Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 30 – Method
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,709
Summary: AU. Sakura gives up on Kakashi as a teacher after Team 7 falls apart. Too bad fate, enemy ninja, and sheer bad luck have other plans.
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 30 of ? Unbeta'd.
Hatake-sensei can't find anything suspicious about the fragment either, when he shows up ten minutes later, though he compliments Sakura for noticing that it was odd and bringing it to his attention.
"I don't recognize it," he admits. "So, I don't know the story behind it, but then… I was very young the last time anyone told me stories about the things here."
Ino exchanges a glance with Sakura and they both drop the matter.
At least, they drop it until he's gone on another scout through and around the building to make sure nothing dangerous has showed up since the last time he's done it. Never mind that he'd just finished a tour.
"I don't know how to react when he says things like that," Sakura says. "It's so strange how… disconnected he seems by everything here but also how it matters a lot to him. He's fine when he's teaching us stuff but…"
Ino frowns as she crouches down to look at the bottom row of books. "Well," she says, trying to decide how to put what she's picked up from him without actually violating his privacy. "This is his home. It matters. But it also hasn't been his home for a long, long time. So, it doesn't matter, at the same time. It's not that weird that he both cares and doesn't care about it. It's probably why he's not as interested in what the monster that shows up at night is as much as we are. He probably thinks he should care, because it's his home, but also that he shouldn't because this is a mission and that's outside of the mission parameters and he's thinking of us too."
"We could take it," Sakura says. "Whatever it is."
"That would be more convincing if we knew what it was," Ino points out, though she laughs. "Why don't we see if we can't find more of the shards while we're looking for the scroll?"
"You mean, since we're looking for one thing, we might as well look for another thing too?" Sakura asks, sounding amused. "I guess so. It's not like we don't know there weren't shards in the rooms we already searched, so we don't have to backtrack or anything."
"That's the spirit," Ino says. "It's not adding more work. It's just… making the work a little more interesting by broadening our focus."
Sakura just shakes her head. "You're just good at spinning bullshit into sounding like it makes sense."
Since that's true, Ino just shrugs. "You in or out?"
Sakura frowns at the shard on the table. "In."
She says it reluctantly, but Ino knows she doesn't really mind, especially not when Sakura follows that with: "It does give us more to keep our eyes peeled for and, well, it's been getting kind of samey just looking for the summoning scroll."
"We can check with Hatake-sensei when he comes back next time," Ino offers, since she knows that'll make Sakura feel better about it. "And confirm that he's alright with us unofficially expanding the scope of our mission by adding another objective."
Sakura mulls that over as Ino goes back to searching through her bookshelf. She's looking for another shard as she searches for the summoning scroll, but she'll let Sakura decide if she wants to do the same without pushing her further.
"I'll see what Hatake-sensei says," Sakura decides. "I don't think he'd have a problem with it, though, but… it is his property we're searching through. He might not want us distracted with what's really a trivial thing."
"That's fair," Ino says agreeably. "Race you to finish this room?"
Sakura scrutinizes what they each have left of their halves then smirks. "You're on!"
That carries them through the next twenty minutes and Sakura is the victorious one. Though Ino complains, she doesn't really mind, because it had been fun, even though she'd picked up yet another splinter.
Ino grumbles as she carefully excises the stupid thing from her finger. "This is definitely the worst part of all the snooping," she declares, as Sakura puts things back into their places.
Just because no one lives here doesn't mean they've got to leave a huge mess around, after all.
They hadn't found another shard, which Ino also considers to be a bit of a tragedy, since if there were more pieces, this room had made the most sense for them to be found in. She keeps that to herself, though, since Sakura hasn't had a chance to ask Hatake-sensei regarding their search for the pieces. He hasn't been back yet.
Sakura grimaces. "No argument there. They're so small but they hurt."
