Volume 4 – The Chakra Slide

Chapter 17 – Coming Out

[Hey, Sis,] I signed as she walked through the door. [How was Parent-Teacher Meeting? How grounded am I?]

My sister sighed and dropped her purse on the dining room chair. She raised an eyebrow at me before signing, [Not one homework assignment? All year?]

I scrunched up my nose. We were doing this again. [Already said before! B-O-R-I-N-G. I do better things, more exciting things. Physics, chemistry, medical studies-]

[You expect to get into medical school? When not trying at school now?]

I rolled my eyes. [Yes, they will say, 'No medical research for you! Such terrible Middle School grades!']

She shook her head and gave me a swift poke on the forehead. She ignored my pout and signed, [If you would study, you'd already graduate school by now. You'd be in college.]

Ugh, Sis, you're such a nag all the time, I thought to myself. Why are you still poking me in the forehead? It was starting to really hurt now. I get it already, lay off…

Suddenly, I wasn't in my dining room anymore. I scrunched up my eyes, trying to reach up to rub at them, but my arms felt like lead. My eyelids creaked open a fraction, blurring against the light in the room. Sis was still there, but I was laying down.

I tried to bring my arms up again, to sign this time, but they were hurting so badly I decided against it.

"Sis?" I asked. "Can't sign, sorry for making you lip-read… where am I?" The words felt strange as they came out of my mouth, but I couldn't quite place why.

My vision cleared a little more; Sis was giving me a strange look. She looked a little older, somehow. I let my eyes cast around the room, and found it to be a hospital. Again… hadn't I recently been in the hospital? And what was that thing on Sis's forehead?

"What's the last thing you remember?" Sis asked. I jolted. I seldom heard my sister speak; she'd lost her hearing when she was five, and she always hated talking when she couldn't listen to herself. The most I'd usually catch from her was overhearing her humming while cooking or reading.

"I… I'm sorry, what did you say?" My head throbbed right in the centre of my forehead; no wonder I'd been remembering my sister picking on me. How did I end up in the hospital?

"What do you remember?" she repeated.

I thought back. Actually… Sis wasn't real, was she? Wasn't she? The last thing I remember… I'd been with my team in a forest. We were attacked. Was that a dream? Was it real?

I think it was, I thought. No wonder talking feels weird… It's in Japanese again, isn't it? Well, whatever was going on, Sis would understand me. She was the only one in our family who knew the language.

She watched me patiently. I took a deep breath and began slowly telling her the story of what had happened. When she didn't interrupt me or accuse me of making things up, my words began rushing out faster; I frequently had to backtrack and add in information to the gaps. She listened wordlessly until my throat was dry from the effort of speaking.

"I see," she said finally. "And you keep calling me something… do you think you recognise me?"

I furrowed my brows. "You're… You look like my sister. I mistook another girl, Ino, for you earlier… Wait." I stared intently at her, my eyes tracing the shapes of her face, her jawline, lips, eyebrows; everything. "You look a little different than I remember, too." My stomach churned. "Am I wrong? Again?"

The woman reached behind her, pulling a chair to my bedside. She sat with a quiet huff, gazing at me with crossed arms. "My name is Tsunade. You are still in Konoha. As to whether I am a relative of yours, well..." She shrugged. "When it comes to ninja, who so rarely leave their home country over many generations, who can say?"

I let this sink in, letting my eyes roam over her face. With having a Polish mother, and a Dutch-Japanese father, I wasn't used to seeing people who looked like my siblings and myself... That's too much coincidence, even for me. I'd spent a ridiculous amount of time studying the brain. Even if humans would pattern match anything- up to and including religious figures in toast- I didn't think I'd manage to mistake strangers for my sister so easily.

My thoughts felt muddled and I was having a hard time keeping everything straight. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to reorient myself. Reprioritise.

"Are you a doctor?" I asked. "Do you know what's going on with me, yet? They said I had some kind of mind-jutsu used on me… and when I was asleep, I had the strangest dreams." They were getting harder to remember now; some strange combination of both of my lives. "Wait, how long have I been asleep? That man- he made me drink something. What was it?"

Wordlessly, the woman reached to the bedside and lifted something, putting it in front of my eyes.

I stared into the mirror. Well. I guess that's why my head hurts. In the middle of my forehead was a tattoo, somewhat like the woman had. But instead of a diamond, it was a black triangle, with some strange scrawled kanji around it. I squinted, trying to see more clearly, but it was like someone had taken a large circle of text and shrunk it down. Well, not just like it, I thought. That's probably exactly what they did. Nobody can write that small.

