PF

by Lazydaily

F

10. Chapter 14

My name is Haruno Sakura.

My name is Haruno Sakura.

My name—

Just think of what you could do.

If you had my chakra reserves, and your control.

Just think of what we could do together.

My name is Haruno Sakura.

Sakura is trapped in a hospital bed. If she gets off of it, her chakra reserves will start to fall.

If she doesn't get back into it, she'll eventually die.

Kakashi is still asleep.

She's been awake for two hours, sealed into a white room. There are no doors, no windows.

There is someone inside of Sakura.

He whispers to her.

Sakura.

Haruno Sakura.

When she closes her eyes, she can see him.

A nasty, horrible world of flesh, like the inside of someone's stomach, three polyps that are horribly people shaped, and Orochimaru, standing at the gate, leaning against the bars.

It's her mindscape. The place she goes when she meditates. It used to be a grassy knoll, flowers blooming—it used to be her safe space. It's not, anymore. All the grass is dead. Sakura can look out from the hill and the grass is dead almost as far as she can see—and because it's her world, she can see all the way to the end of it. Only in the distance can Sakura see the faint green of live growth.

If it's regrowing back into this vast expanse of death, it's so slow she can't see it. If she looks up, she can see her whole chakra system, laid out above her. Sakura used to be able to see her chakra regenerate.

She doesn't see that anymore.

And now, at the top of the hill, in the center of all that death, there is a gate. Not connected to anything. Its opening is guarded by bars, and on the centermost bar is a lock in the shape of a five-pointed seal.

On the other side of it is another world—Orochimaru's world.

Around the gate, his green-black chakra seeps out into the grass of her hill. Sakura knows from experience it would kill the grass on her knoll.

It's not doing that right now, on account of the fact that there's… just nothing left to kill.

Sakura can feel every slimy inch, slowly expanding. Sakura can push his chakra back with her own, but it's not free.

Whatever chakra she uses won't regenerate.

Because—

Sakura remembers Gamami on her chest, screaming at Sakura with her chakra.

WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP

YOU CAN FIGHT THIS

PLEASE

DON'T LEAVE ME

Sakura had heard her. When she was in here. Fighting Orochimaru, and his horrible expanse of gross fleshy nightmares. Pushing him back, back.

Through the gate.

He—

He almost pushed Sakura through.

Gamami killed herself to suck enough natural energy from the air to feed Sakura.

When Gamami fell, that was when he almost got her. Almost closed the gates on her.

But then Kakashi came for her—gave her his own chakra. He took a rations pill, and then—and then he almost took another. Sakura could feel it—the bright, burning star of a rations pill, in his hand.

But you can't take two ration pills in a row, they'll kill you.

Sakura—when Gamami died, Sakura didn't feel anything, because Gamami wasn't really dead. Gamami—Gamami could come back.

Kakashi couldn't.

Taking a second pill would have killed him—but Sakura just wasn't strong enough. Sakura wasn't, but—

LET ME AT HIM.

I CAN TAKE HIM.

Sakura remembers Inner Sakura being a lot more… metaphorical.

There was someone else—something else—under her skin when she threw Orochimaru back beyond the gate and slammed the doors in his face.

Inner Sakura.

Right now, Orochimaru is reaching through the gates, scrabbling at the seal.

It burns his fingers, but his chakra regenerates regardless—regenerates just like hers doesn't.

So he keeps trying—keeps talking.

Sakura wishes she couldn't hear him.

Just imagine what we could do together.

And then, between the words, the sound of burning flesh.

Don't you want to be strong?

The sound of the scrabbling of his fingers on the bars.

You'll never be able to use chakra again.

The sound of the slam of his hands against the bars.

You need me.

The wall of the white room opens.

"Hi, Sakura," Inoichi says.

He's saying Sakura's name, and he's smiling, but Sakura can see in his eyes a hard coldness she remembers from Ibiki and not from Inoichi.

"Hi, Oji-san," Sakura says.

A bit of the coldness drips from his eyes before he re-affirms it—before he hardens his heart against the person inside of her that he thinks might be controlling her.

"I'm sorry I'm so late," he says, coming over to her, kneeling beside her.

Sakura's hands are heavy with wooden cuffs.

Separate, as a concession to Sakura's dignity, maybe? Even if Sakura had chakra, she couldn't use it.

Instead, she can feel it—like she never could before. Something about what she did with Orochimaru, something not having any left—her chakra sense is different than it was before.

These walls, they're lined with seals to block the chakra sense of the people inside.

They don't block her chakra sense even a little anymore.

So she knows that Inoichi has been outside since her doctor left, two hours ago. Waiting, watching. His chakra bubbling with alternating bouts of rage and terror.

The moment he stepped through the door, the terror won—all run away run away run away.

You know, in case Sakura attacks him.

Sakura can feel in his chakra how much he hates being this close to her.

"Use it," Sakura says to him, because she's tired, and she wants her Inoichi back, and not the head of T&I. "Stop looking at me like that, and use your Mind Walk jutsu."

His chakra tenses.

"Sakura doesn't know about that."

"It wasn't Ino you caught," Sakura tells him. "It was me." His eyes are confused for a moment before understanding snaps through them. "It took me a couple tries to find the jutsu I needed in your jutsu room," she explains. "Do it."

He takes a deep breath, and his mouth pinches with irritation.

That's a bit more like it.

He takes a single wood cuff from his pocket. He tosses it into the air, and then makes the single seal needed for the Yamanaka clan techniques. Sakura feels the moment his soul leaves his body, a moment before the wood cuff falls onto his wrist, and he collapses.

Sakura follows that soul into her mind and then down to the scorched, barren hill that was once her pristine, beautiful mindscape.

Inoichi stumbles upon entering Sakura's mind, coughing and choking on the smoke and ash that's still thick in the air around them.

It's unpleasant—probably actually impossible to breathe. Thankfully, though, this is Sakura's world. She beat a Sannin here. He used all of his jutsu, and she still won. Pushed him down and through that gate, slammed it closed on him.

(Or, well…)

(Inner Sakura did.)

So—she doesn't need to breathe.

Before all of this—she had all the power in the world. The power to reshape this world into whatever shape she pleases—she made this hill herself, after all, out of the endless sewers and water and nothingness that was there before. It took her three months. She was so proud of it—it was a perfect recreation of the little knoll where Ino and Sakura first met—where Ino told Sakura she was worth something. She told Sakura that—right where Orochimaru's gate now stands.

But Sakura doesn't have the chakra for anything like that anymore. All she can do—all she can do is not breathe.

Inoichi recovers himself, realizing that he, too, does not need to breathe.

His face, as he looks around him, is horrified. His back is to Orochimaru, so he sees Sakura first. Then, slowly, he turns to face Orochimaru, still leaned against the bars, scratching at the seal.

"That trick with the cuff, very cute," Orochimaru says, burning his fingers on the seal. "If I got my hands on your body, it wouldn't matter, I promise you."

Killing intent swamps the air around the two of them.

Inoichi doesn't react, because he's a jounin. Sakura doesn't react, because this is her world. Sakura can feel Inoichi's fear, though. She can still feel his chakra, here, inside of her—if something happens to his mind here, he'll die for real.

The body in the real world right now—it's just a husk. Not a single wisp of chakra left, all of his chakra beside her. Which is funny—because Sakura thought that would kill you. Apparently not? (The scroll she read on the technique didn't detail what happened to the original body.)

Maybe that's why Yamanakas can do it, and no one else. Maybe that's their bloodline limit. The scroll did say not to use it if you're not of "pure Yamanaka blood". Sakura had kind of thought that was just standard ninja bluster.

"Orochimaru," Inoichi says, and he tries not to sound scared even though fear is screaming all through him.

Orochimaru smiles a slimy, horrible smile at Inoichi.

"Inoichi. Tell me, how's little Inoka doing?"

His tongue flicks out of his mouth.

Inoichi's fear is replaced by blinding fury, and Sakura grabs one of his hands in both of hers before he goes and does something stupid like try and attack Orochimaru. Orochimaru is bound, but he is not powerless. She can feel his horrible, sticky chakra from here, and his arm, where it hangs out of the bars, burns with that chakra.

Inoichi may have all of his chakra here, but this is not Inoichi's mind.

It's Sakura's. Sakura's… and Orochimaru's.

She—she doesn't like it, but she can feel it.

He is bound into that cage, but this world recognizes him as its master as much as it recognizes her.

Even with the chakra she has left, she is sure she could bind Inoichi here, or throw him out.

She had to spend her entire chakra reserves four times over to bind Orochimaru. (Four times her chakra reserves, multiplied a hundred times by the inefficiency of chakra infusion to kill Gamami and almost kill Kakashi.)

"Oh no," Orochimaru says, his head leaned against the bars, his skin sizzling from the contact, "did she not make it?" He pinches his eyes into something approximating grief. "What a tragedy."

His bereaved visage cracks, and he smiles, ear to ear, all of his teeth bared.

"Tell me, Inoichi, do you want to know how your pretty little bloodline limit works?"

Slowly, the fury drips out of Inoichi. Or… maybe it would be more correct to say it gets suppressed deep down inside of him, until Sakura can't feel it anymore.

"It's alright, Sakura," Inoichi says, shifting his hand out of her grasp to plant it on the top of her head. He smiles down at her. "I knew I would find him here—I'm so glad I found you, too." He ruffles her hair, annoying on purpose, and Sakura squirms out of his grip.

"But can you really know?" Orochimaru whispers from the gate. "I could—"

"No, Orochimaru. You could not."

Orochimaru's face twists, his smile dripping away. He looks—he looks like he did when Sakura killed that big snake of his. Whatever it was called.

Manda, a part of her which is not a part of her says.

Sakura represses a shiver.

She's gotta say, she much prefers no-longer-metaphorical Inner Sakura to some weird twisted kind of Inner Orochimaru.

"You think you understand our bloodline limit better than we do, Orochimaru?" There his fury is again. He takes a step forward. "You think you could fool my eyes?"

Sakura grabs for his hand, but he is gone, immediately in front of the gates in the blink of an eye. Maybe… maybe Sakura couldn't bind him. She didn't even see him move.

