txy07b_t7_strife
2011-11-10 - chopped in half for FFn
continued from part A
Kakashi didn't totally ignore the points Neshan had raised, stepping up the team training in the mornings and incorporating some of the teamwork drills Minato-sensei had used into their missions, but there was only so far the parameters of, say, walking a kennel's worth of dogs, could be stretched to simulate a genuine field mission. No, any real work to those ends would have to wait until they started in on C-ranks - a good bandit hunt or caravan escort or two and everything should fall neatly into place. Thankfully, they'd just about done their quota of the basics and it would soon be time for that.
*How often can Madame Shijimi lose her cat, anyway,* he wondered after their fifth time returning the skittish pet. Kakashi could tell by the looks his subordinates were exchanging that they were getting fed up with such simple duties as well as they made their way out into the sunny afternoon.
Dodging a booze-swilling, grey haired civilian with a travel pack as he headed toward the room where mission requests were taken, Sakura was the one to break first. "Ne, Kakashi-sensei, can we please get a more interesting mission soon? If we wanted to weed gardens and find lost pets, we wouldn't have needed to spend five years at the Academy!"
"Hn. These missions... There's no challenge in them," Sasuke agreed. "I need to become stronger. Smelling strongly of mutts does not count." He would never, -ever- admit it, but some of the heroes in those samurai romances had an entertaining way with quips and comebacks. Unsettling an enemy in combat could be a valuable edge, he justified.
It had nothing to do with the way Tenten would grin when he came out with one. At all. And he skipped the worst of the mushy stuff in favor of fight scenes, too. Perhaps he should look into supplementing his taijutsu with a sword? It could be useful in an extended encouter or if he needed to conserve chakra. He wasn't tall enough to get the best use of a long blade yet, but maybe a good solid ninja-to, and a chokuto when he'd reached his full growth...
Oblivious to his musings, even Tenten still nodded agreement with Sakura's request.
"Well... I suppose I can ask Hokage-sama if he has a C-rank mission that's suitable tomorrow," the jounin agreed after a moment. "There's usually something going on... Hm, in that case, the three of you should probably take this afternoon off from training to put together your field supplies - a week's worth is the standard pack. If not tomorrow there'll be something within a couple of days. Well, ja ne..." Flipping open his little book, the masked jounin wandered off, down the street towards Konoha Hospital.
Awkwardness forgotten, the two girls traded high fives and even Sasuke smiled minutely, before they dispersed to follow their instructions.
That moment of camraderie didn't last, unfortunately. Sasuke actually making eye contact to grunt a greeting to Tenten the next morning when he'd ignored Sakura as usual was all it took to get the younger kunoichi fuming again, and the brunette wasn't about to go intentionally setting her off.
Especially with the prospect of something more interesting than yet another lame chore with a thin disguise of ninja training layered on top of it in the offing if the 'team' could just keep it together.
Kakashi was two and a half hours late that day - on the longer end, but by no means a record for him. It was still plenty of time for the tension between the two girls to have ratcheted up to a high degree, and twin shouts of "YOU'RE LATE!" assaulted the masked jounin's ears.
"Hmm, well, I was just on my way when I saw a cow with its head stuck in a fence, and I had to help it get free," he explained, before brushing it off. "More importantly, we should hurry up to the Hokage's tower or all the C-ranks will be assigned before we get there."
"He says that, but he's the one we're waiting for," Sakura muttered. Despite herself, Tenten couldn't help but agree as they (finally!) headed off to get a better mission.
Since the new Academy semester hadn't started up yet, Umino Iruka was helping with mission assignments again today, and the troubled look on his face was plain when they requested a higher ranked one. His eyes flicked from Sakura, to Sasuke, and finally Tenten before coming to rest on their captain, worry over the preparedness of his former charges warring openly with the knowledge that the first were two of the best and their team mate had already been training for a year... that kind of inability to hide his thoughts was one of the main reasons he'd never risen higher in rank, though there were other factors that made him glad enough to remain a chuunin assigned to teaching or administrative duties as well.
The Sandaime looked on with quiet amusement as the internal struggle was resolved, and the Academy sensei passed him the list of C-rank missions without protest, but still shooting the old man a look that begged him to pick an easy one for these first-timers.
Sarutobi scanned down the page quickly with a serious face, then selected a mission scroll holding the details from the rack to one side. "Hmm, this one should do," he decided. Handing it off to Kakashi, he quickly summarized the assignment. "A supply shipment is being sent to the Rice Country border station, bringing food and other common items. As this trip does not include pay for the border guards, only casual bandits can be expected, so a single team will be sent to accompany them. The caravan is forming up at the South Gate stockyard to leave by mid day."
Kakashi gave the scroll a quick once over, mainly a glance at the included map, before rolling it back up and giving one of his eye-smiles. "Thank you, Hokage-sama, we'll be on our way then."
