Naruto stared fixedly at a knot in the wooden surface of the table around which he, Hinata, and Kakashi were sitting. Sakura was in her room meditating, something he had noticed she had been doing much more over the last few days than she had before that day. She had also been quieter than usual since then, and while she was never the most sociable person—he barely resisted the urge to glare at Kakashi as he thought of the reasons for that—she had been spending even more time on her own. It wasn't enough to make him worry yet, but he and Hinata had both decided to start keeping a closer eye on her.
"What did you want to talk to us about, Kakashi-sensei?" Hinata asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence. It was just as well that she had said something, Naruto thought; he had spoken to Kakashi as little as possible recently, and he had a hard time controlling his temper when he was forced to do so.
"I'm sure I don't need to remind you of what happened four days ago," Kakashi said, causing Naruto's frown to grow even more pronounced.
Oh, you mean when Sakura had to save us because you weren't there to do your duty? he wanted to say. Only a light, warning pressure on his forearm stopped him from actually speaking the words, and he glanced down to see Hinata's hand on his arm. Sighing to himself, he simply nodded.
"There are reasons why guard missions that are believed to have a high likelihood of requiring deadly force to complete, as well as all assassination missions, are set at a minimum of B-rank," the older ninja continued. "It isn't because they are difficult, necessarily. Some assassination missions are no harder than low C-rank, and when I was a genin, that's how they would have been classified. After the last war, though, the mission structure was changed back to the earlier system so genin would—hopefully—not be put in situations where they would be expected to kill anyone."
Growing interested in spite of himself, Naruto nodded. His mother had said much the same thing when he asked what the various ranks of missions were like. Supposedly, it was because studies done during the war, when genin had routinely been sent on less difficult assassination and sabotage missions in order to free up more experienced ninja for harder missions, had shown a vast increase in the number of ninja forced into early retirement for psychological reasons. When he remembered what it had been like even to watch someone be killed so violently, he thought he could understand why.
"The problem with the current system," Kakashi said, "is that sometimes things do go wrong, and sometimes genin are forced to kill. Without any sort of training on how to deal with that, the aftereffects can be…unpleasant. In Sakura's case, perhaps even more so, given the way things happened."
So, it's not just because she killed someone, it's because she used the…demon to do it, Naruto mentally translated, feeling himself wince. From the few talks he and Hinata had had with her since then, he suspected she was still not telling them something about what had happened. After learning the last big secret she had been keeping, though, he had no intention of pressing her on the subject—not that that stopped him from being a little curious about it.
"What can we do?" he asked reluctantly, not wanting to talk to Kakashi, but recognizing that the jounin had much more experience in this sort of thing.
Kakashi simply shook his head. "This isn't a new technique to learn," he said. "People's minds don't come with clear instructions attached. Remember, she did what she did for the two of you, and perhaps the best thing you can do is just to be there to remind her of that reason. Give her something positive to think about."
Like we wouldn't? Naruto thought, the response only increasing his bitterness towards his jounin-sensei. We're not like you. We won't abandon her because of something she can't help, especially when it's the only reason we're still alive.
"We'll always be there for her," Hinata replied after several moments' silence, the barely-hidden steel in her quiet tone letting him know that while she might remain outwardly polite towards Kakashi, she shared at least some of his opinions of the man. The two of them had discussed whether or not to let Sakura know what Kakashi had told Naruto as well, but in the end, they had been unable to bring themselves to do so; their pink-haired friend seemed to be getting on fairly well with him recently, and they didn't want to do anything that might turn her away from one of the very few adult ninja who treated her decently.
The thought briefly crossed Naruto's mind that perhaps the fact that Kakashi was treating Sakura well showed that he was trying to make up for what he had done in the past, and he sighed. He felt so angry when he thought of some of the things Sakura had told him about her life before she started at the ninja academy, as well as some of the things she still had to put up with even now, even though she never really seemed to get upset about it—or perhaps especially because of that fact. Now that he had found out about one of the people responsible for what she had gone through, he couldn't just let it go, even if he wasn't the one who had been wronged.
