Obito-Sensei Chapter 18

Mothers

When Naruto drove his Rasengan into the tree, the whole thing pretty much exploded. He glanced over his shoulder and beamed, and at the end of the clearing his mother sarcastically clapped once.

"Well done," she said with a twinkle in her eye. "You've murdered a helpless tree."

"Yeah," Naruto admitted. "But it's like, super murdered, right?" He gestured at what was left, barely a stump sticking out of the ground. "That's good, y'know? It means my control's getting better!"

"That's true," Kushina admitted, walking forward and examining the stump. "But you're not planning on using that jutsu on Sasuke, are you?"

"No way." Naruto shook his head. "It's way too dangerous. I wouldn't want to kill him!"

"That's good." His mother smiled. "Still, it is pretty impressive Naruto. Good job."

"Thanks!" He rubbed the back of his head, beaming. Kushina wasn't slow to praise him, but Naruto always took every bit he got with the same amount of gratitude. He looked down at his hand, tightening it into a fist. "Even if it's not gonna be a super serious fight, I still don't wanna lose to him."

"I'm sure he's feeling the same way," his mom told him with a grin. "Especially if I know Mikoto. No doubt she's training with him, and pretty hard."

"Yeah…" Naruto looked around. "Where's dad? I thought he told you he'd drop by."

His mother frowned. Naruto was used to his dad being busy. He was the Hokage, after all. But lately, he'd been seeing less and less of them. He wasn't really worried about it, but he was starting to notice the absence.

"Still sorting things out with Stone and Sand," she said, and Naruto felt a frown of his own come on. That creepy bastard. It really was all his fault. "You know, with that genin team."

"Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, I bet."

"How's Sakura doing?" his mom asked, shifting the subject. "She never came by again."

"She's training her ass off," Naruto said frankly, and his mother rolled her eyes.

"Language," she tsked, and Naruto laughed.

"I dunno what else to call it!" he said, flopping down onto his butt. "I've only seen her and Obito twice in like, two weeks!" Just like his dad, he was starting to miss her. "And both times I did, she was all covered in bruises-" he made a rubbing motion of his face and arms, "and super pale. Obito told me she was pushing herself really hard; almost into chakra exhaustion, every day."

"She's taking it seriously," Kushina said, and Naruto nodded.

"She saw that guy, when he said he was supposed to kill me," he said, a little subdued. "And he fought that team from Stone alongside the Rain guys too. They weren't pushovers. If Gaara really killed all of them…" He sighed, trying not to think about it. Whenever he did, he got scared. He didn't want Sakura to die. Even imagining it made him shiver. "Yeah. She's taking it seriously."

"Good," Kushina said, sitting down next to him. "If she knows that, then Obito will know too. He'll make sure she's ready by the end of the month."

"I hope so," Naruto said, twiddling with the grass at his feet. "I don't… all she's got is her sword. She's really good with it, but against that guy's sand?" He plucked up several blades and threw them away. Hey, he thought, that was a neat metaphor. "He took on Team Eight and Ten at the same time and won."

"Yeah, that's pretty scary," his mom said, which didn't make him feel better. "But you'll just have to trust her and Obito, and your dad. Sakura wants to fight, and they won't let her die."

"Dad?" Naruto asked, and his mom tapped her nose knowingly.

"If she really gets in trouble, he'll bail her out." She laughed. "The same goes for Gaara, if she trains enough. Who knows. The point is, he's unwilling to let anyone else die."

"That's good." Hearing that mollified him a little bit, but Naruto still felt himself plucking at the grass. "But y'know, dad always says being a shinobi is about sacrifice. Wouldn't that..."

"Everyone has their own way of being a shinobi," Kushina said. "That's just your father; a lesson he learned the hard way, I think." She smiled sadly. "Being Hokage is a difficult job."

"S'why I never wanted it," Naruto said, half-joking. He bobbed his head thoughtfully. "Kabuto said the same thing, about shinobi."

"Kabuto?" his mom asked. "The guy from Rain?"

"Yeah," Naruto said. He'd told both his parents about the Rain team, but not much more than their names. "When we were at the tower, he told us that everyone had their own reason. Every shinobi, I mean." He looked up thoughtfully. "Cause Lee said that being a shinobi was about seeking out a powerful foe. So I guess he didn't really agree with that."