"And they're not even worth bandaging unless they bleed," Ino says, dropping the splinter on the table and glaring at it as she shakes her hand out. It doesn't really help with the sting, but she pretends that it does. Sometimes you have to lie to yourself like that.
"We'd have mummy hands if we did that anyway," Sakura says reasonably. "Which would just make searching even harder and more tedious. I'd rather not. What room do you want to do next?"
"Zig-zag pattern?" Ino suggests. "Take the room across the hall and then cross over once we're done that room? We don't want to go too far from here, since Hatake-sensei ought to be due back for another check in shortly. I mean, he'd find us in any part of the house, but if we wandered, you know that we'd get lectured on team safety."
Sakura laughs. "Anything but that!"
On the table, Sakura has left the shard out. Ino picks it up, turning it over in her hands, being careful of the sharp edges.
"Don't cut your fingers," Sakura warns.
"I'm not a child," Ino says loftily. "I know better than that."
"I'm just saying," Sakura says, then adds: "Any ideas on what it could be?"
Ino frowns at the shard. It's not all that big of a piece, nor is it very wide. One side of it is the pale, bone-white of good quality ceramic. The other side has been painted in dark, dark blue, so deep it's almost black. She doesn't know much about painting but the luxurious sheen to it makes her think that it must have been expensive.
"No," Ino says, feeling disgruntled. "Not really. Just the impression that whatever it was, it was probably fancy and expensive?"
Sakura nods, then shrugs. "We'll leave it on the table then."
Ino sets it down. "You don't want to take it with us?"
"There might not be a safe place to put it," Sakura says reasonably. "And this table is a pretty good place to keep it where we won't lose it without chancing it will get broken or we'll get cut. I don't really want to stick it in any of my pouches, do you?"
"Point," Ino concedes, thinking of how her hands could get cut to ribbons if she did that and then needed to reach into her pouches. "The only thing I've got to wrap it in would be bandages anyway and that's a total waste of them. Come on, let's go."
The room across the hall is handled in twenty minutes. It's empty, aside from a cup that had been discarded in the back of the closet, and the bulk of their twenty minutes is spent searching for hidden compartments and secret panels.
They do find a loose panel, but all that's in it is a forgotten bottle of sake.
"Maybe Hatake-sensei will want this?" Sakura muses as she lifts the bottle and inspects it. "Does sake go bad?"
"No idea," Ino says as she reaches into the small depression, feeling about for anything else. "Do you think Hatake-sensei drinks?"
"Don't most adults?"
Since Ino knows good and well that every adult in her acquaintance does, including her dad and his old teammates, she huffs a bit of a laugh. "Yeah, but who knows?"
Sakura tries a kai on the bottle but it just stays as it is: an old bottle of sake.
"Nothing else is in here," Ino says, sighing, and pulling her hand back, making a face at the thin layer of grime that it's now covered with. She wipes it off on her skirt, since no one here is going to care about her being dirty. "And speaking of Hatake-sensei, where is he? He's been gone for longer than normal."
Sakura frowns as she sets the bottle down. "Maybe he just lost track of time?"
They exchange a long look. That doesn't sound like Hatake-sensei at all.
"Maybe," Ino allows, finally. Anything is possible. She gets to her feet.
"Do you think we should go looking for him?" Sakura asks. "Or give him more time? I didn't hear anything and, honestly, it's hard to imagine Hatake-sensei getting taken down quietly. I've seen him fight for real, after all, well—Kakashi-sensei, anyway, and it was really dramatic. And noisy."
"I guess he could have just lost track of time," Ino says slowly. "It is hard to imagine him going down quietly, though my dad says that no matter how good a shinobi is, they can always be taken out. It just depends on how your skills match up against the enemy's."
"Kakashi-sensei was almost always late," Sakura points out, as they head for the door. "And the few times that he wasn't, it was either really, really important, or by accident. Since Hatake-sensei is never late then, it follows, doesn't it, that if he's late then it's either important or by accident?"
