A/N: Rakugan is a Japanese dried confectionery made of rice flour and powder sugar. They're basically these cookies that come in many different colors and shapes (pink ones shaped like cherry blossoms, white ones shaped like rabbits, green ones shaped like leaves, etc) because they are pressed into these molds.
On the second month that Sakura had served as the Uchiha clan's healer, she was surprised to receive an invitation from Madara to join him and Izuna for dinner.
She should have recognized the invitation for what it truly was: a thinly veiled excuse to absolutely bombard her with questions about her past in a setting she couldn't escape from. Especially since the invitation had come from a man whose curiosity and thirst for knowledge knew no bounds.
At least the food, a much higher quality than she could produce with her own admittedly meager skills, made the endless inquiries less like an interrogation and more like a pleasant meal with friends. Even if the brothers had decided to unleash their surplus of questions which they had apparently been storing for an opportune time such as this.
"Who is your family? Do you hail from a clan?" Madara questioned, scooping up a mouthful of noodles from his bowl of udon with his chopsticks.
"In a way. My parents and my grandparents were shinobi, but we don't have any bloodline traits like your family does. Unless you count excellent chakra control and a general proficiency with mental based jutsus, specifically genjutsu," Sakura plucked a slice of fried tofu from her steaming bowl of noodles. "We do have a crest though."
"What is your crest?"
"A circle with a hollow center." She explained before popping the piece of tofu into her mouth. "It's supposed to represent the cycle of chakra."
"How did you come to sign a summoning contract with the felines?" Madara asked next, absentmindedly stirring his bowl of noodles, steam rising from the bowl.
Sakura chuckled to herself at the story, already having pieced together a tale long ago. Truth mixed with a couple falsities. "It was an accident, actually. Did you know that if you attempt to do a summoning without a valid contract, you get dumped into the world that the summon you align with lives?"
"You attempted a summoning without a contract?" Izuna questioned flatly with a disbelieving expression.
"I used to have a contract with the slugs, you know," she explained with a sidelong look, "When I tried to summon Lady Katsuyu, I was surprised… well, alarmed really, to find myself plummeting into a jungle from the sky. I met Kuro in the jungle and he took me to his leader, Lady Miyabi. I told her my story and she decided I was worthy. She said she'd help me and we've been working together ever since."
"What happened to your old summoning contract?" Izuna questioned, taking a measured bite of his noodles.
"My mentor had possession of it, not me. All I know is that I no longer have access to the contract," Sakura replied smoothly, taking a bite of her meal as well. It wasn't a lie.
The younger Uchiha finished his mouthful before glancing at her forehead pointedly. "What is the symbol on your forehead? We saw you using it before but what does it do?"
"It's my Strength of a Hundred seal. It allows me to store a vast amount of chakra for later use."
"Is that what allowed you to heal all of those people at the Nakano's holdings?"
"Basically. It's a technique that I'm able to use because of the chakra I have stored in the seal."
"Where did you learn your medical jutsu?" Madara asked after a moment, taking a bite of his udon.
"My mentor, Lady Tsunade," Sakura replied, certain that no one had heard of her not yet born Hokage.
"Is that who you learned your monstrous strength from as well?" Izuna tacked on, earning a glare from Sakura.
"What have I told you about using the word monstrous?" she reminded, her stare a silent threat.
"Well, it's true..." he argued even as he gauged the distance between her and himself, checking to make sure he was out of immediate swinging distance.
Sakura sighed quietly, too polite to take a shot at someone in their own house during a dinner she had been invited to. "Also my mentor."
"She must have been a powerful kunoichi to have taught you," Madara complimented, taking a sip from his tea.
"She…" she started with a smile before her expression dropped, her thoughts returning to the elder kunoichi, still in a coma, in her timeline.
Sakura still wasn't sure if her mentor would survive…
"She was…" she finished with a deep frown, taking a bite of her udon to hide her sorrow.
"What was she like?" Madara asked softly, mindful of her sudden sadness.
"She was the most skilled medical ninja I've ever met and one of the most powerful ninja I have ever had the honor of training with. She was the leader of my village," Sakura replied before smiling wistfully, "She also had a bad temper, a penchant for gambling, and was a drunk."
"You were the apprentice of the leader of your village?" Madara asked, surprised by the fact that their healer's mentor had been the leader of her old village.
"I was. I asked her to train me shortly after she took over. I thought I was going to pass out from the stress when I asked her, to be honest. She was very intimidating," Sakura laughed in response, scooping up some noodles in her chopsticks.