"Well, that's a pretty mature thing to say," Kushina said with a little laugh.

"What do you mean?" Naruto asked, and his mother shifted a little, glancing at the Hokage monument. It was partly obscured behind some trees, but still stared out over the village.

"A lot of ninja wouldn't put it that way," Kushina said. "They think that their way of being a shinobi, whether it's looking for someone strong, or killing enemies of the village, or being a tool, enduring, sacrificing…" She trailed off. "They can't look at it another way. They just call it wrong, and move on."

"Kabuto wasn't the only one who was a little weird like that," Naruto said. "They all were. That whole team. Maybe the whole Rain village is like that."

"They're some strange ones," Kushina said with a smile. "But the Akatsuki has always been honest in its beliefs." Her smile vanished. "Even if they can be a little extreme."

"How?" Naruto asked, and his mother shook her head.

"It's not really important right now. Are you going to keep training?"

"Nah." He lay back with his hands behind his head. "I'm kinda bored." He grinned and rolled backwards, coming to his feet. "I think I'll go bother Sasuke instead." He stuck out his tongue.
"Don't want him training when I'm not!"

Kushina laughed. "You go do that then," she said. "Say hi to Mikoto for me, will you?"

Naruto nodded and jogged away, faintly humming a discordant tune. Kushina watched him go with a faint smile. Unbeknownst to him, just before he went out of sight her eyes narrowed. Her focus shifted to the left, and chakra began actively coursing through her body.

At an invisible signal and in a moment so short it didn't really exist, the Hidden Leaf's greatest weapon was entirely prepared for a fight.

"And what," Kushina muttered under her breath as she silently began stalking forward, "are you up to?"

###

"Sit down," Sasuke's mother said, and he did, plopping down on the ground and examining his work with a critical eye. All eight of the posts on the other end of the throwing range were covered in a comical amount of shuriken. It had reached the point after nearly two hours of practice that he'd been aiming for the space in between the steel.

He'd landed far more than he'd missed, but anxiety was still twisting Sasuke's gut into knots. It was a warm and sunny day, especially for January, but Sasuke couldn't feel the sun on his neck and arms. He felt cold and distant, even with his mother only a couple feet away.

"Not good enough," he muttered, and his mother narrowed her eyes.

"Better than anyone else your age," she said, her tone sharp, and Sasuke grunted.

"I never was able to get close to him," he said, tossing one of his last shuriken into the ground. "Shurikenjutsu, ninjutsu, taijutsu…" He gritted his teeth. "Even now."

"You can't compare yourself to Itachi," Mikoto said. Sasuke looked up at her; she was completely expressionless. "It's a fool's errand."

"You don't think I can catch him?" Sasuke asked, his voice low, and his mother sighed.

"I don't think it's your responsibility," she said. "It never has been. It's something you took on yourself, Sasuke. I allowed it because it helped you deal with what happened, but-"

"You allowed it?" Sasuke snapped back. "He's my brother, and your son! You should feel the same way I do!" He shot to his feet, face twisting. "Itachi is our responsibility!"

His mother watched him carefully, and Sasuke's anger faded and gave way to embarrassment. He shuffled his feet, glad the training ground they'd come to was empty. It had been like this since the forest, he thought. He felt like he didn't have any control of himself, and of his feelings: Itachi had broken his composure along with his arm, but the first couldn't be healed by any jutsu.

"I'm sorry," he said after a couple seconds, and his mother nodded, taking the apology with grace. He found himself looking at the scars on her face, feeling something curdle in his heart. "But I can't… I don't understand him, and I can't let him get away."

"It's normal to seek answers, and revenge," his mother said with a frown. "But you've been moving from that towards an obsession, Sasuke. I don't like seeing that in my son."

"What should I do then?" Sasuke asked, starting to pace. "Just let him get away? Forget him? He came back, just for me..." He paused, and suppressed a sneer. "For my eyes, probably. I'll never be able to ignore him, so long as he's alive."

"Of course not." His mother shook her head. "Just… allow yourself some distance."

"Meaning?" Sasuke narrowed his eyes.

"Your brother died that night," Mikoto said bluntly. "Whoever killed your father and so many other Uchiha, that wasn't the Itachi anyone there knew. He'd been growing more distant for some time… but not towards anything that would indicate that." She closed her eyes, and for a moment Sasuke saw in his mother a fragility and fatigue that he'd never seen before. Never allowed himself to see, he wondered, or never been allowed to? Mikoto Uchiha had always been composed and disciplined; it could have been both, or neither.

