A/N: Two more chapters before we're back in Middle Earth. Bear with me. I should update again March 15, 2024. ~ love, DC

Chapter 9: Completing the Impossible Bet

June (year equivalent to 3017 in Middle Earth)

The monks of the remote and rather isolated temple had never had so many guests at one time. Moreover, they had never had such loud guests. It did bring a bit of levity to the men's routine, for (inevitably) as they went about their worship, chores, or meditations they would encounter one of the Konoha ninja attempting to complete their bet with the Legendary Tsunade—who had been their honored guest for several weeks already.

The girl, Haruno Sakura, was very studious but also quick to anger, especially whenever Tsunade-sama made a comment about the girl's lack of progress. This, inevitably, led to the two kunoichi breaking apart the courtyard, and ended with the pink-haired girl flying down the temple steps after being flicked in the forehead. The monks believed Tsunade-sama was antagonizing young Sakura on purpose.

Fortunately, the girl's sensei, one Hatake Kakashi, would mend the damage with an earth jutsu. Sometimes he would do so at the start of the next day if he had passed out from chakra exhaustion before the two kunoichi had had their fight for the day. So far, the monks had only had this happen twice.

Apparently, the jōnin had some advanced form of the sharingan he was attempting to control. The last Hatake had the sense to practice outside of the temple, but what he wrought on the surrounding landscape in the scant seconds he used his sharingan was terrifying. The top of the neighboring mountain peak had disappeared the first time the man had tried to train with this new technique. He also had promptly passed out. Since then, the man had found ways to limit the swathes of land he made disappear with his sight.

The final member of this curious Konoha genin cell was the last surviving Uchiha (faithful to Konoha that is). He was the least destructive of his teammates, which the monks greatly appreciated. They also noted that the boy tended to work on his own and only went to his sensei when he needed a new method of practicing chakra control.

The monks were pleasantly surprised to discover that the young Uchiha had begun doing small chores around the temple while practicing his chakra control. Though, whether this was a genuine attempt to be a good guest, or the boy having been convinced by his sensei doing such chores would help him, the monks did not know or care. Their temple was the cleanest it had been in ages, and the boy was able to help them repair one of the tiled roofs.

The weeks passed, and their guests had become part of the Monks' routine. Each evening, they could expect to find the three ninja (in varying states of exhaustion) picking at the evening meal. For the Hatake, he often had to be coaxed into wakefulness and would eat quickly before falling straight back to sleep.

The routine broke when the Hatake did not appear for dinner nearly a month into this bet. The genin roused themselves from their fatigue to begin searching the mountain top and various rooms where they had found their sensei unconscious in times past. However, by the time the monks had finished eating, the genin had returned panicked without their sensei. This led to Tsunade-sama and her apprentice searching the mountaintop as well. The monks were not too concerned; after all, Hatake was a jōnin and could take care of any challenge the mountain could produce—even if he seemed to be perpetually on the edge of chakra exhaustion.

In fact, by the next dinner, the jōnin was back and tiredly picking at his food. Where the man had been, the monks did not know or care to learn. He was returned, and in no worse condition than he usually was. Given the lack of reaction to his presence at dinner, he had likely returned some time earlier in the day, and the Konoha ninja had already had their concerned talks with him. As far as the monks were concerned, all was well.

Of course, unbeknownst to the monks, Kakashi called his genin, Tsunade, and her apprentice after dinner to his and Sasuke's current quarters. Once everyone was present, he activated the modified privacy seal. It strained his chakra, but he had fine-tuned the seal after its last use and his chakra control had become better in the past few weeks as well.

"Where were you?" Sakura asked after the seals were up. "You were gone. We thought you'd died!"

Tsunade scoffed. "Tch, please, this brat is like a cockroach."

Kakashi ignored the now glaring kunoichi and instead explained what had happened. "I was able to make a portal without it sucking in whatever was in my sight. I jumped through it."

"You what?!" "Sensei! How could you!?" "Are you insane?" "That was reckless."

Kakashi held a finger to his ear and acted like he was clearing it out while grimacing. "Maa, do you all have to be so loud?" he asked. "My ears are ringing."

"I'll make your head ring, you reckless brat!" Tsunade threatened with a raised fist. "Did you even think about what might happen to your genin if you didn't return. What if that portal had let out into outer space? Can you breathe in outer space!? No, you can't."

Kakashi tuned out the Sannin's continued rant. The woman was even pacing back and forth as she harangued him for carelessness, but who was driving him to such carelessness, huh? She should really be yelling at herself, not him.

"Anyways," Kakashi said to redirect the conversation, "I've now learned where everything I look at goes to. It is the strangest…dimension? Yes, dimension, maybe pocket dimension?" He would theorize later; at the moment, he had an audience looking at him intently, and the sannin who started this all was now glaring at him but not ranting anymore.

"It was this vast dark void filled with varying sized rectangular prisms…pillars?" he frowned as he tried to articulate the dimension he had gone to. "There didn't seem to be any discernable progression of time there, granted I did pass out immediately after jumping through the portal."

"What if that masked man was there?!" Sasuke exclaimed. "You said the voids you made were similar to his. What if he can access that place too?" Aww, Sasuke was worried for him.

Kakshi clasped his hands together and brought them close to his chest. "Ahh, my cute genin was worried about me!" he teased. Sasuke looked ready to murder him.

"Sensei!" Sakura yelled. "Stop fooling around. This is serious. What if that Madara person had been there?"