They ate in silence for a few moments before Izuna suddenly asked, "Why do you cut your hair so short?"
"Uh, that's kind of a long story, actually… And my hair much longer than I usually keep it," she replied, unconsciously lifting her hand to fiddle with the ends of her hair, her locks now reaching her shoulder blades. She would need to do something with it soon, either cutting it or pulling it back.
"And?" the young clan hand prompted, both brothers waiting for her story patiently.
"Well, um… I was on a mission with my team when we were ambushed by a man who outclassed us… By a lot, at the time," Sakura began, gazing into her meal as she recounted her tale, "He seriously wounded both of my friends but we were able to escape. When I was looking after them, a team of shinobi that worked under the man attacked me."
Even though the attack orchestrated by Orochimaru had been years ago, the fear and the feeling of helplessness still remained. She silently swallowed before she continued.
"I… wasn't very strong at that point. One of them grabbed me by my hair and taunted me for paying more attention to it than my training. They said that because I was uncommitted, my friends were going to die… So I cut off my hair with a kunai and tried to fight them. But they were right. If it wasn't for another team of ninja from my village coming to save us, we would have all died that day… So, I kept it short as a reminder to keep my priorities in order. To remain strong to protect those I care about."
"A worthwhile goal," Izuna commented, nodding sagely as both he and his brother finished their bowls of udon and placed their chopsticks along the rim of their bowls, nearly synchronized.
"It served me well since then… At least… I…" she replied, her voice drifting off as she realized how little that commitment had actually done.
Sakura's eyes dropped to her nearly finished meal as her mind unhelpfully informed her how weak she still was, how all of her training and perseverance had done nothing in the end.
She was still stuck here in the past while her friends and her village struggled to survive. Naruto was still being pursued by the Akatsuki for the tailed beast inside of him. Sasuke was still a missing ninja, bent on destroying everything he touched. Tsunade was still in a coma, possibly until her death.
She hadn't even been able to help when Pain destroyed Konoha, instead crying out for Naruto to come help in her terrified state. Even Hinata had run into Naruto's battle against Pain to help while Sakura had stayed back. All she had been able to do was help pick up the pieces afterwards.
She hadn't even been able to come up with a way home despite spending nearly all of her free time searching for clues in the Uchiha's library. She was still as weak and useless as ever...
Sakura was startled from her rapidly escalating inner thoughts by a warm hand on her shoulder. She jumped at the sudden contact, nearly dropping her chopsticks. Her eyes shot up from her rapidly cooling bowl of udon to meet Madara's sympathetic eyes.
"Sorry… I guess I… Got a little lost in thought there," she tried to laugh off, plastering a fake smile on her face in an attempt to brush off her sudden depression.
Sakura refused to allow tears to build in her eyes. She couldn't think of anything more embarrassing that crying during a dinner with one of the future founders of her village and his brother.
She felt Madara give her shoulder a gentle squeeze, as if trying to offer some comfort despite her lie, before pulling his hand away.
She felt guilty knowing that they thought she was depressed because her village had been destroyed and all the people she loved had been killed. Her loved ones still existed, just far, far in the future. The village had been demolished but it still persevered, just not where she could touch.
She cleared the knot in her throat before she spoke again, trying to change the subject as the feeling of guilt became too uncomfortable. "You know, you two have asked me all kinds of questions. It only seems fair that I should be able to ask some of my own."
"Ask away," Madara returned easily.
"Well…" Sakura started, a bit thrown by his immediate acceptance. She thought for a moment before canting her body to face the older brother.
"What was that… thing that you were carrying when we first met. The, er…" she made a curvy motion with her hands, trying to describe the weapon the elder Uchiha had had strapped to his back and chained to a kama.
He understood the gesture immediately. "Ah, my gunbai."
"Ah, so it does have a name. What is it? I've never seen anything like it before."
"It's a fan-like weapon that can function as a bludgeon and a shield. It conducts chakra so I can use wind release techniques in conjunction with my fire jutsu, among other things," he explained succinctly, Sakura nodding in understanding.
"Okay. Hmm… Hobbies?" she asked lamely, earning a chuckle from both brothers.
"I enjoy falconry," Madara responded with a smile, earning a surprised tilt of the head from Sakura.
"Training with this one," Izuna answered with a grin, pointing at his brother.
"Favorite foods?"
"Inarizushi," the elder Uchiha answered.
"Tonkatsu. You?" the younger brother replied.
