"Kakashi, if you make me late, I'm gonna set your stupid books on fire! All of them! Including the weird orange ones!"
See.
Look at that killing intent.
Kakashi is a great teacher.
"I'm gonna get Gamami to spit on them, too! I'll use them to light your apartment on fire!"
Kakashi wants to see another nine-year-old in the village capable of producing such strong, directed killing intent. There's a civilian walking next to them, and he's still conscious!
Like, not really happy about it.
But conscious!
If he were feeling what Kakashi was feeling, he'd have passed out—and also have probably shit himself on the way down.
"When do they ever start these things on time, anyways?"
"I dunno? Maybe when they're Hyuuga!" Sakura shouts at the top of her lungs.
Oh, there he goes. Poor civilian.
Sakura is leaking flower petals as she's leaking killing intent. Kakashi can see her itching to leave him behind, replace herself through the trees lining each side of the street.
"You just go on ahead," he says. "I need to stop—smell the roses."
"He wants you there, you stupid—"
Oh well, in that case.
A moment later he has arrived at the gates of the Hyuuga compound, Sakura tucked neatly under one arm. She escapes by use of his family's incredibly secret and powerful jutsu. It can kill jounin. She's used it to kill jounin.
She uses it to get out of a glorified headlock.
Gamami only barely avoids face-planting on the ground after Sakura disappears.
"Sorry we're late," Kakashi says. "Sakura just couldn't get out of bed this morning."
Kakashi easily dodges her futile grabs at his forehead protector in her rage, and bats her away from his pockets.
She stops, standing between him and Kimiko, who is smiling benignly like this is just an everyday occurrence.
"It's not my fault," she hisses back at Kimiko.
"Of course not," Kimiko says, face grave.
She now wears her forehead protector around her neck, her Hyuuga curse seal bared to the elements. How she feels about the little farce Sakura led her clan through, Kakashi has no idea.
He's never known Kimiko to have an expression she didn't want to have.
Sakura stalks up to him, and he watches her warily. She lunges for him, and when he blocks her easily, she smiles. "Kai," she hisses, and then vanishes into a poof of flower petals as all of the seals on his person break open.
You know.
Kakashi's pretty sure other jounin have normal, adorable genin. Genin who just try to steal their forehead protector, or stab them a little, or set them on fire.
Why did he have to get the genin who can break storage seals?
Gamami smirks viciously at him from where she sits at his feet as he stuffs all of his kunai, pornography, and all of his other ninja essentials back into his seals.
Kakashi resists the urge to kick her smug toad face.
"Also, you're not late. You're right on time." Kimiko bows deeply to him, and then again to Gamami. "Welcome, Hatake-san, Gamami-chan. Neji will be very pleased you've come."
She leans down and picks Gamami up, which Gamami inexplicably allows, looking quite smug as Kimiko carries her fat little toad body.
It's been three weeks since Sakura led the whole damn village around by the nose. Because the Hyuuga are extraordinarily extra in all things, they have decided to make a grand little production of the removal of the branch seals. At this rate it's going to take five years, he's pretty sure.
For the most part, outsiders are not welcome, because, again, Hyuuga. He was there for Kanna's, though. He suspects he'll be there for Tsukasa's as well.
But that's probably not going to be any time soon—they say Tsukasa hasn't activated his Byakugan since he returned, which means he's learning his chakra system the old-fashioned way.
Not everyone can be Haruno Sakura.
Kimiko leads him through the complex to the Hyuuga grand courtyard. At the head of it sits Hyuuga Toumi, Hiashi on her left and Kanna on her right Kanna.
Toumi became clan head three days after Sakura handed Hiashi Hashirama's scroll, as a compromise between Main House traditionalists and Branch House radicals.
She's branch house, but she's also Hiashi's second cousin. Kakashi's pretty sure they're all like third cousins at the most, but people seemed very certain that she was much closer to the main house than most branch house members.
She also broke her seal fifty years ago, but kept it secret. That makes her somewhat problematic for both sides.
Like every good compromise, nobody is happy.
Least of all Toumi, he's pretty sure.
She's also conveniently ancient. Picking her dooms them to a decade of bad leadership, at worst.
Kimiko stops at the edge of the courtyard, sets Gamami on the ground and bows to Kakashi, Gamami, and then, most deeply, to Toumi.
Toumi acknowledges Kimiko with a curt nod, and Kimiko leaves. Kakashi watches her go.
He turns back to the assembled Hyuuga clan, and finds Neji at the center of it all, knelt in his full ceremonial finery before Toumi, and Sakura really not far enough to his right, crawled most of the way out of the first row of the assembled Hyuuga and whispering to Neji in a voice that really isn't much of a whisper. The Hyuuga on both sides of her are starting to twitch.
Gamami crashes into Sakura's head, and Sakura stream of hissed non-whispers don't break of pause, despite ten pounds of frog crashing rather violently into her head.
Kakashi kneels in the outermost ring because he's here for Neji, but really—he gets the feeling he isn't here for support.
He's here so that Neji can rub his face in it.
He pulls out a copy of Icha-Icha, relishing the scowls and glares of the Hyuuga around him. Really, Kakashi loves the Hyuuga.
As he pretends to read, he glances over the assembled clan members.
You can tell who's unsealed themselves and who hasn't by whether they cover their Hyuuga curse seal or bare it with pride. Well, pride, or, in one case, with fairly obvious irritation.
That case:
Hiashi.
He had sealed himself upon returning to the Hyuuga compound, and then unsealed himself the next day, in full view of the whole clan, as proof of the scroll's legitimacy. Kakashi had been present, as witness.
Please, he had said, do not seal my children.
Hinata and Hanabi sit not too far from Sakura, unsealed.
A couple minutes and a couple more outsiders later, all of whom give Kakashi looks of bewilderment and mild disgust, Toumi clears her throat, and the courtyard goes silent.
"We gather here today to bear witness to the unsealing of our kin, Neji, only son of Hizashi, who gave his life for our clan," she says, her old voice not much more than a whisper. "I still do not think these productions serve the clan or our kin, but I have been overruled. However, I'm still the clan head, so each time we do this, I get to say my piece."
She leans forward, towards Neji, blind eyes pointing unerringly towards him in that way Toumi's eyes are wont to do.
"Neji, I unsealed myself in private, where none could judge me for my failures, of which I had many. I am not alone—Kenji and Hikoyuki and Sue did the same. They are all pillars of our clan. If you do this in private, I will permit no judgement upon you. This is a private affair. Others cannot heal us, we must heal ourselves, and that is best done behind closed doors."
Neji sits, back straight and defiant before her. She waits for a moment before sagging a bit.
"Stubborn boy," she says, under her breath, but still clearly audible in the dead silence of the courtyard. "Come here, then."
Neji moves forward until his knees touch the stone dais Toumi is perched upon.
Toumi unhunches as far as she is able, which is really not very far, and extends her claws to Neji. He bows his head into her hands, closing the last of the distance, and all over her body, the veins of the Byakugan stand up against her skin.