"What is that?" I asked, voice blank.

"A seal," she said, placing the mirror back on the table. Her eyes were serious. "You are a very lucky young woman. You have teammates who care very much for you..."

Suddenly, the aching pain in my limbs and head didn't matter. I shot upright in bed, ignoring the pain that shot through me, looking frantically around the room. "Where are they? What happened? Where are Naruto and Sasuke?!"

She grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back into the bed. "Easy, kid. I just got finished re-stabilizing your muscles. Between those chakra burns and the venom, you're lucky you didn't have to deal with more atrophy. Not even taking into account being half-comatose for several weeks."

"Weeks?" I winced at the shrill sound of my own voice; my head throbbed. "Burns?"

She sighed and lifted my arm, showing me the many tiny pink lines that covered my skin. "Your teammates are fine. Yes, weeks. And yes, burns. You didn't think your muscles and skin would enjoy trying to overpower chakra webbing by brute force?"

My mouth hung open. The memory of the strange cocoon flooded my mind; how I had pushed myself out of it, feeling the lines snap across my skin like steel wires.

The woman sighed again. "Okay, my turn to talk. Listen closely." When I made no move to speak, she continued, "The poison you were given was intended to affect the chakra production in your brain. It was in the same area that your previous doctors noticed an overproduction of spiritual chakra-"

"I thought it was mental chakra?" I asked, immediately feeling guilty for interrupting.

She didn't seem angry. "Mental, spiritual- these two terms are usually interchangeable. It's unsurprising that your medical team thought it would be a simple matter of your body trying to process memory." She took the chart off the end of my bed and began paging through it absently. "Even in medical terms, it's usually fine to treat them as the same. In this instance, however, the distinction may be important." She frowned. "Spiritual and Mental chakra each combine to form what I like to call Mind chakra. Together, they form what makes you… Well, you."

She pulled a scan from the file and showed it to me. "I've heard you're a smart girl, so I'll tell you this straight out. When you were fed that little potion, the part of your brain overproducing chakra," she pointed it out on the scan, "starting producing chakra that was distinctly not yours. It belonged to another shinobi."

I stared at the little blob of light on the brain scan.

She continued, "This chakra was trying to overproduce itself in your brain to counter it; instead of mental chakra to heal your brain, you were producing spiritual chakra to protect your self."

"Then who..." I tangled my fingers into the blankets. "Who am I, anyway? Which life was real?"

She put the scan back into the file and reattached it to the foot of my bed. "You're you. Whatever memories you recall, your spirit is your spirit." She crossed her arms. "Your sensei noticed fluctuations in your chakra, not an entirely different person taking over your body if that's what you're worried about."

"Then what happened? Who did this? Why do I remember two different lives?"

She crossed her arms. "That foreign chakra… I recognise it." She looked away. "That seal on your forehead is the work of myself and my old teammate. We are probably the only shinobi in the world who would have recognised what was happening to you, let alone having an idea of how to stop it. And you're not the first one he's marked." Her eyes sharpened. "The seal on your forehead was the work of myself and my teammate. His seal, if he used one, is not visible to either of us. The method is different from what we've seen before. We suspect… he may have gained a new power, from another missing ninja. As for why he targeted you in particular," The smile she gave me was much less gentle than her earlier expressions. "That is something I'm interested to find out."

I shook my head. "I don't even know who I was before this."

"It doesn't matter," she said crisply. "Your spirit has not changed; there are going to be aspects that won't rely on memory." Her gaze grew piercing. "So why don't you tell me a little about yourself? Your likes, dislikes… hobbies?"

That was… ridiculously familiar. That was the same line Kakashi-sensei had given my team, not so very long ago… "Um. My name is," I paused. "My name is Sakarin Hirano. I enjoy studying everything I can. I dislike failing. My hobbies are… Well, studying and learning new things."

"What in particular do you prefer learning?"

I blinked. "Well… everything. I've always wanted to learn everything in the world." I shrugged. "I guess I focus more on medical studies, the human body, that kinda thing. I wanted to be a medical researcher."

Her focus sharpened further. "Would it be accurate to say," she said softly. "That you wanted to discover a way to become immortal?"

I raised my eyebrows. "Well, yeah."

Her face morphed into a mask of contempt. "… I see. I suggest you don't."

What? I pushed myself up on my elbows. "Why the hell not? Isn't that what pretty much every medical researcher is trying to do? Stop people from getting sick and dying?" I felt my brows furrowing into a glare. "Hell, isn't that what shinobi are for? Keeping people from dying?"