"You're the only son I have," she said after a moment of thought. "The man who's taken your brother's name is just an imposter." She held up a hand at Sasuke's questioning look. "Not literally. I'm not crazy, obviously. But that's the distance I'm talking about." Her cold facade cracked again, just for a second. "You've got to learn to seperate the Itachi that was your brother, and the Itachi that broke your arm, Sasuke. If you don't… you'll never be able to accept reality."

Sasuke wasn't sure if that would work for him, but it made sense to him that was what his mother must have done. What else could she do, with her prodigy son turning on his family so violently? They'd never talked about this in such detail before; to his mother, the Itachi that had loved them and the Itachi that had tried to kill them were totally separate people.

But then, Sasuke thought, maybe they really were. If someone became another person who only looked and acted like their past self, was it really strange to say they were someone else entirely? Maybe not.

Maybe that was the distance he needed to resolve the question that was always burning him down from the inside out. To just… reject the premise.

His brother was dead. His business was with his doppelganger

"Okay," he said. They'd been standing in silence for almost a minute, his mother watching him with crossed arms. "I'll think about that."

"Okay," his mother echoed him with a faint smile. "It's hard, you know."

"I know."

Her smile grew a little more genuine. "But we can do it together."

Sasuke rolled his eyes at that, and his mother laughed. "That's the principle of the village! Teamwork is always superior to working alone."

Sasuke frowned. "If that's the case," he said, "why is the final for the exam single elimination matches?" His mother frowned back, and he continued. "And why was I put up against Naruto? If that's the core of Konoha… that doesn't really make sense." He looked up at the sky, blue and bright. "I didn't really think about it, with Sakura up against Gaara."

"That's a good question," Mikoto said with a nod. "The Final Exam isn't really an expression of the village. It's a show, to put it bluntly."

"A show?"

"The most powerful people from across the Land of Fire and beyond will be coming to watch," Mikoto said. "That's why the matches are one on one, so that they'll be easy for non-shinobi to follow. Essentially, it's an exhibition." She mockingly strutted back and forth, throwing her voice slightly. "Oh, look how powerful our young shinobi are, please hire them right away," she said, before laughing. "A glorified interview."

"An interview? Haven't we already proven ourselves? Isn't that what the academy is?" Sasuke asked, feeling some of his anxiety leach away, being replaced by curiosity. He rarely heard his mother speak like this.

"Yeah, to the village. But that's the dichotomy of being a ninja nowadays," Mikoto said. "There's being a shinobi in the village, and there's the image you have to present outside of it. Some people have trouble reconciling that." She grinned. "That's why you should have fun with your fight with Naruto. I know you both want to win, but you should be trying to make it as flashy as possible. The ninja there will already know you're worthy. You don't need to worry about impressing them."

"Naruto's probably hearing the same thing," Sasuke said, and his mother nodded.

"Without a doubt."

"And what about Sakura?" he asked, and his mother grew more subdued. "What's her interview then?"

"Gaara of the Desert already has a reputation," Mikoto said bluntly. "If Sakura survives, she'll have succeeded. That's all she needs to do."

"That's..."

"Cruel, yeah." Mikoto shrugged. "But that's how it is. You've got some company, by the way."

She gestured, and Sasuke looked back over his shoulder to find Naruto waving at him from across the field.

"Hey!" his teammate called, and Sasuke grinned.

"Slacking already?" he called, and Naruto scowled.

"Says you!" he shot back, and Sasuke laughed. "You're the one sitting around! Got tired of tossing stars so quickly!?"

Sasuke glanced back at the hundreds of shuriken dotting the posts, and then looked back at Naruto with a flat expression. His friend cracked up after a moment.

"Fine!" he admitted. "You got me there." He started walking forward, and Sasuke went to meet him, leaving his mother behind. "I got bored. I wanted to see how you guys were doing!"

"I'm doing fine. Do you mean Sakura?" Sasuke asked, and Naruto nodded.

"We haven't seen her in forever," he said, kicking at the ground. "I wanna check on her."