Four days of uneventful travelling later, the end was nearly in sight - the caravan master had told them they should reach the border post within the next day's travel as the wagons were pulled off into a camp area to rest the oxen and and make a firepit to cook stew for the mid-day meal. It had been a pleasant trip so far all in all, moving through the countryside at a fast walk but not so quickly as to raise too much dust from the road, dry with the continuing sunny summer weather.
Tenten was finishing up her lunch when a sharp poke in the ribs made her look over at Sakura. The girl was scowling fiercely while across the campfire Sasuke was staring dreamily Tenten's way, until he noticed her looking at least. Shaking himself, the last loyal Uchiha turned away quickly, but not before his rapidly reddening face gave away where his thoughts had been wandering.
*Ohmigosh, that's so cute,* the brunette thought to herself, suddenly realising just why Sakura was so sure the older girl was 'trying to steal her man.' She'd caught glimpses of the occasional blush before but figured it was just the frosty Uchiha starting to come out of his shell a bit - with that look on his face, it was obvious he'd actually, finally noticed girls. *Just my bad luck that it was me he picked to crush on, darn it.*
Without waiting for her to put down her bowl the Haruno grabbed Tenten's arm in a painfully tight grip, the tin dish clattering to the ground as she dragged the brunette off to one side of the temporary camp. "You say you're only interested in this Hyuuga Neji," she hissed accusingly. "So why are you still stringing Sasuke-kun along!"
"Ne, Sakura, I'm really not! Come on, let's not fight..." With little hope of actually getting her point across, Tenten tried to change the subject. "Hey, your chakra control is really good, right? Kakashi-sensei gave me this healing ninjutsu scroll but it's still a little beyond my reach, and I don't really have time to work on a third specialty anyway." She pulled her pack off and rummaged in a side pocket for a few seconds. "Here it is! Why don't you give it a look?"
Slapping the peace offering aside, Sakura growled, "You think I'd be satified with your castoffs, TEN-YEN?"
Stillness, the tensed feeling of a mountainside after a crack of thunder but before the avalanche jarred loose has begun to move. "You've been looking for another fight for days," Tenten observed quietly. An impressive amount of malicious intent radiated off of her, making Kakashi look up sharply from his book at the building confrontation. "I don't know why you won't listen to me... but you just bought one. SO DIE AND GO TO HELL, YOU JEALOUS -BITCH!-"
Dropping the scroll the older girl spun, building momentum for a truly vicious smash with the brass butt of her favorite weapon... a strike that whiffed through the air as Sakura dropped away under it, feet coming up inside the arc of her follow-through to land punishing kicks in the center of the brunette's chest and the nerve cluster under her left arm. The sun and moon fork went spinning away as the arm spasmed and Tenten hopped backwards, gasping in shock and pain. She kept retreating as her team mate pressed the attack, spinning on her hands and spreading her legs into a rising hurricane kick that led into a flip and an aerial stomp, then an uppercut from the crouch of that landing.
By that time the older girl had drawn a quartet of kunai in her good hand even though the left was still tingling and limp, but she hesitated, not truly wanting to do permanent harm even in the face of such an offensive comment. *She's just being a brat,* she tried to tell herself. *She doesn't know how hard I've had to fight against that kind of attitude.* Remembering those times only fueled her anger, though, and the frown of concentration twisted into a wrathful sneer as her arm came up for a throw.
"Fufufufuu..." Sarcastic laughter and a golf clap interrupted the motion, as a form melted out of the large boulder sheltering the campsite from the wind. "I was going to wipe out the defenders for this caravan so my group could replenish our suppplies, since it seems we've run short... but it looks like you two are ready to take care of each other for me." The man was short but massively muscled, about as broad across the shoulders as he was tall. "It's always fun, watching a couple of cuties fight... don't stop, don't stop! If you amuse me, I'll even let the winner live, and give her a -special- prize!"
He pursed his lips in an exaggerated way and mimed a kiss, the gesture even more grotesque on his homely, squashed looking face. A Hidden Stone forehead protector with the slash of a nuke-nin was worn as a bandanna over his bald head. Heavy, khaki canvas pants with oversized pockets and a dark brown vest completed his outfit, while a truly massive axe rode on his back and a few shuriken graced the carrying strap across the man's bulldog chest.
"Hmm, Hajiku no Ishikiri, the Stone-Splitter," Kakashi observed, suddenly standing between the two girls, one hand on a shoulder of each. "I'll need to have a talk with my subordinates later, but for now I'll be your opponent."
"Sharingan Kakashi," the nukenin acknowledged. "Heh... that's fine, my own subordinates are more than enough for yours. Come on out! This... should be fun."
At his signal, senbon and kunai flew from the brush at the edge of the clearing, forcing Sakura and Tenten to dodge away while Kakashi simply knocked the flying weapons out of the air with a kunai in one hand while raising his hitae-ate to uncover his hidden eye with the other. At the same time, a pair of hands emerged from the ground to grab Sasuke's ankles in the 'Shinju Zanshu' Kakashi had used on him during the bell test. Not one to fall for the same trick twice, he crouched and stabbed each of them with a kunai as soon as he felt them take hold, then leapt clear as a second stone-nin climbed out of the ground, clutching his damaged hands to his chuunin vest.