The woman leaned away, her features melting into confusion. "… So you do not want immortality for yourself? You would not harm anyone, in your quest to live forever?"

I scoffed. "That would defeat the whole point. Like, sure, it'd help me study if I had more time to do it, but," I pushed myself into a sitting position. My muscles were starting to calm down a little; it was no longer so painful. "Just think about it. I learn from books, right? If I find any good discoveries, I'll write them down and someone can carry on with it. I just hope I can figure stuff out sooner than that. I want to help the people I know now."

"I see," she said. "I'd heard you had your mother asking around the hospital, asking for classes for medical jutsu… Would you say you want your future to be in medical research, or as a shinobi?" Her mouth pressed into a thin line. "I've heard you are also trying to develop your own techniques, in fighting."

"Both, I guess?" I looked down, rubbing at my arms thoughtfully, watching the pink marks on my skin flush and fade. "Sensei asked me that too, and I spoke with Mebuki-san as well, and…" I frowned, trying to phrase myself. "I told Sensei my goal was to find out what happened to me, and also something else. I still don't know how to put it. I guess you could say my other goal is to be strong enough to be relied on." I swallowed. "I guess I'm already failing at that, aren't I? If I ended up here..."

"You are young," the woman said quietly. She looked out the window. "I think that's enough for today. There's more I wish to discuss with you, but it can wait." Her eyes flicked over to me. "Do not tell your teammates about the nature of this attack. It is highly classified. We will have jounin working on it."

I curled my fists around my blanket. "Does Sensei know? Or my parents?"

"Yes to the former, no to the latter. I am sorry," she said, and it sounded like she meant it. She gave a slight smile. "Speaking of which… why don't we let your visitors in to see you? After we remove all these tubes, of course."

Hesitantly, I smiled back.

When my visitors arrived, I was surprised to see not my parents, but a very distressed Naruto and exhausted Sasuke trailing along behind him.

"Sakura!" Naruto wailed, throwing his arms around me. I winced and was quietly grateful that all the needles and tubes had been removed.

"Back off, Idiot. You're hurting her," Sasuke glared, taking a seat on the other side of my bed. He gave me a wary look. "You're back to normal now? When we left, you weren't making sense, and they said it was getting a lot worse..."

Naruto's grip on me tightened. I patted him on the back awkwardly. "Yeah, I'm okay. Well. As okay as I was before we were attacked, I mean." I changed my pats on Naruto's back to an affectionate hug. "Hey… that lady, I think her name was Tsunade? She said you guys are the reason I'm alright now… Thank you. I'm sorry."

Naruto finally let go and dropped into his seat, but took my hand in his. "We didn't do anything! When you got hurt, it was that old farmer who saved you! And then after that, Obaachan and that Pervy Sage were the ones who fixed you!" His face looked distressed and I noticed he was avoiding eye contact. It took me a moment to realise he was staring at the black marks on my forehead.

I glanced over at Sasuke; he looked just as unhappy.

"What happened?" I asked. "After I- after I was knocked out? Is the old farmer okay?" My stomach twisted.

"He's fine," Sasuke said quietly. "Our mission was cancelled… Kakashi said he asked a friend to finish it with his team."

"And right after we left the hospital when you got hurt, Sensei gave us a mission!" Naruto said.

I listened patiently as they told their story. I couldn't help but smile when they told me they'd been continuing their chakra-control training and had already finished Water-Walking and begun Air Pocket. Even I was having a difficult time with the latter. As their story went on, I felt my smile slipping more and more. I stared at Sasuke in a mixture of horror and exasperation.

"Do you know her or something?" I furrowed my brows. "That's… extreme. Why would you say such things to her? Why fight her?" I recognised the nagging tone entering my voice. I sound more like my sister every day.

He scoffed and looked out the window. "I don't need to know her. She's a shinobi."

He didn't continue. That was probably all I was going to get out of him. I looked at Naruto; he looked just as confused and shrugged haplessly.

I sighed. "So how long, exactly, was I unconscious?" I asked. Tsunade hadn't been very specific in the details.

"Hmm," Naruto hummed. "Well, we got our mission the day after you got hurt, and we left a couple of days later..." His face screwed up in concentration.

"One day for the mission, five days for the festival to start, seven days for the festival to end, and two days for Tsunade and Jiraiya to heal you," Sasuke said. "Fifteen days total."

I put my hands over my eyes and groaned. "So just over two weeks… You guys are going to be way ahead of me in training!" Even if I had the best chakra control, Sasuke was ridiculously good with kunai and taijutsu, and Naruto had me beat several times over with how many jutsu he could do before getting tired.