Sasuke looked back at his mother, and she grinned and made a shooing motion. "Breaks are important," she said. "Go check on your friend. She and Obito are at training ground eighty-eight, last I checked."

Pretty close, as far as that went in the sprawling expanse of Konoha. Sasuke nodded, and Naruto waved.

"Mom says hi!" he shouted as they jogged away. "We'll see you later!"

Sasuke waved as well, but he wasn't thinking about 'later'. He was thinking about what his mother had said about his dead brother, and Sakura.

'Cruelty is how it is,' he thought, and he was a little surprised at the clarity and viciousness of the thought as he and Naruto left the field.

###

When her teammates found her, Sakura was doing the same thing she had done every day for over eight hours straight for the last two weeks. Both of her hands were submerged in buckets of water on either side of her, and she was deep in something she had almost started thinking of as meditation, pulling the water out of the buckets and commanding it with her chakra.

She had moved beyond pillars by the end of the first week. Obito and Asuma-sensei had told her to try more complicated shapes than stacks of water, and Sakura had followed their advice. It had been impossibly challenging at first to guide the water into anything more complicated than a split pillar, but time and practice had made it easier and easier.

Now, she wasn't getting tired so fast, even if she sometimes had to close her eyes and center herself, to take stock of the tingling across her body as chakra poured out of her hands and left her hollow and light, like an empty glass.

Now, she was making flowers instead of pillars. It was the same basic shape, projecting the water upwards, but the difference was at the top, where her chakra split the water out into wide petals. Keeping the water suspended in that shape in defiance of gravity was a gratifying challenge.

Now, at the end of the second week, the flowers were becoming as simple to Sakura as the pillars had been. She'd have to move on soon, to keep challenging herself.

"Sakura?"

She yelped, the flowers collapsing back into the buckets at her sides as her hands instinctively clenched into fists, and opened her eyes. Naruto and Sasuke were standing in front of her, peering at her inquisitively: Naruto was practically glowing red.

"Sorry!" he said, and Sasuke chuckled. "We didn't mean to… that was really cool!"

"Naruto? Sasuke?" Sakura shook her head, trying to center herself. "Where'd you guys come from?"

"We walked right up," Sasuke said matter of factly, and Sakura felt herself blush. She really had been so caught up in the exercise that she hadn't even heard them approach. "So you've moved on, huh?" He looked around as Sakura pulled herself off the ground, feeling a little woozy now that her concentration had been broken. "Where's sensei?"

Huh. That was the first time Sakura had heard him call Obito that. "He left," she said, fumbling for her sword, which she had laid out behind her. "To get some lunch for us." As she picked it up, she frowned. Asuma had taken the blade from her two days ago, and returned it the next. Ever since then the balance had been just slightly different. Not enough to be truly different, but enough for Sakura to notice. She hadn't bothered to ask what Asuma had needed her sword for, and he hadn't told her.

If he was going to, he would when he needed to, she was sure.

"He's not back already? He didn't use the Kamui?" Naruto asked, and Sakura laughed and shook her head. It was good to hear his voice, even though it hadn't been that long.

"Asuma-Sensei called him lazy for teleporting all the time," she said, and Naruto laughed too. "Said he should try running, like a real ninja."

"Well, maybe he's right," Naruto joked. "I mean, I get it, if I could teleport everywhere-"

"Like your dad?" Sasuke suggested, and Naruto snapped his fingers.

"Hey, yeah, he does the same thing!" he said with a thoughtful look. "Do you think he taught Obito-Sensei to use it like that, or the other way around?"

"The first," Sasuke said, and Sakura secured her sword and walked up to her teammates. "My mother is always saying that your dad's the laziest Hokage we've ever had."

"Ha!" Naruto crossed his arms. "That's just 'cause he gets so much done, there's nothing left to do after a while!"

"Sure," Sasuke said dryly. He looked to Sakura. "What do you think, Sakura? Lazy, or efficient?"

Sakura didn't answer. She was too busy looking over his shoulder. Her mouth had gone dry.

"Sakura?" Naruto asked. "What-?" He looked back, following her gaze.

Gaara of the Desert was glowering at them from the shadow of a tree about thirty meters away, his hands rhythmically opening and closing, his chest heaving. His eyes were wide, unblinking, and focused directly on Naruto.

