she kept giggling during and after. This got the entire table to start laughing, even Naruto who recovered from his embarrassment quickly.

After that the conversations remained light, with occasional teasing. Once they'd all finished the older women cleaned up and Sakura went to her room to begin her homework. Laying stomach down on her bed she began reading the scroll Kakashi-sensei had given her. It covered the basic theory of elemental manipulation. The gist of it was that everything, living or not, had some form of chakra in it. To manipulate an element you have to match your chakra wavelengths as close as you could to the natural chakra in the element, which was made much easier if your chakra already had similar wavelengths. Sakura wasn't quite sure how that worked if your chakra was similar to two elements, but there wasn't any information on that in the scroll. At the end of the scroll it did venture to say that if someone familiarized themselves enough with an element's chakra they would be able to control it without expending any of their own chakra. Which sounded incredible to Sakura, though her hopes were slightly dampened when it said this kind of familiarity was rare and incredibly difficult to accomplish, citing the Body of Water jutsu as an example of what could be done with perfect wavelength matching.

The scroll was short but very interesting and opened Sakura's mind to possibilities she had never considered. Though she had little trouble comprehending it due to her studious nature, she thought she'd check in with Naruto just to make sure he wasn't struggling too badly. The sun had long since set, and not wanting to disturb the rest of her family she moved as stealthily as she could down the hall to Naruto's room. Creaking his door open she saw that he wasn't there, so she expanded her chakra awareness. Kushina had been teaching her this for several months and it was difficult and took all of her focus. First she sensed Sasuke's which was calm, telling her he was still asleep. Her mothers concealed theirs naturally as a force of habit even in the house, so she only sensed a small bump that may or may not have been theirs. Last she felt Naruto's signature, typically warm and sunny, felt very frazzled and erratic. So she followed it, back down the hall, down stairs, through the kitchen, down another hall and finally, to the library.

She gently pushed the door open and Naruto jerked his head up from where he was sitting in the middle of the room, wide-eyed like he'd been caught shoplifting. He was on the ground surrounded by open books, some of which could give the Bible a run for its money in terms of length. He still hadn't said anything, but now he was looking abashedly at the floor. Sakura walked over and squatted next to his mess getting a better look at which books he had out, which turned out to be every book on chakra theory they had in the house.

"Naruto," she began, making her voice as patient as she could, "What are you doing?"

"I tried to read that scroll sensei gave us," he sounded miserable, "But I just don't understand any of it. So I tried to read these and teach myself, but…" He trailed off, still not meeting Sakura's eyes.

"I'll help you then." She stated firmly, and he finally looked up at her. His eyes were glassy, like he was trying not to cry.

"But what if I'm too stupid to-" He started to say, but she cut him off.

"I won't listen to you slander my teammate like that." She said in a stern voice, Naruto looked shocked by the suddenness of it but then he grinned at her. "And we all have our strengths Naruto, this is mine." She continued in that same patient, teacher-like voice. "Don't ever be scared to ask me for help, I will never judge you for wanting to learn." She wasn't quite sure what to say after that, but he decided for her by pulling her into a tight hug, made slightly awkward because of the mote of between them. For the next couple hours she gave him a remedial course in chakra theory, control, and manipulation. At some point they both dozed off, using the piles of books as bedding.

And that was how they were found in the morning, Sakura woke up to Kushina's giggling and the flash of a camera as Mikoto memorialized their first all-nighter as genin. Naruto was sprawled messily across a pile of books, and Sakura was using his lower back as a pillow.

"What time is it?" She groaned and sat up slowly, her back aching and complaining the second she started moving.

"Huh?" Naruto groaned and rolled off the book mountain.

"6:30,"Mikoto replied, "we were tempted to wait until seven to teach you a lesson about resting when you can."

"But we also want to encourage this kind of behavior at more appropriate hours," Kushina picked up where Mikoto left off. "So we compromised and left you to sleep on the floor, but woke you up before you'd be late."

"Thank you?" Sakura asked more than said. Naruto stood up and stretched leaving with Kushina, Sakura was about to follow but Mikoto put a hand on her shoulder signifying that she wanted to talk.