After a moment, the veins fade back away, and she picks up an inkwell from her side and slowly draws The Seal of False Chakra over Neji's curse seal.
When she is finished, she sets the brush by her side, and, once again, the veins of the Byakugan stand up across her skin.
"The seal is complete. You may begin."
Neji's shoulders tense as he begins to melt away the chakra pathways branded by the Hyuuga curse seal. They tense again as he rebuilds them.
"Again," she says.
Neji's shoulder tense again.
"Again," she repeats.
Sakura made this look easy, but it is important to remember, Kakashi thinks—Sakura's bullshit. Sakura is just very intense bullshit.
"Again," and "Again," and "Again," and—
"Yes, just like that. Good job, child. You are free."
Toumi reaches forward, and wipes the Seal of False Chakra away.
Neji's shoulders shake, and then he crumples right there before Toumi, his head falling to his knees as his shoulders are wracked with tears. Sakura is immediately at his side, her hand on his back as Gamami jumps onto his head.
Kakashi looks away, as do most of the adult Hyuuga assembled, but Toumi does not, her blind eyes boring down into Neji, her face neither comforting nor scolding.
"Are you okay?" Kakashi hears Sakura ask, because, as everyone knows, Sakura is physically incapable of whispering.
"Yes," Neji says. Then, in a stronger voice. "Yes." His sobs turn to laughter, and he lifts his head, forcing Gamami to reposition herself to the top of his head.
He turns to Sakura, face tear stained—
"I'm free."
It takes Neji a minute to get himself back together, and then he is as pristine as he always is, his expression smooth and even.
Toumi clears her throat, and Sakura hurriedly scrambles back to where she had leapt from.
There is a long moment of awkward silence when everyone looks at Neji and Toumi, and then at the toad perched on the top of Neji's head.
Again, Toumi clears her throat. Sakura looks around confusedly.
What could be wrong? her face says.
Everyone always walks around with toads on their head.
It's Neji who actually does something about it, carefully lifting Gamami from his head, whispering "Thank you," and then holding her out towards Sakura.
Gamami leaps the rest of the way but misses the top of Sakura's head, hitting her full on the face instead.
Kakashi fails to suppress a snicker, and gets even more Hyuuga glares.
Good times, good times.
"Now that your seal has been removed, the Hyuuga curse seals of our kin will recognize your blood as a member of the Main House. Do you swear to never use the seals of your kin against them?"
"I swear it," Neji says vehemently. "My kin need never fear me."
"Although you did not need to unseal yourself before us, you did so. You give hope to the children of our clan who cannot yet unseal themselves, and who can look to you and see that it is possible for them to break their seals. You give strength to us all, in seeing one more of our kin freed from our seal. You honor us, Neji. Thank you."
Neji bows, head to the stone.
"You honor me, Toumi-sama."
"I look forward to serving the Hyuuga with you, cousin," she says.
"And I you."
Toumi nods once more to Neji before turning to the rest of her clan.
"It is not easy. Do not be deceived by the actions of Hiashi, Kanna, and Sakura, who broke their seal in minutes. You are not failures because it takes you weeks, or months. It took me five years. Remember that it does not matter how long it takes you to break it. Once it is broken, it stays broken. It is not impossible." She surveys her clan with her blind eyes. "My door is always open to you. No matter how long it takes, I will be behind you."
Toumi bows her head, and the Hyuuga assembled bow with her.
"I live to serve," she says, and the Hyuuga echo her.
"I live to serve."
Toumi straightens, and her clan straightens with her.
"Divided we are weak, but together we are unbreakable," and her clan echoes her, their voice as one.
Toumi nods, and then pushes herself with a pained grunt to her feet.
"Thank you for your attendance today. You are dismissed."
The adults clear out as Toumi leaves, but Sakura doesn't. She drags Neji through the complex like she lives there, stepping around corners without looking, matching Neji step for step. Kakashi watches them go with half an eye, before following after them, faintly mystified.
As they walk, Sakura whispers to him, "So I've been thinking, I make these, right?" She spreads her fingers, like she's spinning something between them, like she did when she was first learning to manually throw chakra strings. "You could try to cut them?"
"I tried that," he says, as they duck into a courtyard.
"You're really good at this—if you know where I'm going, then you could cut them right before I use them, and I'm like, thrown back, it's really bad."
Kakashi watches in mildly stunned silence, as Sakura tries to teach Neji how to break her most important technique.
They reach the sparring ground and spread out. Sakura notices him then and glares at him.
"Sensei, you can go," she says, flicking her fingers at him.
He raises his eyebrows.
"You didn't want to help Neji before, so—shoo."
Neji fails to swallow a smirk.
"I just got to a really good part of my book," Kakashi says, leaning up against the pillar beside him, holding his book a little closer to his face. Slowly, he slides to the ground. "And my legs seem to have… fallen asleep? I may never walk again, Sakura."
She glares at him before apparently deciding that he's not worth the trouble. She takes Gamami from her head, and tosses her in Kakashi's direction with a "Get him," before turning back to Neji.
Kakashi lies there, slapping away oil spitballs from his precious books, and watches.
Sakura vanishes into a poof of flower petals, and Neji spins, blowing the nearest petals away. Two clones appear behind him, and he dives between them instead of going for either. Sakura appears behind him, and when he spins to face her, he takes a punch to the kidney when she swaps through what are probably chakra strings around half the courtyard ground to get behind him.
He winces, and Sakura makes a low, keening noise.
"Again," he says.
Again, Sakura vanishes into flower petals, and three clones appear around Neji. He dodges through them all, parrying attacks that aren't there and driving his fist through empty chests. His hands occasionally lash out at nothing, but Sakura keeps finding her way back to his side, scoring glancing blow after glancing blow until he overextends, and takes her knee to the stomach.
He falls to his hands and knees, gasping.
"I believe you can do it," she says, unhelpfully.
Neji smiles faintly. "I know," he says. "I do, too."
He pushes himself to his feet, spreads his hands into the low stance of the gentle fist.
Well shit.
Where'd that fatalistic Hyuuga Neji go?
Kakashi had liked him. Who the hell is this new kid?
"You ever try throwing that chakra of yours, Neji?" Kakashi asks, not looking up from his book. "I dunno, might be helpful."
Neji is distracted for long enough that he takes a punch to the throat, and—
"Oh no oh no I'm sorry I just don't even listen when he talks anymore, because he's the worst."
Neji gasps for breath in response, so Kakashi tacks on. "Don't forget that I'm not a real ninja," he adds, turning the page, and oh yes—Minoko-san.
Oh—yes.
Neji stands, with some difficulty, coughing and massaging his throat.
"Again," he says.
They clash, and Neji takes a kick to the back of the knee, takes a punch to the side of the head, and then sends Sakura rocketing back into herself when he punches through the string about five inches past his fingers.
He tries to follow up, but doesn't succeed, going down like a sack of bricks when he slides into Sakura's guard, strikes nothing, and takes Sakura's fist to the stomach.
He coughs blood on the ground, and smiles.
"Again," he says.
Over the course of the next several months, Kakashi continues to have Sakura train with Guy.