'What?' Sakura thought, and even though Gaara couldn't possibly hear the thought, it was as though it triggered him to take action. His hands closed into fists, and he started slowly walking forward. 'What? It's only the second week. I'm not ready. Why is he here?'

It was a stupid thought, and Sakura recognized that immediately. Gaara obviously wasn't here for her.

"Hey!" Naruto shouted, and Sakura's fugue broke. She drew her slightly too heavy sword, and Sasuke pulled a knife from his hip. They both jumped to Naruto's side, presenting a united front against the ninja from Suna.

Gaara didn't care. He just kept stalking forward, eyes fixed on Naruto.

"Get out of here, you freak!" Naruto shouted, and the boy flinched. "What the hell is wrong with you!?" The words were harsh, but he sounded terrified.

"You're very irritating," Gaara muttered, his pace never changing. His arms swayed from side to side, like he was sleepwalking, barely in control of his body. Sakura felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and her hands tightened around her sword. "I already told you how it is. It's your destiny for me to kill you." His eyes flicked between Sakura and Sasuke. "I'm not interested in your teammates. If they leave, I'll even let them live."

"As if," Sasuke said, and Sakura nodded, raising her sword.

Gaara didn't pause or even hesitate, like Sakura had quietly hoped he would.

Instead, he smiled.

"Fine," he said, only fifteen meters away now. "That might be more fun."

She wasn't ready to fight. She wasn't ready for this fight. Would she ever be ready for this fight? Sakura felt one of her feet sliding back and steadied herself, trying to analyze the situation. What could she do against his sand with her sword? Nothing. None of them had anything that would work, even the Rasengan. Charging in would just get them cut or crushed.

Thirteen meters. She started backing up, and Naruto and Sasuke followed her, keeping at her side. They had to stay out of Gaara's range; he hadn't struck yet, but he surely would soon.

A tongue of sand crept up out of the gourd on Gaara's back, and for the third time in her life, Sakura accepted the possibility of her death.

"Stop."

Sakura looked up, and something fast and red landed in front of her and her team, sending them stumbling back in shock. After a moment, they recognized the new arrival.

"Mom?!" Naruto asked, and Kushina Uzumaki didn't even look back at him. She was completely focused on Gaara. Sakura couldn't see her face, but for the first time the boy paused. More sand poured out of his gourd, tentatively floating around him.

After two weeks of working with water, Sakura couldn't help but appreciate the insane level of control and power that must have been necessary to maintain the sand in the air like that. Could she do that with water particles? Maybe, but it would just form a mist. Would that even be useful?

She was, as usual, overthinking things. Kushina took a step forward, and to her astonishment Sakura saw a golden light start to pulse in the small of the woman's back. What kind of jutsu was that?

"Turn around and walk away, right now." Kushina's voice was steel. "You shouldn't be here."

"You aren't my mother," Gaara said, putting a peculiar stress on each word, and Kushina shook her head. Sakura caught a glimpse of her face; she was wearing a furious scowl.

"That thing isn't either," she said, and Gaara sneered.

"Liar," he growled, and more sand poured out of his gourd, so much that Sakura wasn't even sure it could hold it all. "Liar liar liar liar liar." The sand spread out around him, pooling at his feet. "Mother says I need to kill you too." He said it pensively, like someone had just whispered it in his ear. "I guess I'll just kill all of you."

Kushina grunted, and the light on her back exploded, resolving itself into two golden chains. As Sakura and her teammates watched, frozen with shock and awe, the chains darted forward, towards Gaara. The boy nodded, and his sand rose up in dozens of tendrils, walls, and other obstructions, trying to snare the chains.

But Kushina's jutsu danced through everything, so quickly that Sakura could only see the golden afterimage. Gaara's eyes grew wide as the chain's drew closer, and he sent more sand after them, but Kushina's jutsu dodged everything, whipping to and fro like wild snakes.

Unbelievable. Totally unbelievable. The jutsu was so fast and so flexible that Gaara's sand, which had stopped two teams at once, couldn't even touch it. Kushina twitched, and the chains surged forward. Sakura blinked, and they were through the sand, through a hole in Gaara's defenses. They rushed towards the boy's chest and head-

"Enough!" The chains stopped before the voice had even cleared the training ground, and Gaara's sand rushed up, wrapping around them and trying to crush them. Kushina clenched a fist, and they evaporated in a rush of golden chakra, leaving Gaara clutching at nothing.