"You bastard!" he growled, retreating behind the hail of weapons from his still hidden companions. "I'll kill you for that!" Unsurprisingly, his forehead protector and those of the second chuunin and the genin kunoichi who stepped out to meet him were also slashed like Hajiku's. The girl's wasn't originally from Hidden Stone, however, but the neighboring Hidden Grass. She quickly pulled out a roll of gauze and some medical tape and wrapped the wounds while their companion kept the Leaf genin occupied.
That chuunin was dressed in a similar tan body suit and slightly darker vest as the first, but where his partner was as bald as their captain his head was crowned in short, stiff, sandy blond hair cut into a flat-top style. Not wanting to use up all his weapons, he'd formed some quick hand seals, then leaned over to place both hands on a nearby rock.
"Doton: Funpi Sekihi no jutsu!" finger-long shards blasted away from the dog-sized stone, a lethal geyser of sharp edges that he swept after the leaf-nin as they dodged like water from a hose.
"Finally warming up to me, Kachinkachin?" the injured one asked the cloak clad, long haired ex-Grass-nin as she finished her rough field dressings. "Perseverance wins after all!"
"Idiot! This is no time for flirting, Kasui," the kunoichi rebuked him, "and if you don't stop calling me 'kachinkachin,' you'll find some senbon when you try to sit. Are you helping, or are Gansou and I going to have to do all the work?"
Clenching his hands into fists with a slight grimace of pain, the bald nuke-nin beat them together experimentally, then gave a cruel grin. "Heh, just watch me, Kin!" he boasted. "You won't have time to do a thing before I crush these Leaf brats!" He charged as Gansou's ninjutsu ended, lashing out at Sasuke with a blisteringly fast taijutsu combo that kept the genin on the retreat, only barely able to dodge or block.
Hajiku and Kakashi, meanwhile, had gotten into a battle of sand clones, half a dozen more or less damaged copies of themelves dueling up and down the face of the boulder while the two jounin jockeyed for position, each trying to maneuver the other into leaving an opening or giving himself enough time to prepare a more powerful ninjutsu, and the civilian caravaneers had quickly barricaded themselves on the far side of the wagons with their oxen.
Tiring of the dance, the stocky nuke-nin drew his axe and slammed it into the summit of the boulder with incredible force, splitting the massive stone evenly in two. The shockwave destroyed both sets of suna bunshin. Jumping back from the strike the Copycat landed in a half-crouch on one half as it settled, Hajiku taking position on the opposite piece. Their squads likewise seperated, Sakura taking advantage of the break to use a soldier pill.
The young Haruno had discovered first hand the problems Kakashi had warned her about, the stress of real combat with her life at stake proving far more of a challenge to the concentration needed to use her chakra than even the most gruelling practice, and the desperate need for any edge available making it impossible to hold back any ounce of strength or speed she could produce. The fact that two out of three of their enemies were chuunin, not genin, only made it worse - it was all the three Leaf could do to keep Kasui and Gansou from cornering them, leaving Kin to snipe with her senbon essentially at will. As a consequence Sakura's reserves had been bitten into sharply by only a few minutes of combat, between the need to boost both attributes to the maximum and diminished control using it less efficiently.
She could feel her damn hitae-ate coming loose again, too, and with a growl she tugged it off then brushed her hair back and pulled it into place on her forehead to keep the pink mass out of her face, keeping a wary eye on the missing-nin team all the while.
The Stone-Splitter's hands flashed into a short seal combination, one Kakashi recognised but didn't bother countering since the simple jutsu's effect was nothing more than a set-up for later use, and if anything letting his opponent burn chakra to do it quickly was probably a better tactic.
"Doton: Saiseki Enshuujou no jutsu!" The rock where Hajiku stood abruptly shattered into thousands of fist-sized chunks. Some fell away into the cleft between the two sections but most stayed in place, rough egdes providing too much friction to immediately slide loose. The Stone-nin continued into a second set of seals without a pause, the sight prompting Kakashi to memorize the unfamiliar technique with the blood-red Sharingan eye in his scarred left socket. "Kataiishi Sankaku no jutsu!" Hajiku announced at the end of a moderate length series of hand seals, the crumbled stone at his feet flowing up his legs and clinging to his body, forming an armored layer complete with a rough helmet and two large, rounded shields on the forearms.
"How do you like my Hard Stone Armor, Sharingan Kakashi?" he gloated. "I'm sure you studied it well... too bad you'll never get to try it, because with my next move, the battle is over. Tenseki Juudan!" He rolled himself into a rocky ball, the head of his huge axe protruding almost comically from one side like the key on a wind-up toy. The ex-Iwa-nin began spinning rapidly before hurtling across the gap toward Kakashi.
Quickly dodging away from the strike and several more that followed the Leaf jounin quipped, "Hmm, well, that is an impressive jutsu, but... it seems a rolling stone gathers no moss."