"It's a fight between umebushi, anko dumplings, and anmitsu for me," she laughed before continuing, "Okay, a more serious question: How long have you two lead the clan?"
"Around five years now. After our father was killed in a battle against the Senju, we both unlocked the next phase of our sharingan. The clan recognized us as being the most powerful of our family and named us the heads of the clan,"Madara explained.
"Although, technically, he's our leader," Izuna added, jabbing his thumb towards the elder Uchiha.
As they spoke, Sakura finished her meal. As she laid her chopsticks along the rim of the bowl, she continued, "I've never heard of a clan electing a leader like that. I thought most clans used an heir system."
"Most do. We are unique in that we elect our leaders based upon their contributions or skill in battle rather than something as nonsensical as direct lineage. The battle that afforded me my leadership, in which I first used the next phase of my sharingan, was…" Madara paused for a moment, appearing to be searching for the correct word to describe an undoubtedly gruesome battle, "...memorable for those involved."
"I would imagine it was…" Sakura commented gently, knowing that a battle in which he saw his own father killed must have escalated very quickly.
Sakura tried to bring the conversation away from the tender subject of familial death by commenting on the subtle hint that Madara had unlocked the next phase of his sharingan before Izuna had. "Did you unlock the next phase later on, Izuna?"
"I… yes," the younger brother replied hesitantly, as if holding back some kind of information, "It didn't happen for me until a week or so later."
"It works like that?"
"Apparently. We are the first to accomplish such a thing, so it's all new information at this point," he answered, his words somehow sounding like a lie.
Sakura didn't miss the almost saddened, sidelong look that Madara sent his younger brother. Even though she had caught it, she knew better than to press. She changed the direction of the conversation once again, trying to bring them out of sensitive territory and back onto easy, friendly ground.
"So you've been in charge for five years? How old were you two when you took over?"
"Seventeen and sixteen," Madara answered simply.
Sakura quietly noted that the brothers were in their twenties, substantially older that she had thought they were. She has assumed that they were her age. To think that Madara had taken over the responsibility of his entire clan at the same age she was now...
"Was it hard, being so young?"
Madara's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Is that young to you? We were considered men at twelve."
"Twelve? I had just started taking missions for my village when I was twelve…"
"So old? When did you first see combat?"
"I fought my first enemy when I was twelve… When did you?"
"When we were four."
Sakura gaped at the two brothers, startled and horrified by his declaration. "Four!? Who allowed you to battle against someone at four?"
"We weren't allowed, we were expected. Since we were old enough to walk, we were taught to wield a sword," the elder Uchiha returned, eyebrows furrowed.
"Your village didn't do the same?" Izuna questioned, his expression also one of confusion.
"No. At least not with the vast majority. Some incredibly gifted kids were allowed to if they wanted but sending a child into combat like that is generally looked down upon. Kids aren't even allowed to spar until they're four..."
Madara's eyes drifted to the table as he became deep in thought. The younger Uchiha glanced at his brother before his gaze returned to Sakura, baffled.
"What was your childhood like, if you were on the battlefield so early? Were you two even allowed to be kids?" Sakura queried with a concerned expression.
"What do you mean by 'allowed to be kids'?" Izuna returned, his befuddled expression only deepening.
"Being kids! Like not having to worry about fighting, spending days just playing with other kids. Like playing hide and seek or tag or pranking adults," Sakura explained vehemently, not understanding how they didn't know what being kids meant.
Had they really not been allowed to just be children when they were young? Were things really so bad back in this time?
"Hide and seek and tag are drills for battle. How are those children's games?" the elder Uchiha queried, his eyebrows coming up in surprise.
"What? Battle drills?"
"Hide and seek trains how to find enemies that may be concealing themselves on the battlefield and tag is a test of speed to catch fleeing opponents…" Madara detailed simply.
"Not… Where I come from…" she muttered in response, silently considering how the games she played as a child could have evolved from these drills. The thought filled her with an immediate revulsion.
"It sounds like you grew up in a very peaceful place…"
"I suppose I did… At least compared to here..."
"Do you have any siblings?" Izuna questioned after a moment of shared, baffled silence.
Sakura shook her head, still reeling from their precious topic. "No, I'm an only child. My mom decided she didn't want to have any more kids after my birth."
The confused expressions returned tenfold. "An only child? And she decided she didn't want more children? How is that even possible?"
"With… birth control…" Sakura answered with a disbelieving stare.
"Birth… Control? You can control births? Do the babies disappear during birth?" Izuna questioned, an expression of horror dawning on his face.
