Sakura sobbed as she looked at her reflection in the water of the river that flowed from the base of the waterfall at the far end of the Valley of the End. She was completely hideous! Her hair was a mass of tangles because she hadn't had her comb on her because she'd left it in the bag she'd left at home, her face was smudged with dirt, and her lips were beginning to get chapped. That didn't even begin to cover the state of her nails, or the fact that there were smudges of dirt on her hands, arms, and legs, and the fact that there was dried blood on her left leg because she'd skinned her knee which was now scabbed. Her clothes, which were the horrendous bright orange ones that Naruto lent her were absolutely filthy, and helped make her smell worse than she looked.
Tetsuo-sensei had let her bathe and wash her clothes instead of making her clean the statues like she was supposed to be doing because he was tired of smelling her. Instead of taking her somewhere reputable where she could properly get clean, he had told her to "Pick a spot on the river, but don't wander off too far". She didn't know how she was going to do this though, since the water was freezing, and she had no soap with which to clean herself, her clothing, or her blanket which was beginning to smell rather rank as well. When she'd pointed this out earlier, Tetsuo-sensei had told her that she had to work with what she had, not what she wished she had, that people got by without soap for centuries, and that she could do so now.
When she had pointed out that she wouldn't have anything to wear while her clothes dried, Naruto had just given her a look as if there was a solution that was so obvious that a toddler would get it, and that since she didn't get it, she was less intelligent than a toddler, before digging into his supplies and pulling out a t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts and telling her that he would want those back as soon as her clothes were dry since, if he kept loaning his clothes to an idiot, he'd have nothing for himself to wear. Naruto, who wasn't in the best of moods at the time, had then wandered off muttering something about someone named Suzume not being this much trouble, and gotten back to cleaning Uchiha Madara's statue, taking more care than the last few teams that had been out here apparently had.
As she yet again dipped a toe into the water, and found it too cold to even consider dipping another body part in, she cried about the unfairness of it all. This wasn't how things were supposed to go. She was supposed to have caught Sasuke's heart, been steadily dating him by now, and been well on her way to becoming Mrs. Uchiha. They'd never really said anything about anything like this back in the Academy when they talked about life as a Kunoichi. Back then, in the Kunoichi classes, it had been more about flower arranging, and being able to pass oneself off as a proper woman from just about any social class for a mission, and how best to sit to catch a man's attention if one needed to. All the other stuff like throwing shuriken and kunai and survival training had been covered in the mixed classes, and even then, they hadn't talked about anything like this.
As she backed away from the water again, she found herself running into something. Something that was warm, alive, and much taller than she was, and therefore couldn't be Sasuke-kun whom she didn't really want to see her while she was in this condition. She shrieked and whirled to face the pervert she'd run into and give him what for, only to have Tetsuo-sensei pick her up and throw her into the water before she could say or do anything to him.
"I don't have all day you know." Tetsuo sensei said when she surfaced, cold, wet, angry, and somewhat in shock. "Technically, I do. But, keeping an eye on both you and Sasuke in order to make sure you don't get yourselves killed is much easier if you're both in the same general area."
"Mom was right!" she yelled, angry at him and hoping to land a verbal blow since she couldn't land a physical one. "You're just a..."
"Finish that sentence and I'll hit you." Tetsuo-sensei who had seated himself on a rock on the riverbank replied as he pulled several kunai out of a scroll which had been in a hidden pocket on the outside of his right pants leg and started examining them. "I have no problem hitting girls, and there are people out there who would do worse if you slandered them like that. I'm a happily married man, and I prefer my women with a few more years on them, more sizable...assets, and the ability to take care of themselves, which are all things you don't have."
She sat there in the middle of the river, shivering as the water rushed past her trying to pull her downstream and sputtering in outrage, too upset to speak coherently. She probably looked really stupid, but at that point, she was too cold to care. The inner part of her that usually thought the things that she wasn't supposed to seemed to be agreeing with her for once, based on the way it was swearing.
"Hurry up and wash up, I'm getting tired of waiting for you to get done." Tetsuo-sensei said from his rock where he was sharpening a kunai.
"Why are you being so mean to me? !" she asked, having found her voice and once again crying at the unfairness of it all since directly confronting her sensei on this like she wanted to would probably turn out to be suicide.
"I had a friend that I went through the Academy with." Tetsuo-sensei replied, looking directly at her. "We both graduated at the tail end of the Third War, and were promptly sent out to fight. My friend was placed on a team with a girl that was just like you, but had the excuse that she'd been rushed through the Academy because it was a time of war to explain at least some of her behavior. Rather than waking her up and showing her what's what, their sensei catered to her, and the rest of the team followed his lead. My friend died saving her during what was supposed to be a routine sabotage mission when the little twit walked right into one of the traps they were setting up. It was a waste though, because the girl he died saving died soon after, never having learned her lesson, and never having appreciated my friend's sacrifice."
"I'm sorry about what happened to your friend," she ground out through chattering teeth still upset with her teacher and slightly disappointed that her sympathy ploy hadn't worked. "But what does that have to do with..."
"You?" Tetsuo-sensei finished for her. "As I said, you're just like how that little twit used to be, and unlike her sensei, I'm not going to let you get anyone on this team killed because of your incompetence, least of all yourself. I don't expect you to become the next Tsunade, but it is my job to turn you into a decent Kunoichi, which is something you are a far cry from being right now. If I have to put you through a great deal of hardship in order to do so, then so be it. Better now, than later when your life could depend on skills and a strength of character that you do not yet have."
