A (mostly) slice-of-life chapter written to let the kids be happy.

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Chapter 19

"Sustaining a genjutsu requires a delicate balancing of forces. The inherent tendency of the genjutsu net is towards fracture; the natural direction of the target's chakra is to push up and outward. To counter this strong outward force, the genjutsu caster must exert a firm downward and inward force with their chakra. Too little chakra pressure and the net will explode; too much pressure and the net will be crushed like an eggshell. The caster must maintain perfect balance at every moment, rising and falling with the target's chakra output instantaneously, in order to maintain the illusion."

– Achieving Genjutsu Mastery, Vol. I Ch. IV

Her skin itches gently beneath the bandages, and Sakura must once again remind herself not to scratch. Instead, she readjusts her collar in a bid to subtly apply pressure to the site, careful not to expose anything beneath the cloth; she had chosen the high neckline in order to cover the genjutsu she had cast over the several layers of bindings wrapped around the newly-inked skin of her throat. Shikamaru slants a suspicious glance at her at the motion, and Sakura immediately pulls her hands away from her shirt and stares intently at the shogi board sitting on the engawa between them, avoiding his eyes. The boy is nothing if not observant, and had quickly taken notice of her uncharacteristic turtleneck when she and Naruto had arrived at his doorstep for jutsu practice.

She'd tell him one day soon, she's sure of it. Shisui, Itachi, Kumo—all of it. Just not today. She doesn't yet know how to put any of this into words—hell, she isn't even sure yet what to think about half of it. Her head still aches with the memory of the previous night's nightmares, each vision terrible and alien and connected only by Kumo's disembodied advice ringing in her ear.

And how could she explain to Shikamaru the way Itachi had knocked on her bedroom window a few days ago in the wee hours of the morning? The way he had slid through the shadowed curtains, hands moving silently as he covered her house in seals to prevent their chakra signatures from leaking out into the street during the procedure? How could she describe the way all of her furniture vanished into a scroll in seconds, the intense look on Itachi's face as he covered her entire back and half the floor with complex, precise calligraphy? The way the ink had felt so cold against her skin as the brushstrokes carefully swept across her nape, only to later burn like flame as the symbols crawled up her body to form a collar on her neck?

How could she make him understand that the black characters wrapped around her throat like a choker were placed there to help her? That the valve constricting her central chakra median had immediately eliminated the pain caused by her chakra sensitivity and erased a heavy load of pain-induced stress that she had not even known existed until it was gone? Without that phantom weight, her chakra control had actually improved if anything: she had been able to cast the genjutsu Itachi taught her to cover the seal on her first try, and had been able to sustain it so far without breaking a sweat.

But the whole thing sounds crazy, even in the privacy of her own mind. And whenever she even thinks about sharing the experience, Itachi's face slides into her mind like a shadow, the intensity of his aura and the eerie hollowness in his gaze that night darkly emblazoned within her mind. The way he had suddenly appeared without warning, not even a greeting on his lips. Only, "We must perform the sealing now." And afterwards: "I apologize for the inconvenient timing, Sakura-san. I must leave for a while, but I will check on the seal when I return. And please…for now, do not tell a soul."

Sakura still does not know what to think about that, or the dangerous shinobi who had briefly replaced the boy she knows. And until she does, it's best not to worry Shikamaru further.

Selecting a pawn that she had captured earlier in their shogi game, Sakura deliberately drops it onto a suboptimal spot on the board and sneaks a look at her friend from beneath her lashes, gauging his response.

The boy narrows his eyes at her inelegant move—he had taught her the game after all, and can immediately tell that this is no accidental misstep—but the imminent interrogation is derailed by a sudden surge of chakra emanating from the yard.

They both turn in time to catch a very frail, sickly caricature of Iruka-sensei emit a cry of frustration before disappearing into a cloud of smoke. Naruto emerges and stomps towards where they are sitting on the engawa.

"I give up!" he declares. "This is so stupid, why do we even need to learn this stuff anyway? It's not even a cool ninja move!"

Shikamaru sighs.

"Why don't you take a break?" Sakura suggests. Secretly, she is also starting to feel a bit worried. Yoshino-san had initially been a bit hesitant around Naruto for some reason, and it had taken several weeks of his persistent cheerfulness for her to relax. His continuous blasts of chakra this afternoon, however, are putting her on edge again. Sakura can feel the wary shifting of Yoshino's chakra patterns within the house from all the way out here.

