- Poison Practice -
"Shut up."
Sakura stares lasers down at her water bottle, red faced and heavily panting. The exhaustive training she and the girls have just put themselves through isn't the only reason her face is on fire. She's always been terrible at keeping secrets, especially from Ino. But after her week with Shikamaru, her secret keeping has reached an all new low.
"SHUT. UP."
"I heard you Ino!" Sakura yells at her friend, and then turns to Tenten for help. "Do you see what I have to put up with when you're gone for too long?"
"Nuh-uh," Tenten says, shaking her head. "You're not pawning this off on me."
Ino is still frozen in shock, the last bite of her protein salad forgotten in its mid air trajectory. Her fork clatters back into the take away container and Ino sets it aside in the grass. "Tell me everything! Now!" She demands.
Sakura flops backwards into the grass, arms coming up to shield her face- from the sun, from her embarrassment, and from the piercing gaze of her three friends.
"Hinata," She whines, voice muffled. "Tell them to stop picking on me." Sakura turns her face to the left, peeking at her through a crack in her fingers.
Hinata, in her typical shy fashion, goes red faced at being pitted between two of her friends. "S-Sakura doesn't have to say anything if she doesn't want to…" Her voice lacks the conviction she's trying to convey. But then her pale eyes looks off to the side, as if deciding the wisdom of her next words. "But you know, if you did want to talk about it…"
"Traitor." Sakura accuses, collapsing fully into the grass. Her limbs flop boneless in a starfish sprawl.
"See, even Hinata is dying for details. She never pries!" Ino crawls over on her knees, shaking Sakura by the shoulders. "Come on, I'm dying over here! Let me live vicariously through you!"
"Okay, okay!" Sakura yells. She stares up into the summer sky, trying convert heat into bravery. This was not how she'd expected this day to go.
The afternoon had been a last minute event put together by Tenten. Over the last few years, Team Gai had completed more OOV missions that any other unit in their division. Because of this, when Tenten finally got back from her travels she was practically frothing at the mouth for girl time. The first time she had suggested an all girls training day, the other girls in their cohort were happy to oblige.
But then they all learned a hard truth: 'Girl Time' meant something very different to Tenten than it meant to the rest of them.
Being Gai and Rock Lee's teammate, Tenten was a stone cold masochist when it came to training intensity. The woman was out running at 5am, every day rain or shine. She loved any opportunity to make the rest of the girls suffer with her. And suffer they did.
At first, their group trainings had been an excuse for female bonding. These days, it felt more like an excuse to push themselves or show off newly acquired skills.
Under Tenten's disciplined programming, they fed off each others work ethic. It was inevitable that the rest of them would become gluttons for punishment too. Eventually, they'd expanded their training sessions so that each girl got to take turns leading the group. The end result was a training format that, had their superiors known what they were doing, would probably have put a stop to it years ago.
It was dangerous, but it was also insanely fun
The motto of their group training day was simple - A rising tide lifts all ships. Gone were the years where they belittled each other as women or put each other down. No longer did they hoard their collective resources out of petty competition.
The rest of the world was happy to look down on Kunoichi, but they refused to look down on each other. After Sound's attack during the chunin exams, they had all come to a collective pact- no woman left behind. Some day, that woman might be the one saving your life.
First, Tenten would lead them through absolutely brutal calisthenic drills. They didn't stop until someone threw up, and everyone usually threw up a lot. Sakura couldn't help but feel that, had Rock Lee been there, he would have been proud of his teammates youthful fire.
Tenten had plans to take their conditioning to the next level too. She was currently working on a curriculum to teach them all how to open the First Heavenly gate. While she didn't quite have a handle on it yet, she could already keep the first gate open for several seconds thanks to Lee's tutelage. Once she figured out how to keep it open even longer, she promised to teach them all in turn.
Hinata especially couldn't wait for that day. She appeared shy and quiet on the outside, but once she'd been given a taste of authority, she was as terrifying as any drill sergeant.