This cut through the anger she had been steadily building up against him, and she didn't know what to think or how to feel about this. She had gotten used to thinking that he was being mean either just to be mean or because her mother had pissed him off and he was taking it out on her, and had come to dislike her sensei severely because of it. But to do something like this in order to give her a wake-up call before she made a mistake that got someone, maybe even Sasuke, killed?
"Dunk your head under the water to get rid of some of the dirt and grease in your hair, and come out of there before you catch your death of hypothermia." Tetsuo-sensei called to her just as she was getting lost in thought.
She complied and made her way to the riverbank afterward, not feeling anywhere near as clean or refreshed as she should be. When she reached the bank, Tetsuo-sensei threw her a towel with which to dry off, which she did. As soon as she was dry, she changed into the boxers and t-shirt that Naruto loaned her, shivering all the while because she wasn't much warmer out of the water than in it, as the weather was currently only a few degrees warmer than the water had been. As soon as she was dressed, Tetsuo-sensei handed her a comb and a kunai.
"You've got ten minutes to comb your hair. If you can't comb it in that amount of time, cut it until you can." Tetsuo-sensei said when he found her looking down at the kunai in confusion.
"But..." she started, not wanting to let go of the beautiful hair which she'd grown out for Sasuke, in hopes of catching his attention so she could become his wife. Sasuke was so tortured by his past, and he needed a good woman in his life to help him, and she was determined that that woman would be her.
"What do you think would have happened if someone grabbed Uchiha Madara's hair in the middle of a battle?" Tetsuo-sensei asked, drawing her attention to the statues that were off in the distance which her team was supposed to be cleaning.
"Uhh..." she said, wondering what this had to do with her hair.
"The idiot who grabbed Madara's hair would've gotten stabbed in the throat is what would have happened." Tetsuo-sensei said, answering his own question.
Without warning, she felt a hand grip her hair and yank her head back as a kunai was pressed against her throat.
"This is what would happen if your hair were grabbed in the middle of battle however." Tetsuo-sensei whispered in her ear as he pressed the edge of the kunai against her throat more firmly before releasing her and pushing her away from him.
"Long hair on a ninja isn't a mark of beauty. It's a way of saying "I'm better than you, and I can prove it". Time spent tending to that hair is time that could otherwise be spent doing more productive things such as training. Those who have long hair had best be able to back up their claim. " Tetsuo-sensei said when he released her.
Sakura picked up the comb and frantically struggled to comb her hair in the time limit her sensei had given her, determined to not lose the hair she spent so long growing out until it was perfect. The comb ended up getting tangled in it several times. She knew when the time lime limit was up, because her sensei grabbed the comb from her hand and handed her a kunai. When she refused to do as she had been ordered, mainly because she was crying too hard, her sensei lost patience with her and did the job himself, grabbing her hair into a bunch at the nape of her neck and sawing it off.
"We'll even it out later." Tetsuo-sensei said. "Now hurry up and wash your clothes."
Sobbing at the unfairness of it all once more, despite the fact that she wouldn't be receiving any sympathy over this, she hurried to comply as the long hair she'd spent years growing started blowing away in the breeze behind her, lost to her sensei's impatience with her lack of skill.
While Sakura washed her clothes on the riverbank at the Valley of the End, her father sought an audience with a man he would have been happy to have never seen again in his entire life. It was necessary however. He'd spent the last several days trying to find a job to replace the one he'd lost, and it was beginning to look like he wouldn't find anything legal in Konoha. The reason given for him not being hired was because he'd fallen out of favor with the ninjas. It was more likely that his family had fallen out of favor with only one very powerful ninja in particular, and the other ninjas had fallen into line rather than fall out of favor with him as well, than that he'd fallen out of favor with every ninja in the village, but it all worked out the same in the end.
The only things he could think to do to rectify this situation before he was forced to leave the place that had been his family's home since the Founding was to order his wife to shut up for once in her life before she dug the hole they were in any deeper, attempt to apologize to the man his wife had offended, and throw himself on his mercy. He hoped and prayed that this would work, because if it didn't, his daughter could come back to find them gone.
If they left, who knew when they would see their child again. Sakura had signed up for a minimum of five years of service when she had graduated the Academy, and unless she was dishonorably discharged, or let go for medical reasons, she belonged to Konoha until those five years were up. Because of this, they wouldn't be able to take her with them if they went anywhere, and if they were forced to leave Konoha because of his wife's actions, it could be at least five years before he saw his daughter again, if ever.
This was something that his wife who was protesting against his request that she keep silent about the Shimura family didn't seem to understand however. She'd been getting her way for too long, and because of that she seemed to think that she would be able to bully Shimura Danzo and the other village leaders in this regard. The fact that she'd chased one foreign born family out of the village because the wife had upset her hadn't helped matters because, she had grown so convinced of her power that she currently wasn't able to see the clear signs that she was losing this battle, and losing very badly at that. Since she was currently in what he and Sakura called her Extreme Mode, all she could see was her goal and how she thought she should get to it, no matter who she trampled or what she may have ruined along the way.
Edited 10-5-12