Unfortunately, this also means that Kakashi has to do challenges with Guy three days a week, but he supposes it's kind of worth it. Hard to say—it's a lot. Guy is a lot.
Regardless, she improves.
However, no matter how much she improves, Guy's a fucking monster. He fights evenly with Kakashi with his fists. Kakashi has "over a thousand jutsu" at his beck and call (actually two hundred and thirty-one, but no one else needs to know that), Obito's Sharingan, and now, the Hiraishin.
Guy can still fight him to a standstill with his fists.
(How egregious this is cannot be overstated.)
Sakura never manages to touch Guy—never gets a clean hit. He hears the faint whoosh when she un-transforms, notices the lack of sound in the clothes of her clones, can feel the slightest change in her chakra. Kakashi has the hiraishin and it mostly doesn't help because Guy is a shit sensor at one hundred feet but the best Kakashi's ever known at ten or less.
He knows where Kakashi will be before he's there—from the faint flash of chakra in the destination seal the moment before Kakashi arrives. The first time Kakashi thought he'd get Guy with it, Guy punched him clear into next week.
Although it sounds stupid to say it about a taijutsu idiot who only ever uses his fists, this a step beyond Sakura's training against Neji.
Kakashi, if he's honest, had not expected her to get good enough to fool Neji's Byakugan. Sakumo didn't fight Hyuuga, so Kakashi never knew that fooling a Byakugan like that was even possible.
She will fight sensors and people with eye jutsu and ultra hearing and all manner of bullshit. Eventually, Sakura will fight someone who can see her. Who knows where she is, the moment she's there. His father did. His father beat them. The movement abilities of the Hidden in the Leaves technique are extraordinary, and useful even when the technique's secret is broken.
Right now, she relies too much on the fact that she is invisible and that her opponents think she can be everywhere.
She won't always have that luxury. She needs to be faster, stronger, smarter.
The one rule of fighting Guy is that you can't trick him. Kakashi would know—Kakashi is the tricksiest ninja Kakashi has ever known, and Guy has never been fooled for one damn second.
But Sakura doesn't believe it.
She thinks she can be invisible.
So each day, after Guy goes to do his own training, and when he's off on his own missions, Kakashi teaches her a new kind of chakra-control exercise.
To take your chakra, and thread it through the air around you—wipe the sound from within it. It's classically impossible—total fucking bullshit—hot garbage.
His father could do it.
Each day, he trains her to suppress her chakra signature. Fold it up into a single point, as if she's just a petal, hanging in the air.
Each day, Sakura gets a little quieter.
Each day, her chakra presence gets a little smaller.
(But never both at once, because chakra suppression's a bitch.)
He has her unseal all of her flower petals and even out the chakra signature so they're all uniform.
It doesn't work.
When Guy can't hear her, he can feel her chakra. When he can't feel her chakra, he can hear her.
When she goes slow enough, he can feel the wind on his back.
When she makes silent clones, with exactly the correct chakra signature, he can see the faint aura of darkness behind them where they're sucking the light from the air.
When she's far enough away, he's memorized the shape of every damn petal she has, and he can track her through every swap.
Guy is not vulnerable to genjutsu not because he has perfect control over his chakra like Sakura does, and not because he notices every change in his own chakra flow, no matter how tiny—but simply because Kakashi has never known someone who could create an illusion perfect enough to fool him.
"Excellent job!" Guy says, because it is. In three years she did what took his father three decades. It just isn't enough. "I can feel your youth from here! But it is not enough to defeat me! The beautiful Green Beast of Konoha!"
Day after day, quieter, smaller.
Never enough.
Never even close to enough.
Finally, three months in, and she is on her hands and knees, panting, faintly pale from low-level chakra exhaustion.
As she stares at the ground and as Kakashi worries that this was too much—that he should have told Guy to go easier on her—she says the words he had been hoping she'd say from the moment he brought Guy into this.
"I have to be stronger," she says. "I have to be faster. Please, teach me."
Meanwhile, Kakashi decides that it's finally time to teach her ninjutsu. Not ninjutsu as other ninja will learn it. How he learned it.
No.
Sakura stared at his chest when he performed a signless jutsu, and replicated it. She has something—something truly extraordinary—but she will never be a ninjutsu master.
He is not teaching her so that she can use his ninjutsu—he's teaching her ninjutsu so that no one can ever surprise her. Every ninjutsu he's ever seen, so that she'll know it if she sees it, so she can recognize it by the feel in the air and the signs of the user.
Kakashi has killed ninja beyond number by using ten techniques they had never seen before in a row, and killing them because of it—he will not let someone else pull that on Sakura.
He starts easy.
Water clone, earth clone, lightning clone.
She stares at his hands.
"Again," she says. "Again," she says. "Again."
Then, a little harder.
Fireball, instant quicksand, lightning eye.
"Again," she says. "Again," she says. "Again."
When she sees enough, he starts asking her, jutsu half completed.
"What is this?"
With each jutsu, she gets a little better.
Some days, they spar. He is no match for her without his jutsu anymore, so he starts using them.
Real jutsu.
Not, turn over the earth and blow away your petals.
Lightning clone and water dragon and fireball. His lightning kunai and the diving in the earth technique and a baby, mini, Chidori. The Sharingan and the Flying Thunder God technique. Not enough chakra to kill her, but enough to hurt her.
And he does, sometimes.
She goes down in a heap, smoking or bleeding or hacking up smoke.
Water prison, lightning web, wind blade.
"Again," she says. "Again," she says. "Again."
Once, they end up in the hospital, and he sits next to her, and wonders if he's doing the right thing. Better him than someone else, but wouldn't it be better if it were no one at all?
Then, later, Chidori, Ransengan, earthquake.
"Again," she says. "Again," she says. "Again."
They spar, and he is not Might Guy, but he is Hatake Kakashi. She knows more and more of his jutsu, but he's faster than her, stronger than her, smarter than her. He knows every corner of her jutsu, and he's seen her fight hundreds of times, so when she makes a clone in front of him and off to his right, he knows to hiraishin behind her, and zap her in the back with a tiny lightning release.
They spar, and when he's going all out, she never touches him.
She never touches him.
She never touches him.
She spends three days faking jutsu she can't use to spend half of her chakra blowing a fist sized fireball into massive oil spitball, and when he flashes to one of his kunai to escape, she is there, giving him a Guy special straight to the kidney, and he goes down.
She brings him to his knees—before she ever gets a clean shot on Guy.
Everyone seems to think he's stronger than Guy.
Kakashi has no fucking idea where they got that impression.
Guy beat Itachi into a paste without getting hit once, while Itachi damn near put Kakashi in the ground.
As Guy trains her, properly now, she devotes herself to taijutsu with the same stupid, single-minded devotion that she gives to staring at his ninjutsu.
She watches Guy show her proper form, and repeats it and repeats it until she has it down.
She learns to wreathe her muscles in chakra, give her punches oomph her noodle arms can't give them by themselves.
It's not the sharp controlled explosions of Tsunade and Kanashii's chakra-impulse strength technique, but it's the start of it—what she will have to master first in order to get her hands on it.