What he really wanted, more than anything, was to talk with his mother about the whole situation. She would be able to tell him more about what had happened, and maybe she would even have some idea of what he could do about Kakashi. Most of all, he wanted to ask her about his father, because finding out that the man whose memory he had always looked up to had been responsible for hurting Sakura—even if he could understand the reason, intellectually—had deeply shaken him.
Shaking his head, he realized that Kakashi had left at some point while he had been thinking, and Hinata was the only one sitting at the table with him now. She gave him a concerned look, to which he responded with a brief smile, and the two of them stood up to go fetch Sakura for some sparring practice outside. The mission would be over in two days, but for now he wanted to lose himself in training and not have to worry about everything that had happened during the past two weeks or everything that they would have to deal with once they returned to the village.
- - -
Home again, Sakura thought tiredly as the great gates of the Village of the Hidden Leaf came into view at last, somewhat surprised to find that she really was glad to be back. At the moment, all she wanted to do was sleep; Kakashi had set an exhaustingly quick pace on the return journey, and Team Seven had completed the trip that had taken them three days before in just over a day and a half. Even Naruto looked tired, and she had heard him mumbling about his wonderful, comfortable bed nearly continuously for the past half hour, despite the fact that it was barely mid-afternoon.
"I know you all want to get some food and rest," Kakashi said as they passed through the opened gate, the chuunin on guard duty nodding to them in welcome, "but we need to go see the Hokage first. I sent a message to him with some basic information about what happened during the mission, but he's going to want to talk to each of us to get more details."
Sakura noticed Naruto shoot a mutinous glare at their jounin-sensei, and she sighed. He, and even Hinata to a lesser extent, had been doing that ever since she had woken up after the attack, and she wanted to know what was going on. It could just have been the fact that Kakashi was gone when the enemy ninja attacked, but she didn't think so; if anything, she would have said it had something to do with herself, but she couldn't think of any reason why that might be. Kakashi had been quite helpful over the past several days, and under his instruction she was finally making noticeable progress in her taijutsu skills.
Despite that, she couldn't help but glare at him a little bit herself as they walked towards the Hokage's tower. If Naruto was tired and Hinata exhausted, she felt like she was about to collapse at any moment, only sheer willpower keeping her upright and moving forward. Her chakra coils still weren't completely healed from having the Nine-Tails' chakra flow through them, and the constant strain of traveling so quickly certainly hadn't helped the healing process at all. She could understand Kakashi's reasoning for why he wanted to get back to the village so quickly in order to report—the presence of foreign ninja in Fire Country could be a sign of a serious threat, after all—but surely they had time to be able to sleep for at least a little while before meeting the Hokage.
Several minutes later, Sakura stood with her teammates in the Hokage's outer office, waiting for the door guards to announce their arrival. She very much hoped that he wasn't busy with someone else, because at the moment the only things keeping her from falling asleep standing up were her sore muscles and aching head. The sooner they met with him, the sooner she could get back to her apartment, take some painkillers, and flop onto her bed for a nice, long, hopefully nightmare-free nap. A warm bath would be nice too, but she was somewhat afraid she might fall asleep in it and drown.
"You may enter," the chuunin on the right side of the door finally said after an interminable wait, causing all of them—even Kakashi—to perk up slightly. Idly, Sakura wondered how the chuunin guards ever knew that the Hokage was ready to see someone, but she found she was too tired even to be curious. As they walked into the inner office, she was surprised to see that the Hokage appeared nearly as tired as she felt, and she wondered what could possibly have happened in the few weeks since she had last seen him that would make him look like that.
"Please, sit down," he said, gesturing to a row of chairs in front of his desk—not the most comfortable ones, Sakura was glad to see, as she was sure she would have fallen asleep in one of those.