Orochimaru reaches for him, grabs him, pulls him inside. He's too big, but his body twists and warps and then he's on the other side, his shoulder still clutched in Orochimaru's hand.

"No!" Sakura lurches towards them, but—there is no fear in Inoichi's chakra. And the anger there—

It's cold.

It's—

It feels like Kanashii's, when she was squatted down before Sakura's clone, and saying—

How old are you again, Sakura?

Hate.

"Just because you stole and tortured one of our children, how you underestimate us, Orochimaru."

Inoichi lifts his hand and brushes Orochimaru's hand from his shoulder, like it's nothing.

This wakes Orochimaru from the shock of actually being able to pull someone through the bars. The horrible red goop that his world is made up of surges around Inoichi, immediately blackens, and then dies.

"We are the Yamanaka, Orochimaru. We walk the minds of others, we stand up against them in their own mind, where they are all but Gods." He leans forward. "You think you scare me, Orochimaru?"

Orochimaru lunges at Inoichi, but his hands burn where they touch Inoichi's skin. He backs away, and Inoichi catches him by the throat, his hand all but invisible with speed.

Orochimaru's neck burns around Inoichi's hand. He struggles to free himself from Inoichi's grip, but he fails. His hands burn where they touch Inoichi's skin, and his strikes do not make Inoichi so much as twitch.

It is impressive—if you can't feel Inoichi spending his chakra like water.

Half gone, already.

"You are nothing but a caged dog, Orochimaru," Inoichi says, tossing Orochimaru to the ground. "Do not think you're anything more." He snaps his fingers, and a circle of black fire erupts from around him, burning through the red goop of Orochimaru's mind, leaving charred blackness in its wake. When it reaches Orochimaru, he screams.

Inoichi turns back to Sakura, and steps through the gates, like they're not even there.

Sakura watches—

Forty percent, thirty percent.

Orochimaru is still screaming.

"Good job, Sakura," he says with a smile—

Twenty-five percent.

"Being able to retake your mind from him is quite extraordinary."

Twenty percent.

He crouches in front of her, like he has all the time in the world, and, because Sakura is a ninja, she doesn't let her worry show on his face.

This is a show.

It's fine.

Ino's dad is big and strong and a jounin and he does this for a living.

It's fine.

He won't run out of chakra and die.

He won't.

"I'm proud of you," he says, ruffling her hair again, knocking her forehead protector down into her eyes.

Fifteen percent.

He turns back to Orochimaru, still on fire and screaming in the realm of his own mind. He's at the gates, burning hands clawing out at Inoichi with fury.

"I'll see you again, Orochimaru."

Ten percent.

"I'm not finished with you yet."

He vanishes, and the black flames vanish with him, leaving Orochimaru a horrible smoking husk on the floor of his own mind.

Sakura blinks back to the real world, and finds Inoichi smiling at her, like he isn't a single percent from chakra exhaustion.

"I'm sorry, Sakura. This is going to take a while."

Sakura nods.

"But I know who you are. I know you're still Haruno Sakura."

Within her, Orochimaru lets out a pained, hissing laugh.

But for how much longer.

Just you wait.

"We'll get you through this."

I'll start with him.

Scratch scratch.

Scrabble scrabble.

(Kill him rip him apart leave nothing left of him, Inner Sakura says to her, and Sakura sure hopes the antecedent of there is Orichimaru, and not Inoichi.)

(We can go into his mind and rip it apart from inside.)

"Ino wants to see you."

Sakura's gaze, which had wandered down to her hands, snaps to Inoichi. He grins at her.

"Ever since you got back—she's been so mad at me. I had to—" he smiles a pained smile. "I'm so glad it's still you."

"Not for long," Sakura says, in a whisper. "I can feel him. I can't push him back. My chakra isn't regenerating, Inoichi."

"If I have to, I'll give you the infusions myself."

"I know things I don't remember learning."

Inoichi takes her into his arms, crushing her face against his familiar chest. It's… not as hard as it should be, given he's not an Akimichi. He's gone to seed a bit, with his desk job in T&I.

Sakura wraps both of her hands around him.

"Jiraiya is coming—he says he can even bring back Tsunade. They'll find something." He's trying to sound confident, but he just sounds like he tries to convince himself. "If there's anyone who can figure this out, it's them."

Do you know what I did to them, the last time I saw them?

And Sakura suddenly, and very viscerally, does. She pushes it away.

"What about my parents?"

"They don't know you're back yet."

"Don't tell them. Please, don't tell them. If you have to kill me, tell them I died in Mist."

"We won't—"

"Promise me. I don't want him to see them."

Inoichi stiffens, and then slowly lets her go, letting her fall back against the bed. "I can't promise you that," he says.

"Then lie."

Inoichi's fake smile breaks, just a little. "Fuck," he says. He holds a hand up in front of his face. "Fuck, why did it have to be you."

"Please."

"I promise."

Sakura sniffles, Inoichi's tears bringing out her own. But she can't cry.

Not yet.

Not while Orochimaru can still feel it.

Not while he can—

You'll never be a ninja again, Sakura-chan.

Not while he can capitalize on it.

"Do you want to see Ino?" Inoichi says, voice rough, pulling his hand away from his eyes. "If you don't let her see you, she'll kill me, you know."

Sakura nods. "You have to protect her, from me. When I—"

"You won't."

"He'll look for her. Her and Kakashi and Neji and my parents and—"

"Don't worry."

This time, Inoichi's voice is sure. "This is where we put you, when we weren't sure if you were him. Not even he could get out."

Sakura is in a room that looks like a hospital room, with a hospital bed and beeping machines, and the walls that are just that right kind of hospital off-white.

But outside—outside there's no one. She can feel twists of chakra she doesn't recognize for as far as her chakra sense extends.

Seals.

She doesn't say it.

Orochimaru has access to some of her senses, but because he didn't seem to notice that Inoichi was pretending, she doesn't think he has access to her chakra senses or her mind.

Maybe he won't notice.

"Will she be safe when she's with me?"

"Yes."

Sakra looks at him, and through her chakra sense, she can sense the complicated twists of chakra on the floor, like it's a massive seal. "Okay."

Inoich smiles. He ruffles her hair again, intentionally being messy about it, knocking her forehead protector into her eyes again—for real, this time. She doesn't push him away.

"I'll send her in. Kakashi will be fine, too, don't worry. He's just a bit chakra exhausted."

And because Kakashi has a chance of regenerating his chakra ever again, they don't want to give him an infusion.

With her—

Well.

Sakura knows what chakra regeneration feels like. She felt it, before, when she had been recovering. At 8%, right after she woke up. She could feel it every moment, her chakra growing—little by little.

Right now, she can't feel a single thing.

Sakura will never naturally regenerate chakra again.

Within Sakura, Orochimaru laughs.

"Wait," she says, a moment before the wall opens before him.

Inoichi turns back to her, and raises his eyebrows in question.

"I want to summon Gamami," Sakura says, and she hates that she has to ask.

Inoichi's face pinches. He tries and fails to not glance down at the wood cuffs on her wrists, which are really the least of Sakura's problems.

"I'll look into it."

Ino bursts through the wall with an Anbu member Sakura's never seen before. Cat.

His chakra—his chakra feels like her cuffs.

"Sakura," Ino says, and her voice is rough.

"Hey, Ino."

"You—" she crosses the distance between them, and then starts to lightly punch Sakura in the arm.

Orochimaru starts to speak, and Sakura mentally sings the Konoha anthem to not hear a single word he says.

"They wouldn't let me see you," Ino says and sniffles.

Her eyes are red, and her face is blotchy. Her hair is messy. The shirt she's wearing is wrinkled.

The last time Sakura saw Ino cry was four years ago, when the Tsukuyomi had fried Sakura's brain, and she couldn't barely finish a sentence.

But still—she's never seen Ino so messy.

"I'm sorry," Sakura says, and she finds herself sniffling, too.

Crap.

Aw—

Inner Sakura interrupts Orochimaru with a thousand mouths—a horrible, gut-wrenching scream that makes her head feel like it's about to split—

But it's better than hearing Orochimaru speak.

Better than hearing him talk about Ino.

"You can't cry," Ino says, starting to cry. "Ninjas aren't supposed to cry!"

"What about you?" Sakura says, wiping ineffectually at her face. She wasn't supposed to cry—she didn't want to give Orochimaru the ammunition, but neither was Ino!

"I'm just an academy student, I can do what I want!"

Sakura makes a farting noise at that, and Ino's face scrunches up, even as tears still spill messily down her cheeks.

"That's stupid."

"Yeah, well!" Ino gasps in a messy breath and punches Sakura in the arm again. "So is getting a stupid Sannin sealed inside of you!"

Sakura bursts into tears at that.

"I'm sorry," Ino says, wrapping her strong arms around Sakura and pulling her against her chest.

"I'm gonna make your shirt all gross," Sakura says, doing the opposite of anything about that, reaching her arms around Ino's back and digging her fingers into Ino's shirt.

"Gross," Ino comments, but doesn't let Sakura go even a little.

Once they've cried themselves out a little, Ino starts pushing at Sakura.

"Scooch."

"Ino—"

"You shut up!" Ino says, crawling into Sakura's bed, and pushing Sakura bodily out of the way when she doesn't move, pointing at the Cat Anbu in the corner. "I didn't even want you here! Just look at the wall."

"He's here to protect you," Sakura says, but she doesn't resist, letting Ino push her off to the side of the bed so Ino can settle down beside her.

"Fuck that."

Sakura blinks in surprise. Ino doesn't curse. Her mom gets really mad about it.

"Ino—"

"No. I know you, Sakura—you kicked me out of your mind, you're not gonna let him take you. I'm a Yamanaka, he's just a stupid, slimy, nobody."

Sakura does not point out that Orochimaru is of literal Kage power level, and the literally the opposite of nobody.

"His jutsu is different from yours."

Ino shakes her head. "No. I don't care. It doesn't matter."

Sakura's heart melts a little.

Cute, Orochimaru says, because Inner Sakura is no longer keeping up her horrible screeching. How about I—

Sakura gives into Inner Sakura's ever-present desire for blood and violence, drops herself into her mindscape, directly in front of the cage, and then drives her fist through the bars and into Orochimaru's face.