Bellowing with fury the nuke-nin uncurled again and pursued, shaking the earth with the impacts as he slammed his axe into the ground just inches short of his opponent again and again. Kakashi led him futher away, the need to insulate the civilians and his team from the collateral damage that was the usual result of a high level battle having kept Kakashi from really opening up with his repetoir until then.
The genin's battle wasn't going quite so well, unfortunately. Whenever Sasuke or Tenten would try to pull back to use their ranged attacks, the Stone taijutsu specialist Kasui would slip around and keep them in close, and when Sakura tried to strike back she'd be driven away by Gansou's ninjutsu or still more needles from Kin, who all the time was getting small but telling shots in even if she didn't have the accuracy needed to hit specific nerve clusters or vital points.
"This just isn't working," Tenten observed, breath coming in heavy gasps. "We need a new strategy, or *any* strategy to begin with," she complained quietly from her point of the triangle formation. "I'm actually close to running out of hidden weapons, and there's been no time to unseal any more..." She trailed off and her eyes narrowed as she remembered a trick one of the teams she'd been hired to help train in pursuit tactics had pulled on her, but setting up the idea it had given her could be a problem with the way Team Seven got along - it wouldn't do any good if their enemies got all the details while she tried to explain to her team mates, and they hadn't formed the kind of rapport needed to understand what each other were thinking from gestures and scattered phrases.
While trying to figure out a way around that, she slipped a hand into her back tool pouch, pulling out what looked like a deck of playing cards and stripped off the wrapper.
"What's that for?" the Grass kunoichi sneered, the nuke-nin trio having also backed off to catch their breath for a few seconds. "You going to challenge us to a game of poker for your lives?"
Taking the cue as a basis to buy a little more time, the brunette cut and shuffled the deck. "Oh, you never know, it might be interesting," she replied. "Maybe a different game, though... ever tried fifty-two pickup?" Ignoring her enemies' confused expressions, she she split the deck again into two stacks and jammed them under the cuffs of her fingerless gloves to be out of the way for the moment. Taking a quick step to one side she pulled Sasuke's near hand toward her belly and ordered, "Throw high!" before using the 'Henge' technique to become an oversized shuriken and fall into his grip.
After only a moment's surprise the Uchiha did just that, spinning to gain momentum before launching the two foot wide throwing star into the sky. Reaching the highest point of the steep arc the girl reverted to her natural form, quickly whipping out her weapon sealing scroll and opening it, then tossing it forcefully back toward the ground while holding the loose end so it would unroll in the air and delay her descent just one more crucial second. She used the time to slice a fingertip on each hand for fresh blood. Descending, she swiped the bleeding fingertips across the long line of storage seals, grabbing and throwing the weapons that appeared in a flurry of wood and steel at the cursing, evading missing-nin.
Kin finally found a moment to return fire as the Leaf girl neared the ground, a glancing blow to the abdomen that barely drew blood but was enough to throw off her landing, and which tangled in the pink silk of her top.
There was the crunch of breaking bone from her leg as Tenten struck the ground and went down, the jarring impact making her bite the inside of her cheek deeply as well. Despite that, the Leaf kunoichi pulled herself into a sitting positon before spitting out a mouthful of blood and giving a gory grin. "Paper wraps rock," she gasped, forming a ram seal.
All across the battleground, the explosive tags she'd wrapped around the various weapons as she threw them detonated... including the one on the kunai Kin had grabbed to throw back. The clanless girl was blasted sideways to land against the wheel of one of the carts, mercifully unconscious. Sasuke was knocked for a loop as well but still aware and uninjured, leaving just Sakura to finish cleaning up.
The Stone and Grass missing-nin were much worse off, having been in the middle of the field of exsplosions and when the smoke finally cleared all three were looking heavily charred, though since she was at the outer edge the enemy kunoichi had gotten off the lightest, mostly having just been bowled over since her heavy cloak stopped the worst of the scattering debris.
Gansou was worst off, having been in the middle of sealing for a mudslide ninjutsu to take advantage of the scattered weapons by throwing them back at the Leaf-nin, and hence unprepared to roll with the follow-up attack. He lay limply where he'd landed from the explosions. Kasui was a bit unsteady but well enough able to keep his feet, at least until Sakura's heels plowed into his jaw one after the other in a roundhouse kick. Already concussed by the force of the blasts he went down and stayed there as well.
Finding herself left alone against the enemy who'd proven most able at dodging her needles, the former Grass kunoichi bit off a curse and growled, "I just knew it was a bad idea, traveling with those morons." Seeing the pinkette bound towards her to finish the job, flipping across the cratered and weapon strewn battlefield as if it was nothing, she grimaced and called out, "Hey, are you going to chase me, or take care of your team mates? They don't look so good, you know..." A pathetic attempt at a distraction, but it seemed to work, and the nuke-nin slipped away among the giant, mushroom-studded trees before anything more could go wrong.
For example, getting caught by Sharingan Kakashi after he pulled his fist back out through the hole it had punched in Hajiku's axe on its way to the man's chest. The blow hadn't immediately killed the former Stone-nin but he was definitely out of the fight. From the look he sent her way the infamous Copycat Ninja was well aware of her arriving on the edge of their battle ground, and if he hadn't been more anxious to check on his team after the huge explosion she'd undoubtedly have been next.
