Thank god I'm over my dryspell. I don't know how long this burst of creativity is going to last, so let's all enjoy it while we can! With added snippet from Sakura's pov.

She thinks about cutting training short, only to get lunch over with, but ends up drawing it out instead. Sakura is jumpy and her strange behavior is making the boys nervous. She hopes wearing them out will keep them from doing anything stupid. Of course nothing has ever kept Naruto from doing something stupid.

"You're a real pretty lady," he tells Haruno-san, rudely pointing with his chopsticks at her. Sakura's carrot snaps in half between her fingers.

"Thank you very much," the woman says with a small polite bow of her head, picking up a bit of plain rice und eating it without a single grain tumbling onto her kimono. Even her food is pretty; fruit and vegetables arranged in colorful little flowers.

Five more bentos sit next to her, right were the brats had disregarded them in favor for her ugly but nutritious ones.

Genma's eyes keep flying back and forth between Haruno-san und Naruto, obviously anticipating disaster but unable – or unwilling, the asshole – to prevent it.

Sasuke seems to find his lunch most interesting. The way he keeps conscientiously shoving food into his mouth makes her think he, too, wants to badly say something that they'll all end up regretting.

"But you know," Naruto keeps going, "I don't think you should turn up for training anymore."

Haruno-san's chopsticks freeze about a centimeter before her mouth, before she lowers them back into her bento.

"What makes you say that, Uzumaki-kun?"

Sakura and Sasuke have frozen as well, and Hisana can feel a piece of salmon fall right out of her mouth. It lands on her pants with a soft 'flup'.

"I don't like how you make Sakura sad."

Oh. Ouch.

Said girl looks as if she's about to have an aneurysm, or maybe give Naruto one. She opens her mouth, but Sasuke silences her by sticking more rice into it. With his chopsticks. The poor girl faints.

Her cousin doesn't even seem to notice, he's far too absorbed in the drama going down on their little pink picnic blanket.

"Sad?" she asks mildly, but there's something calculating in her eyes. So that's where Sakura gets it from.

"Yeah," the blond continues, totally oblivious. "She's been weird since you came. I don't like it."

She should really be saying something.

"Haruno-san," she hears her own voice say, "I think we should have a quick talk after lunch." Why did she say that? Oh yes, because she's the team leader and that lady would have punted the little punk right across town if he told her she couldn't see her daughter.

She might be small and dainty, but her fingernails were efficiently and brutally short and she was currently putting enough pressure on her pretty metal chopsticks to bend them just the slightest bit.

"It's about Sakura's progress," she adds a little helplessly. Haruno-san's eyes turn to her. The grip on her chopsticks eases.

"Yes, of course. Let's enjoy lunch first."

Sakura is out for the rest of lunch.

"She's ahh – tired. Just taking an nap!" Genma assures her mother. "We'll give her five more minutes, then we'll get the bucket. Ah – I mean … we'll gently rouse her from slumber. Like you should do with a lady. Yes."

She sends the boys on a run around the training ground and carefully steps over Sakura towards her mother. After a moment of hesitation Genma joins them.

"I understand," Haruno-san begins carefully, "that somehow my cooking has become insufficient?"

She looks at the bentos still lying next to them, unopened.

"Not your cooking, Haruno-san."

This is terrifying, she thinks. The woman doesn't look much older than her sister used to be, and she's treated her sister's friends with much less respect. She's nineteen years old (and a half, by now), why is this so scary? She refuses to be intimidated by beautiful people. Maybe, she muses, it's the height difference. Physically looking up to someone always makes you feel weird.

"It's not your cooking," she repeats, a little more confidently. "But Sakura has this…notion, that she needs to diet. I've tried to talk her out of it, but she won't hear it. I find it much easier to simply control what she eats for a while, until she understands. I meant to speak with you about it earlier, actually."

The woman raises a delicate eyebrow.

"Notion? So you do not approve? That a young lady has to take care of herself?"

"Kunoichi take care of themselves differently than civilian women."

She seems to consider this.

"Frankly, I consider this kunoichi business to be the notion. She will grow out of it eventually. I only fear that by that time, she will be too old to marry a good man. The diet I have her on is appropriate for a girl her age and weight. It's only meant to get her used to watching her food intake, so that, when she comes to her senses, it won't be so difficult to change her habits."