"Naruto needed a medic level chakra theory course?" She asked in a joking tone.

Not quite sure where this was going Sakura gave a quick explanation about their homework and why Naruto needed help.

"Ah that makes sense." Mikoto agreed, and then got to her poin. "Would you be willing to help Sasuke in a similar way?"

"Sasuke never struggled with theory in school?" Sakura asked again instead of stating, still groggy this early in the morning.

"He has a weakness that many of our clan possess," Mikoto paused, giving her a second to process. "He is over reliant on his eyes, I'm not sure he could break out of a genjutsu, or if he'd even try."

"But if he can see through them then why would he need to break out of them?" Sakura wasn't sure where Mikoto was going with this.

"Genjutsu can affect all of the senses, we can only see through visual genjutsus which are also the most common." Sakura looked like she understood but Mikoto wasn't finished. "And you can confuse an Uchiha by layering too many genjutsu," Sakura began looking confused again so Mikoto elaborated. "Imagine seeing dozens of genjutsu ghosts at once."

It dawned on Sakura then, the ghost of a genjutsu showed it's caster a very transparent version of what the target was seeing. A risk of layering several genjutsu was confusing yourself visually, and then not noticing a stray kunai, or any other number of threats.

"So I would like you to show Sasuke the error of his ways," Mikoto continued in a voice that Sakura thought was far too cheerful considering the topic at hand. "I'll leave the rest to you and if you succeed we can take the next step in your evocative genjutsu training." That was plenty of motivation for Sakura, so she left to quickly get ready.

Sasuke and Naruto were finishing their breakfast when she came into the kitchen. Sasuke quirked an eyebrow at her disheveled appearance and smirked. She ignored him and went upstairs to begin her morning ritual. Ten minutes later she was standing in the kitchen with a piece of toast. Quick goodbyes were exchanged and they were on their way to the same training grounds from the day prior.

"So, do one of you want to tell me why you were sleeping in the library?" Sasuke asked after a few minutes of walking in silence.

"I couldn't understand the scroll Kakashi-sensei gave me, so Sakura was teaching me about chakra theory last night." Naruto said, and then visibly braced for the teasing insult. Sakura was glad that Sasuke seemed to notice Naruto's mood and chose not to joke. Instead he just hummed quietly in affirmation and kept looking ahead. A few minutes of walking in comfortable silence later, and they were at training grounds ten and their sensei was already there waiting for them.

"They say that being five minutes early is considered on time," he greeted them with mock irritation.

"But you were so late yesterday!" Naruto almost shouted, and Sasuke nodded in agreement. Sakura chose to keep a pleasant smile on her face, hoping to maintain her sensei's favorite status. Somehow their sensei's pout was visible through the mask.

"At least one of you respects me." He almost whined.

"Good morning sensei," Sakura greeted cheerfully, eager to move on from the theatrics. "What will be doing today?"

Kakashi dropped his kicked puppy demeanor and got back to business. Today we're going to cover your strengths and you're going to teach one of them to each other." That made sense to Sakura, it would be a good way to build teamwork, but they already knew each other very well. "But first, you two," he pointed at Naruto and Sasuke. "Go warm up with a spar, I want to talk to Sakura."

Kakashi wasn't used to showing up early, but he wanted to do good by his sensei's kid, and the other two were interesting, specifically the girl.

"So Sakura, let's talk about your skill set." Kakashi opened amiably enough. He was curious as to how a fresh out of the academy genin had such a diversified roster of techniques, but he would hold off on the interrogation tactics.

She paused to think for a second before replying, "My most developed skills are innvocative genjutsu, setting traps, basic medic abilities, and I use paralytic poisons I make myself." That was an impressive list to say the least, almost too impressive for a new genin that wasn't part of a clan. Even if Mikoto and Kushina had been raising the girl, they must've been teaching her since she started at the academy.

Maybe it was time for a little interrogation, "Why so many?" His tone was innocent, but he saw something in her eyes sharpen at the question. He was caught off guard when her tone was even more unbothered than before.