For her block, Hinata would instruct them in Taijutsu, honing their hand to hand combat to a wicked sharp edge. With her Byakugan activated, she could watch everyone train at once. This let her call out corrections the second a girl dropped her guard even an inch. She saw every time you threw an imperfect punch or stepped you foot in a vulnerable way. She was a task master of the first order, but Hinata didn't stop there.
Once they were on the edge of physical exhaustion, Hinata would spar with them one on one. Even exhausted, no one could match her reaction time; not in a million years. Her palm-strike based Taijutsu was just so fast. Sakura suspected even Kakashi would have a hard time dealing with her. It only made the rest of them better though, because each day they trained with her, they got faster and faster. Sparing with Hinata was usually when someone threw up a second time.
Taking a break from physical training, they would eat lunch while Ino took over. She would bring out her travel set of various poisons and lay them out in the grass. As a botanist, she cultivated a truly impressive variety of dangerous plants and herbs. Over time, she had perfected blending them into even more dangerous compounds.
She was fluent in neurotoxins and venoms alike, a poet of inducing neural and physical symptoms. While they ate, she would bring out her newest poison and instruct the group on how to identify its properties. When she deemed it necessary, they would even experience the effects of a controlled dose on themselves. It was the perfect way to train mental grit in adverse conditions.
"You need to know what symptoms to expect in the event you become poisoned in the field." Ino would say. "The faster you can identify symptoms of specific compounds, the faster you can react and counter them."
Sometimes it was a drop of poison under the tongue, or a venom administered with a poison coated scalpel. They had balked at the idea of poisoning themselves the first time around. Now, they were desensitized to the idea of recreationally ingested toxins.
"It's educational!" Ino would insist to the group while Sakura threw up the rest of her lunch.
Deep down, Sakura knew Ino was right. Better to prepare for the worst case scenario while under careful supervision. No one wanted to be caught unaware in the field and not know how to heal a comrade.
And then, under the careful gaze of their resident medical genius, each girl would take turns locating the poisonous compounds in their partners bodies.
First, Sakura would figure out how to break each compound down into their smaller chemical components. Once done, she would then instruct each practitioner on how to do the same. In this way, each girl got first hand experience of the symptoms of each poison as well as how to deal with its safe removal. Some people might say that what they did was morbid and not just a little disturbing.
Those people would be right. It was dangerous and stupid, and they still had to much fun doing it.
But the part of the day Sakura loved best was the long stretches of time after they were done training. The times when they all lay there exhausted in the grass. These were some of her favorite moments- when they stopped being Kunoichi and talked as friends. At least, she had loved it up till now.
Out of the blue, Ino had asked her sarcastically if Shikamaru had confessed his undying love for her yet. Sakura had been so caught off guard, she had spewed her gulp of water all over her legs. Just how had she she ended up here, the center of their collective attention she wanted no part of?
Ino had meant her comment as an outlandish joke, as nothing more than a baseless tease. Because, "Between Shikamaru's allergy to motivation and Sakura's workaholic tendencies, they are right on schedule to spend another 30 years orbiting each other before either one of them makes a move."
Turns out, Shikamaru could still surprise all of them.
"How did this happen…" Ino's voice is a ghost, haunted and paper thin. "How do you just manifest a boyfriend out of thin air like that?"
Sakura chokes on her water a second time for entirely different reasons.
"Really? Shikamaru?" Tenten asks, nose wrinkled in bewilderment.
"You haven't seen them together yet." Ino says. "You've been too busy running around the continent chasing Akatsuki and gathering intel. You haven't been around enough to see what I've seen."
"I think they would be a cute couple." Hinata contributes softly.
"I think I'm going to throw up again." Sakura murmurs into her palms.
"That's just residual Iris poison. You'll be fine." Ino shushes her.
"He must really freaking like you if he went all the way to Suna." Tenten says. "Neji asked him to pass the salt at dinner one time, and Shika's response was 'Do I Have To.'"