(There are no scrolls on Tsunade's technique because no one but her ever managed to do them. He doesn't know how he'll teach them to Sakura, so he kicks that can off down the road.)
She and Guy have play-spars in which all she uses is taijutsu, and he hobbles himself all the way down to genin levels.
He keeps himself just ahead of her, always just a little too strong for her, and she crawls up at him.
Just a little stronger, just a little faster.
Genin, chuunin.
On the off days, when they spar, she gets faster, stronger.
Her hits don't touch him.
Don't touch him.
Until, finally—
It's early spring, a chill in the air. About five in the morning, because Guy is a psycho and when there's something she wants, Sakura's just as fucking psychotic.
She runs into the training ground, launching herself from the bridge and crashing into one of the three poles beside the pond. Kakashi does not have Obito's Sharingan active, but he can imagine the exacting, precise movement of her chakra as it wreathes her legs for only the moments she needs them, and then vanish back into her coils again (because every moment your chakra is in your muscles is a moment you're losing chakra), before her chakra vanishes from his senses entirely, because Sakura doesn't believe in doing anything halfway. The day he taught her the full chakra suppression technique was when she started using it every moment she wasn't actively using chakra.
She's breathing a little hard, a bit of sweat shining at her brow. She's still wearing her red dress, bright red with a civilian circle on its shoulders and on its front, split up to the waist on either side revealing basic ninja shorts. Two months ago, he had to take her to get her clothes treated by a proper ninja tailor when she threatened to give up on taijutsu because of the pit stains.
Sakura, no matter how much of a ninja she is coming to look like, will always be Sakura.
And, right on cue, she touches at her hair, straightening her bangs and fluffing out the rest of it. She's been growing it out, because Ino is growing out hers.
Sakura is grumbling to herself as she drops down from the post, and it sounds suspiciously like "No matter what he does, Neji's hair never gets in his mouth. Stupid boys."
There was a running pool in Anbu while he was there about whether the bullshit that is Hyuuga hair was part of their bloodline limit.
It is.
Kakashi won a lot of money that day. Sage bless Hyuuga Kitano. Man had hair down to his ass and the loosest lips of any Hyuuga Kakashi ever had the fortune of meeting.
He had died in front of Kakashi's eyes exactly twelve days after the revelation of the Hyuuga hair, his face eternally frozen into a smile under his mask. Kakashi quit Anbu the next day.
Sakura walks across the pond like it's not even there, summoning Gamami with a quick bite of her thumb.
"You're never here before Guy," she says a moment before her kai tears unpleasantly through him. She is kind enough not to put enough force behind it to break open his seals. She's wearing them too, now, so that's probably the only reason for her restraint.
She puts Gamami on her head, despite the fact that Gamami's little toady fists immediately ruin all of the work she had put into making her hair perfect.
He can feel a wobbling of chakra from Gamami, and Sakura briefly breaks chakra suppression to wobble back at her.
Sakura has assured him that actually they're talking in secret code but he refuses to believe it.
"I like to mix it up," Kakashi says.
He closes his eyes against the follow-up kai.
It's the truth. He likes to mix it up. Sometimes he comes early, sometimes he comes late.
Sometimes, he doesn't come at all.
The next set of chuunin exams is in three months.
Rock.
The ones six months after that are in Mist.
Neither are great, but both of the sets of exams after that are in Cloud.
Sakura is better at internal motivation than she used to be, but it's not perfect. The C's and B's are grinding on her. She's good enough for A's and she knows it, but genin can't get assigned to them. She knows she's strong enough for chuunin.
She trusts him, but that trust isn't, and never has been, complete.
Why is he holding her back?
Is she still weak?
He can see those doubts growing in her mind.
She makes a half-hearted attempt for his forehead protector, but the fact she has to lift chakra suppression for it makes it trivially easy to dodge.
At five A.M. exactly, Guy appears in the center of the training ground.
"Dynamic entry!" he bellows, and Kakashi and Sakura flinch in unison.
Sakura breaks chakra suppression to wibble and wobble at Gamami, and then tosses Gamami over to the pond behind her.
"Guy-sensei," she says, and bows.
Hurtful.
Kakashi's never gotten a Kakashi-sensei.
Considering she's smirking at the bottom of her bow, she's aware.
"Adorable pseudo-student!" Guy bellows. "I see that you are overflowing with Youth for our spar today! I will endeavor to match your Youth, Youth to Youth!"
Sakura hesitates, halfway up from her bow.
"I've dealt with this for a decade," Kakashi tells her. "He's always been like this."
Sakura gives a faint snort before she finishes her bow.
"Eternal rival, you make me so mad—" He blocks Sakura's attack, and punches her in the shoulder hard enough to toss her into the air, just before she vanishes into a poof of flower petals "—why do you have to act so cool!"
He shakes his fist as he ducks under Sakura's next attack, and slams a shoulder into her, scattering her into flower petals once more. He ignores a clone's attack, and sighs dreamily. "I will one day be as cool as you, Kakashi. If I cannot then I will—" backstep, leg sweep, cross that Sakura tries to sidestep, but fails to, clipping her guard and spinning her to the ground "—climb the Hokage monument with only my chin!"
He steps back, whaps a nearby petal with a single finger, sending Sakura un-transforming and to the ground with a bloody cough.
"You have to give a time, Guy, or whenever I take you up on that, you'll say—no, it's for next year!"
"You doubt my honor, eternal rival?" Guy says from where he's crouched on the ground beside Sakura, one hand on her back. She nods, and he stands. "In ten years, I swear it. When you ask random civilians who the coolest ninja is in Konoha—" he sweeps his hand through a Sakura clone, backsteps one of her punches, and kicks backwards without looking, catching Sakura full on the chest "—they will say 'It is Might Guy—the glorious green beast of Konoha!'"
In case you're wondering.
No one calls Guy that.
No one has ever called Guy that but Guy.
"Easy bet."
Guy leaps over Sakura's attack, blocks her attempted follow up while he is temporarily unable to dodge, and then crashes a fist into her guard hard enough she hits the ground before she can vanish into flower petals.
"You will see, Kakashi! I will show you!"
Sakura, meanwhile, hasn't gotten up.
She's still lying on the ground, staring up at the sky, breathing deeply. Gamami has hopped over to her head, and they're wobbling their chakra at each other again.
"Adorable pseudo-student! Of course you should try it! How will you know if you never try!"
Sakura's face temporarily blanks in surprise.
No way.
No.
No way.
"You can understand them?"
"As if you cannot, glorious rival! They are flickering their chakra in Morse code, as plain as day!"
(Behold, the best sensor Kakashi has ever known at ten feet or less.)
What the fuck?
However, there are more important things to think about.
"Secret code, huh?" he says to Sakura.
"Shut up! You couldn't break it!" Sakura shouts as she flips to her feet. The moment her feet touch the grass, all of her summons vanish.
Including Gamami.
"Oh no, whoops!"
She bites her thumb, and slams it into the ground.