"My mother's are great resources for knowledge," she said delicately, but he wasn't finished.

"And yet Naruto and Sasuke have each specialized in one thing." It wasn't really a question or a statement, it was almost an accusation. Of what, Kakashi wasn't sure. But Konoha had a history with both genjutsu and poison users, and something about the intelligent glint in her eyes was reminding him of traitors best not mentioned.

"I don't have endless stamina and chakra reserves, or a prodigious disposition towards ninjutsu, my only natural talent is in chakra control." Her honesty caught him off guard, "If I specialized in only one area I would never be able to keep up with them."

Just like that his paranoia was appeased, at least for the moment. "Ah, that makes sense." She looked up at him without that carefully crafted calm look, "So what do you want to work on now?"

"Evocative genjutsu, chakra sensing, elemental manipulation, taijutsu, making more lethal poisons, and I want to get an apprenticeship at the hospital." She answered without hesitation, clearly having thought her goals through before.

"Well I assume your moms will help with most of that, but taijutsu and ninjutsu are my specialties." Kakashi was glad to hear that she wanted to improve the more basic forms of fighting, even if they didn't come naturally to her. "And you'll benefit from Naruto and Sasuke's masterclasses in their strengths."

"But what should I teach them?" She asked after a moment's hesitation.

"Let's start with low level genjutsu, and breaking out of them." He replied. Sakura nodded and looked down muttering something about lesson plans to herself. Kakashi grinned at her excitement and gently steered her back towards the spar that had turned into a brawl worthy of the rowdiest bar. He silently sighed and pulled out his book, he was willing to curb his habitual lateness but he couldn't ruin his carefully crafted image of aloofness, at least not yet.

Sakura was pulled out of her thoughts when Naruto grabbed Sasuke by the collar and threw him in her direction. "BOYS!" She got their attention immediately. They were both covered in bruises, scratches, and blood, surrounded by what seemed to be every weapon they'd had in their pouches. At least they had the self awareness to look embarrassed. Sakura quickly got to work cleaning and bandaging the two of them all while scolding them under her breath. Kakashi covered his chuckle with a cough when he thought about how the boys had three mothers.

"Let's get started then!" He exclaimed with mock enthusiasm once Sakura was finished.

Sakura was exhausted, Naruto had taught first and she really did owe him an apology. She's always assumed his fighting style was entirely erratic and unplanned but he'd led them through a series of katas and situations in which the movements could be used and how they could be modified for other circumstances. It was just the basics and Naruto's style didn't suit Sakura, but it did inspire her to research into which styles would, and gave her an idea of how to begin overhauling her hand to hand combat. In all it took roughly an hour and a half and they stopped around nine for a break and Kakashi went over what Naruto had taught them.

"So what did you learn from this?" Kakashi asked once the three of them were seated in the shade of one of the many trees.

"That Naruto would be a good teacher," Sasuke said, surprising Sakura with his sincerity. Then he smirked and added, "Which is remarkable considering how stupid he is."

"Hey-" Naruto immediately began to report, but Sakura cut him off.

"I learned that Naruto put a lot more effort into his form than I thought." Sakura said kindly hoping Naruto would forget about Sasuke's insult.

"Thanks-" Naruto started to say but was once again cut off.

"That's all well and good," Kakashi started, ignoring Naruto's indignant huff at being silenced again. "But how can you apply his lesson to your training?"

"We already go through katas together every morning." Sasuke informed their sensei.

"Yes, your mother's told me that the two of you spar too much." Kakashi replied.

"When did you-" Naruto attempted to ask, but Kakashi interrupted again.

"The question is mostly for Sakura, she said she wants to improve her taijutsu." He answered Sasuke's question, but was looking at Sakura with amusement in his eyes, probably at Naruto's blatant pouting.

"Naruto's style isn't for me," Sakura began after a moment of thought, then ignored Naruto's blatant look of disbelief and continued. "But the method is, I want to find a style that works for me and practice it the way he taught us." When she was finished she looked to Kakashi-sensei for his approval.