She has ten percent of her chakra right now.

She can spend one percent.

Who will yell at her for that?

Orochimaru's head literally vaporizes, most of the upper part of his torso with it.

Sakura pulls her hand back through the bars, chastising herself a bit for letting him get to her—for letting herself listen to Inner Sakura. She takes a step back before Orochimaru crashes back into the bars, still headless, arms out and grasping for her.

This was a stupid risk, a waste of chakra—but in here everything is chakra, and Sakura knows chakra. In this world Sakura beat Orochimaru of the Sannin. She's scared of the poison that's leaking out under the gate she can't seem to stop, but she's not scared of Orochimaru.

Sakura slips out of her own mind before Orochimaru can remake his head to find Ino's fists balled up in the front of her hospital gown.

"I'm fine, Ino."

Ino shakes her head in response, which is… fair, Sakura supposes. "Don't just do that."

"I'm sorry."

Ino shakes her head one more time before twisting her body just a little, so that Cat, where he stands in the corner, can't see Sakura's torso at all.

"I won't let him out, Ino. I promise."

Big promises, Orochimaru says.

"I'll kill myself first."

She knows how to do it, too. It's… not hard.

Kakashi didn't want to teach her, but she insisted.

She's a ninja, and some things are worse than death.

She had almost killed herself, in that moment before Gamami crashed into her chest, when all but a single drop of her chakra was gone, and the horrible fleshy redness of Orochimaru's mind was curling up around her ankle—before Inner Sakura stopped being so metaphorical.

Orochimaru goes silent at that.

Ino makes a face.

"It won't come to that."

Then, in the space between them, hidden from Cat, she makes the Yamanaka clan symbol.

"Ino—" Sakura says, reaching between them to break Ino's seal, but she is a moment too slow.

A blink of the eye later, and she is staring down at her own face, but there is something in the hold of her eyebrows, her chin, that lets Sakura see Ino in her skin.

Of course Ino is prettier in Sakura's face than she is.

Stupid Ino.

"What—"

Ino covers her mouth with both hands. Straight into Sakura's soul, Sakura can hear Ino whisper—

Dad says they'll never let you summon Gamami, use me.

Sakura blanches.

Sakura opens her mouth under Ino's hands, and—

I won't release this jutsu until you do it.

Ino's eyes are hard in Sakura's face.

Sakura swallows back a sob.

"Why are you so perfect?" she says into Ino's hands.

Ino grins, and then flinches, probably because Orochimaru is saying horrible things at her.

Is this—Sakura, has he been like this since you woke up?

Sakura's silence is all the answer Ino needs.

Sakura looks sadly down at Ino's pretty hands, and then breaks the skin of Ino's right thumb with Ino's left index finger's nail.

Forming her chakra is harder when she's doing it through Ino's chakra system, but it's not impossible. She goes slowly, gets it all right, and then presses Ino's bloody thumb against her own body's chest.

Seals spread from the site of her thumb and she is suddenly and very violently thrown against the wall, Cat's arm against her neck.

Sakura coughs as pain spreads through Ino's body—

Before she is very suddenly back in her own.

"Let me go," Ino demands across the room, scowling thunderously at Cat.

Meanwhile, on Sakura's chest is—Gamami.

"Hi," she says.

Cat looks over his shoulder, ignoring Ino's punches to his face and kicks at his crotch.

You're alive, Gamami says. She raises her webbed hand hesitantly, and sets it on Sakura's face. You're still you?

Sakura nods as Cat sighs deeply.

"Sage, do I hate children," he says.

And then his body flinches, and Ino goes limp in his grasp.

Ino, in Cat's body, sets her own body on the ground.

She turns back to Sakura, probably grinning under the Anbu mask.

"I'm a stupid, gross idiot. Nobody likes me."

Thank the first toad, Gamami says, I thought—

Sakura hugs Gamami tightly to her chest and giggles.

"Look at me," Ino says, and starts flapping her hands wildly. "I'm such a bad ninja I let an academy student—"

Ino jerks up from the floor as Cat sighs deeply, leaning back against the wall.

"Go, get yourself killed," he says. "See if I care."

Ino smiles victoriously and pushes herself up from the floor. Sakura does not miss the wince, the hand that twitches towards her throat, the pained twitch of her shoulder from a bruised shoulder blade.

Inner Sakura is all the way up her throat, behind her eyes, and Sakura has never wanted to kill someone more in her entire life. Cat twitches when Sakura's killing intent crashes into him, and Sakura is half off of the bed when—

"It's okay, I'm okay," Ino says, crawling up onto the bed from its foot, putting herself directly between Sakura and Cat.

Sakura, with great effort, pushes Inner Sakura back down inside of her where she belongs.

"You're a mess," Sakura says instead of addressing how willing she was to kill Cat (never mind the fact she has no chakra, and is chakra-suppressed to boot), holding Gamami tight to her chest, because it's true.

"Shut up!" Ino says, wiping self-consciously at her face, and trying and failing to brush her hair into some semblance of order.

Sakura sits up, setting Gamami in her lap.

How long has it been out here? Gamami asks.

"Three days," Sakura says. Ino looks at her curiously, and Sakura nods down at Gamami in her lap while motioning for Ino to turn around.

"Gamami, talk so I can hear you," Ino complains, turning obediently (to the extent Ino could ever be considered obedient) so that Sakura can get to her hair.

"Fine," Gamami grumbles from Sakura's lap. She pokes at Sakura's cuffs. "This is stupid, what could this really do against Orochimaru?"

Sakura pulls Ino's hair out of its ponytail, and takes a moment to relish how ridiculously soft it is.

"Stop playing with my hair, Sakura," Ino says. "I don't want to have to look at this stupid Anbu more than I have to."

Cat sighs again, but Sakura has to say—yeah, she wouldn't want to either.

She flips Ino's bang forward into her face and collects the rest of it, smoothing it out as best as she can without a brush.

Don't react, Gamami says, turning to face Sakura's belly button, and placing her hands on the fabric she finds there.

The cuffs prevent Sakura from responding in kind so she focuses on Ino's hair instead.

"Sakuraaa," Ino complains.

A warmth spreads into Sakura from the center of her coils—Gamami's chakra.

She hopes Gamami's not going to do something stupid like turn herself into a statue again.

So far, Gamami's fine. No more natural energy than she can handle.

"Fine, fine," Sakura complains, finishing with Ino's hair, and trailing her hand down the ponytail before Ino turns back to her. "Why is pretty hair always so wasted on people who don't appreciate it?"

"I like your hair," Ino says, reaching past Sakura's forehead protector to run her fingers through it.

It feels nice. Sometimes, they brush each other's hair, which Sakura likes a lot and Ino barely tolerates. She much prefers to train, because she's not just beautiful, she's also hard-working and incredibly talented.

She's the top student in her year, didn't you know?

Sakura rests her hands on Gamami's head as Ino continues to card her fingers through Sakura's hair. Which, by the way, is stringy and awful. Ino's a liar.

"So," Ino says, stopping, because she's also, you know, pretty mean. She settles next to Sakura, though, shoulders brushing. "I could hear him, when I was you."

Now that she's reminded, she can hear Orochimaru scrabbling at the gate again.

"Is he—is he always like that?"

It's only been a couple hours.

It's—

"Let's—" Sakura shakes her head, scritching at the dry, scratchy top of Gamami's head.

Ino bumps into her in response, a nice, sure weight against her side.

Just wait, Orochimaru says.

You think—

Sakura has a bit of chakra now. It makes it easier to have the air around Orochimaru swallow up his words. Gamami isn't giving her a lot of chakra, but she's giving her enough. Sakura can afford this tiny cost.

"In that case," Ino says, pulling her legs up before her, and resting her head on her knees to look at Sakura, "yesterday, I beat Sasuke-kun in a taijutsu spar."

Sakura claps appreciatively.

"He looked so mad," she says, and then sighs dreamily. She scrunches up her face, and then laughs.

Ino—Ino is a little weird. Ever since she scored better than Sasuke on a clone exercise a year ago and got him to glare at her, she's been like this.

"He's so pretty when he's mad, Sakura."

Sasuke is pretty all the time. Sakura does not intentionally antagonize him to produce his mad face, but she is not surprised he is also pretty when he's mad.

"And he's so cool," Ino continues, eyes distant.

Sakura makes an affirmative noise, as Gamami starts to take in natural energy.

Ino narrows her eyes at Sakura.

"What?" Sakura asks, bumping against Ino's shoulder.

"You don't think he's cool," she says.

"He's cool," Sakura says, and she's not lying… per-se.

He is cool! He's just… a lot weaker than her? It's hard to really get that excited about a boy who's so… weak.

She thinks about Yagura, who kind of put a fist through her chest, but he was really sorry about that and he gave her a chuunin jacket and told her how great she was and the color of his blindfold was so pretty and he smiled at her like she was just the best and also he had been so strong not even Madara could fight him and—

Ino narrows her eyes further.

"You can't lie to me, Sakura," she says.

"If I did like him, you'd be mad at me for that!" Sakura protests.

"I would," she admits, and Sakura laughs. Ino's voice is suddenly very serious. "He's mine, don't take him."

"You would ditch me for a boy?" Sakura asks, a little hurt, and Ino makes a face. She bumps irritably at Sakura's side.

"No," she lies.

It's okay, Sakura says to herself. It's okay.

She definitely isn't tempted to listen to Inner Sakura, and find Sasuke and beat him up in front of Ino… so that Ino will like her best again.

(It's okay, a dark, sad part of her that has nothing to do with Inner Sakura says—)

(You couldn't.)

(You won't be able to, ever again.)

"Sakura, no," Ino says, shaking her gently.

"I'm fine."

"You—" Ino hesitates, because she's bad at feelings. "You don't have to be."

Sakura smiles, and tries not to cry.

"No crying," Ino says, tearing up.

"I'm not crying, you're crying."

"I got the best scores in the academy on ninjutsu on Monday, you can't cry, you have to congratulate me."

"Congratulations," Sakura says, crying.

"No, stupid—" Ino says. "You're not supposed to do that."