Gamami appears again, and she is frowning thunderously.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she says, rubbing Gamami's head. She still uses one finger to do it, even though Gamami is now large enough to overflow both of Sakura's hands when Sakura tries to pick her up.
Gamami flutters out a flicker of chakra that manages to feel disdainful, and then hops away to the pond.
Sakura makes a face, before standing.
"I will pretend I did not hear you," Guy bellows, because he's really only got the one volume. "Come, my adorable pseudo-student!"
On Guy's face is a grin that is… wrong. It is not his nice guy grin. It's his actual fight grin. Guy is a nice guy, yes—but no one who has ever fought him in the field has ever come away with that impression.
In the field, Guy smiles like the fucking monster he is—lips parted too wide, showing too many teeth, all of them pressed together altogether too tightly.
"Do not hold back, I assure you that you cannot hurt me."
He can feel Sakura's chakra flare as she breaks chakra suppression, and raises her hands before her.
She does not start leaking flower petals.
"If you will not come to me, pseudo-student"—there's that grin again—"I will go to you!"
Sakura dodges his first attack, slipping into his guard, and then takes the follow up cross, knocking her a solid three feet back. She lowers the hand she blocked with with a wince.
Guy laughs.
"Yes!" he shouts, charging forward again. She dodges his punch and his follow up kick, and then moves in, almost dodging his elbow, but not quite. She goes down, but only for a moment, and Guy's grin only grows.
This—this is familiar.
Sakura dashes forward this time, following Guy as he dashes back, ducking under his counterattack and around his follow-up kick, only to take an elbow to the back—and drive her head full force into Guy's stomach on her way down.
It pushes Guy back an inch, if that, and then Sakura is on her hands and knees on the ground.
Nothing more than an inch—but that is the first time Sakura ever struck him hard enough to move him at all. Guy hadn't blocked that attack. He hadn't dodged.
Slowly, Kakashi threads chakra through Obito's eye, and the world spins into red and black.
"Excellent job," Guy says, patting his stomach. "Fantastic job. I am so proud to have taught you so far, but you must not be satisfied with this! Stand up, my adorable pseudo-student, let us reach for the peak of Youth together!"
Sakura takes a deep breath, and pushes herself up to her feet.
With the world moving at an obliging like seventy percent speed, he can see clearly now—Sakura is not faster.
She is dodging Guy's attacks before they begin.
This is how Kakashi fights Guy. However—and Kakashi cannot overstate how critical this is—Kakashi has Obito's Sharingan.
He can see Guy's every muscle twitch, and not only that, Obito's eyes dutifully uses that totally nonsensical information to map out exactly where he will be, letting Kakashi not be there, because trying to match Guy speed for speed is not a fight Kakashi has ever known anyone to win.
Sakura mistimes a dodge, but a moment before Guy's fist connects with her shoulder, she wreathes it in chakra. A blow that should have bruised her black and purple (Guy was pulling his punches, because he isn't trying to kill her) just tosses her to the ground instead.
When Sakura comes sprawling down to rest in front of Kakashi, she looks up at him. She's smiling, he realizes—grinning, from ear to ear.
Kakashi recalls, for the first time in a long time, that first day he saw Sakura—standing in her little civilian yard in her little civilian clothes, performing a jutsu perfectly with the wrong damn hand seals.
When he had thought of how to use her chakra control, how he could teach her to use her chakra control, he thought only of his father. On his more fanciful days, he had thought of Tsunade. Train with Guy, figure it all out later. Looking down at Sakura, now, he wonders if maybe—maybe he'd been wrong from the start.
"What did you say to Gamami?" Kakashi asks her.
"I said that if I didn't have to maintain the five or six jutsus for the Hidden in the Leaves technique, I might be able to feel Guy-sensei's chakra movements. It's harder with him than it is with you, because he just moves all of his chakra around inside of his body. I was pretty sure I could use it to predict how he's going to move."
She flips to her feet and laughs, like it's nothing.
Easier with him than it is with you.
Kakashi reviews the last two months. How, slowly but surely, Sakura had started dodging his jutsus, just a little before he started them. At first just a hair, but then more and more and more. Sometimes she knew what jutsu he was using, sometimes not—but she always knew when one was coming.
So slowly he hadn't noticed, just thought she was getting faster.
When she downed him for the first time last week, she had been at his hiraishin target before he was there.
Just like Guy.
Son of a bitch.
Before him, Sakura dashes forward again, slipping under Guy's counter attack, punching ten degrees off of his current position and exactly where he was dodging to, earning her a solid hit on his guard. She pushes her advantage, pushing further in as he tries to recover his balance, feinting up and punching low, but she takes a kick to the side of the face she clearly hadn't seen coming and goes down hard.
"Oh, no, pseudo student!"
Sakura stands, falls. Stands again.
"I'm fine."
She falls again.
She isn't.
Guy transitions them to more kata exercises instead of continuing to spar.
"If you can read my chakra, then you can match it!" he bellows. "Reach for the stars! With the power of youth!"
He offers her his Green Leotard, guaranteed to increase her Youth tenfold, but, thank the Sage, she refuses.
Two months later, when Guy comes back from a mission, petals once again fill the air around them.
Guy's monster grin returns.
"Oh, pseudo-student, your Youth staggers me!"
Two weeks later, Sakura forces Guy to a knee for the first time. She dashes towards him, ducks under a punch, jumps over his leg sweep, punches over his block, forcing Guy to shift his weight instead of taking advantage of her reduced mobility, blocks the counter-cross, pushes into his chest, swaps with a leaf behind him on his counter-attack, turns sideways to dodge his back kick, and drives her fist into the back of his knee.
He goes down. One knee and one hand, because Guy is a fucking monster.
He grins at the ground like the nine-tailed fucking demon fox.
"Excellent job, pseudo-student. Now," he stands, turns back to her, his horrible grin mirrored on her face, "do it again."
Do you want to know when I knew Minato was stronger than me?
After enough time passes that no one will think twice about it, he takes her to the Hatake blood room, at the center of the compound his father built.
A proper blood room—one that no eye can see into, one that no one can spy on (so long as he yet lives) because his father had big dreams for the Hatake clan.
He says it is for telling her about a secret jutsu.
In actuality, the moment he has sealed the room closed, he turns to her and he says.
"What happened, with the Hyuuga? What did you do?"
She tells him then about the first time she touched Neji's seal when they fought, and how it had felt wrong, twisted up, burned like her chakra had been burned.
How she had set Gamami on his head (tricked him into putting Gamami on his head!), and Gamami had confirmed Sakura's suspicions.
How she had thought that Jiraiya's jutsu could work to heal him, but didn't know how to get it to him.
How she had gone to Ino, because Ino knows everything, and Ino had gone to Shikamaru, who she said was super lazy and annoying but actually smart but don't tell him I told you that.
How she had transformed into Ino and snuck into her clan jutsu room (Sage's horns on a stick), and stolen the Triggered Implanted Memory technique.
How she had taunted and taunted and taunted Higura, the worst of the Main Branch, until he hated her, until everyone would believe he would do this.
How she didn't tell Neji what they were doing, because everyone would think he was in on it, but how she had asked Neji to let her see his chakra pathways with her own chakra, map out exactly the shape of his seal.