Kin wavered indecisively for a moment, but finally hauled the bald man up onto a shoulder before leaving - for all that he was uglier than a mountain ape and had a temper to match, Hajiku was actually half-decent to the dark haired girl, and besides that he was the one who knew where this "Kimimaro" they were supposed to meet would be.
Kakashi was on the knife edge of chakra exhaustion as his 'Raikiri' faded away. He only took a moment to confirm that the Stone jounin was shocked into unconsciousness and that the new presence he'd sensed approaching was only the genin kunoichi before pulling his hitae-ate down to cover the chakra-hungry Sharingan eye, and hurrying back to check on his team. He'd hated to leave them alone in the first place, but with the destruction his opponent had been casually dealing out they could easily have been injured or killed without even intending to. Maybe the girl would help the jounin escape and maybe she wouldn't - with missing-nin you could never tell, especially when members of a group had come from different villages - but regardless his team was more important.
His heart clenched in his chest as he arrived at the camp area to find widespread devastation, and the student who'd simultaneously become his favorite and most troublesome kneeling tearfully over the other two where they'd been laid out by the wagons.
Looking up at his approach, she pleaded, "Kakashi-sensei, help me! It isn't working!" Then, much to his surprise, the pink haired genin flipped through the hand seals for the healing technique he'd given Tenten a scroll detailing, produced a soothing green glow between her hands, and pressed them against the older girl's abdomen where the tattered, blood-soaked top had been cut away.
Gently but firmly pushing her aside he knelt and examined the wound himself - charred skin sloughed off at his probing touch and exposed tissue gleamed wet with blood and fluids, but he couldn't see any fresh bleeding, and the tissue beneath the bits that brushed away was pink and as healthy as could be expected given that it had only been treated with the absolute most basic medic ninjutsu in existence, little more than sterilization and a bit of cell stimulation. He didn't know much more effective ones himself, or rather while he'd copied the techniques the knowledge of the body to properly apply them was something he'd never studied in detail. All the same, they should be enough to keep the girl alive, and what he couldn't deal with would be put right when real medic-nin arrived.
Course of action decided, he ordered, "Sakura, I don't usually use soldier pills, so I'll need one of yours. I'm almost out of chakra right now." As the girl scrambled to comply, he looked up at her, and for once saw his student without a ghost hiding her face. "You did a good job," he told her, eye screwed up with a rare, truly genuine smile. "To achieve that jutsu on your first try... it's an amazing feat. The wound didn't close over because that's a much more advanced technique which even I can't do," he admitted, before popping the proffered medicine into his mouth and crushing it. Moments later his fastest dog summon was carrying a message to bring the medic-nin, and his own hands were engulfed in the radiance of a slightly more advanced healing ninjutsu.
On the man's other side Sasuke watched and listened and fumed at being so helpless, his balance still not recovered from the shockwave and rapid tumble when Tenten's body had knocked his legs out from under him. And just a little, he wondered at how his other team mate had improved, between that acrobatic taijutsu that was like nothing he'd ever seen, and mastering one of the most notoriously difficult class of ninjutsu in existence in a matter of minutes. Perhaps there was more to her than just another loud, annoying, clingy fan-girl after all?
Being so close, Kakashi had accompanied the caravan the rest of the way to the small border post while his intact students were sent back to Konoha with the medic-nin and Tenten. For all the girl's burn had been large and deep, neither it nor the internal damage from the shockwave would cause her any lasting difficulty, or even significant amounts of scarring. By the time she woke up it was nothing more than a large patch of tender new skin, with a thin ridge of scar tissue around the edges where there had been damage from the explosive tag's heat but not to the point of needing to be excised and regenerated.
It was still confusing to her, waking up in a comfy, firm bed in a sunny white-painted room, when her last memories were of being tossed into the air as a giant shuriken, locked in deadly combat. The realization that she must be in the hospital was logical enough after that, and looking around she saw her team mates were also in the room, which was a bit of a surprise. Maybe not so much in Sasuke's case, given what she'd finally figured out about him, but didn't Sakura hate her guts?
The Uchiha boy was leaning against a wall with crossed arms, brooding, but looked up when he heard her breathing pattern change. "You're awake," he said simply, prompting a faint gasp from Sakura, who froze indecisively where she sat reading a magazine.
"Yeah," Tenten replied, voice rough from disuse. She cleared her throat before asking, "I guess you guys got 'em, then?"
"Keh," Sasuke snorted disgustedly and went back to his sulk.
Setting her magazine aside, the Haruno girl finally spoke up. "Ah, well, it was mostly your attack, but that kunoichi threw one kunai back at you. It was still tangled in your shirt when you set the kibakufuda off. There wasn't much after that."