"You should just graduate," Sakura coughs out a sob, "be a ninja. You're way too good to be a genin."

"Dad won't let me—" Ino pauses to gasp for a messy, sticky breath, "—I have to remake his stupid InoShikaChou team."

"That's stupid!" Sakura says, throwing her arms around Ino and rocking them both.

"I know, Shikamaru's so lazy and Chouji is so spineless and they're the worst I want to be on—" wet, messy gasp "—Sasuke's team."

"Would you have been on—" gasp "—my team, if I had stayed?"

"Of course, you, me—" cough "—and Sasuke, we'd be the strongest genin team ever."

Ino's fingers dig deeply into Sakura's back.

"You should set your dad's desk on fire," Sakura says, her head tucked into Ino's shoulder.

"I already did that when he didn't let me see"—cough, wail—"youu."

Sakura sobs against Ino's shoulder.

"You can't die, Sakura," Ino says, strong enough her embrace makes Sakura's ribs groan. "Please."

"I'm trying—"

"You have to promise."

"Inoo—"

Sakura feels Gamami's hand on her stomach, crumpling the hospital gown under her tiny toad fist.

"Sakura won't die," Gamami says, and her voice is clear. (Gamami never cries, not even when she was killing herself to give Sakura enough chakra to fight off Orochimaru.)

Ino pulls back from Sakura enough to look down at Gamami, then she looks back at Sakura.

"It's two against one," she says, and her face is so gross. So messy, blotchy and red and snotty and teary. Sakura loves her stupid gross face so much. "You have to survive, that's how it works. This is the council of Sakura, majority wins."

"Yeah?"

"Yes," Gamami says, definitively, and Ino nods.

"Yeah," she says.

Across the room, Cat sighs.

"Nobody asked you!" Ino says, voice cracking and rough. She turns back to Sakura. "So, promise. That's what they make you do in the council of Sakura."

"Since when are those the rules?"

"Now. I just decided them. Promise."

Sakura sniffles, and looks between Gamami's yellow toad eyes, and then to Ino's earnest pupil-less ones.

"Okay," she says. "I promise."

Ino crushes Sakura back against her and definitely starts crying again.

"And you have to be a ninja again, too! You have to be jounin by the time I graduate."

"Ino—"

"No! Shut up! You only get to say 'yes' and 'I promise'."

She pushes Sakura away again, mushes their foreheads together.

"Well?" she says, trying to make her face imperious despite the tears and the snot and the redness. Her light blue eyes bore into Sakura's. "Don't think I won't use my mind switch technique on you to make you say it," she says.

"Yes," Sakura says, even as her chakra continues to refuse to regenerate, and Gamami's infusion slows to an agonizing pace because chakra infusion is 100:1 on a good day—even as she can't stand from this bed without signing her death warrant. "I promise."

Ino takes in a messy breath, and nods. "Good." She wipes at her face, and then makes a horrified face at her hand. She takes Sakura's sheet and wipes her hand off on it, and then wipes her face off with that.

"Did I miss anything, Gamami?"

Gamami considers this for a moment, not moving because she's gathering natural energy.

"She also has to lock Orochimaru out of her mind, so she never hears him again."

"Yes!" Ino immediately agrees, grabbing Sakura's face again. Then, after making a grossed out face, she picks up Sakura's sheet and wipes Sakura's face clean with a clean stretch of it. She looks down at the sheet with that same grossed out face, and tosses the whole sheet on the ground. She grabs Sakura's face in both hands and conks their foreheads together again.

There is no doubt in her face, still pretty despite the red blotchiness.

Her faith rests heavy against Sakura.

"I promise," she says, as Orochimaru laughs, long and cruel.

Ino looks into her eyes, and then nods. She sniffles one last time.

"No more crying," she says. "I've decided, no more crying. Not because of the stupid ninja code"—Cat twitches—"but because everything's going to be fine."

Sakura laughs, a little brokenly.

"No, that's a bad laugh," Ino corrects her. She forces out a laugh, high and reedy and not much better. "We'll work on the laughs."

Sakura giggles.

"Yeah, like that. Now—to more important topics."

She looks very seriously at Sakura.

Sakura looks back at her, a little confused.

"What is this?"

She points at Sakura's mostly bare legs.

Sakura looks at them.

They're fine. She broke the left one pretty bad when Orochimaru kicked her into the ground, but it's been healed.

She looks back up at Ino, who is now pointing at her chest.

"Also, this! What is this?"

Sakura looks at the mess they've made of her hospital gown.

"I'm in the hospital," Sakura says.

Ino almost contradicts her before she remembers that actually that's what they're supposed to be pretending.

"It doesn't matter! This is stupid! Is this your fault?" She turns to Cat, who sighs heavily. "You look like the kind of pervert who would want to look at half-naked eleven-year-old girls."

Cat flinches.

"What are you, fifty?"

"Twenty-two."

Ino pinches her face in suspicion before shaking her head. "No, that can't be right."

Cat makes a great presentation of creating two wooden ear plugs, and then inserting them into his ears.

Ino sighs, turning back to Sakura.

"Gross."

Cat twitches, because he obviously didn't actually put in earplugs. He is here as Ino's bodyguard, after all.

"I'm going to get you some real clothes," she says. "I'll be right back—" she scrambles off of the bed, and then hesitates. "Are you—are you gonna be okay?"

Sakura nods, even though she really won't.

"And you!" Ino points at Cat, having also noticed that there's no way he actually put in the earplugs, because she's brilliant and incredible and amazing in every way. "I don't trust you to be alone with Sakura, you have to leave first."

Cat, with a great dramatic show of distaste, pushes himself off of the wall, and then, slowly, so slowly, makes his way to Ino. Ino tires of his production, and walks around and starts pushing him towards the weird spooky wall-opening. "Out, out, out."

She looks back at Sakura, and her scowl breaks with a smile filled with fondness and relief that really shoots Sakura right in the heart.

"I'll be right back. Don't do anything stupid or interesting while I'm gone!"

And then she's gone, the wall closing behind her.

After Ino and Cat have left for the second time, Sakura back in her normal red dress and ninja shorts (even if they took all the weapons out of her shorts), Gamami speaks.

Tell me what happened, she says.

Sakura does, to the best of her ability, staring up at the off-white ceiling. Gamami is hooked directly into her chakra system, so she speaks through that, little ripples in the chakra beneath her hands.

Sakura can't flicker her chakra out of her body because of the cuffs, but the chakra inside of her coils is unbound.

She's all the way back up to 15%. When Gamami isn't killing herself, it's a slow process.

My chakra, it isn't regenerating, she says, after she's done telling Gamami what happened.

I can regenerate it for you, she says.

We know that'll never work.

Gamami makes an unconvinced noise.

I can spend all my reserves, like I did before, and then you can just resummon me.

Sakura imagines what Gamami is describing, and feels sick.

You're asking me to kill you. Use you up, like you're just a battery.

There is a moment of silence. It's okay, Sakura.

It's not. It's not. I won't.

Even if it means you can never be a ninja again?

Sakura grabs Gamami in both of her hands, and lifts her tiny little bright-blue body up before her.

I could feel you die, Gamami. I could feel how much it hurt.

She can still remember feeling Gamami's chakra coils coming apart, just so she could push chakra into Sakura, just that little bit faster. Her entire body coming apart, natural energy flooding through her and warping her, twisting her, turning her to stone.

That long moment in which Gamami was still there, trapped in the stone, before she died, and vanished back to Mount Myouboku.

Then she remembers that she has broken the connection between them, and she pushes her face towards Gamami until Gamami sets her hands on Sakura's face, links their chakra systems, and repeats herself.

Gamami's little sideways pupils slide away. I can take it.

You shouldn't have to.

So you're willing to never be a ninja again?

Now it's Sakura's turn to look away. She sets Gamami back on her lap. She waits for Gamami to reconnect their chakra systems with a tiny little toad hand.

If that's what it takes, then I'll stay a civilian. You—she looks down at Gamami—you'll stay with me, even if I'm just a civilian, right?

Of course I will, she says, closing her tiny little toad fist in Sakura's dress. You humans have such short lifespans, compared to us toads, it's—

Her chakra flutters out of her control, and her gaze dances away.

After a long moment of silence, she says—It's nothing but a blink of an eye

Sakura grabs Gamami with both of her hands and clutches her tightly to her chest.

I love you, Gamami.

Gamami's chakra fluctuates uncomfortably.

I—Gamami gives out the chakra equivalent of a cough, pushing herself out of Sakura's arms to settle back into Sakura's lap. She sets her hands on Sakura's stomach. The technique I used to regenerate my chakra. You might be able to use it.

Sakura stares down at Gamami, open-mouthed.

Why didn't you just say that? Why—

It uses natural energy. I—Gamami shakes her head. We have a field in Mount Myouboku, of all the toads and all our summoners who tried to use natural energy, and failed. There's hundreds of statues there, Sakura, and I—I don't want you to be one of them.

Sakura swallows. She remembers her face twisting, even as the natural energy sang to her that it was fine. It was as she was meant to be.

She remembers believing it.

And all the toad techniques are for people with large chakra reserves. If your reserves are small, then the natural energy can swallow you in a moment. Sakura, it's so dangerous, I don't—I'm scared of what it could do to you.

Sakura looks down at Gamami.

Maybe Jiraiya knows what to do, she says. He's coming, he can help, right?

Gamami makes a face at being forced to rely on Jiraiya.

Even if it's dangerous, you still want to use it, don't you? Gamami asks.

Sakura presses her lips together.

Yeah. I really, really do. I want to be able to summon you whenever I want, I want to be able to punch Orochimaru in his stupid face, I want to be able to remake my mindscape—

And you want to be a ninja again.

Sakura swallows. I want to be the strongest kunoichi the world has ever seen.

Gamami bumps her head against Sakura's stomach.

She gives out a cute little toad sigh.

Of course you do. Stupid human. Why couldn't you have gone and summoned one of my siblings?

Sakura runs her fingers over Gamami's head, over her eye ridges, lined with pink.

I'm glad I got you, Sakura says.

Gamami gives a cute little toad grumble.

I love you, Gamami, Sakura repeats.