Despite her worry, Ino can't help but be amused as they step into the hallway. "And you accuse me of being good at spinning bullshit. That's some tortured logic if I've ever heard it, Forehead."
"Shut up, Pig," Sakura says.
Without having to discuss it, they each look down opposite ends of the hallway, backs to each other. Nothing is there, which Ino had expected.
Sakura sighs. "It's not getting cold either, so whatever it is, it probably isn't the monster."
"It's not even lunch yet," Ino notes. "So, if it is the monster, it would be a pretty significant change from what we know of it."
Sakura doesn't point out that they both know that what they know about the monster could fit into a thimble. They know almost nothing. Other than the fact that it exists.
"Let's do one more room," Ino decides, after thinking it over and weighing the odds with what they know. "If he's just late, then he'll probably show up while we're working on it. If he's not, then… we'll have to decide what to do."
"Can you look for him with your mind?" Sakura asks.
Ino frowns. "I normally would, but if he's actually been attacked then doing so would probably take me out too, given what happened last time. Do you want me to risk it?"
"Ugh," Sakura says.
She just waits for Sakura to answer.
"Not yet," Sakura says, though it comes reluctantly. "It would be a stupid risk to take when we don't know what's going on. If Hatake-sensei has been taken out then we're going to need all hands on deck, not further halving our power. Besides, you're heavy."
Ino smacks Sakura in the shoulder for that. "You're just as heavy!"
"Come on, let's do this room," Sakura says, sliding open the door and then pausing.
Ino peers over her shoulder. "Oh," she says. "I think we're going to be here for a good while."
The room is full of… a lot of things. On first glance it makes her head spin a little, just trying to sort it all out. There's no windows either.
"We're going to need the lamps."
"Maybe we should leave this room for later?" Sakura asks, even as she closes the door. "No one would know. Really."
"It will still be just as bad later," Ino says. "And, look on the bright side, the lamps are in the kitchen. That means we can keep an eye out for Hatake-sensei while we go get them."
Sakura brightens. "That's true! Maybe we'll find him!"
Because Hatake-sensei has drilled them on caution, they don't run down the hallways, but instead they walk, taking care to move silently. He's told them to practice this whenever they're not actively searching a room and, so far, everything he's done has made good sense.
They are getting quieter, Ino notes, as they slip out of the servant quarters and into the larger, more elegantly appointed rooms. There's still not a lot in these rooms, for the most part, but the quality can be seen in the grain of the wood and the way that the even though it's been years, the doors open without creaks.
Since they've already searched these rooms, they don't do much as they pass other than open the doors slightly, just to see if Hatake-sensei is in them. Sakura takes the left while Ino does the right and that means they're not even slowed down much at all.
They don't find him on their way to the kitchen, which is a little disheartening but also not unexpected. The odds of him being in a room that's already been declared as free of summoning scrolls and anything else interesting is… well, low.
He's not in the kitchen either but there is a pot of tea on and, when Sakura presses her hand to it, she says, "It's still pretty warm. Almost hot."
Sakura lifts the lid off and looks into the pot. "It looks like he poured out a cup." Sakura hesitates a moment, then says, "Want one?"
"Sure," Ino says, since they're already here, and they're allowed breaks at their own discretion so long as they're not slacking off. She frowns slightly as she looks around the kitchen. "I don't see a cup in here. He must have taken it with him."
"I want to say that's weird," Sakura says, as she gets two cups out for them. "But he's done that a few times."
He has.
It's actually almost reassuring, in an odd way, to know that Hatake-sensei has the habit of pouring tea and then wandering off with it like a distracted professor.
"It does lend credence to the idea that he's just forgotten to come check on us," Ino says thoughtfully. "Also, it means we should check the roof. He tends to brood up there."
Sakura giggles a little. "He does," she says, as she hands Ino a cup. "Want to split a ration bar?"