Still not moving from his critical position of holding up the wall, Sasuke made the variation of snort indicating irritation. "The explosive tag attack knocked one of the rock chuunin out and left the other easy prey for Sakura's new taijutsu, and the girl ran away after that. The one on the kunai stuck in your clothes tossed you into a wagon and knocked me off balance. Sakura found a healing ninjutsu scroll somewhere and figured it out after a few tries, then used it on the burn on your side. Then Kakashi finished with his enemy and summoned the medic-nin, who brought you back here." Summary complete, he pushed himself upright and left. The hospital's wall did not fall down, even without the support of the Uchiha clan, and the continuing evidence that he was not necessarily the center of existence lent an extra stomp to the boy's tread.
He knew he was being ridiculous. He knew that he should have realised people don't fit into neat little boxes for long, if at all. He knew that if they were really as useless as he imagined them, his two most annoying fangirls Ino and Sakura would have failed the sensei's tests like the rest of their contemporaries. He knew that he wasn't the only one who was allowed to change and become stronger.
It still stung his pride to have to admit he might have been wrong about things. It still rankled that he'd been unable to do anything but buy time against their enemies, that it was someone else who finished them off. It still struck at the deeply buried fear that he would never be able to match his brother, that he would never be able to achieve his vengeance. It still hurt that the first girl to ever come close to being worth his time in his eyes had gotten so badly injured, and it still confused him that he felt that way in the first place when he'd sworn to concentrate on increasing his capacity rather than worry about girly stuff like ... LIKING girls, and ... that kind of stuff.
He sulked along at full adolescent brood towards the Uchiha compound and the training grounds, where he'd at least be able to absorb himself in physical effort and stop thinking...
He remembered some of the physical efforts described in tantalyzingly euphemistic detail in those damn books he'd somehow gotten hooked into reading, and blushed. A pair of old ladies sitting on a bench outside the hospital agreed that it was the most darling thing as he passed, and if they were just their grand-daughters' age...
Thinking hard about shuriken, the different types of shuriken, care and maintenaince of shuriken, and the best ways of throwing shuriken, Sasuke sped up just a bit more.
In Tenten's hospital room, an awkward silence had fallen. The older girl, her hair free from its buns for once and trailing down past her shouders in loose waves, was still looking curiously at her female team mate, wondering why she'd bothered to visit, and Sakura was fidgeting nervously, staring down into her lap.
Finally, the youngest Haruno stood, bowed, and gave the brunette a repentant look. "I'm sorry, Tenten... even if I was angry, I shouldn't have used such insults, nor attacked you that time. And... I can tell that you really haven't been doing anything to lead Sasuke on, somehow he just noticed you like he never noticed me, before."
*So does that mean he's noticed her now, so she can apologise? Well, at least she's making the effort, and it's a better result than just winning against the girl again would have been, let alone how it looked like things were going.* Tenten nodded slowly, then replied, "Apology accepted." Her serious face lightened a bit, though still not enough to call it a smile. "I probably shouldn't have teased you quite so much, either, Sakura... Wanna try this again?" She patted the side of the bed invitingly.
The pink haired girl smiled then and sat as indicated, prompting an aswering smile in return. "I'd like that," she said, then reintroduced herself, "I'm Haruno Sakura, I like Sasuke and dango, and ..." She ran a finger across her hitae-ate, still in its new place on her forehead. "...and I'm a serious kunoichi. Would you like to be friends?" Her face kept its smile, even as her eyes began to glisten thinking of things she'd said and done, and bridges that might be too burnt for repair.
"I'm Tenten of the Leaf," the year-older girl replied, "I like studying new weapons and seals, and dango too. I'm also a serious kunoichi, and I'd love to be your friend." Though not understanding the full reasons behind the tear that trickled out of the other girl's eye, she wiped it away with a gentle hand and rubbed her back reassuringly.
Just outside the door, Kakashi let his hand fall from the handle. His one visible eye narrowed in thought, and the mask moved as he frowned contemplatively. Deciding not to get involved with crying females when the problem he'd been intending to confront seemed to have been worked out already, he turned away again - time enough to talk to them after reporting on the mission he'd just returned from.
As for that other thing... after the continuing dischord he'd decided against entering the kids in the upcoming Chuunin Selection Exam, but now he wasn't so certain. Of course, he'd thought things had worked themselves out before, too, so it would really depend on how the next week's team excercises went.
Nodding decisively, he pulled out his copy of Icha Icha Paradise and moseyed in the general direction of the Hokage's tower.
Sakura's eyes were still a bit red when she returned home that evening, after Tenten had been released. She rubbed the forehead protector on her brow again as she slid the door closed, then turned to see Kikuko on the couch, watching her with a curious look and a half-open trap manual in her hands. Instantly, the younger sister's expression clouded, and her eyes threatened to spill over again. "You were right, okay?" she bit out. "I was an idiot. Go ahead and laugh." Without waiting for a reply, she stormed up the stairs toward the sanctuary of her room.
Flabbergasted, Kikuko could only watch, and blink. The situation was the same on the second take, but still made no more sense. "Was that about... the movie-star thing? It couldn't have meant that much to her, could it?" the older girl wondered aloud. "Huh... Well, I suppose I can try not to treat her like such a kid any more, she did get into field duty after all."