"And I have someone in mind who might be able to help you find that style." Kakashi answered her questioning look with a cheery grin. "But we'll worry about that later, now it's time for Sasuke's class."

Kakashi was leaning up against a tree watching his students over the top of his book. He was openly grinning at the growing frustration on all three of their faces. To be fair to Sasuke he wasn't doing a bad job explaining, but his style of ninjutsu was not suited to his teammates skill sets. Standard ninjutsu were too restrictive and chakra intensive for Sakura's small reserves. On the other side of the spectrum, Naruto had too little control to cause any more than an uncontrolled explosion every time he tried to produce a fireball.

After another fifteen minutes of watching Sakura practically beg for more instruction, Naruto causing worryingly large explosions, and Sasuke spiraling into shame faced failure, Kakashi decided to step in. "Ok let's review shall we?"

Sasuke looked up with the purest form of relief in his eyes. "Why isn't anything working?"

"Naruto has too little control to perform a ninjutsu that isn't wind natured right now." Naruto looked a little put out at that and tried to comment but Kakashi talked over him. "And Sakura doesn't have enough chakra for traditional ninjutsu, they waste too much chakra."

"Traditional ninjutsu?" Sakura asked him inquisitively.

"Did you read the scroll?" He countered back, hoping to encourage free thinking.

She thought about it for a minute and then posed a question herself, "Why do you need ninjutsu if you can just manipulate the element?" She asked but didn't seem finished, "Ninjutsu seems a lot more…" She trailed off.

"Restrictive?" Kakashi finished her sentence while looking at her to see if that was what she was going for. At her nod he continued, "Because most people will never have enough control over their chakra to realistically use pure elemental manipulation in combat." Sakura seemed to understand at that, but the boys needed a little more information. "Ninjutsu as well as hand signs are shortcuts, a way to make the element do what you want but at the cost of more chakra and less control over how the element manifests." He was expecting Naruto to be confused but he nodded in happy understanding, and Sasuke just looked relieved that his teaching wasn't the cause of his teammates failure.

"So once I learn a wind jutsu Sasuke can help me?" Naruto inquired, looking incredibly relieved that he was able to get through the question without being interrupted.

"Yes, and I will start working with Sakura on earth manipulation soon." He'd expected a bout of jealousy from the other two but they just seemed pleased that they'd all be learning. Perhaps he'd been a bit too harsh in their first test. "But for now, let's have lunch and then it's Sakura's time to shine."

During their brief lunch of soggy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, provided by their sensei, Sakura continued to work on a plan for her lesson. She would separate them because they had different weaknesses when it came to genjutsu, and their competitive nature would not be helpful. Additionally she was also hoping to accomplish her mother's mission in helping Sasuke.

So far it was going better than she could have hoped, she was currently trying her best to hide the smug grin threatening to erupt on her face. She'd rarely seen Sasuke look so frustrated. Naruto had had some trouble breaking out of her genjutsus at first but he seemed to be getting the hang of it, so she'd given him a new task. Walk in a straight line for ten meters back and forth, and avoid the small obstacles she'd put in his way. The catch was that some of them were weak area effect genjutsu that just put up the illusion of a rock or large stick. At least that was what he thought, truthfully they were all genjutsu and currently he had about a twenty percent success rate at identifying them, but she was proud nonetheless.

Sasuke on the other hand, had yet to break out of her first genjutsu. She'd taken her mother's advice and put an auditory genjutsu on Sasuke, all it did was make his ears ring. In the academy they'd only ever practiced breaking out of visual genjutsu and Sasuke had simply looked through them with his Sharingan, simultaneously passing the test and wowing the other girls in their class. Sakura was playing on that weakness now, no matter how many times he'd shouted Kai, nothing had worked. She wasn't really sure why it wasn't working, unless he was just not channeling chakra into the hand sign, but Sasuke wasn't stupid.