Yeah, yeah, Gamami says, but Sakura can feel the warmth in Gamami's chakra.

Sakura wonders, sometimes, if she would be able to sense chakra anywhere near this well if she didn't have a tiny little grumpy toad who was fundamentally incapable of expressing affection. If she didn't have to get her I love you's from warm little twists of chakra.

Before she goes to bed that night, her doctor returns, sliding into the room, his chakra flow a soothing, calming balm. Perfectly under control, how she likes to imagine Tsunade's chakra might feel.

"Hey," he says, waving to her as he comes into the room. "How are you doing?"

Sakura shrugs. She's not sure how to answer that.

He nods understandingly, grey hair falling briefly over his round glasses. He brushes it off.

"How's that leg of yours?"

Sakura kneads it with one hand.

"It's totally healed, I think?"

"Have you tried walking on it?"

She has not. You know, on account of him telling her the only thing keeping her alive is the bed beneath her, feeding chakra to her body's essential systems.

She must reveal some of this in her expression, because he laughs.

"I'm sorry if I scared you," he says. "They're keeping this room totally sealed off from the rest of the hospital, so I was worried I'd come back and find you dead on the floor." He comes to a stop beside her bed, and holds out his hand with a kind smile. "As long as I'm here, you don't need to worry about that. I'll give you a chakra infusion after we're done—" his gaze slides to where Gamami is sitting in Sakura's lap, and gives her a matching smile "—although it looks like Gamami-chan there might have beat me to it."

Kabuto is really just… unfairly nice.

Look at him, remembering Gamami's name and everything.

Sakura can tell Gamami is pleased, even if she's frowning. (Or well, not frowning—that's just her face. She has a resting frowning face.)

Before Sakura can move her, Gamami leaps from Sakura's lap to Kabuto's head.

He catches her flawlessly, barely even staggering back.

Sakura is pretty sure this means he's a pretty strong ninja, even if he's not wearing a forehead protector. She doesn't approve of that (she hopes Jiraiya's nonsense isn't contagious), but it does make sense.

You know, because she's buried at the bottom of T&I.

Sakura takes Kabuto's hand, and he pulls her gently to her feet.

She can immediately feel her reserves start to fall. It's not fast, but it is not ignorable.

Every moment, she can feel more of her chakra drip away.

Drip drip.

Drip drip.

He could be working for me, Orochimaru whispers in her mind.

Let all of that chakra of yours drip away, until I'm the only thing that's left.

Sakura does her best to ignore him, and releases Kabuto's hand.

"Can you walk a little for me?" Kabuto asks.

Sakura does, and for the first couple of steps, she can't help but limp, her body convinced her leg is still broken, but it quickly gets over itself. She jumps, and can feel her chakra stagger downwards in response.

It is a thoroughly unpleasant experience. She does not like it.

She closes her eyes to take a deep breath, and is surprised to find Kabuto kneeling before her when her eyes open.

"Um?"

"Sorry, bad habit," he says, smiling a little sheepishly. "You know how it is—I just wanted to take a look at this leg of yours while you're putting weight on it."

Sakura nods, and ignores the butterflies in her stomach when his hands, wreathed in green, run over her leg, not quite touching her.

"When you came in, I was really worried about the state of your leg—Orochimaru really did a number on it—but I'm happy to see it's healed almost completely." He stands, and offers her a hand she doesn't need to lead her back to the bed. She takes it.

She sits back on the bed, and that feeling of chakra constantly draining from her system eases.

"Now, I'm just going to do a quick checkup," he says, lifting his glowing hands before him. "Okay?"

Sakura nods.

Kabuto runs his hand down the air before her, head, chest, and then, for a long, uncomfortable moment, on her stomach, over her new seal. She has to say—she prefers the old one. She could have removed that one whenever she wanted.

This one—

Kabuto is frowning in frustration before he realizes what he's doing.

"Sorry," he says. "I've never had a patient with this kind of seal before, I got distracted."

Sakura shrugs, a little lost in his earnest black eyes.

He finishes his scan, running his hand down over her legs, and then standing again to run them over her arms. Never touching, always at least an inch or two away, but she can feel his chakra anyways. That green glow is like a physical thing, sweeping through her, doing, well… probably reporting back information, considering what Kabuto's here to do?

He straightens with a smile, clapping his hands together, dispelling the green glow that had surrounded them.

"Well, as far as my scans appear to show, you're in perfect health." His smile turns a little rueful. "I'm sorry I can't actually help you with any of your real problems. How are your reserves?"

Sakura shrugs. "I'm up to about a fifth," she says. "Gamami's been helping."

At the mention of her name, Gamami jumps from Kabuto's head back to Sakura's.

"Normally, I'd tell you to be careful about that sort of thing, but I've never seen a case like this. You still can't feel your chakra regenerating naturally?"

Sakura shakes her head. "Not even a little, and I'm pretty good at sensing that kind of thing."

"I've never heard of a case of Chakra Infusion Syndrome so bad that chakra regeneration stopped completely," he says, shaking his head. "We're officially out of my pay grade."

He places a comforting hand on her shoulder, and his hand is warm.

"Hang in there. I don't have much of a choice but to give you a clean bill of health, which means they're not going to let me back in here, but Jiraiya-sama and Tsunade-sama should be here soon—and I hear even Toumi-sama is going to come in and take a look. Don't lose hope, Sakura-chan."

Nobody calls Sakura Sakura-chan. She's not sure she likes it.

But, then again, if it's Kabuto, then maybe…

"Alright. If you have any concerns, just like, yell it at the walls? I'm sure whoever's guarding this room will be able to come and find me if you need me."

Sakura nods.

Kabuto releases her, and walks back to the portion of the wall everyone seems to enter and exit through.

He stops there and turns back.

"I'm rooting for you, Sakura-chan. I'm also civilian-born—even if I'm just a genin. You mean a lot to us."

Sakura nods.

"Good-bye, Sakura-chan."

"Good-bye, Kabuto-sensei."

The door closes, and Orochimaru, once again, starts to laugh.

Maybe I should go after him first.

Show him whaat a civilian-born ninja can really do.

People come to see her, over the next couple days.

Ino, Inoichi, Ino, Neji, Ino, The Third Hokage, Guy.

Ino.

(Ino comes a lot, okay.)

Toumi, once.

She does her weird her-whole-body-is-an-eye thing that makes her everything glow with chakra, and then sighs, long and tired and old.

Five years at least, she says, before Sakura's body regenerates chakra even a little.

Damage not to her chakra pathways but to her chakra itself from being attacked by Orochimaru, and then refilled and immediately emptied for ten, fifteen minutes on end.

It's nice to have confirmation—but Sakura would really have rather been wrong.

Kakashi doesn't come. He's still unconscious.

Yet more evidence that rations pills are only marginally better than getting killed because you run out of chakra.

Every night, she has nightmares. Or maybe—maybe nightmares is the wrong word for them.

Every night, she has memories.

His memories.

Some of them are fine. Missions, training, drinking.

Some of them are even nice. There are memories of a tiny Jiraiya, a tiny Tsunade, and a bizarrely young-looking Third Hokage she (Orochimaru) calls Hiruzen-sensei.

Hiruzen-sensei, who she (Orochimaru) idolized and loved with all of her heart.

Like him, she (Orochimaru) had thought. I want to be a ninja just like him.

But some of them are horrible. People in jars, people in pieces, people screaming for mercy and her (Orochimaru) laughing with disdain.

When she wakes up, she has to spend five, ten minutes remembering who she is.

My name is Haruno Sakura.

My name is Haruno Sakura.

From inside of her, Orochimaru laughs.

Not too much longer now, and sometimes things like—

So that's how the White Fang's jutsu worked.

Whatever pathway is open between them, it runs both ways.

With Gamami's help, she covers his gate with rocks, sinks it deep into the earth, but it doesn't matter.

Sound is not real in her mindspace. It doesn't matter how deep she buries him, his voice comes through, all the same. His memories come through, all the same.

Everyone seems to be watching her, asking her questions only she could answer.

How does she say that if Orochimaru consumes her, he'll be able to answer those questions as well?

She doesn't want to say it, doesn't want to get locked away in a hole from which she can never escape—but she knows from the memories that seep across that gate just what Orochimaru would do if he got out.

Who he would kill, if he got out.

Every morning, she clears out the slimy horribleness of his chakra, pushes it back into his horrible little flesh cave.

He's not as cruel as he was, on that first day—not as desperate.

He doesn't need to drive her crazy with his words, because he knows eventually, he'll supplant her.

He sits deep in his flesh cave, and he meditates, pushing more and more of his chakra out from the base of the gate.

When she stands outside of his gate, he opens his eyes, and he just smiles.

Every morning, there is more and more of his chakra to push back into the gate. Gamami can keep up, but by less and less every day.

Sakura realizes that she is not going to get the choice between torturing Gamami for chakra or becoming a civilian.

Her choices are torturing Gamami for chakra, or killing herself to keep Orochimaru locked away inside her.

Inoichi comes every day, walks into her mind, threatens and tortures Orochimaru, then leaves.

"How much longer?" she asks, because she—

She just can't say it.

Can't say—

"When I sleep, I get his memories, and he gets mine. Every day, he can push more of his chakra from under the gate."

Or is that Orochimaru, growing inside of her?

Does she have to do something now—because if she waits until there's too much of him, she won't want to say anything, any more.

"Tomorrow. Jiraiya and Tsunade will come tomorrow." Inoichi ruffles her hair. "Just hang in there. Just a little longer."

One more night.

She can handle that, right?

Before she goes to sleep, she says to Gamami—

Would you tell me, if I stop being me?

Of course.

Sakura pauses, staring up into the darkness. Would you kill me, if I didn't care?

Gamami hesitates. You're still you, she finally says.

For how much longer?

You're still you.

Sakura is woken by Jiraiya stomping his way into the room.

"Wakey-wakey, beautiful!" he bellows, and—

"Shut up, Jiraiya, would it kill you to let me sleep in one Sage-damned day of your life."

Sakura opens her eyes all the way, still in the mist of Orochimaru's memories, having not yet recited her "My name is Haruno Sakura"'s—and then she processes the words that just came out of her mouth.