"Thanks, and yeah, sure, it should be a good while until lunch still so a snack isn't a bad thought," Ino says, wandering over to one of the windows and looking out at the pale blue sky. There aren't many clouds but those that are there are stretched and thin, like a bit of lacework, more holes than substance.
And there she goes again, Sakura thinks, biting her lip in worry. Zoning out.
Ino doesn't react when Sakura carefully reaches over and plucks the cup of tea from her hands, just to make sure that it doesn't spill, since it's hot enough to still hurt if it gets all over them. Ino's hands don't even fall to her side, remaining as if she's holding the cup.
It's so creepy. Sakura sets both of their cups down on the counter and, keeping an eye on Ino, she opens one of the other windows. She hasn't complained of any headaches today and we haven't done anything more strenuous chakra-wise other than a few kai . I don't like it. Neither does Hatake-sensei.
She looks over at Ino again. She hasn't moved.
"I'll be right back," Sakura says, and hoists herself out the window and up onto the roof. She shades her eyes against the sunlight and that's all it takes for—
"What are you doing up here?" Hatake-sensei says, appearing by her. He's frowning a little.
"Ino's done the zoning out thing again," Sakura explains hurriedly. "I wouldn't have left her, but we were taking a break in the kitchen and saw the tea and so we thought you might be on the roof. Since that was easy enough to check…"
Hatake-sensei liked to be told immediately if Ino went… elsewhere… if it was at all possible.
He nods, clapping her lightly on the shoulder. "All right," he says. "Good thinking. Now get back inside and I'll follow."
Sakura nods, flinging herself back down and into the kitchen through the open window. In the same motion, she gets out of the way so that she doesn't delay Hatake-sensei's entrance.
Finding him so easily, after all that worry, makes her feel a little silly for all of that but, at the same time…
We were doing what he's taught us to do. Think through all the options and act on them once we've eliminated the ones that don't make sense.
Ino is still by the window.
With a sigh, Sakura picks up her abandoned tea as Hatake-sensei lands in the kitchen, takes in everything in a glance, and approaches Ino's still form.
I really, really wish we knew what was causing that. Hatake-sensei is worried about it too. Ino has said it's nothing internal and she hasn't been straining herself with all the extra mind work she'd been doing…
She hops up onto the counter and waits, watching Hatake-sensei place a hand on Ino's shoulder and say something too low for her to hear. Her tea is still warm through the cup and Sakura sips it, letting the warmth wind down through her stomach. Oddly, that makes her feel a bit better.
Ino jerks back into awareness, her shoulders shaking, and while she can't see, Sakura guesses her hands have convulsed around—empty air, because Sakura had taken the cup away from her.
Hatake-sensei murmurs a few more things to Ino then steps back.
Ino is frowning when she turns around. "Sorry," she mutters, looking put-out and embarrassed in about equal measures.
"I saved your tea," Sakura says, tilting her head towards the cup. "That was a pretty long time you were out."
Ino glances at Hatake-sensei.
"From my count, perhaps three minutes," he says. It's not a long period of time in the grand scheme of things but it is a long time to just—
Stop.
And it's slowly but surely getting longer.
Watching Ino's shoulders slump makes Sakura wish she could do more to help with this. She bites her tongue and says nothing. Ino knows this as well as she does and it—doesn't bode well, even though they haven't figured out what it means.
"Drink your tea and eat something," Hatake-sensei orders and Sakura doesn't have the heart to tell him he sounds like a fussy dad.
"We were going to split a ration bar," Sakura offers, hopping off the counter to go and get one. She picks one that neither of them hate. They each have their preferences, of course, but they tend to save those for meals.
If Hatake-sensei has a preference, he hasn't said anything, and he seems to eat all of them with the same absent-minded concentration he uses when he's thinking of something other than what he's doing.
Cracking the bar in half, she hands half to Ino, who takes it without much interest.
"It tends to happen more when I look out windows," Ino says, after swallowing a bite of the ration bar.