Naruto plops down on the engawa's polished wooden flooring and emits a plaintive whine; Shikamaru promotes a Silver General and diligently ignores him. Sakura bites her lip as she fiddles with several captured pieces in her lap.

"Perhaps you should try using less chakra," she ventures. Unlike genjutsu, ninjutsu has chakra "sweet spots"—a target interval within which the jutsu will run. Falling short of or overshooting the target will result in misfires, and Naruto is consistently overshooting by a massive amount. It's incredible how he hasn't even broken a sweat.

"Sakura-chaan, I'm already using as little chakra as possible! Ever since you told me earlier, I've been only using, like, a drop!"

"Then work on your control," Shikamaru mutters. "Baka," he can't resist adding under his breath. Naruto, luckily, doesn't notice.

"But howwwwww?" he whines, swiping half heartedly at Shikamaru's captured shogi pieces. He is blocked by an angry hand.

"Practice leaf concentration or something, I don't care. But stop messing with our game!"

Sakura grins behind her hand at Shikamaru's scowling face. Shogi is about the only thing capable of riling up the normally easy-going boy. Discreetly tugging on Naruto's sleeve, she hands him a leaf she had plucked from a tree earlier and motions to Shikamaru's elbow, where a similar leaf is plastered, its edges fluttering in the breeze.

But Naruto just looks confused. "Oi, Pinecone! Why do you have a leaf glued to your arm?" Reaching out as he speaks, he grabs a corner and tugs.

The leaf softly rips into two pieces.

"Baka," Shikamaru says again, loudly this time. "I was practicing leaf concentration. Don't you pay attention in class at all?"

"Be nice," Sakura chides amusedly. "Why don't you give it a try, Naruto?" She places a new leaf on Shikamaru's elbow, where it obediently sticks and begins to wave gently like a flag.

Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that Naruto's technique is quite lacking. His first attempt doesn't stick at all and his second burns the leaf to a crisp. Yelping in alarm, he smacks the leaf away and gingerly pokes at the pink, leaf-shaped imprint it left behind.

"I give up!" He hollers again, flopping down onto his back. Beneath the frustration, though, there is a growing worry, and for good reason. Sakura bites her lip. The annual Academy exams are approaching, and with only one year remaining in their studies, this year's exams are looking to be especially tough. Students are instructed to begin preparing months in advance because the final year's class has limited seats—and if Naruto's performance does not improve soon, he won't be getting one.

"Your turn," Shikamaru murmurs. As Sakura blinks down at the board, he turns and slaps another leaf onto Naruto's forehead. "Sit up, baka. Let's try this again."

Sakura hides a smile and considers her next move while stealthily observing their progress. It had taken some time for Shikamaru to shed his initial grouchiness regarding Naruto, but he had eventually been won over by the boy's sunny personality, albeit begrudgingly. On an academic level, however, the two are night and day.

"I saw you lick that leaf, you know. There's no point trying to fool me, you'll still fail the test."

Seeing Naruto's eyes grow slightly teary, Sakura sighs and quickly moves a pawn forward, motioning for Shikamaru to switch roles with her.

"Naruto," she tries gently, plucking the leaf from his hands, "perhaps you are experiencing a theory issue. You probably weren't following along very closely to Iruka-sensei's lecture on this, were you?"

Naruto blushes at her good-humored skepticism and rubs his head contritely. Shaking her head, Sakura places the leaf in her arm and offers it to him. "Try to pull it off."

Tentatively, he runs a finger around the leaf and tries to tuck a nail between it and her skin. He quickly finds that to be futile: Sakura's leaf is plastered to her skin in an airtight seal.

"If you can do this, you could probably get full marks on the chakra control portion of the test. Of course, if you are just looking to pass—"

"Wrong," Shikamaru interjects, shaking his head. "If you could do what I did, you'd get full marks. Whatever Sakura's doing right now is definitely not an Academy technique."

"It's not?" Sakura frowns. "Weren't you practicing all afternoon to improve your technique?"

"No, I was just doing it to stop you from nagging."

Sakura snorts. "So what's wrong with what I'm doing?" she asks bemusedly.

"Don't ask me, I don't know how you're doing it. But I'm positive not even Iruka-sensei sealed his leaf as tightly to his skin as you're doing."