Then again, maybe not, she thought uneasily, as he turned a piercing gaze onto her. He didn't look upset, precisely, but neither could she tell what he was thinking. It made sense, though, she supposed; this was official business, so she couldn't expect him to act any differently towards her than he would have towards any other ninja in her situation.
After they had all seated themselves, the Hokage turned to Kakashi. "Now, Kakashi," he said, "I will expect a full report on the ninja you followed to the border, but that can wait until later. For now, I wish to hear your genin's accounts of what occurred while you were away. Naruto, please begin, and leave nothing out regardless of how trivial it may seem."
Some corner of Sakura's mind was paying attention as Naruto began to speak, but she was more concerned with what she would say when it was her turn. She hadn't told anyone, not even Hinata or Naruto, about meeting with the Nine-Tails in her dream—if it had been only a dream, which part of her doubted—but she didn't think she could bring herself to hide anything from the Hokage. She desperately did not want her friends to hear what it had said to her, though.
To her relief, when Hinata finished retelling her version of events—considerably more detailed that Naruto's, thanks to the unique perspective granted by her byakugan—the Hokage clapped his hands together sharply and said, "Thank you both. Unfortunately, I must speak with Sakura in private now, so you are dismissed. I trust Kakashi has informed you of the penalty should you speak of what you have learned to anyone who does not already know."
Naruto and Hinata nodded, though they seemed unfazed by the warning—probably because they were too tired to care at the moment, Sakura thought, watching enviously as they left along with Kakashi. It was only once they were out of sight that she realized she would rather have had them there for support, even if she was afraid of what they might think once they heard everything. She didn't want to remember what had happened, though she knew she would never be able to forget it.
"Now, Sakura-chan," the Hokage said, much more gently than she had expected, "I will need you to tell me what you remember, but not just yet. Given what happened to you, I think I should show you something first. Hopefully it will bring you some comfort."
Huh? Sakura's fatigue-fogged mind tried to wrap itself around the Hokage's words, but all she could make out was that he wasn't going to make her tell her side of the story yet. She didn't know what could possibly make her feel better about what had happened, though.
"Here, look at the last page of this scroll," the Hokage's voice sounded from beside her, and she started in surprise as the largest scroll she had ever seen was dropped into her arms. Wobbling a little as she regained her balance, she spread the scroll out over a nearby table and flipped quickly to the back, absently noting what looked like some very unusual—and very dangerous, if she wasn't mistaken—techniques written on the pages she skipped. When she reached the last page, though, she felt herself physically flinch backwards as she drew in a sharp breath.
"The Shiki Fuujin!" she exclaimed, once she had regained some measure of composure. "This is…this is everything about it. How it was created, how to perform the sealing technique…even how to break it. But why are you showing this to me now?" The massive page was covered with esoteric diagrams, numerological equations, and scribbled notes, all of which led inexorably to a larger than life depiction of the very seal inscribed upon her abdomen. For a moment, she could scarcely believe what she was seeing, and she looked up at her teacher with imploring eyes.
The Hokage smiled and rested one hand comfortingly on her shoulder. "Because you are ready to see it," he said. "Truthfully, in knowledge alone you have been ready for quite some time, but that by itself is a poor indication of worth. Another student of mine, the master of the man you were forced to kill, taught me that bitter lesson. After hearing what your teammates had to say today, though, I have no doubt that your heart is a fitting match for your mind."
Sakura had no idea what she could possibly say to that. Her teacher, a man she respected more than anyone else in the world, had essentially told her he trusted her with the most dangerous secret in the entire village. It was not an honor of which she felt worthy; she could still feel the spray of blood from a mangled body that had once been a living person, could still hear the man's agonized moans as she forced tainted chakra into his body and burned him alive from the inside out. Worse still was knowing that she would do it again. How could someone like her possibly be worthy of so much trust?