How Neji let her, because part of him knew—part of him hoped.
How she challenged Higura to a duel, got him to let her into his room.
How she had knocked him out, then used the seal of false chakra to exactly recreate the pathways of Neji's chakra in her own system, and then burned a copy of the Hyuuga curse seal into her skin.
How she had killed Higura—stabbed him in the back of the neck, without letting him even wake up.
How when they came for her, she cried not because he had tortured her, but because she killed him, in cold blood.
How he was mean and awful and horrible but she still killed him.
How she knew it was the right thing to do, but how it hurt.
How she still hurt.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks her.
"Because you would have stopped me," she says without a moment of hesitation. "Because you told Neji you wouldn't help him."
The silence, after she says that, is long.
They go on missions together, and they are not C's anymore.
They can't get A's, so instead they get the missions that would require a whole squad.
Teams of missing-nin, and networks of bandits.
A five wagon caravan with a hundred million ryou of fine silks.
He is Hatake Kakashi, and so he manages to convince the Hokage to not send them on any assassination missions.
They blow up ships in Lightning, destroy bridges in Earth, protect the daimyou's daughter as she courts a foreign noble.
The missions get more dangerous—she gets injured, and he gets hit by chakra exhaustion more than once.
Once she saves his life by taking a kunai to the gut, and falling to her knees before him.
They fight bandits and missing-nin and all manner of people they have no choice but to kill, and slowly but surely, Sakura's hands get bloodier and bloodier and bloodier.
She's ten and then she's eleven.
Her hands are not as bloody as his had been, but they are bloody because of him.
She can't lead missions because she's still a genin, but she has the ability.
The Hokage looks up from his paperwork as Kakashi steps through his door.
He knows what Kakashi is here to say.
"Out with it."
"I wish to enter Sakura into the Chuunin Exams in Mist."
The Hokage nods, as if he's considering this for the first time, because he is possibly the most obnoxious human being to ever live. He looks down at the folder before him, stamps it, sets it aside, leans back.
"She's eleven."
"And a half," Kakashi cannot quite stop himself from saying.
"That's awfully young, Kakashi. She's doing fine at your side. Explain yourself."
Kakashi takes a deep breath.
"I can say nothing I did not say when I stood before you four years ago."
"She has been of chuunin ability for years," the Hokage says.
It's an iffy thing to judge—the variance of the Chuunin Exam is high. He'd give her 40% odds (which are very good odds—he'd only put his odds on his first attempt at 45%) once she was able to regularly beat Neji. She's had an outside 10% shot since she became a genin.
But even when she had above-average odds to win, he still pegged the chance of death at 10%. She doesn't have a team to watch her back—any team she'll join will either be weak enough to drag her down, or old enough they'd never trust her. The Chuunin Exam is a nasty thing, and it's nastier when you don't have a good team.
"She only realized it recently. She has… changed, over the last six months. I can tell that my decision not to nominate her for the exams in Rock weighs heavily on her."
"You are her jounin instructor."
Kakashi shakes his head.
"She has never forgotten I wanted her more than she wanted me. She trusts me, but she does not…" he thinks of Minato, so larger than life, so big and strong and invincible, "have faith in me."
The Hokage's brow twitches.
"No," he says. "Try again."
Kakashi takes a deep breath, and tries his best lying—me? expression.
"Yeah, I taught Jiraiya that, and he taught Minato, who taught you. Try again."
"I don't want her in these exams," Kakashi says shortly. "I want her by my side. She doesn't have a trustworthy team, which makes these exams a nightmare—doubling or tripling their chance of killing her. But her trust with me is nearing its end. My relationship with Sakura can bear another six months' wait, but not one and a half years, and the next two exams are in Cloud."
"Is she strong enough for this?"
"I believe the odds are strongly in her favor."
"That's not what I'm asking."
Kakashi bows his head.
This time, he doesn't bring up Itachi because he is exactly why this shouldn't be done. Too much pressure, too much responsibility, too soon. That wasn't the only reason, but it was a hell of a complicating factor.
He and Kakashi are relics of a bygone era.
Maybe someday, they would look at a 12-year-old genin, and balk. Now, it's an 11-year-old chuunin.
Time marches on.
"What do you need?" Kakashi asks.
"I want to see it. I'll test her myself."
Kakashi's heart freezes in his chest.
"Sir?"
"I have an opening three days from now, at 11 A.M. An hour. Will that work for you?"
"Yes… sir."
"Good," the Hokage says. "Don't tell her, I'd like to see her reaction myself. You're dismissed."
Kakashi arrives early. This would normally be Guy's day, but he's out on a mission, has been for the last two weeks. S-class, so damn secret not even Kakashi has been told anything about it.
It's convenient, because it means he doesn't have to make an excuse for why he'd be taking Guy's day. Sakura's a smart kid, she'd know something's up.
As Kakashi stands alone in the center of the third training ground, he throws a kunai to the opposite side, teleports to catch it before it hits the tree, then turns and throws it back across the training ground. He teleports across the training ground once more to catch it, but his hand closes on air.
Sakura, eleven years old and inexplicably smug about it, spins his kunai on a finger. Gamami squats on her head, now so large she only barely fits. Sakura still wears her forehead protector on the top of her head, her caged-bird seal bared proudly. Cherry blossom petals slowly fill the air between them, dancing and spinning and never falling.
"You're only ever early when you're going to give me one of your stupid tests," she says, quite accurately.
He teleports over to her to retrieve his kunai, and as his hand closes around the kunai his forehead gets noticeably lighter. He uses the fang she still has hung around her neck as an anchor, and slips his forehead protector from her hands before she can vanish into a flower petal.
"Boo, cheater," she complains, as he parries Gamami's sword strike with the back of his shoe, redirecting it into the ground. He keeps standing on it, much to Gamami's frustration. She spits oil at his leg, and he decides discretion is the better part of valor and teleports across the clearing. He has to duck to stop Sakura from getting her hands on his forehead protector and his elbow just bursts her into flower petals.
She appears to his right, clearly a clone, and then another copy of Sakura appears a moment after that to his left. He ignores the Sakura to his right, attacks the one to his left, so of course she is the Sakura to his right, hands closing over his forehead protector and then vanishing in a flower petal.
"So," a Sakura clone fingerspells with Anbu hand signs, "did I do it? What do I have to do this time?"
"Let's take a seat," Kakashi says instead of answering that.
It's a little before nine A.M.
Sakura hesitates, and then poofs out of a petal. He takes the opportunity to retrieve his forehead protector, and she squeals an objection. He doesn't let her take it back this time. Instead, he sits down at the edge of the pond.
Slowy, suspiciously, Sakura makes her way over to him and then sits next to him.
"Did Guy die?" she asks.
Kakashi momentarily can see nothing but Guy, buried under an avalanche of rock, just one eye visible—Guy, hanging off his hand, smiling at him, thanking him—Guy, dead on the ground in front of Naruto, on his knees and faceplanted into the ground because he'd died standing in an instant and fallen like a puppet with its strings cut.