Sakura hops back up on the counter since Hatake-sensei doesn't care if they sit on them, so long as they're not using the kitchen here to actually cook. Heating up water for tea doesn't count.
Hatake-sensei sets his cup down and Sakura blinks a bit at it, a little bemused, because she hadn't even noticed he'd still been carrying it.
"It does seem to be part of the pattern," Hatake-sensei says thoughtfully. "Ino, when we go back tonight, I want you and Sakura to write down a list of all the times you've zoned out and where you were and what the last thing you remember looking at was."
Ino glances sidelong at Sakura, who shrugs a little. She doesn't mind, though she knows Ino is going to, at least a little.
"Yes, Hatake-sensei," Ino says, and she does sound a little resentful.
Sakura wishes she was close enough to bump her shoulder companionably, but she'd have to move and that would be way, way too obvious.
"Alright," he says, "now tell me about your progress. Anything new?"
Ino shakes her head.
"We did find a bottle of sake," Sakura says, smiling a little as she finishes her tea. "We weren't sure if it goes bad or if you'd want it though. No idea how old it is."
"I think we can leave it be," Hatake-sensei says, with amusement in his voice. "But thank you for thinking of me. And for not drinking it yourselves."
That makes Ino laugh a little. "It would taste terrible anyway. I've tried Dad's sake before. Gross."
Sakura shudders. "Even just the smell is kind of… ugh, you know?"
Ino looks at her and they both giggle.
"Hatake-sensei," Sakura says, "we were also wondering if it would be okay if, while we searched for the summoning scroll, if we also looked for extra shards? We're really curious about what it is."
"I don't see why not," Hatake-sensei says slowly. "So long as you both remember the primary goal of this, it shouldn't be a problem. You might not find any other pieces though—I have no idea what it belonged to either."
"We know," Ino says, setting her teacup down. "But, like, it's just something that's kind of fun? It's a different kind of mystery, trying to figure out what it is, as opposed to trying to find something that really doesn't seem to want to be found."
Hatake-sensei leans against the counter opposite Sakura and looks at the both of them for a long moment. "So what you're saying," he says, in a voice that's almost a purr, "is that you're bored."
"No. No!" Sakura says immediately, alarmed, because she hasn't missed the almost threatening undertone to that. "We're not bored at all! We're just wanting to expand our skills, Hatake-sensei!"
"I agree," Ino says, her eyes a little wide. "We aren't bored. Not even a little."
Because they know. They absolutely, totally know, that if Hatake-sensei thinks they're bored, they're going to have… a very exciting time of it. It will also probably be painful. Useful, in the long run, but painful.
Sakura will pass on that as long as she can.
He chuckles. "I'll have to think of something else to keep you two entertained, later, but yes. You may search for the shards of whatever it is. Keep them separate and let me know if you find anything."
"Yes, Hatake-sensei," Ino says.
Sakura frowns curiously, mulling her way through that. "Why do we have to keep them apart?"
"Some traps only activate when everything is put together," Hatake-sensei says. "Consider it another exercise in caution."
Sakura thinks, not for the first time, that Hatake-sensei is really very, very paranoid. She sometimes wonders if Kakashi-sensei was as paranoid but, if he had been, then he'd never really expressed it openly.
"Alright," he says. "Now that you've watered and fed yourselves, get back to work."
Ino heaves a sigh as she heads towards the lanterns.
Sakura grimaces and goes to take one herself. It's not fair to make Ino carry them both. "Are you going to come with us?" she asks Hatake-sensei.
"I'll drop by," Hatake-sensei says. "And if you need me, I won't be too far."
He's just being lazy, Ino complains as they head back to the room with their lanterns. Three people would get through the disaster much faster than two would.
Sakura bites the inside of her cheek, not wanting to laugh when there's a chance that Hatake-sensei might hear it. I notice you didn't say that to his face.