"W-what!? No! Gods no... It's a pill that prevents pregnancy," she answered with a growing blush, uncomfortable by the sudden, intense, and baffled stares by the brothers.
"That's… possible?" the elder Uchiha muttered.
"Does that…" Sakura paused, her eyes flicking between the brothers in shock. "Not exist here? How many siblings do you two have?"
"We had three brothers."
"Your mom had five children!? And all boys?" Sakura gasped in disbelief, "Where are your other siblings? I didn't realize there were more of you running around."
There was a heavy silence as the two Uchiha glanced at each other before Madara softly stated, "They're dead."
"They're… Oh..." Sakura's face dropped as she put her hand over her mouth as if to catch the careless words she had let loose. "Oh no, I'm so sorry. I… I wasn't thinking."
"It's alright. They've been gone for nearly fifteen years now…"
"I… Still. I'm sorry you lost your brothers. And your parents... Especially with you all being so young. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been for you both. I'm so sorry I was so thoughtless..." she insisted, leveling them with her sympathetic gaze.
"...Thank you," the elder Uchiha nearly whispered, staring at her with an indiscernible expression.
Little did Sakura know that no one had ever offered their sympathy to the brothers before. As children, they had been told to bear the pain and if they had cried, they had been beaten for their weakness. It had been best to simply force their sorrow into the shape of anger and use it against the Senju.
Sakura was horrified.
She had heard stories and read tales of life during this time but she had never fully grasped the suffering people had gone through. The suffering the founders of her village had been forced to endure. She was sickened by the thought that children as young as four had been forced to fight and kill in battlefields they never should have seen.
"Neither of you should have to live with that. With... this… Gods, I'm sorry," the kunoichi gestured around herself broadly, signifying the world they lived in.
If the brothers had been given the chance to live normal lives, to be able to be children, to not lose family to never ending battles, to not be forced to fight to the death at the tender age of four… Maybe the future would have been different. Maybe Madara and Izuna's faces would be donning the Hokage monument in her time as well. Maybe Madara would never have defected from the village and fought Hashirama at the Valley of the End.
But it wasn't meant to be. The thought that she could not interfere during this time filled her with a sense of shame and frustration. The thought that Madara would one day die at the hands of the First Hokage and that Izuna would fade so far into obscurity that she had never even heard of him in her time made her furious. No matter how depressed or livid she was, however, she had to leave as small a ripple in this time as she could before she returned home. Her meddling could result in an even bigger catastrophe in her future.
"Don't be. It's just how the world is," Madara informed, giving her an odd, soft look.
Sakura's gaze hardened at that, her sadness from knowing she couldn't try to make her future a better place feeding her vehemence. "No one should have to live in a world where their family dies so readily. Where children have to see a battlefield so young. Where they can't even be kids… It's not right..."
The two brothers watched her with expressions of surprise and wistfulness. Silence reigned for a long moment before the elder Uchiha finally spoke, longing in his voice. "I envy the village you lived in. It's a tragedy that such a place was lost."
Sakura worried her lip for a moment, pondering her own words, before she quietly suggested, "Maybe one day it can be like that here…"
When Sakura looked back up to the brothers after a long pause, she found that Madara was staring at her with an almost pained expression, as if he were recalling a distressing memory.
"One can only dream."
The dinner with Sakura had raised more questions than answers. Madara had learned so much and yet so little. He had acquired more pieces to the puzzle that was her only to find that the puzzle was much larger than he had anticipated.
Instead of the dinner and his questions sating his curiosity, they had amplified it.
And, either more interesting or more distressing still, she had brought up memories long buried. Memories of his childhood friend, sloppily tucked away in the back of his mind until the pink haired kunoichi's peaceful and optimistic look on the future, despite the tragedy she had endured, had dredged them back up. Memories of childish promises that had been broken and ignorant dreams that had been abandoned.
Sakura had once called the place him and Hashirama had dreamed of as children home.
A place where children weren't forced to fight and die in unending wars. A place where shinobi of her caliber were still raised. A place that knew peace.
And it had been destroyed.
Madara wondered if that was a sign or an omen. He wondered if peace was only possible for brief moments of time before it once again faced the horrors of war. He wondered if the shared fantasy with his old friend had been just that or if their dream had had merit. Her village had made it work for some indistinct amount of time. She hailed from a place he could only wish existed for his family.
He found no answers to his wandering thoughts of peace but he would find answers to the riddle that was Sakura.
Madara's visits to her always warm home became more frequent over the next month. It seemed that when he wasn't out of the village, tending to clan business, or training with his brother, he was with her.