Setting her manual aside, she headed to the kitchen to brew some sweet tea and get out the rice crackers... it looked like comfort foods were in order, and maybe a sisterly heart to heart.
(Would you like to know more?)
Hyouton - 'ice release' (ninjutsu) - "use a hyouton" in this context is roughly the same as "take a chill pill."
This turned out to be much more of a Sakura-focused chapter than I'd expected - that's all right, it still ties up the loose ends from Tenten's and Sasuke will get his turn in their parts of the Chuunin Exam.
Sakura's mention of famous battles is from her study of ninja history - research and information gathering was her best ability before graduation, after all. Kakashi on the other hand, while too young to have been present (or even born yet) for Masaki's Grove, was in the first group through the walls at Bellflower Pass and so has a slightly different perspective on it than the history books. For those keeping score, yes, that is the battle Kabuto was found in the aftermath of and adopted by a Konoha medic-nin, Yakushi Washimaru. As the turning point in the Leaf-Stone war many stories are tied to it among the older generation of ninja.
Sakura is twelve, Kikuko is a month or so shy of fifteen, Jinrei and Kenshiro are just over sixteen, and Ichimaru is nineteen. Their mother is thirty six and their father two years older to the day.
"Kikuko-oni" (Demon-Kikuko) is not a typo, rather it's Sakura ragging on her sister as siblings are wont to do. She loves her family, it's just that a lot of the time she doesn't like them very much. It's the teenager thing, if shifted back a couple years due to the rate ninja kids have to grow up.
She has one more brother who hasn't appeared though he was mentioned in passing, his name is (somewhat uninmaginitively, as the first born son) Ichimaru, a jounin ANBU squad captain whose mask is based on a cat. As such, further details about him are classified. Her mother is also a Jounin and just going back to active status since Sakura graduated, considering it a nice break after eighteen years of raising children. Her father retired on disability after losing an arm just above the elbow eight years ago - he recently obtained a nin-puppeteer style replacement but as that art is unfamiliar is still working on mastering it to the degree needed to be confident in combat again. He has also found that he likes having time with his kids, rather than being constantly away on missions.
On the subject of ninja and polyamorous relationships - To nip any protests in the bud, this isn't just me 'being a guy' and thinking that multiple girls are cool, because more than one other person in a relationship is more like adding an exponent to the difficulty of accomodating each other's personalities than adding to it, rather it's a logically derived conclusion from what we know of the ninja world. (If it WAS that, Sakura wouldn't be squicked by the idea, for one thing! There ARE no ugly kunoichi in the series, and I'd give even odds that even Akamichi girls are hot, just more filled out.) First, special bloodline abilities really are a critical factor in whether a ninja is strong or merely average for the same amount of effort, and in this version at least the ability to consciously mold and use chakra is in itself a trait only present in a minority of the population, making matches between those with the ability essential to continue a ninja clan.
Second, we're consistently shown around twice as many male ninja as female among genin, and less than that at higher levels - only one of Akatsuki is a woman, and otherwise there's been all of one each in chuunin (Shizune), ANBU (Yuugao, the one who found Hayate after Baki killed him in the break before the Chuunin finals), special jounin (Anko), jounin (Kurenai), and kage (Tsunade, though the one half-silhouetted image of the Mizukage in the lineup when Kakashi talks about the five great ninja countries is either female or bishonen, but given the number of the latter already there's no certainty) ranks and it's kind of arguable whether Shizune even counts, as I'm not including the Academy instructor (Suzume) among the field ninja. However, barring mass infanticide or widespread genetic disorders human birth rates are about equal, which means there's a lot more kunoichi or potential kunoichi than we've seen on field duty... and ninja on field duty often get killed, reducing the available male population. Similar concerns are also what drive them to get serious about relationships by fifteen or sixteen, and popular wisdom holds that a ninja who hasn't formed some kind of stable relationship by eighteen will probably die single, too devoted to the job to make time for other people and the extra emotional stress.
In such a case, a ninja gal can either take a chance on a civilian who won't understand her life style to begin with and may influence any children toward being unable to use chakra, fight over the boys who are around and possibly lose or suffer disabling injury in the heat of the moment, or try to find another kunoichi they can get along with in that way. Similarly, because it is so difficult to find a working three-way match, two girls who are compatible dating and even being intimate with each other without a current male partner won't get more than a second glance, at least within a ninja village. Gay men get some small breaks from this from people who recognise the hypocrisy of holding them to a different standard, but it's offset almost as much by resentment at taking themselves out of circulation unless they're open enough for occasional female playmates even if none stay in a lasting way. The way both Haruno twins seem to be interested in Ino but not visibly competing over it absolutely rots the socks of their admirers, though the common knowledge of their being psychic and the degree to which they act in unison preempts most of the nastiest rumors.