In her tiredness, she must have spoken aloud, for the Hokage turned her to face him and, lifting her chin up, stared into her eyes. "Killing is never easy," he told her quietly. "Nor should it be, even in our line of work. There is no better reason to do so, though, than to save the life of a friend. You have nothing at all to be ashamed of."
Kakashi had tried to tell her the same thing, but neither of them understood. She wasn't bothered so much by the fact that she had killed someone as the manner in which she had done so. The sheer savagery with which she had killed the enemy ninja frightened her, but more than that, her nightmares were filled with scenarios in which she hadn't been able to stop with just him. Nearly every night, it seemed she found herself faced with the broken, bleeding corpses of her friends, sacrifices to the demon within her.
"Perhaps even more importantly," the Hokage continued, "you proved without a doubt that you are the one in control of your actions. The Nine-Tails cannot use you, and even if nobody else in the village ever accepts that fact, you should know that I do. Allowing you to study this—" he gestured to the open scroll— "is the best way I can think of to prove it to you."
Maybe he does understand after all. The thought ran through Sakura's mind, but she was reaching the limit of what she could process after such an exhausting journey, and she simply couldn't seem to find the words necessary to thank him sufficiently. Instead, almost before she realized what she was doing, she reached forward and hugged him as hard as she could, hoping that he would understand what she was unable to say aloud.
"Go get some rest, Sakura-chan," she heard him say, a curious note in his voice, as he returned her embrace after a moment. "We can discuss what happened to you during your lesson tomorrow, since I think you are far too tired right now to be able to provide the amount of detail I will need to know."
Releasing him, Sakura stepped back and bowed deeply. "Thank you," she said, relieved beyond belief that she would be able to put off having to talk about what she had done at least until she was feeling awake enough to think clearly. She just hoped he wouldn't change his opinion of her once he heard what she had to say.
- - -
"…and then it bowed to me, but more like it was mocking me than because it was serious, and just disappeared," Sakura finished. In a softer voice, so quietly as to be almost inaudible, she admitted, "I was so afraid, Sarutobi-shishou. I'm not even sure why, since it didn't try to hurt me at all, but it was like it scared me just by being there."
"And you think this makes you weak, somehow?" the Hokage asked, his tone neutral. Her head down, unable to look him in the eye after what she had just said, Sakura nodded. She heard him sigh, as though she had disappointed him, and she mentally braced herself for whatever he might say.
"Child, you are too hard on yourself." That was not what she had been expecting to hear, and, startled, she glanced up to see him looking at her, an exasperated expression on his face.
"I would have been far more worried if you had not been frightened of the Nine-Tails," he continued. "When it attacked the village, even experienced ninja found themselves terrified by its mere presence, and to face it knowing that it was inside your own mind…anyone sane would have been afraid in your position. I am proud of you for being able to stand up to your fear."
He's…proud of me? Sakura thought, barely able to believe what she had just heard. Suddenly, she felt certain that this was going to be one of the best days in her entire life, and she risked a hesitant smile.
"Much better," the Hokage said. "Now, I believe it is time for your lesson. Come outside, and you can show me how much progress you have made on the Fuuinkoku technique. He turned and opened the door leading out to their usual practice area—a small, fenced-in yard where nobody would be able to see Sakura performing techniques for which many people might try to have her executed simply for knowing, regardless of the fact that the Hokage himself had been teaching her.
Inwardly, Sakura groaned as she stood up and followed him. While she had been meditating much more, recently, she hadn't actually practiced the Wind Engraving technique itself at all while she had been away on the mission, and she hoped he wouldn't be too disappointed with her.
"Start with something simple," he told her. "I think the Shiryoku Funin, one meter radius, would be a good test."
Sakura nodded, glad that he had chosen a simple three-character seal—and one of the first ones she had learned, too, for its simplicity and usefulness. Perhaps she wouldn't embarrass herself as badly as she had been afraid of. Centering herself, she thought of exactly how she would write out the Vision Diversion Seal if she were doing so by hand, and, keeping that picture in her mind, she ran through a series of hand seals with which she had become quite familiar over the past several months. A whispered "Fuuton: Fuuinkoku no Jutsu" completed the technique, and she felt chakra begin to flow out of her much more smoothly than she could ever remember happening before. She held her breath as she waited to see the results.