He came to associate her with the scent of flowers and drying herbs. She would burn dried sage and incense-like concoctions of herbs and flowers in her hearth, filling her home with the pleasant smell and always making him wonder where she had found the plants in the freezing climate.
He would often catch her buried in one of the numerous scroll from the library, jotting down notes onto another scroll with an expression of absolute concentration. He wondered what knowledge she sought and had asked her once. She had replied with a bittersweet smile that once again raised more questions before responding "knowledge to be a better medical ninja and a better kunoichi". It almost sounded like a lie.
The Uchiha knew she was searching for something deeper and had yet to find the answer as to what it was when he investigated the scrolls she finished. After all, the mishmash of scrolls on history, geography, herbology, elemental jutsu, various experimental new jutsu such as the barely developed space time jutsu and barrier jutsu, gardening, and even cooking explained very little.
Madara wanted to look at her handwritten scrolls to see what she had deemed important enough to write down but found that the thought of invading her privacy and breaking her trust sickened him, even if his spying would bring him closer to his goal of understanding her. The thought of Sakura, the near mythical woman she was, feeling betrayed by him left him with a deep sense of discomfort.
He didn't look too deeply into it.
Madara simply decided to take the long route (and the most enjoyable route, he found) to learning about Sakura through their conversations. Their oddly satisfying conversations. He nearly always left her home with a sense of warmth that extended farther than the heat he absorbed sitting in front of her gently burning hearth as they spoke.
During the first few times they had interacted, Madara had memorized her visage with his sharingan. The first time he saw her from across the battlefield. The first time she healed one of his family members. The first time she healed him. He had her form memorized but found himself interested in the different sides of her and how her body changed with her emotions. Her different faces.
He had memorized her in the depths of fury, rearing back to land a killing blow on a person whose life she had deemed was hers to take. He had memorized her in a state of complete focus, pulling the poison from his dying kin with her skilled hands. He had memorized her when she healed him, even if he still second guessed whether or not he actually had seen the blush grace her cheeks after their gazes had met.
The sharingan may be powerful but his sight was failing significantly after so much use of the Mangekyo Sharingan. Perhaps he had seen it wrong. Perhaps he had imagined her face flush.
He didn't like the feeling of doubt that settled in his mind or whatever reason fed it.
But Madara found that he did like spending time with her. Even if Izuna, the maddening little brother he was, had taken to teasing him as well as Sakura. As far as Madara was concerned, his visits with the clan medic were perfectly innocuous.
And tonight was one such visit.
The Uchiha found himself comfortably seated in his usual spot, basking in the heat of the hearth as Sakura shared with him her hidden stash of rakugan. He had felt strangely touched that she was willing to share her box of sweets with him, despite it being such an simple gesture. It showed him that she cared about him enough to try to make him happy.
As he chewed on a bite from a cherry blossom-shaped rakugan from her stash, absorbing the heat from the fire, basking in the scent of flowers, and listening to her talk about how her garden was coming along, he felt a sense of… warmth.
Madara couldn't find a better word for the sensation but could place other times he had felt it.
One was one of his earliest memories. He couldn't have been more than three at the time. He had fallen from a tree while learning to use chakra to climb and his now deceased mother had been embracing him and comforting him. He hadn't been particularly upset about the fall but had enjoyed one of the rare moments in which his mother had shown him affection. After all, he was to be a warrior and affection made for weak warriors.
The first time he had taken a hard look at the night sky. The sense of wonder and strangeness as he gazed at the galaxies above him. The feeling that he was so very small compared to the universe. The thought of whether or not other worlds suffered through the same endless battles his did. The bloodied corpses of his first kills lying at his tiny feet did little to dampen the sense of wonder and smallness he felt staring at the stars. He was only four and had just killed three grown men but the brilliance of the stars above him allowed him to withhold his tears until he was safe at home that night, tightly curled up in his futon in the room he shared with his then still living brothers.
The final was when he was perhaps five or six. It became difficult to tell his age after he had been thrust into the battles. The days began to run together in one bloody smear with a few days of happiness peeking out of the gore. This had been one such day.
Him and Izuna had been basking in the sun, laid out on the riverside, after a day spent fishing and playing in the water. They had thrown each other into the river multiple times while rough housing and had gotten thoroughly soaked. He could still vividly remember the sensation of the sun drying his clothes and his skin, the feeling of soft grass against his back, and the foggy redness from the sunlight seeping in through his closed eyelids.