Naruto and Sakura both study the leaf on her hand again with varying degrees of curiousity. "Hm," Sakura says. "So how do you do it?"

"I slowly channel chakra to my arm—and pay attention, Naruto, unless you want to fail your exams—and pool it into an oval, vaguely leaf-shaped spot right beneath the surface of my skin. As long as my chakra isn't too agitated, the leaf always sticks if I use around the right amount of chakra. I usually eyeball it now, but it took a little bit of trial-and-error to find the sweet spot initially." Shikamaru sticks another leaf onto his arm to demonstrate.

"That's how I initially learned, too. But I haven't done this exercise in months." Sakura frowns, recalling the first time she had tried it, so long ago. Her parents had still been alive then.

"I suppose it does feel a bit different now." She frowns harder, thinking. "I guess I notice more things now," she starts slowly, "and my chakra instinctually reacts. Like the chakra in the leaf, for example."

"There's chakra in the leaf?" Naruto's eyes go wide.

"Baka, all living things possess some level of chakra," Shikamaru sighs. "But I don't understand how you can sense it. The amount of chakra in a leaf should be quite small."

"Hm," Sakura says again, subconsciously fidgeting with her collar. Ironically, the sealing of her chakra sensitivity had probably unlocked the ability, since she no longer feels pain when extending her senses outside of herself. Shikamaru catches the motion again and glances at her sharply; she offers him a subtle nod in return.

"Since I can sense the chakra in the leaf, I can manipulate the chakra on my skin into the exact shape of the leaf, thus creating a perfect seal. I also can make my chakra stickier."

"I wasn't aware of stickiness being a characteristic that can be manipulated." Shikamaru's eyes narrow even further.

"I suppose it's less about stickiness and more about magnetism. When I feel this leaf, I can feel…vibrations in its chakra, as if it's spinning. Our chakra does this too. And when our chakra gets close to the leaf, it seems to induce the two chakras to start spinning in opposite directions. So I'm guessing that they become attracted to each other like magnets."

"So you're saying our chakras do this automatically?"

"I think so, but not perfectly. So I can consciously rearrange the alignment a bit to create a stronger attraction." Sakura stretches her hand towards Shikamaru's leaf, and the three of them watch as the leaf flutters violently for a second and then flies into Sakura's palm.

"That is SO COOL," Naruto says in a breathless voice.

Even Shikamaru now has a look of naked curiosity painted on his face. He leans forward. "Can you repel the leaf then?"

Sakura shrugs, handing the leaf back to him. Now is probably not the best time to mention that she's practiced rooftop jumping before, which is a technique that she suspects involves chakra repulsion, though she wasn't able to sense it at the time. Staring at the other leaf still plastered on her arm, she concentrates, and the leaf tumbles away moments later as if blown by an invisible force. "Seems so."

Naruto is practically vibrating in his seat. "TEACH ME HOW TO DO THIS, SAKURA-CHAN!" he explodes. "PLEASE!"

Sakura can't help but grin at the enthusiasm. "You'll have to learn how to do Shikamaru's technique before you can try learning this," she says, smile growing wider as Naruto hurries into the yard and immediately sets about de-leafing a tree.

"I wouldn't count on him learning your technique anytime soon. I don't think I can do it either." Shikamaru is frowning down at the leaf in his hands. "I don't sense this 'spin' at all."

"It's definitely there." Sakura places another lead on her arm. With a bit of focus, she exerts attraction on one side of the leaf and repulsion on the other, causing it to bend backward into an arch. Repeating this along the length of her arm causes the leaf to cartwheel down the stretch of skin.

"I don't doubt you, but I suspect it may be an ability few people can copy."

That catches Sakura's attention. "You think it's a chakra control thing?"

"And the special relationship you seem to have with your chakra, I think. I'm pretty sure my chakra control won't be good enough to pull that off even if I practice, at least in the near future."

"Hm." Sakura can't deny that the thought of possessing a special talent causes something warm and bubbly to settle in her chest. She allows a small, pleased smile to curl at the corners of her lips as she sends her leaf sliding across her skin like a skateboard.

Amused, Shikamaru swats her on the shoulder. "Someone's feeling smug, I see. I'll let you enjoy it for another moment before I pop your bubble." He adds another leaf to her arm, smirking as Sakura immediately gets the hint and sends that one swirling down her arm as well, the two leaves spiralling around her arm in a double helix.

"Pop my bubble?" Sakura inquires, adding a third leaf for good measure.