"I did it!" she exclaimed once the small cloud of dust dissipated, unable to keep from bursting out in joyful laughter at her success. Whether it was because of the long hours of meditation she had been doing recently or—she shivered at the thought—because of her memories of manipulating the Nine-Tails' chakra so easily, she found it was almost trivial now to mentally mark out the paths with her chakra for the technique's miniature windstorms to follow.
"Not bad," the Hokage said, nodding in approval as he inspected the simple pattern she had inscribed on the soft earth by her feet. "Now try a more complex sealing diagram…say, the yellow seal of the Gofuu Kekkai."
Sakura winced, feeling her good mood begin to evaporate. That had been one of the last seals the Hokage had taught her before the mission, and she hoped she could remember it properly. Along with the linked seals for the other directions, it formed an impenetrable barrier, but since all five seals needed to be activated simultaneously, the technique was impossible for one person to perform alone—not that she had enough chakra to activate even one of the directional seals. The yellow seal represented the principle of the center, and as such it was by far the most complicated; it would take a significant amount of chakra just to form the visualized pattern, and even more would be required to sustain the winds long enough to trace out the entire diagram.
Oh well, it's better than more meditation practice, she thought with a trace of humor as she began the technique. Spinning out intricate webs of chakra in a pattern visible only to her mind's eye, she could feel a very noticeable drain on her reserves, but she was pleased to find that she was able to sustain the technique long enough to let it run its course. The result—a perfectly formed seal, as far as she could tell—was definitely worth the headache she could already feel forming.
The Hokage bent down and examined the seal closely, then shook his head, causing Sakura to wonder what she had done wrong. When he stood back up, though, he was actually smiling, an event so rare that she thought she could count on one hand the number of times she had seen him do so during the three years he had been teaching her. She had learned to both understand and appreciate his habit of giving unconditional praise only sparingly, but seeing him so obviously pleased with her woke something warm within her, and she smiled back at him.
"I did not expect you to succeed with that one," he told her, still smiling as he motioned for her to precede him indoors, where the large scroll she had seen the previous day was resting on a low table. "Your chakra control is nothing short of amazing, and I truly wish my successor could have known you. I have a feeling he would have liked you very much, and you could have learned a great deal from him."
Sakura bowed her head in an attempt to hide the blush she could feel creeping over her face. "Thank you, Sarutobi-shishou," she murmured, uncomfortable with both the praise and his reference to the Fourth Hokage. "I'm not sure I could do that technique again without having to rest for a while, though."
"Then it is fortunate that the rest of today's lesson will be spent studying the scroll I showed you yesterday," the Hokage said. The two of them sat down at the table and, as he unrolled the scroll, Sakura found herself wondering if she was really ready for this yet. Despite his praise, she couldn't help but think of how much she still had left to learn, and she remembered how much trouble she had had deciphering even basic information about her seal when she first started trying to learn about it.
To her surprise, though, she found that she could easily understand the notes the Fourth had written, and while many of the calculations and diagrams were over her head, she thought she would be able to figure them out with a bit of study. What impressed her the most were the seemingly-intuitive leaps in logic the Fourth had made as he worked out the elements of the seal, and for the first time she saw why her own teacher called him the greatest fuuinjutsu master the village had ever seen. It was one thing to be able to understand and perform a technique, but it was something else entirely to be able to develop one.
Suddenly, Sakura felt very foolish as she recalled her confident promise so many years ago that she would find a way to improve on the Fourth's seal, which she now realized was something that could almost be considered a work of art to those who understood its complexities. She wondered if this was how the Hokage had felt when he heard her, and she couldn't help but wince as she thought of how arrogant and ignorant she must have sounded. It was a wonder that he had agreed to teach her at all.