"Well, shit," Jiraiya says.

"Oh no," Sakura says.

Tsunade steps past Jiraiya, glances briefly at the wood cuffs, and peers down at Sakura's eyes.

There's not a trace of fear in her or Jiraiya.

"Personality seepage? Memory seepage? What's your name, kid."

"Sakura."

Her hand glows green, and she sets it on Sakura's chest.

"Repeat that for me?"

With Tsunade's hand on her chest, Sakura feels it—a transformation jutsu.

Her heart pounds.

She looks at Jiraiya.

Is that Jiraiya?

Is this Tsunade?

Who are these people?

Why are they—

Sakura raises her hand to fake-Tsunade's, dips her fingers into the transformation jutsu, and pulls.

When the smoke clears from around fake-Tsunade, she finds…

A middle-aged woman?

Smile lines around her eyes and frown lines around her mouth.

Who looks… almost the same as Tsunade?

Possbily-Tsunade sighs as possibly-Jiraiya erupts in laughter.

"What's happening?"

"You really shouldn't be able to do that, kid."

"Tsunade likes to use a transformation to hide—" he twists forward to look at Tsunade, and frowns, "—how… old she is? I gotta say, Tsunade, I was expecting worse."

Jiraiya takes a fist to the face, and goes flying into the wall hard enough to leave a dent.

"I also think you look fine? Assuming you're really Tsunade—if you're not you look hideous."

"That's kind of you to say, kid, but—" her wrinkles vanish and her skin smooths as her transformation reweaves itself over her skin, "—I ain't doing it for you." She puts a painful pressure on Sakura's chest. "Now, tell me your name."

Sakura opens her mouth, and the look in Tsunade's eyes makes her swallow it back again.

"You're scaring the kid, Tsunade."

"She might be Orochimaru."

"She has a Mount Myouboku toad sage sitting next to her head." Said toad is currently glaring bloody murder at Tsunade. "No way she'd stay at Orochimaru's side if he took Sakura's body."

Tsunade looks at Gamami, and then twitches her eyebrow in challenge.

"Do not taunt the toad, Tsunade."

"She taunted me first—" she says, because apparently being a legendary ninja does not stop you from being super petty, and her gaze crashes back down on Sakura.

"Haruno Sakura," Sakura blurts out.

"Good," she says, and smiles at Sakura. She pats Sakura's cheek condescendingly, and sweeps her body with a glowing green hand, just like Kabuto did.

Now that she's awake, she finally pays attention to Tsunade's chakra.

It is… wow.

To compare Kabuto's chakra to Tsunade's is an insult. All of her chakra moves perfectly in sync with her motions, not a single ounce lost, flowing in and out of her pathways with perfect precision.

Sakura had always thought her control was good.

She—she realizes now, feeling Tsunade's chakra move, that, in fact, she didn't know what good chakra control actually looked like.

Not to mention the fact that every motion of her body is sure and precise and unhesitating, like the world belongs to her, and she's just been loaning it out for a while.

"I have to admit, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've been checked out by an eleven-year-old girl."

"Yeah, no way in hell. You've just never noticed."

Jiraiya ducks under Tsunade's punch, vanishing and appearing on Sakura's other side. He pats her head, just to be obnoxious.

"Tsunade brings that out in a lot of kids. You think you're not attracted to women, and bam—" his gaze wanders over to Tsunade's rather prominent cleavage. "And there's uhh. Hoo, wow." He shakes his head, still staring. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," he continues, after a really long moment. "Happens to uh," he blinks, doesn't look away. "What was I saying?"

"Your last will and testament," Tsunade says, cracking her knuckles.

Jiraiya's gaze snaps away from Tsunade's chest when Tsunade's killing intent covers the room.

Sakura kinda wants to laugh. But—

"I—What I said. Is no one worried about that?"

"Nah, kid," Jiraiya says, once again patting her head because the last like two years, have not made him any less obnoxious. "Even the Shinigami's seal is a little leaky, and this is just a Five Elements seal, not to mention that Orochimaru is a damn sight smarter than the nine-tailed demon fox. To be honest, we were expecting you to be mostly Orochimaru by now. Great job, kid."

Sakura looks up at Jiraiya, and his gaze is genuine. The thumbs-up, however, feels sarcastic.

"Thanks—"

Sakura jumps when Tsunade's hand falls on her stomach. She plucks at Sakura's dress.

"Why are you wearing this? You should be wearing a hospital gown, who the hell lets patients change back into their street clothes while they're still in a hospital bed?"

"Ino?"

"Am I supposed to know who that is? Jiraiya, who the hell is Ino?"

"Inoichi's kid?" He double checks with Sakura and Sakura nods.

"What? She's like, two, what the fuck does her opinion matter?"

"Give the kid a break, Tsunade."

"I'm trying, but she's got this stupid dress on." She points at Jiraiya. "Turn around."

Jiraiya turns around.

"I'm gonna have to be in this hospital bed forever, so Ino figured that I should at least be able to wear my own clothes," Sakura says.

"Oh, don't be melodramatic." Sakura feels a spark of hope. "You regrew all of your tenketsu, you can deal with this."

That.

What?

Sakura feels a smile twitching at the corner of her lips.

"You're cute," Tsunade says, and then turns back to Sakura's dress. "I'm gonna lift your dress up a bit, okay? Just high enough to see this seal."

"Um!"

"Oh, you're wearing shorts, fantastic, not enough kunoichi wear things under their dresses. Jiraiya, take a look at this seal."

Jiraiya does not turn around.

"Tsunade, I've been like, working my way through the kinks of the world, but I gotta say I don't have any interest in—"

"Do you want to help the kid or not," Tsunade says, and there is a cool fury under her words.

Jiraiya turns.

"That's what I thought."

Sakura covers her face with her hands and tries not to let her face combust under her blush.

"You don't have anything to be ashamed of, kid. You must have done a lot of taijutsu, very good muscle structure."

"You're not helping, Tsunade."

She indeed, really wasn't.

(Although part of Sakura was, internally, all but dancing about the fact that Tsunade, aka the strongest kunoichi alive, was complimenting her.)

"Not enough kunoichi do taijutsu, look at this muscle definition, especially at this age? That's a lot of hard work."

"Tsunade-sama," Sakura whimpers.

"Fine." She pats Sakura's stomach in a way she probably thinks is comforting, but really isn't. "Look at the seal. You're the one who read all the Senju and Uzumaki sealing scrolls."

Jiraiya leans down with a "Sorry, kid."

He gives Sakura a good minute of contemplating how preferable death would be to this before he flips Sakura's dress back down over her stomach, and speaks again.

"Yeah, standard Five Elements seal. Exactly like I taught Kakashi after that mess with his teammate. Flawless sealwork, of course, kid's a prodigy."

Sakura lowers her hands with a sigh of relief only to find Tsunade looking reproachfully at her.

"I once fought a team of Rock ninja totally naked," she says. "You're gonna have to get over this eventually."

Sakura cringes.

"That was a good day," Jiraiya says, and does not duck in time, going flying into the wall.

"Ow," he whimpers from the floor.

"But I guess you're still young," Tsunade says. She pats Sakura's thankfully-no-longer-bare stomach. Then, to Jiraiya—"Get up, you big baby."

"I'd like to see you get punched across the room and then stand up like it's nothing," Jiraiya grumbles.

"What was that?" Tsunade asks him, voice hard.

"Nothing."

Tsunade flips Sakura's dress back up to reveal her stomach. "Are you sure you don't need to take a look with your Sage Mode? You're better at—"

Sakura push her dress back down, and then holds it there, glaring at Tsunade.

Punch her in her stupid face, Inner Sakura suggests, and Sakura is incredibly tempted.

Tsunade gives her a single dubious look before turning back to Jiraiya.

"Nothing we couldn't see better from her mindscape," Jiraiya answers. He turns to where Gamami sits beside Sakura's head, glaring at Tsunade with Sakura. "Hey Gamami, how are you doing? Still tiny, I see."

The glare moves to him.

"You seem great, glad to hear it. You see anything unusual with the seal? You've been in Sage mode pretty much continuously, right?"

"She says no," Sakura reports. "But umm," both of the Sannin's heads turn to her, and her words get stuck in her throat.

"You're scaring her with your ugly mug, Jiraiya," Tsunade says.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's that cleavage of yours, you saw how she was—"

Jiraiya successfully dodges Tsunade's punch this time.

"I wasn't staring at her cleavage," Sakura finally defends herself.

Although, looking at it now, it is.

Impressive?

Vast?

"No judgement here, kid. This is a judgement-free space."

"I was looking—well not looking-looking—at her chakra," Sakura says. "It's… it's nice. Very controlled and smooth, and umm, stuff."

A genuine smile crosses Tsunade's lips. "Aw, she's sweet. You spent the two days we spent running here talking about what a hellion she was."

"That's just because you don't have a forehead protector to steal."

Tsunade snorts. "Good thing I threw that damn thing away a decade ago, then."

"You what?"

Tsunade turns to her, one eyebrow raised. "I'll tell you when you're older."

That's stupid-Kakashi code for I'll tell you never.

"Tsunade ran away because she got scared of blood," Jiraiya whispers.

Tsunade's expression freezes at Jiraiya's words.

Not the hot rage or cold fury from before, but—

Is that.

Grief?

"I'm sorry, Tsunade. That was over the line." Jiraiya has set a hand on Tsunade's shoulder, which definitely opens him up to take a punch, if Tsunade goes for it.

She doesn't.

Tsunade's chakra shivers with a faint kai that ripples through the room. She rubs the diamond on her forehead and shrugs Jiraiya's hand off.

"What did you want to say, kid?"

"I'm getting his memories and stuff when I sleep, and when I wake up, I have to spend like ten minutes sorting me from him."

"We know," Tsunade says.

"And, umm, he's able to push more of his chakra from the seal every day."

Tsunade's eyebrows raise, and she looks up at Jiraiya.

"Is that normal?" Tsunade asks him.

"I don't know of any records of sealing a person with the five elements seal. It isn't showing any signs of wear and tear, although I'll need to take a look at the inner seal to make sure. It's probably just Orochimaru getting better at pushing his chakra through the seal, but that's definitely worse than the seal going bad. I can fix the seal."