I'm not an idiot, Ino scoffs. That would've just earned me a new and exciting exercise that I'd loathe with every fiber of my being.
She manages to hold in her giggles until they're back in the room, with the door shut and have turned the lanterns on. Then, and only then, Sakura cracks up laughing.
"Oh, shut up," Ino says, frowning at the room. "I notice you didn't say anything either."
"I'm also not an idiot," Sakura declares. "Do you want the left or right side of the room?"
Then she sneezes.
"I think," Ino says thoughtfully. "I think that we're going to have to clear some space to actually work first before we get anywhere with searching through here. Otherwise we're going to wind up re-searching what we've already gone through."
Sakura purses her lips. "Maybe we can move some of this stuff to the empty room across the hall? That would help give us room to move and allow us to keep track of what we've already gone through. At least until there's room enough in here that we don't have to make room."
Because, while the lanterns are lit, both she and Ino are standing quite close to each other and the door—there's nowhere else to move without stepping on something else. She shifts and her shoulder brushes Ino's.
"How about we start where we are and work our way inwards?" Ino says. "I mean, like, there's really nothing that makes better sense, right?"
Sakura raises her lantern up higher, trying to get a better view of everything in the room as she turns to look at what's in their way. "I think I see a few rolled carpets," she says. "We should probably get those out pretty early, so we can unroll them and search them before the floor in the other room is crowded with things. We can lay the carpets out on each other."
"They're going to be disgusting," Ino mutters. "And heavy."
Then she sighs.
"But yeah, alright, let's start with the carpets."
So that's what they do. The first carpet is, by mutual agreement, the absolute worst to get out of the room. It's nearly twice their height, seems to weigh at least several hundred pounds, and as Ino had predicted, it's absolutely disgusting with embedded grime and dust. It's almost slimy and Sakura tries really hard not to think about why.
When they drop the carpet on the floor in the next room, they are both grimly unsurprised by the way spiders skitter free.
"If this wasn't for a mission, I'd have run out of here screaming a long time ago," Sakura says, picking a spider off her shoulder and killing it. It's big enough that it crunches under her palm.
Gross.
"What," Ino says, as she steps on a few of the escapees, "you don't like bugs?"
They shudder in tandem.
Sakura feels filthy and it's going to get worse. There's no real point in complaining, both she and Ino know that, but it helps. In the village, when they're comparatively at leisure, even when running D-rank missions, there's very little of this.
It's an adjustment they're both used to but that doesn't mean they have to like it.
"I think we should just kick this thing open," Ino muses, eyeballing the rolled carpet. "We already know there's going to be more bugs in it, but we do need to see if there's anything else."
Sakura gives the thing a long look of her own. "You think we can get the angle right to have it unroll?"
Ino wiggles a hand back and forth. "I'm willing to try," she says. "Whether or not the carpet is willing to work with me is another story. We should probably tie masks about our faces. Who knows what's in the dust."
"Ewwww," Sakura says, but Ino is right so they both dig out face wraps. They're nothing like Hatake-sensei's face masks and Sakura quietly pines for one of those for a moment before she shakes it off, tying the bit of cloth firmly across her face. "Want us both to kick at the same time?"
Ino nods, her eyes determined over her own face mask. "I think that's the best way."
It doesn't work perfectly, but they do get the carpet to unroll halfway in a kick and that's a pretty big start. They each kill a few more bugs and then, by mutual agreement, use their feet to unroll the rest of the stupid thing.
It doesn't earn them anything more than extra bugs and dust and grossness. Even when they check it for chakra residue, there's nothing. They leave it to rot on the floor and go fetch the next one, which is mostly the same, although, once they've given up on that one and gone back to the room full of way too many things—
"I think that's another shard," Ino says, staring into the space that was behind where the carpet had been. "Hang on, let me see… yes! Sakura, look, it is another piece!"