"Hey, are you even listening?" Sakura asked suddenly, breaking him from his rumination.
"Of course." He was always listening when she was speaking. "You were saying how your nightshade, a normally extremely hazardous plant, was coming in nicely and that you were concerned for your eyebright since the last freeze."
"Hmm…" she hummed as she leaned in close to eye him before suddenly smiling, "Impressive, still paying attention while lost in thought. I'll even let you have one of the anko dumplings Hitomi made me this morning as a reward."
"Such a high honor?" he returned with a teasing grin, "I heard you put Izuna through a wall for trying to steal one of your favorite foods earlier today."
"And you remembered they were one of my favorite foods? You can have two then," she laughed in response, drawing an easy smile from the relaxed Uchiha.
Madara leaned over to pluck one of the messy dumplings from the plate sitting next to her, popping the whole thing into his mouth. While they weren't his favorite by any means, he couldn't turn down her offer. He was many things but rude wasn't one of them.
"The bilberries should be done by the end of the month. I'm a bit excited to have a fresh stock. They work so much better when-" Sakura started before being cut off by a chakra signature approaching her home.
They both recognized Izuna's chakra and while Sakura wore an expression of confusion, Madara knew what his brother's sudden appearance this late at night meant.
It was time for a night raid.
His younger brother barged right into Sakura's house with no formalities, as he was opt to do after having spent so much time with her.
When he entered the living room, however, instead of his face displaying his normal serenity, his expression was hardened. Instead of his leisure clothes, he was already dressed in his battle wear, his katana strapped to his side.
The comfortable atmosphere of their warm, private conversation was immediately broken as Madara got to his feet, already anticipating what Izuna was going to say.
"Night raid. Fujita holdings. The Senju might be there," Izuna explained briskly before curtly nodding to Sakura in greeting, too focused on the impending battle for friendly etiquette.
The elder Uchiha's expression immediately hardened at the thought of what was to come. Night raids could be particularly dangerous, especially in forests as deep as the ones near the Fujita family's lands and especially if Hashirama was among the combatants. He had learned the hard way, specifically at the battle of Biei, to try to avoid fighting Hashirama in the forest.
Madara hadn't exactly planned on setting the forest ablaze during that fight but it had worked out in his favor. Even if that particular event had sparked the rumor that Sakura had first heard of him from and even if it had resulted in the maps needing to be redrawn. Again.
The wild haired Uchiha nodded to Sakura in farewell, noticing her concerned expression, before he turned to follow his brother out of her warm home. He didn't have time to ask her what the look was about even though he had wanted to. He still had to don his armor before they left and every minute was important.
"Wait!" Sakura suddenly called out as he passed the threshold into her living room and clinic. He took a half step back and peered around the corner as Izuna continued outside.
He had a moment to absorb her worried expression before it morphed into decisiveness. "Should I come with you?"
Madara felt his expression soften at her offer as surprise coursed through him. He wondered if she asked because she worried for them or because she had accepted to join war parties on occasion when they produced her contract. By the concern still shining through her expression, he assumed the former.
He felt a surge of affection for her as he smiled and answered "Not this time. But perhaps you could keep an eye on things while we're gone?"
Based on Sakura's determined expression and the serious nod she sent him, he should have expected what he came home to that morning.
A/N: To see the amazing fanart made for my stories, to read bonus scenes, and to see more fun stuff, check out my Tumblr (Astroavis). And don't forget to leave a review if you're enjoying the story or to drop off your theories for where it's going! I always love to hear from readers.
Alright, for favorite foods...
Inarizushi, Madara's favorite food (from one of the Naruto databooks), "is a kind of sushi or rice ball. Sushi rice is stuffed in seasoned Aburaage tofu pouches [sweet, deep fried tofu skin]. Inarizushi is technically sushi, but it is not something you order at nice sushi restaurants. It is easily found at supermarket delis [...] Inarizushi is a very casual food [...] it's best eaten right from your hands."
I made up what Izuna's favorite food is. Tonkatsu is "a Japanese food which consists of a breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet." More deep fried stuff. I think that Uchiha love junk food. (I get the feeling Sasuke really does love sweets but denies himself as a kid because Itachi did as well.)
Sakura's favorite foods are also from the databooks. Umeboshi are pickled ume (plums). Anko dumplings/dango are small balls made of rice flour which are then skewered in rows of three-four. Sweetened red bean paste (the level of sweetness varies) is then poured over the skewered dumplings and served. Anmitsu is like a sweet jelly/jello made from seaweed or algae and is generally served with fruit.