There was a man under the same tree Gaara had been. He was tall, with tanned skin and dark red hair.

"Lord Kazekage," Kushina said, and Sakura was surprised the man didn't melt into a puddle of acid and bile from Kushina's tone alone. "How good of you to join us." The glow in her back fully vanished, and Gaara growled, beginning to advance.

"Gaara," the Kazekage said, and his son stopped, eyes wide. "I said enough."

For a moment, it looked like the boy might tear himself in two, yearning to press forward but kept back by something like fear, if he could feel it at all. But it was only a moment, and Gaara relented, his sand sulkily sliding back into his gourd as he stood stock still, staring at Naruto and his mother.

"Tell me," Kushina said, "were you planning to restrain him before or after he murdered my son?"

"A shinobi cannot murder, or be murdered, Uzumaki," the Kazekage said with a faint sneer. "But if you are so concerned, I would not have allowed this to proceed."

"How comforting," Kushina said, taking a deep breath.

Naruto stepped forward. "You're the Kazekage? You're his dad?" He looked between the two of them, and Sakura did too. She could see a resemblance. Their faces were very similar, the same way Kushina and Naruto's were. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"He doesn't have much tact, does he?" the Kazekage noted, and Kushina glanced down at her son. Sakura wondered how she'd ended up here, going from meditating with her water-flowers to Naruto insulting the Kage of an allied village in just minutes.

"I didn't hear anything out of line," she said, and the Kage snorted.

"I'll forgive that, for today," he said, turning away. "Gaara. Follow."

It was like a command for a dog, not a human being, and Gaara resisted it for a moment. His father crossed his arms and tapped one finger against his shoulder, and something golden and shimmering rose up around him, like an aura of tiny particles. "Now."

"Another time," Gaara eventually said, his eyes going dead and flat, and he turned to follow his father. Team Seven and Kushina watched him go the whole length of the training yard, and when they were finally at something resembling a safe distance the Kazekage turned. He wasn't looking at Naruto, or Kushina, or even Sasuke, but at Sakura. She blinked at the sudden attention. The man didn't look angry, or even irritated. He just regarded her with something that looked uncomfortably like pity.

"A word of advice, girl," he said, and Sakura felt herself bristle at the appellation. "It doesn't matter how much you train. If you step foot in the arena with Gaara, he will kill you." He turned around, waving dismissively. "If you want to live, you'll surrender. I can restrain him here; that won't be my duty during the Exam."

And with that, he and his son were gone in a flicker of sand and gold.

"Asshole," Kushina spat, turning around to face them. "You guys all okay?"

"Yeah." Sakura nodded, but found that her hands were shaking. She looked down at them, the Kazekage's words ringing in her ears.

'He will kill you.'

"Was he following me?" Naruto asked, and his mother nodded.

"How long? Why did you stop him?" Sasuke asked, and Kushina frowned.

"For a while. Since Naruto left to find you guys," she said. "I noticed right away, but I couldn't risk stopping him by myself, at least not until he got ready to attack. He's still a guest in the village, and the Kazekage's son besides… even if he doesn't treat him that way." Her lip curled in disgust. "What a horrible man."

"Horrible men make horrible children," Sakura said faintly, and Kushina gave her a surprised look. "My mother says that sometimes," she said, her head still ringing.

'He will kill you.'

"He was talking shit, you know," Kushina said, and Sakura looked up in surprise at her coarse language. "We won't let you die. The village won't let you die, not in a match against that guy. It's not happening."

"Sure," Sakura said. "I know."

But saying it out loud just made it more absurd. What could anyone do, even Kushina, or the Hokage, or her own parents, if Gaara caught her in his sand? What could they do if he started squeezing the life out of her, crushed her sword, crushed her bones?

Nothing. If that happened, they wouldn't be able to do a damn thing.

'If you step foot in the arena with Gaara, he will kill you.'

Sakura shivered.

###

AN: I just wanna stick a quick apology in here. I've been trying to stick you a weekly update schedule for Obito-Sensei, and up until this chapter I was managing that. I got caught up in some personal difficulties (though to be honest, who doesn't have their fair share of those right now), and that got this relatively simple chapter pushed back. Hopefully, next week will mark a return to a normal update schedule. Hope you enjoyed the chapter!