Sasuke made a sound of disgust. "You mean we finally had time to catch up with you." He shook his head. "Someone with amnesia shouldn't be as far ahead as you were..."

Naruto scrunched up his face. "Yeah, it was totally unfair! You couldn't remember anything but you kept learning everything so fast. I still probably can't do any jutsu as fast as you!"

"At least her throwing and sparring are still terrible," Sasuke said.

I stared at them both, mouth agape. "Are you… are you picking on me? And admitting to not being the biggest, baddest ninjas ever?" A choked laugh burst out of me. "I'm not sure if I should feel proud or annoyed..."

"Hey! Be proud! We've been working hard!" Naruto scowled.

I smiled at him. "I'm very proud. And grateful. You're both dorks. Thank you." While I had a feeling I wasn't getting the whole story, it was abundantly clear that they had gone to ridiculous lengths to find this healer for me.

I tried my best to hold onto my smile as I remembered my conversation with her. What would have happened to me, otherwise?

Naruto ducked his head, not expecting the praise. "Well, we're the biggest, baddest ninjas. Remember?" He grinned. "But like we said, it was that old farmer guy and Tsunade and that pervy Sage..."

I looked first at Naruto and then at Sasuke, who was staring resolutely out the window. I sighed. "You're both idiots. You think helping people only includes medicine and fighting or whatever." I rolled my eyes. "It doesn't always have to be that extreme, you know." I frowned. Come to think of it, that sounded an awful lot like me. Wanting to study medicine and learn to fight…

"Ugh, stop lecturing, you're starting to sound like Iruka-sensei!" Despite the words, Naruto was beaming. "Oh! That reminds me! Obaachan said she'll probably let you go home tonight or tomorrow. Do you think you'll be able to train?"

I confirmed that once I was cleared to walk out on my own, I'd be back at training. What I would do at training would mostly depend on how much my body hated me. Something told me Tsunade would be unimpressed if I came back to the hospital immediately with damaged muscles, and she did not seem like the type of woman I wanted angry at me.

Our conversation continued on the same line: talking about different things to try in training, new chakra control exercises and how we could try using them in a fight, and finally ending on us wondering whether we'd be grounded from missions again.

Naruto was loudly boasting of all the pranks he would pull on the missions office when his stomach let out a loud growl. "Oh, oops! Wow, I guess we were here for a while..." He looked over at the clock; he was right, it had been several hours already.

I made a shooing gesture. "Go on, go home and eat. I'll see you guys at training tomorrow after they let me out."

"Okay… but if you're still hurt just stay home, okay?" Naruto prodded. "We'll come to visit after training if you don't show up. I'll bring you ramen!"

I grinned. "Deal."

With that, Naruto started walking out the door, but Sasuke lingered behind.

"You should go eat too, Sasuke," I chided.

"Your mother caught us downstairs when you were still sleeping. She said to give you some books if you woke up," he said, digging through his backpack. Naruto waved at us and left the room.

It was quiet without him around. Sasuke piled up several books onto my bedside table; I tilted my head to read the titles. "Hmm. She got me some new ones."

Sasuke grunted deposited the last book, closed his backpack, and turned toward the door. But instead of following Naruto, he stood still and crossed his arms.

I raised my eyebrows. He wasn't looking at me. "Something up?"

He continued staring at the wall. After a moment, he said, quietly: "I don't like cutting my hair."

"Huh?"

His eyes flickered to me and then back at the wall. "Shorter hair makes me look like my brother. I hate him. So I keep it longer."

A memory of our first meeting played back in my head. He'd asked me why I cut my hair short, hadn't he? And when I asked why he would keep such long hair when it was so inconvenient, he hadn't said anything. But why tell me now?

"Oh," I said simply.

He crossed his arms. "… And I don't hate it when you show up early for training."

I blinked. "Thank you?" Coming from Sasuke, that was probably supposed to be a compliment.

He nodded once and walked over to the door, before stopping again.

"I still can't sense chakra as well as you," he said. "But… I learned how to see it instead." He shrugged uncomfortably. "Your chakra is brown and green. It's like… moss on a tree." He opened his mouth as though to say something else, before shaking his head and opening the door. He left without another word, the door softly clicking shut behind him.

I beamed.

Extra Special Blather &c.: So... Not completely satisfied with how this chapter turned out, but I'm glad to be back in Sakura/Sakarin's perspective. (Though I never want to write someone that dazed again...) Happy Holidays, everyone. [EDIT: 114 reviews between FFnet & Ao3... Dang! Thank you!]