"Feeling a bit intimidated, are you?" The Hokage's voice startled her out of her thoughts, and she jumped slightly at the noise while wondering how long she had been studying the scroll in silence.
"Yes," she admitted, hanging her head. "I understand a lot of what he did, but I don't see at all how he knew how to do it. And there are still some things I don't understand at all, like these weird chakra flow diagrams and…um, are these equations supposed to represent some sort of decay over time?"
The Hokage leaned closer to the scroll, his brow furrowed in thought. "They appear to be a model of some sort of balancing or redistribution between two unequal quantities," he said after a few moments' inspection of the lines she pointed to. "Aside from that, I am unsure, but I must admit that I have not actually studied these notes in that much detail. For the chakra diagrams, I would suggest consulting some of the texts used by medic-nins, since this seal is intended to be placed on a human body."
That makes sense, Sakura thought. The main seal's chakra would definitely have some sort of effect on a person's own chakra coils, though from what she understood, the two secondary seals were intended to reduce those effects in some way. She remembered what the Nine-Tails had said about the seals being equivalent to a door and its lock, but the actuality of the situation was more complicated than that. What confused her the most was that there were two separate sets of calculations and diagrams that both appeared to solve the same initial problem, and she couldn't tell which solution was correct.
"In any event," the Hokage said, "I am afraid we will have to finish our lesson early today. I have some important business to attend to, made even more urgent by what your team discovered on your mission."
His tone made it clear that no further information would be forthcoming, so she simply nodded and stood up, closing the scroll. As she bowed and left after thanking him, though, she found herself wondering what he meant and if it had anything to do with why he seemed so much more tired now than she remembered him being less than a month ago. Perhaps Naruto or Hinata would know something she didn't, given who their parents were, and she resolved to ask them when she saw them tomorrow for training.
- - -
Shikamaru was bored—not an uncommon state of mind for him, he had to admit, and generally one in which he was perfectly happy to indulge himself. It was far better than actually having to exert himself in some manner, after all. At the moment, though, he was rapidly approaching the point where he wondered if he might lapse into unconsciousness, and even by his standards, that was a bit much. It pained him to admit it, but the only thing keeping him awake was Ino, Chouji having fallen asleep some time ago after eating enough to make the restaurant manager cry.
What gave Asuma-sensei the brilliant idea to hold a team meeting at a buffet-style yakiniku restaurant? he wondered. Especially since he never bothered to show up. That sounds more like something Naruto's team's jounin-sensei would do. Perhaps something more important had come up at the last minute, but as far as he knew, things had been remarkably quiet and peaceful recently, especially by the standards of a hidden village. He couldn't remember his father mentioning anything out of the ordinary, at least, though he supposed that didn't necessarily mean much if it was something classified.
Still considering the situation, he nodded absently as he pretended to listen to what Ino was saying about how pointless their latest practice had been. It wasn't that he didn't agree with her in principle, but it was just more of the same things she had been saying for the last month. He wasn't quite sure why she was upset, though; in her place, he would have been perfectly happy to be able to lie back and relax while someone else bore the brunt of Asuma-sensei's attention—not that playing go and shogi with him was a great hardship, he had to admit, since the older ninja was an interesting and challenging opponent.
"Hey, weren't Sakura, Naruto, and Hinata supposed to get back today?" Ino asked, seeming to tire of her former subject. "I want to know how their mission went."
Apparently Chouji hadn't been asleep after all, as he raised his head from the table. "Yesterday afternoon, actually," he said. "I saw Hinata on her way back to the Hyuuga compound, but she looked really tired, so I didn't say anything to her."
Ino frowned. "They got back yesterday and Sakura hasn't come by to see me yet?" she wondered aloud. "I hope she's all right. They were gone for a long time, after all, and it was a C-rank mission."