Yes, she kind of suspected that. Haruno Sayuri couldn't project more of a conservative aura if she stamped 'TRADITIONAL' onto her forehead. Her small and pretty forehead. Another thing that Sakura has not inherited from her mother, besides her lovely blonde hair and charming, airy voice. Yes, she thinks, keep talking like that.

The more she dislikes the woman, the easier it seems to grasp onto that Uchiha arrogance. She gives the woman a smile that feels more like a sneer.

"Haruno-san, I understand you are worried about your daughter. But as long as she is a kunoichi, I can promise you, I am very well versed in what she needs. My education covers many areas that a regular civilian has no possibility of knowing. A kunoichi knows best, what a kunoichi needs."

Yes, so she's basically implied that the woman is uneducated and can't care for her daughter. Genma's face in unmoving, but he feels distinctly scandalized. Haruno-san's eyes narrow.

"But sweetheart," she croons, and it's not a very nice tone, "you aren't even a real kunoichi yet."

Stupid cow."

And yet," Genma finally cuts in, "she's absolutely correct. Sakura's height and mental capacity are superior to those of her peers. And yet she is unable to build up the same muscle mass as them. This can only be explained by illness or insufficient nutrition."

Pick one, Hisana thinks a little meanly. Did you let your daughter get sick or do you not feed her enough.

"Uchiha-san is the best ninja in her year" – is she? – "as is Sasuke-kun. She has them both in top form. Your daughter is in capable hands."

The woman's lips thin in anger, because there's nothing she can say. Genma is a real ninja, and as Sakura mentions every once in a while, her father is very much in favor of her being a ninja and 'getting the foolishness out of her head while she's young, Sayuri, please. Let the girl'.

"Fine."

It does not sound 'fine'.

"Fine, I will keep my advice and my motherly care to myself. She would have been grateful in a few years, I hope you can bear being responsible when no man wants to marry her anymore."

With that she turns away, a little less graceful and a little more rumpled and bitter, and leaves. Her things are still all over the grass; the pink picnic blanket and the bentos, uneaten and by now warmed by the sun.

"How childish," she muses. Haruno-san seemed so elegant and feminine. This is just bratty and immature.

Genma scratches his head.

"Civilian woman don't need to grow up like kunoichi. They bat their eyes a little, get married, pop out some children and spend the rest of their lives being pampered. I'm pretty sure nobody's ever told that woman no." He claps her on the shoulder. "That was touch-and-go for a while, but you did well. Sakura you can stop pretending to sleep now."

Startled, Hisana whips around. Sakura is indeed already sitting up, looking a little sad and a little sheepish at being caught.

"I'll leave you to it", Genma says. "I'll pick up the boys to get some food. Meet you at Ichiraku's."

"Do you think…she's right?" Sakura asks after a long silence. "That nobody will want me?"

Hisana ponders this for a while.

"Civilians? Probably not."

Sakura's face falls.

"You have too little faith in yourself. What would you care about civilian men? I don't think you'll 'get over it' and quit. I think you'll be a great kunoichi."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. And as a kunoichi, you won't want a civilian. You need a ninja, someone to keep up with you. A jounin – at least."

Sakura nods fiercely.

"At least."

At Ichiraku's Naruto is already at his fourth bowl.

"Ne, ne, Sakura-chan, Nee-chan! What took you so long?"

"Just a little talk," Hisana says with a vague smile.

"Talk about what?"

"Mind your own business, idiot," Sakura snaps. "Sasuke-kun, will you feed me again~?"

"What am I, your nanny?"

They bicker. Food flies. Some lands in the right mouths, most of it not. All in all, it's been a good day, she thinks.

Hisana is, by nature, a problem solver. There is, however, one problem that she's been valiantly trying to ignore.

"Everyone, please partner up," Ito-sensei calls, silencing them with a sharp clap of her hands. "We will be holding mock tournaments next week, two versus two."

Hisana looks around. She doesn't know the name of even a single of her class mates.

There's boisterous laughter as two boys partner up to her left, giggling behind her as two girls link arms. Of course being an Uchiha has garnered her a few admirers, but nothing like the faithful entourage Sasuke sports. She's 'the older one', 'the scary one'; boys admire her from afar, girls generally don't like her very much.