"Shikamaru seems more proactive when he's around Sakura though.. A-at least from what I saw at Ino's birthday party?"
"With your eyes, Hyuuga, you should have been the first to see this coming." Ino bites.
"Oh, my eyes see enough." Hinata sips her tea, her clear gaze staring into Ino like she's looking strait through her.
"…What's that suppose to mean?" Ino asks. A dark blush is spreading across her face now.
"Nothing at all." Hinata says quietly. "Kiba asked about you the other day though."
"Kiba? Really Ino?"
"Shut up Tenten, I know exactly who you have the hots for!"
Tenten's eyes go wide and predatory, her pupils dilating down into nothing. "One more word and I'll kill you." She growls. Her voice is a thin hiss gritted through hard clenched teeth.
"You started it!" Ino glares back.
"Hey! Don't get defensive just because Hinata has you all figured out!"
Tenten and Ino continue to bicker, making up for lost time with their verbal sparing. Hinata watches them go back and forth, looking for an opening to play peacemaker. Down in the grass, Sakura suppressed a snort, happy to finally be ignored.
"And you!" Ino glares down at her. Whoops, spoke too soon. "Don't think you're getting out of talking about this!"
Now she was damp and the center of attention. "Okay listen!" She finally says, sitting up and squaring herself towards the other girls.
This was good. This was exactly the opportunity she had wanted, to be able to try out the idea of dating her best friend before they actually went and did it.
"I… We…" She hadn't know exactly what she was going to say, but she had at least meant to say something. She flounders again with her words, grasping desperately for anything. But try as she might, her mouth refuses to cooperate. It's like each word is a wooden block too big to fit through her mouth. They back up inside her, jumbling together. "We just…We're still.."
Nothing about their relationship felt safe to talk about yet. She couldn't speak her feelings out loud because…because what if she jinxed it? What if talking about them was the straw that broke the camels back? She had barely acknowledged her feelings for Shikamaru two days ago. Now she had to talk about how she felt? To people?
Ino goes still, noticing Sakura's distress. Her gaze turns from teasing to gentle concern. Shikamaru isn't the only long time friend who knows Sakura's every tick and tell. "Hey, it's okay. You don't owe any of us an explanation."
The other girls look away, feigning interest in their food. Ino reaches into the cooler, handing Sakura a water bottle from the bottom of the ice chest. Taking it, Sakura remembers how Shikamaru had done practically the same thing for her after the summit. The image of him pressing a cold water bottle into her hand flashes bright in her memory.
"Is passing out water bottles a love language on Team Asuma or something?" She asks, knowing she's deflecting.
Ino paused, thinking it over. "Actually, I guess it kind of is. Choji's the one doing most of the physical work on our team. Shika and I are sort of his walking backpack, we carry all his water and food when we train."
Sakura tries to imagine what it must have been like to grow up so interconnected with others.
"Hey, not to change the subject…" Tenten says, reaching into the cooler for her own lunch. "But I do have to talk to you guys about something."
The girls all looked up, jostled from their various thoughts by the seriousness of her tone.
"Team Gai has been traveling hard for the last few weeks. Obviously I can't talk about the nature of our mission, but…We were on our way back from Sound country when we saw some pretty disturbing attacks. We found mass murder sites all along the Fire country border, even west into Grass country too. The incidents almost felt like a trail of…"
Here Tenten pauses, trying to come up with the words for what ever she was remembering. Her voice is here with them, but her mind is clearly somewhere else. She's recalling something terrible she's seen and doesn't want to see again. "It looked like a trail of terrorist attacks. We don't actually have any proof that the attacks are all linked, but still.."
She makes eye contact with each of them,"Something bad is on the move. If any of you have to leave the village for any reason, just… keep your guards up, okay? "
Something frays in Sakura's mind, the small tail end of a loose thread. Cautiously, she starts pulling at the seams. "Roughly how long ago were these incidents?" She asks, knowing Tenten can't give more than the most vague of details. What ever she'd seen must have spooked her bad, especially to risk breaking confidentiality like this.