She figured Kakashi-sensei would know what was wrong, for now she was just relaxing in the shade occasionally setting up new genjutsu for Naruto. She was also taking this extra time to reflect on how she'd felt during Sasuke's 'class.' She hadn't felt that useless in a long time, but after thirty minutes of desperately trying to conjure fire and begging Sasuke for help, she'd been ready to send herself back to the academy for being incompetent. She hadn't realized until Kakashi had explained why she couldn't do it that she'd slipped back into that overly self deprecating state of mind that she used to live in before she'd accepted that her mothers didn't see her as a burden. She'd pushed herself to the brink of exhaustion day after day trying to prove that they weren't wasting their time with her, until eventually they'd had a talk about how she was their daughter, not just a student. Occasionally that thought process weaseled its way back into her mind and she would have to take a minute to reevaluate her circumstances and remind herself that competence doesn't correlate to worth. Kushina had been telling her that in simpler words since her first year at the academy, and she was still there to remind her if she needed it. She almost yelped when Kakashi appeared squatting in front of her and tapped her on the head with his book.

"Maybe it's time to give them a break." He said standing and gesturing to where Sasuke was laying face down repeatedly hitting his forehead on a rock, and Naruto was hunched over intently examining a fake rock. Sakura chuckled and cut her chakra connection to the jutsus, Naruto was so startled by the rocks' disappearance and fell backwards into a sitting position. Sasuke just stopped banging his head and groaned.

Kakashi brought them both over to the shade where Sakura was still sitting. "So how do you think you did?" Kakashi asked no one in particular. When both boys just looked abashadly at the ground, he turned to Sakura and said, "What did you think of their performances?"

"Naruto had about a twenty percent success rate, which is a lot of progress from where he was in the academy." Naruto smiled brightly at her which almost made her stop. Almost, "But I would dock points because he never thought to consider that they were all genjutsu, even though the obstacles he thought were real moved each time he turned around." His smile was a little less bright, but he didn't look too upset so Sakura thought she'd worded that well. Sakura was less confident in how to assess Sasuke.

After a couple beats had passed she continued, "And Sasuke… struggled more than I thought he would." She decided to keep it short, hoping Kakashi-sensei would know what to say.

"That was a dirty trick Sakura," Kakashi said to her instead of giving his opinion. Sakura couldn't really argue with that either, but maybe it had been an effective one. "Would you care to explain why?"

Sakura gave him a half hearted glare before timidly turning to Sasuke and explaining herself. " You rely too heavily on your dojutsu," he looked up with a mildly betrayed look in his eyes. She stuttered and turned back to Kakashi blushing.

He was looking at her inquisitively, "And this has nothing to do with what Sasuke said yesterday?"

Sasuke looked to the ground and Naruto looked scandalized. "W-what?" Sakura sputtered, "n-no of course not!"

Kakashi looked ready to push the matter when Sasuke muttered, "Sakura isn't like that."

Naruto finally picked his jaw up off the ground and piped up, "Yeah! Sakura-" But apparently today was interrupt Naruto day and their sensei was celebrating.

"And you agree with her method?" Kakashi asked, directing the question to Sasuke.

"It was humiliating," Sasuke stated with no hesitation, Sakura's face flushed with shame. "But she's right, and…" he hesitated, "I would probably have been too stubborn to listen."

"And that's why your mom asked me to talk to you about it." Sakura said, trying to subtly defend herself in front of their sensei.

Sasuke just groaned and mumbled, "Better you than her."

Kakashi closed his book for the first time since the interrogation began and looked at the three of them. After a minute of awkward silence he seemed to come to a conclusion. "Ok, then all is well, but next time let's try a little communication." He directed this to Sakura who wouldn't meet his eyes.

He looked up at the sun, "And that's enough for today, meet back here tomorrow at the same time." Before anyone could respond he poofed away and the three remaining began another semi awkward walk home.

A/N

...hii..how yall doin..?

So I know I don't have much of an audience but I still feel bad about how long this took. I've practically had this written for almost a year now, my adhd wouldn't let me edit/proof read it so here we are. Now that I'm starting school again I'm usually more productive on things that aren't related to school haha. So my goal is to write a chapter a month hopefully, if I really get into it I'll try to make it more often than that. Anyway thanks for reading! Comment if you feel like it, have a good one!