"How much is more, Sakura?" Tsunade says, turning her gaze to Sakura.

"It costs me five percent of my reserves yesterday to push it back," Sakura says.

"And the day before that?"

"Two?"

"And she's the one infusing you with chakra?" Tsunade says.

Sakura nods.

"Right. Well—" Tsunade drops her hand on Sakura's stomach, and Sakura's coils are suddenly full. Tsunade used barely a tenth of her reserves. She remembers what Kakashi said under his breath whenever Jiraiya did something ridiculous.

Sannin are bullshit.

She's starting to understand why, now.

"I can give you several full infusions a day, so we have time. Don't let yourself go below ten percent, and it shouldn't aggravate your Chakra Infusion Syndrome. Your case of Chakra Infusion Syndrome may be so bad it's just a matter of how many decades from now you'll recover, but that's no reason to be sloppy."

Sakura is still staring, open-mouthed, at Tsunade.

Tsunade's lips twitch with a hint of a smirk.

"Showoff," Jiraiya coughs, and Tsunade doesn't deny it.

Tsunade taps Sakura's mouth closed when she leaves it hanging open. "Close your mouth, you'll catch flies."

Tsunade turns back to Jiraiya with a raised brow.

"Right." Jiraiya turns to Sakura. "Sakura, we'll want to take a look at your mindscape, to see the internal state of your seal. I know that's a really personal thing, but we really do need to see it."

She nods, but—Sakura thought only Yamanaka could do that? Like, they certainly seemed to think so.

(Sannin are bullshit.)

"Alright, I'm going to need to put my hand here," he shows her. "Don't worry, I can do it over your dress, because—"

"Cloth is nothing to chakra."

Jiraiya grins.

"And then I'll move me and Tsunade into your mindscape. Okay?"

Sakura nods.

He sets his hand on her stomach, and Tsunade places hers on his with a roll of her eyes.

They go still. Unlike Inoichi, their chakra are still in their bodies.

She follows them down, and finds their consciousnesses standing on her burned knoll.

"You're a real rank son of a bitch, you know that?" Tsunade is saying, looking out on the blackened expanse of Sakura's mindscape.

"What? She's the one who made this so difficult. I assure you, the minds of the other people I absorbed are untouched."

Fury buzzes through Sakura, and Sakura pushes it all off on Inner Sakura, and then shoves it down and away. Being angry doesn't help anyone.

"Is that what's in those nasty flesh orbs behind you? What the fuck happened to you, Orochimaru?" Jiraiya says, standing just out of reach of the bars.

Orochimaru ignores him.

"Tsunade," he says, his voice a purr, "I've been working on jutsu I think you would like."

Tsunade breathes in deeply.

"Is it about how to put yourself back together when one of your most trusted personal friend rips you in half?" she asks. "Oh wait, I already know that one." She turns away from Orochimaru and back to Sakura. "Can you clean up this leakage of his for me, I want to see if you're doing anything obviously inefficient."

"I figured out how to raise the dead, Tsunade," Orochimaru says from behind her, and Tsunade goes still.

"Fuck. Tsunade—"

"Nawaki and Dan, Tsunade—I can bring them back."

Tsunade takes a deep breath, her whole body shaking.

"He's telling the truth," Sakura says.

"Sakura—" Jiraiya hisses at her.

"And I can tell you how to do the jutsu."

Orochimaru's face twists.

"You little worm," he hisses, slamming his hands against the bars, ignoring the burn of the steel on his skin. "I'll eat you alive you jutsu-stealing—"

Tsunade appears before him, reaching through the bars, and grabs a hold of both of his arms by the bicep. Chakra flares through her, flowing from her body into Sakura, and then into Tsunade's consciousness. Then she pulls, and there's a horrible sucking noise, and Orochimaru screams.

Tsunade staggers back, one of Orochimaru's bloody arms in each hand. She looks down at them and freezes.

Orochimaru laughs a pained, hissing laugh.

"You never got over that little fear of yours, Tsunade?" he asks, and suddenly his chakra isn't like rot but like blood, pooled all around the gate, all around Tsunade's feet. "You should have really—"

The gates shake when Tsunade kicks them, knocking Orochimaru onto his butt.

His arms still aren't regrowing.

Slowly, Tsunade turns to Sakura. Her face is deathly pale. She's shaking.

She walks towards Sakura, one step at a time.

"Sa—" she stops, coughs, "Sakura. If you could—" she heaves her breath in a gasp, falls to her knees. She blinks, tries to stand up, fails.

Sakura goes to her, kneels in the pool of blood, and hesitantly places her hands on Tsunade's shoulders.

"Start with these," she finishes, her voice small, her eyes unfocused. She's covered in blood. Orochimaru's blood.

Jiraiya is beside her, one hand on her back, his head twisted back to glare at Orochimaru, still smirking at them from beyond the bars.

His arms still haven't grown back.

There is fear in his eyes.

Sakura takes the arms from Tsunade's grasp, and erases them the same way she has all of the traces of Orochimaru in this mindscape of hers. She closes her eyes and imagines that they're gone.

She can feel the kick in the chakra, but it's—nothing more than erasing the rot from her little grassy knoll.

Orochimaru screams the moment they vanish, falling to his knees, forehead to the ground.

Before Sakura, Tsunade tries to smile, but doesn't quite manage it.

"Thank you—" cough, shiver, "—Sakura. That was—" she looks down at her bloody hands, and her eyes go distant. "Very therapeutic," she finally finishes.

She turns, in fits and starts, back to the gate, where Orochimaru lies crumpled on the ground, his arms slowly regrowing.

She staggers forward one step, and then another. She stumbles into the gate, slamming her hand onto the bars. It burns, but she doesn't flinch. She reaches forward, catches Orochimaru's foot, and he vanishes, back into the depths of his horrible flesh world.

"What a shame," she says, and then falls to her knees in the blood as her entire body begins to shake.

"Fuck fuck fuck," Jiraiya says, catching her the moment before she faceplants into Orochimaru's new blood chakra. "I'll be right back," Jiraiya says, and they both vanish, leaving Sakura standing alone in the blood slowly spreading from the gate.

Sakura closes her eyes and when she opens them, the blood is gone from her dead knoll. It is hers, after all.

Sakura checks her chakra and finds herself about eight percent lighter.

Then she walks to the gate and looks out on the horrible flesh-world of Orochimaru's mind. She looks at the three vaguely human-shaped polyps in the mess beyond the gate. She'd noticed them before, but she hadn't known what they were.

Is that what she was almost turned into?

Is there—

Is there a way to free them?

Sakura is vaguely aware of Tsunade and Jiraiya off to one side of her physical body, Jiraiya's arms around Tsunade's shoulders as she shakes. Her hands are fisted up on his chest, like she's trying to push him away. But considering that she punched him into the wall hard enough to dent it, she must not be trying very hard.

With one last glance at the three polyps of Orochimaru's previous victims, Sakura rises back into consciousness.

"I don't need your damn help," Tsunade says.

"I'm starting to think maybe you do."

"Fuck you."

"You helped me put myself back together when he burned me out, Tsunade. Can't you let me help you with this?"

"What is there to help," she says. "I killed the two people I loved most, this is—"

"That's bullshit and we both know it." Jiraiya pushes her away, lowers his face to meet Tsunade's gaze. "You didn't let me think I owed Orochimaru when I came back stronger, after he burned a hole in me. Fuck if I'm gonna let you think those deaths were your fault."

"Fuck off—"

"No. I—I've waited too long already. You never left me hanging for this long. That was wrong, and I'm sorry. Tsunade—we're all we've got. We can't just let each other be alone."

Tsunade's face crumples, and she pushes Jiraiya away. For real this time, sending him head over heels into the wall and leaving a vaguely Jiraiya-shaped dent.

"Enjoying the show, kid?"

Tsunade's hands are still shaking.

"Not… really?" Sakura says, honestly.

Tsunade laughs a little broken laugh.

"I'm forty-nine fucking years old," she says, like that's relevant. Sometimes, adults just announce their age, for no reason.

She clenches her hand into a fist as Jiraiya heaves himself back up into a sitting position. The shaking in Tsunade's shoulders finally subsides.

"So tell me, Sakura. How twisted would my brother and lover be, if Orochimaru brought them back?"

"They'd be your slaves."

Tsunade closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath in.

"And you'd need to kill two people to bring them back, and then again every month or two for as long as you keep them alive."

Tsunade lets the breath out.

Jiraiya comes up behind her, and sets his hand over the symbol for bet on the back of her haori.

"Fucking Orochimaru," she says.

"Fucking Orochimaru," Jiraiya agrees.

Sakura would also like to join in, but people always yell at her when she curses.

"I knew it sounded too good to be true," Tsunade says.

"Doesn't make it hurt any less."

"I just want to see their faces one more time."

Jiraiya doesn't say anything to that.

Tsunade sighs.

"I imagine you didn't get a good enough look at the seal?"

"No," Jiraiya says, smiling just a little.

Tsunade gives out an irritated sigh.

"Stupid adult bullshit," Tsunade says to Sakura, stepping back up to her bed to place her hand on Sakura's stomach. "Turn into a better adult than us, alright, Sakura?"

"I already wanted to be the strongest kunoichi in history," Sakura says. "So I was already shooting for that."

Tsunade laughs.

"I guess we have to get you fixed up, then."

She and Jiraiya go still, and Sakura follows them down into her mindscape one more time.

Tsunade swallows heavily at the sight of the blood welling around the base of the gate, and Sakura erases it with a blink.

Tsunade turns back to Sakura with surprise.

"Go, look at the seal, do whatever you have to do," she says after a moment.

Jiraiya tromps over to the gate with heavy steps, and Tsunade approaches Sakura, crouching down before her.

"It took eight percent of my chakra this time."

"That's not a growth curve I like," Tsunade responds. "It's not unworkable, though."

"You know of a way to… make it stop? Can you make him go away?"

Tsunade makes a wishy-washy sort of head wiggle.