It's mostly younger students who think she's the bee's knees – or they do until team 7 throws a bitch-fit and scares them off.

"You're not going to take another team, right?" Naruto asked suspiciously a few weeks ago. "You're too busy with us, right? You don't have time for other teams. And we are awesome, so you don't need one either."

This sentiment was echoed by the rest of the team.

"Nee-san, you don't spend enough time at home. Where are you going at night?"

"Nee-san, Ino-pig wants to go shopping with you, too! You won't right? I tore my leggings, you have to come with me!"

They're incredibly needy and usually she doesn't mind. Making team 7 into a proper family is after all her main goal. But they do make it a little complicated to have other relationships.

Not that they are the sole cause of her social isolation.

Sarah was awkward. It was her superpower. She was Awkward Girl. She would have deserved a suit even, in rust red and yellow and printed on her chest – an aardvark.

There is a reason why Evie was her only friend. Hisana is, at least on the inside, still the same person. Yes, her head has gotten a little bigger, because, frankly, she's a genius and it's hard not to feel a little superior, but that hasn't made her better with people. Whereas she used to be nervous because she felt inferior, she now feels annoyed because people have turned out to be ninety percent idiots. She's not stuttering anymore, now she notices other people stutter and it's annoying.

She's vaguely aware that she should probably be more sympathetic – god knows it would have helped her if someone had been more sympathetic – but she can't bring herself to. She loves team 7, and maybe Genma and Ito-sensei, but everyone else just seems so unimportant and not worth the trouble. They all say the same things, do the same things and after a while they all start to look the same.

Is this what Sasuke felt like, this complete apathy? It's a terrible feeling but she doesn't know how to shake it.

"Hey, you want to be partners?" someone chirps at her right. She whirls around, thinking, for a second, that the question is directed at her.

"No," comes the rather rude answer. A blonde girl shrinks into herself.

"I-I just thought…-"

But the other girl isn't even looking at her, she's looking at Hisana. Dark hair, dark eyes, hands in her pockets and mouth turned down in annoyance. A Nara.

"You," she says. "Let's partner up."

Hisana's reaction is at this point reflex.

"No," she blurts out, "I already have a partner."

Her hand shoots out, randomly grabbing one of the girls to her right. She doesn't want to get involved with a Nara. The very last thing, she needs right now is a Nara. She can barely keep up her façade as it is; if someone were to poke and prod at all the holes in her story, it would fall like a house of cards. 'Who are your parents? Why didn't they kill you too? What do you remember? Why do you not talk to your old friends anymore?'

The girl raises an eyebrow.

"Yes," it comes slowly from where her hand is clamped down on a lot of cloth. "Apologies, Nara-san."

Hisana slowly turns around and comes face to face with a pair of sunglasses.

It hurts sometimes, it really does. Her mother used to be a doting, kind mother; constantly worried about her, showering her with little presents and attention. Her mother loves her, wants only what's best for her, she's sure of it. She's always known her mother to disapprove of kunoichi, but hearing it so plainly breaks something important between them.

'No man will want to marry her anymore.'

Every girl dreams of her prince to come one day, take one look at her and know she's his princess. Even Ino does.

'He will be a ninja-prince', she used to say. 'A jounin.'

She has no doubt that Ino will one day get her jounin – she's pretty and smart and she isn't afraid to go out and get what she wants herself. Sakura wants to be like that.

That's why she wanted to be a ninja, she wanted to be like Ino.

When she told her mother, it was the first time in her life that she felt she had somehow disappointed her.

'A lady does not chase men. A lady lets men chase her.'

It's a terrible feeling, disappointing her mother. So she puts up with the diet, even if she likes cake so much. She drinks water and green tea without honey, when classmates drink fruit juice and bubbly soda. Her mother teaches her to memorize things, poems mostly, even though it also helps with class, and how to dress. On some level she knows it's holding her back. But it's her mother – the thought that she could be wrong is inconceivable.

The picture she's kept safe in her mind, being as beautiful as her mother and as strong as Ino, it shatters the day Nee-san takes her aside.

'You're too thin.'

It's just a single sentence, but it's the beginning of the end.