Sakura looks at it. "The colour's the same," she says, studying the piece. Where her piece had been flat, this piece is knobby, like it's maybe the edge of it, with a little 'foot' reaching down to hold the whole thing up.
"Let's go put it on the table with the other piece," Ino says. "Hatake-sensei will want to look at it later and maybe we'll find more pieces in here."
Sakura snorts a laugh. "We could find half the village in here, Ino!"
"Good thing we're not looking for that," Ino says breezily. "Come on, hurry up!"
Rejuvenated, they leave the shard on the table (it is the same colour as the first piece, though they don't look like they're meant to be directly connected to one another) and go back to the room filled with everything. It takes them another half an hour to clear the remaining large carpets out of the room (none of them have anything interesting in them or about them) but the effort is worth it as, now, they have more room to work with.
Hatake-sensei confirms that their second piece seems as harmless as the first and helps them sort through about a quarter of the room (they find nothing really exciting or scandalous, though they do find a bag of ryo; Hatake-sensei says they'll keep that, since it's still useful tender in the village, and sets it aside) before he leaves again, to do another scout of the Main House, just in case something has managed to get in or become a threat in the last little bit.
He also finds a shard, buried in a sack full of long-grain rice. Like Ino's, it has a little foot to it.
Like both of their pieces, Hatake-sensei can't find anything weird about it and he gives them leave to put it with the others.
"Do you think the summoning scroll will be in here?" Sakura wonders, once he's left again. "Admittedly, we've got everything but the kitchen sink in here, and yet..."
"Who knows?" Ino says, frowning as she holds up what had once been a really nice kimono. Now, it's a tattered ruin with a large, dark stain on half of it, but even as a decrepit shadow of what it once was, Sakura can pick out the gold and silver thread that had been used in the embroidery. "What a waste."
"What do you think the stain is?"
"Looks like some kind of oil," Ino says, considering it. "See? It's got that slick sheen to it. Whatever it is, it's definitely not blood."
Since that's what Sakura had been worried about, she sighs with relief.
Ino folds the kimono as neatly as she can and sets it aside. "What a waste," she repeats, sounding a little offended.
Sakura understands that. A good kimono is an expensive piece of art.
Putting it in the carpet room, they dig back into the mess of things and, Sakura doesn't know about Ino, but she knows that she winds up losing track of time. Something about the enclosed room lit only by lanterns and filled past the point of cluttered with things that tell the stories of the lives of people no longer here, but these are little glimpses through time… that are, well, it's oddly timeless, even as they grumble about things.
They find another two shards—one partly flat with a sharp curve upwards (it reminds her a little of a broken bottle) and another one with a little knobby foot. Sakura fingers one of the little knobs thoughtfully. Something about them seems a little familiar, but she's not sure from where…
They're just putting that one on the table with the others when Hatake-sensei comes back to check in on them again.
He looks at their finds for a long moment, his expression slightly closed off. "You're starting to find a fair number of them. Five now. Any thoughts on what it is?"
Sakura frowns a little at him. "Do you know what it is, Hatake-sensei?"
He smiles faintly. "No."
"Neither do we," Ino says, though she's also frowning just a little. "I'm kind of hoping there'll be more in here, so we can figure it out."
"Oh?" Hatake-sensei says. "And here I thought you two might want to see what I found."
Exchanging a glance with Ino, Sakura says quickly: "We'd rather do that, Hatake-sensei."
Maybe that's why he's a little odd right now. Maybe whatever it is he found is both important and yet—he's been a bit weird about everything here, really, though she can't blame him for any of it. Sakura can't even imagine how she'd be doing if it was her in the situation he was in, even though sometimes the way he reacts is frustrating to her. Maybe just rolling with it is her having to eat a slice of humble (though that doesn't seem like quite the right word) pie.
"Do you have it with you?" Ino asks.
He shakes his head, turning towards the door and waving for them to come with him. "Come on, I'll show you."