"The most recent one was maybe…6 days ago? Definitely less than a week." Tenten says.
An isolated moment pops into her head at that number. That was the day after her summit proposal. Sakura reaches for a blurry memory, one clouded by the fog of anxiety. The sharp image of Utsuho's concerned frown staring down at a scroll of encrypted intel the morning they left Sunagakure.
She tugged on that thread again. The image of a 12 year old girl on her surgical table appears soon after. The girl's team had been attacked on the road, their perfectly capable Jounin instructor just barely able to fend off the attack. Her own Sensei in a battle that left him in near cardiac arrest.
Maybe Sakura hadn't been imagining the feel of eyes watching her as they'd traveled home. What if something bad had been watching Sakura and Team Utsuho until they'd crossed the Fire border? Sakura shakes her head to clear her thoughts. She was probably just connecting unconnected incidents in her mind.
Even still, the feeling of dread remains in her stomach through the rest of their lunch. When their group parts for the evening, her dread lingers, walking home with her.
It takes an extra long shower and a good soak in the tub before her muscles begin to unwind. She tries not to get too tangled in her thoughts. She focuses on her bath and healing the bruised ribs she got from sparing with Hinata.
Compared to the glacial blue waters of Kiwa's Ryokan, her own bathwater is a sorry substitute. She wishs she'd been able to pick up some of those citrus blossoms from Suna before she left, but the trip had been so overwhelming it had all but slipped her mind.
Now if she wants them, she will have to go all the way to the international market near Sensei's house to pick some up. In Konoha, they would likely be triple the cost too…
And idea rises to the surface of her thoughts like a bubble in her bathwater. A slow, wicked grin spread across her face. Maybe she didn't have to pay import taxes on luxury Suna goods. Maybe she didn't have to make the trek out to Sensei's apartment either.
Closing her eyes, she meditates on her memory of those blossoms and their otherworldly scent. The bright zing of orange peel mixed with a syrupy jasmine richness. The smaller blossoms had smelled the strongest, so she focuses on those…
The smell of citrus buds blooms into being when her Yume-jutsu clicked into place. She opens her eyes to find tiny white flower petals ripple across the surface of her water. The smell is intoxicating. It's like standing in an endless orange grove bathed in summer sunlight. She layers in the memory of Suna's desert waters too, inhaling the steam to wash away her worries.
It was bliss, and it hadn't cost her a penny. She indulges in the luxury of her Genjutsu spa treatment, pushing her imagination to create more and more blossoms. She nudges them about with an outstretched finger tip, surprised when the bath water ripples around them.
Now that she was home, she would need to work harder on her Genjutsu. She finally has the time to develop it in earnest. The summit was finally off her plate, so she wouldn't have to stay up late preparing her proposal or practicing debate arguments. Her shifts at the hospital would be a temporary nightmare, but she was use to it after all these years.
She remembers what Yume-Kakashi had said in the hot spring: That she was getting stronger and so was he. Maybe together they were finally strong enough to take her Jutsu to the next level.
She still doesn't know if there are applications for Yume-Jutsu in close quarters combat. Even if there is, those situations are not her immediate priority. There were plenty of other situations her Jutsu was more suited to address.
She knew, like any other Ninja, that your opponent wasn't always another person. Sometimes your opponent was unexpected harsh weather, or dangerous unforgiving terrain. Sometimes your greatest enemy was the weakness of your own mind, the long stretches of time alone on extended isolated missions.
The truth was, she didn't actually know what she was doing. Her Jutsu was completely unexplored territory, not just for herself but for anyone. All she could hope to do was explore it, one step at a time.
But that was tomorrows work. For now, she decides to enjoy her bath with as many Yume-citrus blossoms she can sustain at once. She would worry about the future later.
She was home now. She was safe. Shikamaru was safe. That was all that mattered.