"The seal's fine," Jiraiya says, crouching down at Tsuande's side. "If Orochimaru's getting through the seal more, it's not because of any damage on the seal itself. He's just one obnoxiously smart son of a bitch."

Tsunade nods.

"Alright, let's go back to the real world. Jiraiya?"

They vanish, and Sakura follows them out of her mindscape.

Tsunade lifts her hand from Sakura's stomach. She draws a small seal from her pack, and then sets it on the ground. Sakura leans forward to see her bite her thumb, place her bloody thumb on the seal—

And then vanish.

Or.

No.

It's—

What's happening?

"And I permit Haruno Sakura."

Sakura blinks as Jiraiya and Tsunade come back into view.

"My great-uncle's portable blood seal," Tsunade explains without explaining anything. "It's conveniently able to exclude people within its range, which will ideally include Orochimaru, presuming it recognizes you and him as different people."

What.

"It's an invisibility seal?"

That seems… incredibly strong.

"It's easily broken," she says, waving it away. "Now—Sakura, you said you have some of his knowledge."

Sakura has to take a moment to recover from the knowledge of this incredibly nonsense seal. What?

Why?

How?

"Sakura, focus."

Hurriedly, Sakura nods.

"Do you know anything about the jutsu he used on you?"

Sakura shakes her head.

"It was only luck I knew about Edo Tensei—the reincarnation jutsu."

Tsunade shrugs. "That's a shame, but we didn't really expect you to."

"Here's the deal, kid," Jiraiya says. "We think Orochimaru hit you with some kind of possession jutsu. They're real nasty. They take control of someone by slipping poisoned chakra into the victim's chakra stream. Most people don't even notice before all of their chakra has been poisoned, which leaves them at the mercy of the jutsu user. Now, we're not totally sure, but it looks like Orochimaru went and turned his whole damn self into a possession jutsu."

"How do you normally deal with a possession jutsu?"

"You just remove the poisoned chakra. You could have done that, easily, I'm sure, however—in this case, it looks like Orochimaru is the poisoned chakra. There was way too damn much of it, so you didn't have the chakra to remove it all. It's not your fault, no one could have—except maybe Tsunade, but rule number one of not going crazy is never comparing yourself to Tsunade—you did good to survive the way you did. When Kakashi used the Five Elements seal on you, you were able to take the poisoned chakra and seal it away. Just like you would a tailed beast, because that's all Orochimaru is, now—chakra."

Sakura feels a but coming.

"But the Five Elements seal isn't total. No seal can be—a perfect seal would erase chakra from existence, which is categorically impossible. With tailed beasts, this means you get some extra tailed beast chakra, which doesn't do much except make you go crazy and want to eat everyone." That's a pretty big 'doesn't do much except'! "However, with Orochimaru, his chakra is the possession jutsu. Too much exposure to it will eventually possess you."

Sakura swallows, and Jiraiya pats her knee.

"Now, we'd love to seal Orochimaru tight enough you never have to think about him ever again. The Five Elements seal is pretty leaky—a tighter seal like the Ten Point Star Seal would be better. Unfortunately for us all, double-seals are dangerous—sometimes they strengthen the seal, but sometimes they cancel it out or blow it entirely—and removing the seal you've got would rip all the pathways around your chakra reserves to kingdom come. I'll be looking into what we can do to remove Orochimaru from you permanently, but it'll be a long process. Too long. Thankfully, Tsunade is a freak of nature."

Jiraiya ducks under Tsunade's punch.

"It's my grandfather's technique," she says, from Sakura's other side. "He made it to combat the Uchiha, but it was too challenging—only he and my great-uncle could ever use it."

"Also you," Jiraiya interjects.

Tsunade shrugs. "You're familiar with genjutsu cancellation?"

Sakura nods.

"That was a common technique among the Senju during our war on the Uchiha. The serious Sharingan genjutsu couldn't be broken by ordinary kai, so that was the only way to break them. But the problem was that the Sharingan allows for passive continuous re-application of the same genjutsu, and each genjutsu cancellation takes time and effort. So Hashirama felt that a better way to deal with the genjutsu is to simply never be caught in it at all."

Sakura frowns.

"It is easier to show than it is to explain. Watch."

Sakura nods, and the beauty of Tsunade's chakra flow breaks. No longer one even flow—it's now choppy, uneven. More… human.

"Jiraiya?"

Jiraiya snaps his finger, and Sakura can feel the genjutsu in the sound. It tangles up her chakra as it passes, and Sakura can feel it tangle up Tsunade's chakra flow in turn.

Balancing on Jiraiya's knuckles, Sakura sees a tiny dancing monkey.

"Give me a Tsu! Give me a Na! Give me a De!"

Tsunade huffs out a small laugh, and out of the corner of her eye, Sakura feels Tsunade's chakra flow shift, from the choppy human flow to that unbroken beautiful flow, and the tangle of chakra that is the genjutsu within her just… unravels.

Sakura stares at Tsunade, open-mouthed.

Jiraiya stops the genjutsu, and Sakura feels her own chakra untangle, but.

What—

What was that?

That wasn't genjutsu cancellation or a kai.

It was too… smooth, too elegant for that.

"You felt it then?" Tsunade asks.

Sakura nods.

"It's not impressive if I use the technique while under genjutsu." Sakura would really like to disagree. Just so, so strongly. "Might as well kai or cancel it, but. Jiraiya, again?"

Once again, Jiraiya snaps, and his genjutsu washes through the room, tangling Sakura's chakra and reforming that same monkey.

But it washes over Tsunade without effect, her chakra refusing to bend or warp to Jiraiya's will. Perfectly carving out a loop within her own body, going only to the place it is going and nowhere else, refusing to allow itself to be moved by forces other than Tsunade's will.

Like Tsunade's chakra is hers and hers alone to control.

"Give me a Sa! Give me a Ku! Give me a Ra!"

Sakua is staring, open-mouthed.

Jiraiya cancels his genjutsu.

"Grandpa was really bad at naming things, so he called this one The Perfect Flow technique, which I have to say—sounds like it's about controlling menstrual flow, which I could have really used while that was still a problem for me, but noooo. Grandpa was too good for dealing with that problem."

Jiraiya shifts uncomfortably, and Tsunade kicks him.

"You're a forty-nine-year-old man, you should be able to hear about periods without squirming like a child."

Sakura looks between them awkwardly.

"Don't worry, I'll get you some scrolls for techniques that are actually useful."

Jiraiya shifts awkwardly again, gets kicked again.

"Now, about—look, I call it the Closed Loop technique—because it requires you to fold your chakra into a closed loop. I'm gonna call it that, because Grandpa's name is just horrible. It makes you immune to genjutsu, as you can tell, which is very useful. However, it also makes you immune to possession jutsus, because the initial injection of poisoned chakra won't take. All of your chakra is completely under your control, and the poisoned chakra can't get in."

"Hashirama never noticed that, though! That was all Tsunade, because Hashirama wasn't good enough to use it all the time."

Tsunade's lips twitch. "Shut up, Jiraiya."

"I'm just saying, everyone talks about Hashirama and Tobirama like they're the only Senju that matter and it's bullshit."

Tsunade continues to fight down her smile. "It has other benefits, like, say, it makes you immune to chakra poisons, saves you if you get a hole blasted in your chakra system, and just generally makes your jutsus faster with less wasted chakra."

Jiraiya leans towards Sakura, and faux-whispers. "Hashirama didn't know about those either."

"Are you done?"

"I just want to put up a sign that says Tsunade is cooler than Hashirama was and hang it over the Hokage monument."

Tsunade hides her smile with her hand.

"Why is it all the jutsu I need were created by Hashirama?" Sakura asks.

"Because Hashirama was bullshit," Jiraiya responds immediately.

Sakura looks to Tsunade, and she just shrugs.

"And while you're doing that," Jiraiya says, "I'm going to be making some diagnostic seals to confirm that what Orochimaru used on you really was a possession jutsu, and we're not just wasting our time."

"What about—what about my chakra not regenerating?" Sakura knows this is more important, because Orochimaru is apparently still trying to possess her, and if she doesn't do anything, he'll succeed, but.

Sakura really wants to be a ninja again.

"It's not anything you need to worry about right now. First, get Orochimaru out of your head. Then, we can worry about how to regenerate your chakra the old fashioned way."

Sakura blinks.

"What?" Sakura asks.

"Chakra regeneration uses natural energy. That's how you make new chakra—you suck the natural energy out of the air, and combine it with your chakra to make more. One chakracule—"

"Don't call it that."

"It is a term of art—"

"You made it up—"

"That's everyone else's problem. One chakracule and two natural energycules—"

"Oh that's definitely worse."

"Do you want to see my research that proved that natural energy and chakra are not infinitely divisible? I figured it out, I get to name it."

Tsunade glares at Jiraiya, and Jiraiya subsides.

"Combine to create two chakracules. It appears to be a process in the chakracule itself. I've looked into what causes Chakra Infusion syndrome before, because it is clearly a deficiency of the chakracules itself, but it persists through infusions of chakracules which should be healthy—"

"I'm pretty sure you can't complain about Hashirama's inability to name anything."

"Don't you have seals you should be drawing?"

Jiraiya produces an inkwell and a brush, and kneels on the ground.

"That's what I thought."

Tsunade turns properly to Sakura.

"There's a scroll for this, but it's bad. I'll walk you through it—" then, in a smaller voice, she grumbles, "—because that damn old geezer made it an S-class crime to let me gamble, so I don't have anything better to do. And he wonders why I left this damn village."

Sakura spends a moment hypnotized by the perfect, flawless flow of Tsunade's chakra. Knowing it isn't like this naturally, but because Tsunade has decided this is what her chakra flow should look like only makes it more beautiful.

A smile twists at the corners of Tsunade's lips, and the flow of her chakra changes, spinning and twisting as it moves through her chakra pathways. Then it slows, speeds up, and even breaks into what feel like rapids, rough and rugged and turning into whirlpools and eddies, and all of it in a single unbroken flow, not a single bit of chakra out of place.

Sakura finally pulls herself away from the hypnotic way in which chakra flows through Tsunade's coils.

"Sorry."

"No, I put a lot of work into this technique. It's nice to be appreciated. Now—"