She sounded as though she wasn't sure whether to be worried or a bit hurt that Sakura hadn't told her she was back, and Shikamaru sighed. Why did girls always have to take things so personally? If, gods forbid, he had been on a C-rank mission and traveled fast enough to get back a day and a half ahead of schedule, he knew the only thing he would have been thinking of would be sleeping—which wasn't all that different from his normal thoughts, but he figured it was a desire anyone would be able to understand in that situation. He knew better than to mention that to Ino, though.
"Hinata didn't look hurt, just tired," Chouji said, then shrugged. "They're probably all still resting. It's not like the Hokage would have given genin a dangerous mission or anything, even if it was C-rank."
Ino still didn't appear totally convinced, but she nodded anyways. "Yeah, you're probably right," she sighed. "I wonder why they got back so early, though, if everything went okay."
That's…actually a good point, Shikamaru realized, faintly surprised. It wasn't that Ino was stupid—far from it, actually—but she tended to prefer action to introspection, and he would not necessarily have expected her to think of something like that. Perhaps Team Seven had found out some sort of information that was important enough to warrant their early return, though if he remembered correctly, they had gone to a fairly remote, unimportant part of the country. He just wished he could remember exactly where that had been. Then an easy way to get answers to his questions occurred to him—so easy, in fact, that he wouldn't even have to do anything.
"Why not go check on Sakura?" he asked Ino. "If she just got back from a long mission yesterday, she probably doesn't have much food in her apartment, so you could take her some dinner and find out about her mission too."
And, of course, he thought, then you can tell us all about it tomorrow before practice. It was fairly obvious that if Asuma-sensei hadn't shown up by now, he probably wasn't coming at all, so it was time for them to leave anyways before the restaurant staff did more than just glare at them—well, at Chouji, at any rate. This way, Ino could get some reassurance that Sakura was fine, and he would learn what had happened during his friends' mission without having to go to the bother of finding one of them to ask. Granted, he would probably see one or more of them soon enough anyways, but it was more the principle of the matter than anything else.
"Good idea, Shika-kun," Ino said, grinning widely. He sighed at the nickname, knowing she only called him that because it annoyed him. "Well, in that case, I'm going to go before it gets too late. See you tomorrow!"
After waving goodbye, she turned and left, causing Shikamaru to sigh again as he realized she had forgotten to leave any money for her part of the meal. It appeared that this plan would be more troublesome than he had thought, if only monetarily, and he hoped she would learn something interesting. He also hoped nothing serious had happened to Sakura and the others, but Chouji had said Hinata appeared fine, and he was sure that if something had happened, none of them would have escaped uninjured. He did not envy the fate of the person who tried attacking any of the members of Team Seven.
Well, no point in worrying about it now, when anything that might happen already has. Nodding to Chouji, he stood up, waiting for the other boy to join him. Hopefully tomorrow would bring answers to the questions that persisted in annoying him.
- - -
Author's Notes: Wow, thanks for all the reviews again! I'm glad that people seem to like--or at least are interested in--my portrayal of the Kyuubi, and as hopefully came through in this chapter, the differences from canon will definitely be explored in some detail. Unfortunately, due to holiday-related time constraints (traveling/vacation, trying to finish stuff off at work before said vacation, etc.), I don't expect to have another chapter finished before some time in January. My apologies to anyone who's disappointed, but I just won't have the time; at least this chapter doesn't end on a nasty cliffhanger.
Just to give a little background on a couple of areas that some people might be interested in given their relative importance to the story, I'm primarily drawing from Taoist sources for my system of meditation, mostly because Buddhist visual meditation tends to be much more focused on external goals (e.g., visualizing the Pure Land of Amida or the Western Paradise) rather than an internal understanding of one's own body. For seals, though, I'm working almost entirely from Esoteric Buddhist sources, primarily those dealing with the creation of mandalas. So, while I am making stuff up as I go along, it all does have at least some grounding in real-life mysticism. In any event, thank you for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy the story!