None of this has any immediate relevance to the main cast, however, as they're all still just kids, with crushes (acknowledged or denied) the most any of them are up to - even if Ino is not as rabid in her pursuit of the class hottie Sasuke because she's flattered by the attention of Sakura's also smokin' brothers that relationship is still only at the 'friends with possibilities' stage. As to age of consent, if their society considers them old enough to take a life, they're old enough to create one, and there are any number of methods for ninja to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
Amaboshi - sun-dried persimmon - a namelike word picked at random, in this case.
For those of you who've read Nathan's story, Teenage Genin Ninja Heroes, Sakura is not doing the technique he has her training in there - or at least, not quite. Certainly not when she uses a soldier pill, and has a surge of chakra that has to be tamed... but other times, when she's trying to do the most with the least and has the extra attention that would be taken up controlling that extra, more unstable chakra, she has noticed that altering the way it flows within her muscles gives a bigger return than forming the same amount of chakra around her body like the Academy technique. And, with the Haruno bloodline developed for combat uses unlike the TGNH Haruno, she has a seperate mind to go into a meditative state and do that finicky control... so in a way, she kind of is using the technique, without even realising that it's not the same thing at all.
"Ten-yen" - a ryo, which seems to be the standard unit of currency in the Naruto world, was the name of a ten-yen coin, though such are now generally just referred to as "ten yen coins." As such, Sakura pretty much accused Tenten of being a very cheap slut, having been itching to get a rematch of their earlier fight now that she has some skills to apply. Tenten is sensitive about this issue to begin with as a teenage girl living alone, without even the thin shield of a family name to ward off scumbags who think there's much more entertaining ways she could make a living than as a ninja. This is made even worse by the fact that there's a spelling of "tenten" which means "moving from place to place; being passed around repeatedly."
hajiku - (1) to flip; to snap; (2) to repel - It seemed just right for an ugly berserker, ne? His clan is distantly related to the Leaf's Akamichi, as you may have guessed, but they have taken their development in different directions.
ishikiri - stone-cutting; quarrying; stone-cutter
Shinju Zanshu - Double Suicide Decapitation, supposedly. Different sources list the translation as "Inner Earth" or "Groundhog" instead of "Double Suicide," which make rather more sense.
Doton: Funpi Sekihi - Earth release: stone knife (Jomon-period tool, shaped like a rice spoon) + springing up; flying away
kachinkachin - (1) rock hard; stiff and unyielding (personality); (2) clangor - Kasui is making fun of Kin for repeatedly turning him down, the actual wording of the expression used at the end of the paragraph would be "ishinouenimosannen" - literally, "Even the coldest rock will get warm if sat on for three years," hence her reply about the placement of retaliatory needles.
kasui - (n) spike - no, his family name is not Wittowikki, nor does he posess a title like "the Bloody."
gansou - (n) rock formation
saiseki enshuujou - broken stone; rubble + maneuvering ground - a D-to-A-rank ninjutsu used to cover a battlefield in loose stone, either to reduce the ability of non-Stone-nin to move easily or to set up for other ninjutsu. The rank varies mainly based on how large an area is to be affected, the chakra manipulation itself is quite easy but becomes draining over a larger area.
kataiishi sankaku - hard stone + (1) (obsc) armor, helmet & shield (armour); (2) kakurei, kakuun & kakumei (first, fifth and fifty-eighth years of the sexagenary cycle; times of civil unrest according to onmyou-dou)
tenseki juudan - rolling stone + flying through/cutting across/longitudinal slice. Yes, the basic look is stolen from the rock dude in Ninja Scroll, if with a different weapon, but in continuity it's derived from the same roots as the Nikudan Sensha used by the modern Akamichi clan.
Again, there's a conglomerate japanese word for the expression Kakashi uses as a quip after this technique : "tensekikokemusazu" - a rolling stone gathers no moss
henge - transformation - opinions are generally divided on whether this technique is a real transformation or just an illusion, but I fall into the "real" camp for three reasons: a) Naruto transforms into a fuuma shuriken and then matches the flight characteristics of a real fuuma shuriken for Sasuke's Shadow Shuriken attack on Zabusa, which would require actually having the apparent mass and aerodynamic properties of the object he turned into. b) Sasuke wasn't surprised at this happening, so it's not just Naruto doing some funky real transformation when everyone else just uses an illusion. c) Gamabunta tells Naruto to do a combination henge to turn them into something with claws and fangs for fighting Shuukaku, which would be pointless if said claws and fangs were just illusions. Again, there'd be no reason for him to know about it if Naruto's henge was different from anyone else's in being a real, physical change. Henge no jutsu is therefore classed as ninjutsu in this version of the setting.
Omake: The same type as Kakashi?
Thinking hard about shuriken (his hand brushed the navel in a firm stomach, that abruptly turned hard as steel), the different types of shuriken (damn that was a big one, and so well made), care and maintenaince of shuriken (a glimpse of chest through a tattered pink shirt), and the best ways of throwing shuriken (it slipped easily around his fingers, all he had to do was twirl and...), Sasuke sped up just a bit more.
Screw target practise, he had a hot scene bookmarked and a full box of kleenex waiting.
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