Shikamaru smirks again. "Checkmate."

It takes her a moment to catch on. Blinking, she looks down at the shogi board again, and finds that he's right. It's not even close.

She laughs. "I doubt I'll ever beat you at this, Shika."

"Who knows," he shrugs, "maybe one day."

Sighing in contentment, Sakura looks out across the yard where Naruto is sitting, the ground around him littered with burnt leaves. After months of badgering from the boy, she has finally stopped thinking of him as 'Naruto-san,' and it is…nice, to be able to sit here with her friends in the warm spring sunshine. Simply, perfectly nice. She feels like just another human being again, living just another life.

"One day," she repeats with a smile, trying not to giggle as Naruto sacrifices yet another leaf to his education. "And probably not without some help. Please be patient with us."

Shikamaru doesn't laugh. He begins to clean up the shogi board, brows knitted as his mulls over something in his head. Sakura glances over, her attention caught by the sudden silence.

"Shikamaru?" she asks.

He doesn't look up immediately, but when he does, his gaze is clear and steady.

"I'll wait," is all he says.

And Sakura catches his real meaning. She feels her neck burn beneath her high collar and swallows the sudden lump in her throat, futilely grasping for the words to express her gratitude.

"Shikamaru." Her hand creeps up to her throat again. She doesn't know how to continue—but then his hand closes around her wrist.

And she realizes she doesn't have to.

On a rooftop several streets away, two shinobi face each other with their weapons drawn.

"Get out of my way," says one. His voice is hard, his eyes shadowed behind the ornate tanuki mask. His legs are tensed into a crouch, ready to spring.

"Hm, I wasn't aware that standing on a rooftop constitutes a traffic obstruction," the second man replies lightly, one hand in his pocket as he casually twirls a kunai with the other, face likewise obscured by a hauntingly beautiful mask. "But you are a first-rate shinobi—it shouldn't be too hard for you to hop around me."

The first man pounces before he can finish, faster than the eye can follow, and the sound of metal on metal rings through the air.

"I'll repeat myself once and only once: get out of the way, or I'll report you for treason."

"Treason? For a friendly spar while on duty?" The second man chuckles. "Maa, perhaps you could win me a suspension. I could use a day off, especially since I'm always stuck babysitting the jinchuuriki these days."

In a flash, the shinobi disengage only to reappear several meters away with another metallic crash.

"We have direct orders to relay significant developments to the Hokage. If you do not step aside, I will report you," the first man grinds out between clenched teeth. The kunai in his hand shakes minutely against the other blade.

"I don't see any significant developments, though. As your superior, isn't it my job to stop you from wasting the Hokage's time? He's pretty busy, you know, when he's not off smoking."

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The first man's kunai is knocked into the air, but a barrage of senbon flies from his hands a moment later. The other man leaps out of the way, allowing the needles to embed themselves into the roofing.

"Not significant? The girl is twirling leaves down her arm like a hotshot jounin newbie on bar night! And I say hotshot because you fucking know as well as I do that not all jounin newbies can even do that." He pulls out several shuriken and drops into another crouch. "What's the deal, Hound? I've never known you to be disloyal."

The air grows cold as the second man's laid back aura abruptly evaporates. He strikes without warning an instant later, and the two engage in another round of shurikenjutsu.

It ends quickly, with a kunai pressed beneath porcelain mask.

In the sudden stillness, the first man's breath comes out slow and even.

"Are you sure about this?"

The second man does not reply.

"Why her?"

Silence.

Dark eyes close behind the tanuki mask. "Just this once, then."

The kunai does not waver. "Why?" the other man throws back.

"Because we are friends, asshole. I think you're making a mistake, but what can I do? You're as stubborn as they come. Now get the fuck off me."

The kunai lingers for another second, and then disappears. The second man steps away.

"She's not like me," he says. He doesn't look at his companion.

"Then stop acting like she is."

Silence.

"Hey, I'm doing you a favor. Don't be so ungrateful, answer me."

"It's just something I have to do."

The first man sighs. "I know," he says. "I trust you. Just…hit me up if anything happens, okay?"

"…Thanks."

"Anytime." He sighs again. "Now, just one last thing..."

The punch he throws is not particularly fast, but Kakashi allows it to meet its mark all the same.

Until next time! The Hokage's orders were issued in Chapter 10. A long time ago, I know…