Ramen Doodles

By Andrew J. Talon

Disclaimer: I do not and probably never will own Naruto or any other copyrighted works mentioned in this story. I am not writing this for profit.

The Impermanence of Life (part 2)

A guest chapter by Obloquy

Sakura tried to get her new teammates together for lunch - among other things, she was dying to know how Naruto got his headband after all - but a series of... well, apparently Naruto had eaten something bad, plus a bunch of her fellow kunoichi had a thing for Sasuke (which she could see, but Ebisu-san had mentioned once in passing that dating prior to age 15 or so was a great way to guarantee that a relationship collapsed into flaming wreckage, and not always metaphorically,) and Sakura ended up chewing through her bento while varying between stretches, juggling weapons for hand-eye coordination, and and chakra control exercises.

Her control was almost good enough through ninja wire to manipulate a pair of chopsticks, but not quite.

She would keep trying and get there soon though!

The one good thing, though, is that she had time to find Team Gai - Ebisu introduced her to Gai for some taijutsu training tips, and she met his genin in passing - and finally (now that she was herself a graduated genin) hear a bit more of what the experience was like and what she should expect.

While Lee was usually a font of exuberant information, it was Neji's snide commentary that clued her in that there would be a further winnowing, since most graduated genin ended up in the genin corps instead of under a jonin supervisor.

Given that she was paired with The Last Uchiha and a kid who had passed under mysterious circumstances (which might have been some kind of "junior ANBU, convince the class you're an idiot as undercover practice" stuff or maybe that was her hobby novel mindset running away with her), she felts their team's odds were pretty good, but this unfortunately meant that she didn't necessarily stand out compared to her teammates.

Tenten hadn't mentioned any prior teammates before being paired with Lee and Neji, though, she Sakura felt safe assuming that the winnowing would be of teams instead of team members.

'But nothing in life is certain until its end,' Sakura reflected as she washed her hands, and faced her reflection in the mirror.

Then she returned to the classroom to await their supervisor.

And wait. And wait.

She was honestly envious that Ino had gotten someone really cool - the son of the Hokage himself! - but given her position as an heiress it was sort of expected. Sakura didn't recognize any of the other jonin who showed up, but she wished her classmates well as they departed until there were only three left.

Sakura. Sasuke. Naruto.

"Naruto, I know you hang out with Sandaime-sama occasionally," Sakura began when they'd been waiting a while. 'I'm doing some chakra control exercises to pass time, but they're a bit tedious too... Maybe I should get one of the boys to help me with a training game?' "so would the Tower remember to warn us if our sensei got an emergency mission out of the village?"

"Uh... Eheheheh...?" Naruto chuckled uncertainly.

"Ugh," Sakura grumbled. 'Look around. What can you use.' "Hey, we've got all this space so there's no point waiting to kill time. Want to do some coordination drills with me?"

"How?" Naruto wondered as Sasuke gave her a look of interest.

It took a bit of explaining, but soon after they were tossing her training kunai back and forth at each other, deflecting with a knife in one hand and catching or throwing with the other.

Naruto missed a lot of them, but he was earnest in trying and Sakura made sure to toss him some easier ones. Sasuke was much more competent, but it looked like he was a little out of practice at training with a partner.

It took a while, but eventually their supervisor arrived.

"Well, this is interesting. I wondered what I heard from the hallway... clean up and meet me on the roof," the silver-haired man instructed.

"Yes sir," Sakura agreed, quickly gathering her stuff with the boys' help and heading up.

Introductions were... well, they were. Their teacher didn't give much away beyond his name (which Sakura memorized to run past a few of her older contacts, assuming it wasn't a pseudonym), and Sakura hoped her goal of one day teaching a genin team was appropriately professional.

(She wanted to be the next Tsunade if possible, but literally every girl her age wanted something like that, so ideally her show of humility and maturity should make her stand out if her more muscular build and calloused hands hadn't already.)

Then came the other shoe. A survival test the next morning with a 66% failure rate. No further details beyond the time and place. Shit.

Kakashi dismissed them and vanished.

"Okay. Sort of saw this coming, but I think we can pull through," Sakura said before the boys could go anywhere.

"Ehh?!" Naruto yelped, and even Sasuke seemed a bit surprised.

"You saw this coming?" he questioned.

"I've got contacts with kids who were in the year ahead of us. I know there's some determining factor about whether we stay under a jonin for personalized training or get sent to the genin corps, no one told me details, though," Sakura explained. She stood. "Okay, he told us where the test is going to be, and it's 'survival training,' so we should take a bit to scope out the location. I don't know this training ground off the top of my head, so we should check if it's forested, if there are water sources, what the wildlife is like..."

"Why's that?" Naruto asked, but he asked while following her and Sasuke instead of arguing or leaving, so that was a plus.

'Right, they stuck us with the scholastic dead-last. I'm going to need to explain a lot of things from now on unless he's really good at faking stupidity,' Sakura sighed mentally. Then she put on her Big Girl Boots and set to it.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto called out as smoke puffed around him. Sasuke was sitting back against a tree, slightly winded after Sakura had nudged him into demonstrating some KatonFire Style ninjutsu, but his eyes widened as the smoke cleared.

Sakura stared, checked for genjutsu by scrambling her chakra, checked for the telltale lack of shadows that gave away some types of clones, checked for genjutsu by pricking herself with a senbon needle, checked for whether the grass under the many Naruto's feet was bending, and mentally ran through the list on ninjutsu that she knew existed (even if she couldn't perform most of them).

"Okay," she said through her suddenly dry mouth, "I can definitely see how you graduated with that. Immediate multiplication of manpower would be incredibly useful for combat, guard duty, patrols, and maintenance missions. If you practice some carpentry skill, you're pretty much a one-man workforce." She thought through some possibilities. "Hey, can you show me your aim with shuriken? All of you, at once, that tree."

"""Right!""" the orange horde yelled, and while a few shuriken missed the tree still ended up a pincushion.

"Okay," Sakura said slowly. "We can definitely work with this."

It's fun to see Sakura learn to stand on her own.