Kakashi opens his mouth, and no words come out. He takes a deep breath.
"No," he finally finds the breath to say.
Sakura makes a relieved noise.
Kakashi looks at the pond before him, and takes a moment.
It's not long enough, so he takes another.
"It's about the Chuunin Exams."
Sakura perks up. "You're going to let me participate?"
"Sakura, do you know what percentage of participants to the Chuunin Exams die?"
Sakura makes a confused noise.
"I dunno? Like, five?"
Pretty close.
"Seven." Across the last five years.
"Come on, Sensei, I'm better than that! I'm strong enough, I can do this!"
"Do you know what percentage of participants who finish the first stage die?" Kakashi asks.
"Less? Three or four?"
"Eighteen."
"What?"
Kakashi looks over to her. "The second stage is the killer," he says.
She makes a face.
"And Sakura, you're a lock for the second stage."
He can't tell her what the stages would be, because then all sorts of people would get mad at him, but maybe—maybe this would be fine. First stage is always some kind of basic skill test. Strength, intelligence, a bit of cunning. Sakura will pass it with ease.
But…
No one ever dies on the first stage.
"Can't you wait?" Kakashi asks her.
"The next two are in Cloud!"
"I know."
"Sensei, no! I want—" Sakura's face breaks, just a little "I'm a good ninja."
"I know."
"No one else does," she says. "They treat me like I'm just a kid! Just a civilian kid!"
Kakashi looks at those circles on her dress, looks back up at her face.
He looks back at the pond.
"I almost died in my chuunin exam." Sakura falls silent. "My whole team did. We fought against a Rain team that used poisons, and we almost didn't notice in time. My teammate, Rin, had to carry us, and then bury us in the mud to hide us while we were unconscious. I just barely woke up to save her when she was fighting against an entire team all by herself."
He turns to Sakura.
"Do you still want to take it, Sakura?"
She nods, eyes shining with determination.
Kakashi sighs.
"The Hokage wants you to take a test, like I gave you when you made genin."
"Oh, okay. What is it? I guess it's not to just steal your forehead protector?"
"No, it'll be a little harder this time."
Sakura makes an irritated noise, and twists to shove her face at his.
"It starts at 11."
She harrumphs, and falls back against the grass. Her head hits the pond, and her hair drops into the water while her head bounces off of it.
He waits for her to notice.
"Oh no my hair!"
It's not the longest two hours Kakashi has ever spent.
He stops Sakura from using a fire jutsu to dry her hair because he's pretty sure she'll need all her chakra for whatever the Hokage has planned.
She eventually sits next to him and spins her chakra through her tenketsu. She can have several spirals going at once, giving her roughly the look of a blinking sign.
While they wait, Gamami sits in her lap, and they flicker their chakra at each other. Kakashi resists the urge to pull out Obito's Sharingan to see if he can read what they're saying.
Just before eleven, off-duty jounin start to gather.
First is Kurenai.
"I was here for the first one," she explains, leaning against one of the poles off to their left. "Seemed only right. Also—" she cuts herself off before she can reveal just who Sakura will be fighting with.
Then Shikaku, Hayate, Inoichi—
"You here to see me win again?"
Inoichi hesitates for just a moment before replying, "Of course."
Sakura frowns.
Gamami flickers at her, and she flickers back.
—Kanna, Kioko, Asuma.
"I don't remember inviting anyone to this." Everyone spins as one, and finds the Hokage standing in the center of the training ground, eyes dancing with mirth.
Except—he's not in his Hokage outfit. He's in his shinobi outfit.
Fuuuck.
"Imagine, that seven Konoha jounin would fail to notice an old man walking into a training ground? I'm disappointed. In my day, we never would have let something like this happen." He laughs to himself, and because he's the Hokage, everyone laughs awkwardly with him.
Sakura has hidden behind Kakashi.
"That's the Hokage!"
"Indeed it is," the Hokage says. He appears before Kakashi, and extends a hand down to Sakura. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Sakura-kun."
Slowly, Sakura takes his hand, and then shakes it.
"I hear you want to be a chuunin, Sakura-kun."
Sakura nods, still mostly hidden behind Kakashi.
"You're awfully young for that, don't you think?"
Sakura stiffens, and draws herself up to her full (but still rather pathetic) height.
"No!" She starts to leak flower petals.
"Another two, three years—what could be the harm?"
Sakura physically moves Kakashi out of her way, instead of going around him like a normal human being.
"I can be a chuunin now! I'm stronger than most of the chuunin, I know it!"
The Hokage hums, tapping his chin.
"It's not that you're weak, Sakura-kun. It's just that Konoha is trying to let our children be children, just a little more. Don't you want a chance at that?"
Sakura's eyes harden.
"I want to be a ninja."
The Hokage sighs. He cracks his back with a pained groan.
"Youth is wasted on the young," he says, before settling back to face Sakura. "Well, for kids, we want to make sure they're extra strong before we let them take the exam."
"That's stupid," Sakura says, having apparently forgotten all of her awe at the fact that she is talking to the Hokage. The Hokage is pretty good at that—just look at Naruto.
The Hokage chuckles.
"Maybe. But I'm the Hokage, so I get to be stupid, sometimes."
Sakura makes an irritated hmph.
"What do I have to do?"
"The same thing you did to make genin—except you have to take my forehead protector." He taps it. Normally, his forehead protector is built into a helmet. For this, he has forgone the helmet to simply wearing an ordinary forehead protector tied at the back, his bald pate bared to the air.
Sakura frowns—and then the Hokage pops when Sakura rips his forehead protector off his head from behind him.
She looks down at where the Hokage used to be in stunned silence.
"Yes, just like that," the Hokage says from behind her, and she whirls to face him.
"What was that?"
"A very forbidden, very dangerous technique."
She narrows her eyes. "Kakashi didn't use jutsu."
He smiles. "You have an hour," he says.
The jounin pull out of the clearing, leaning against the trees. On his left is Shikaku, suppressing a yawn with a hand, and on his right is Asuma.
"Kick his ass," Asuma says, voice elevated but not really managing the emotional inflection to make it an actual shout.
Sakura frowns. "Isn't he your dad?"
"Why do you think I want you to kick his ass?"
Sakura giggles a little.
She turns back to the Hokage. He smiles brightly at her.
"Anytime you're ready, Sakura-kun."
Sakura charges him, no subtlety at all.
Maybe—maybe having her train with Guy was a bad idea.
The Hokage dips and dodges through her jumps and swipes at his forehead, and on her third failed attempt, her body shifts—expanding up into the form of the pink-haired kunoichi who saved him in Lightning—her hand extending an extra foot. This time, when he dodges, she shifts before he does, forcing him back and back and back as he dips and dodges away from her before she feints left and then catches him as she goes right.
The Hokage, once again, vanishes in a poof of smoke, and Sakura finds herself staring down at her empty hand.
"What's wrong," the Hokage says, suddenly by Sakura's shoulder. "Did you lose something?"
There is a moment of fury in her expression before she takes a deep breath. She throws herself backwards on chakra-enhanced legs, and he easily dodges her. She turns, and dashes after him. He spins as she appears behind him, but she gets into his guard anyways, and this time, instead of going for his forehead protector, she drives her fist straight into his stomach. He's waiting for her, though, pushing the blow aside with his hand and spinning around her. She drives an elbow back to ten degrees off of where he dodges to, and she stops.
She turns to him.
He smiles at her.
She leaps back, and he continues to smile.
…
Is… is the Hokage feinting with his chakra?
It's… theoretically possible. But like, no?
You can fully suppress your chakra—a-ok.
You can even, if required, send chakra to random places in your body—annoying, but fine.
But to, in a fight, scramble the chakra you send to your various body parts to confuse an enemy?
What Sakura does is insane, true.
But this is definitely more insane.
Fucking.
Kages.
"Okay," Sakura says. "Okay."
She takes a deep breath, and then vanishes into a cloud of flower petals.
"Very good," the Hokage compliments. Three clones appear around him, and they are slow, not predicting the future, but the Hokage is not Guy, and can't distinguish the clones from a silent version of the real thing. He does not tap them out of existence. He clearly could, but he doesn't.
This says something about the rules the Hokage has made up to give Sakura a fighting chance against, you know—
A Kage.
He only dispels one when he brushes his hand through it to guide its punch away from his face.
Sakura stops, all of her clones backing off.
"So, will you tell me the rules?"
"I will not," the Hokage says cheerfully.
Sakura grumbles with a scowl, and dashes towards him. The Hokage identifies two of her clones, and he lets them hit him, dispelling them, but there are five more, and however the Hokage is identifying the clones, it doesn't work with them. He dips and dodges through them, dispelling three as he pushes their attacks aside, but Sakura can pour out clones all day, and eventually the numbers cause him to overbalance, and Sakura is there, kicking him right in the back.
He poofs out of existence, and then poofs back into existence behind Sakura, mouth open—
But before he can say anything she turns and dives into the pond, and the Hokage clone before them twitches, suddenly drenched, followed quickly by an equally drenched Sakura, who he dodges easily when she goes for his forehead protector.
Five Sakura clones appear around him… all of which are dripping wet, with none of the drops that fall from their elbows or hair hitting the ground.
Sakura stops, and sighs, while the Hokage laughs.
As she works through a basic drying jutsu, she says, "Academy three"—she shakes out her now-dry hair—"and no counter-attacks."
"I've never been any good with normal clones," the Hokage says, still dripping wet, "so I made a substitute."
Sakura frowns mulishly. "With a very secret, very forbidden jutsu?"
"Yes," he says brightly.
In the Hokage's shit-eating grin, he can see himself.
It is… not a sight he is comforted by. Is that what interacting with him is like?
Oh, no.
"Why?" she asks.
"Because I don't want you to go to the Chuunin Exams, but I'm not allowed to say no. The clan heads would have me replaced—they want to be able to choose which of their clan members get to go. So I have to give you some kind of 'reasonable' test."
"This is reasonable?"
"I don't give people tests they can't pass."
A smile twitches at the corners of her mouth.
"Oh." The smile grows wider, and she lets out a little giggle. "You think I can pass this?"
"Of course," he says.
Sakura's giggle turns into a full-throated, joyous laugh.
"I believe in you, Sakura-kun, I'm sorry if this made you think I didn't."
Sakura starts jumping around the training ground excitedly. She turns to Kakashi, and then gestures emphatically at the Hokage with both hands.
"The Hokage believes in me!" she shouts, at the top of her lungs.
"The Hokage is known to have no taste," Kakashi says, because he really just can't help himself.
Sakura's eyes harden, and killing intent comes crashing down on the clearing.
"Oh my, that really is quite something," the Hokage says from behind her. "So, now that I've acknowledged you, you'll agree to wait until you're at least fourteen to take the exam, right?"
"Nope!" Sakura says, grinning back, and the ground around her feet cracks as she flings herself back in his direction.
"I thought you decided that this wouldn't work," the Hokage says as Sakura's attempts at his forehead protector go wide.
"This is the coolest thing I can do!"
"Yes," the Hokage says, sidestepping her next attempt, and—ducks when Sakura follows him, then brushes her hand away from his forehead protector and takes a step back from her attempted headbutt. She appears behind him and snatches left when he goes right. "But we've already established it doesn't work on me," he says, taking some more distance.
"No," Sakura disagrees, chasing after him. He dodges right, but she is already moving right. He raises his hand to whap hers away, and she sees it coming, already pulling it back. He dodges right into a flower petal cloud and she goes left.
He says, "Sakura, it's important to—"
His forehead protector disappears, re-appearing above the pond.
The Hokage dashes towards it, but Sakura is there in a split-second, his forehead protector clutched tightly in her hand.
"Gotcha," she says, grinning from ear to ear.
The Hokage stops at the pond's edge, and the clearing is silent. Sakura's smile starts to slip, and she shifts on her feet a little, until—
Asuma bursts into laughter. Louding, booming laughs, bent over double, slapping his knees.
"Lost your forehead protector to a genin—" he pauses to gasp in a breath "—an eleven-year-old genin."
Sakura immediately brightens. She vanishes, and re-appears next to Asuma.
"He's your dad, so you can have it," she says, handing it to him.
"Oh, well—"
It vanishes from his hand.
"Yes, Sakura," the Hokage says, forehead protector already back on his head. "You got me. I was just a little surprised, is all. Good job."
Sakura grins widely. The rest of the assembled jounin still appear to be in a state of mild shock. Which is, you know—fair.
The (third) God of Shinobi just got his forehead protector stolen by a child.
"It's the same way I got Kakashi's forehead protector!" The Hokage winces. "I swapped myself with your forehead protector while you were distracted trying to lecture me! You were so caught up you didn't notice me attaching my own chakra to it!" The Hokage winces a little more.
Yeah, eat it.
Imagine training this little monster.
Make fun of Kakashi for getting his forehead protector stolen now, huh?
(It's fine, Kakashi's not bitter.)
"Congratulations, Sakura-kun," he says. "You can take the Chuunin Exams."
Sakura crows her victory to the sky, and all the assembled jounin wince.
"Last time, everyone congratulated me," she says, looking suspiciously at the jounin around the clearing.
"I congratulated you," Asuma says flatly, still leaned against his tree beside her, as the other jounin hurry to offer their very heartfelt and not what the fuck kind of monster are you congratulations.
"I feel like you just made fun of your dad?"
"That's basically the same thing."
Once Sakura has very graciously accepted the congratulations from all the jounin she runs to Gamami and flings her to the air in her excitement. With her new chakra-enhanced strength she manages to pitch Gamami… quite a ways. Gamami looks not at all okay with this, flickering and flaring her chakra loud enough Kakashi can feel it.
"Ugh, fine, you're such a baby," Sakura grumbles, and then replaces herself with Gamami, and screams with glee as she plummets to the ground.
She lands directly in front of him, and then beams up at him.
Once again, Kakashi drinks in the sight of her blinding happiness with Obito's Sharingan, ensuring he can never forget it.