"Maa, I had passed out amongst the trees and mountain I had disappeared previously. I would have been well hidden," he said dismissively. Sakura and Sasuke both had one eye twitching while a vein in Tsunade's forehead was pulsing. Shizune, who Kakashi decided was now his favorite, just dropped her head forward and sighed.

"Did you discover if you can teleport from within this dimension?" Shizune asked before the angry ninja could yell at him.

"I did not try," Kakashi explained seriously. "Once I woke and saw that everything I had disappeared was there, I made another portal and left." And promptly passed out upon return, but he had a feeling the four ninja around him could guess as much.

"Tomorrow, I will see if teleportation is done by thinking of a location or physically walking the distance I desire to go from within this dimension."

"You're not going alone, brat. I'm coming with you," Tsunade growled. Kakashi blinked several times.

"Agreed," Sakura and Sasuke both said. Kakashi stared at his genin and blinked again.

"Do I get a say in this?" he asked.

"No," everyone, including Shizune (the traitor), announced bluntly.

Kakashi refrained from sighing in resignation and instead opted to act like he was pouting. It always seemed to annoy his genin when he put on such an act, and it also seemed to annoy the Sannin too. So it was a win-win in Kakashi's book to put on such an act.

"Maa, fine." Maybe Tsuande could explore the dimension while he recovered his charka?

…

Tsunade could not believe this brat. For such an elite ninja, he had such low chakra reserves and an even lower concern for his personal wellbeing. Well, actually, his reserves were on the higher end for a jōnin, but what he was trying to do with his reserves made them insufficient. She imagined his success with ninjutsu thus far was due to impeccable chakra control. The brat might even be a half-decent medic if he applied himself.

Tsunade pinched the bridge of her nose as she paced around the platform they had landed on while her only way out of this dim dimension slept to recover his chakra. She kicked a fallen tree in frustration, and it went careening into the dark distance.

The brat had made the portal in the same space he had cleared a large swath for forest from the mountaintop, so the platform they were on was littered with dead and slowly decaying trees. The tree trunks were broken in varying lengths, like a perfect oval had been cut out of the forest and whatever had been in that circular space now resided here—plucked straight out of one reality and placed in another.

Tsunade shuddered. Kakashi could use this technique to decapitate an enemy in the blink of an eye. There would be no defense. Worse, as demonstrated by the concerning amount of rubble and snow in the distance, the brat could make an entire village disappear if he had the right vantage point and could see the entire place.

Could that "Madara" do the same? Could he assassinate anyone with the blink of an eye? Make Konoha disappear? No, he would have done so by now if he could. Maybe the brat was mistaken, and Madara did not have access to this void space?

Or, Tsunade thought with a growing sense of dread, maybe Madara did have access but how he accessed it was different. Kakashi seemed to make things disappear from a distance, but it sounded like the voids this Madara made were on his person; therefore, he could create voids within close range.

More concerningly, how could that be the case. How could they both have the same (yet different in regards to range) sharingan ability? Had Obito been related to Madara close enough for such a manifestation? But Madara's line followed the main family, and Obito would have been part of a branch family. Granted, the Uchiha clan was incestuous, so perhaps cousins had married at one point or another, but that would still be one hell of a coincidence.

No, it would make more sense of this Madara to have—Tsunade promptly sat down and felt sick to her stomach.

What if Madara had Obito's other eye. How the man gained access to Obito's corpse, Tsunade did not want to know, but she recalled the chūnin's corpse had never been recovered from the cave-in. Eye-theft was the only other plausible answer for why Madara and Kakashi's void making abilities were so similar and yet had different applications. Surely Kakashi had realized this too by now. Madara was using Obito's other eye and, through that, had been able to traverse outer space.

Tsunade hugged her knees to her chest as nausea ran through her. Between the eye theft and the thought of Minato and Kushina's son on some alien planet…Tsunade took a few shuddering breaths to compose herself.

They had more to learn yet, but it would be slow going if the brat didn't gain more chakra or find a way to reduce the cost of this advanced sharingan technique.

…

July

"Sign the damn contract, brat!"

Sasuke lost concentration and began to fall from his precarious perch. He regulated his chakra once more and latched back onto the bell tower of the monastery.

"No. I'm refining my chakra control, and my reserves are expanding." How could a grown man like their sensei sound that petulant? Sasuke discovered his eye was twitching, again.

"Not fast enough!" Tsunade of the Sannin snapped back. "Sign. the. toad. contract."

"You're not my Kage—you can't order me!" Sensei sounded like a teenager yelling at their stepparent. He may as well have said: "You're not my mom."

The legendary Tsunade made a frustrated growl that Sasuke could empathize with after six months as the jōnin's student.

"Are you trying to annoy me into becoming Hokage?" she snapped.

Sasuke could see that working; the man had essentially annoyed Team 7 into using teamwork up until that disastrous mission in Wave. Sensei's telling, thoughtful pause suggested the man was starting to think his usual tactics to get people to do the things he wanted would work on the woman too.

The silence between the two elite ninja stretched before the woman sighed. "Do you want to find Naruto?" she asked softly.

"Of course," Sensei responded immediately; he even sounded a bit hurt at the suggestion that he didn't. Sasuke wondered yet again who this Naruto person was to Sensei (beside the Kyūbi jinchūriki which had an obvious importance to the strength of Konoha).

"Then you need more chakra, and learning sage mode would give you that chakra," the legendary medic reasoned gently—she almost had a maternal sounding concern in her voice.

"I'll continue to refine the flow of chakra when using kamui," Sensei countered.

"I still think that's a stupid name," the Sannin announced in a deadpan.

"It's my technique, I'm naming it what I want to." It was genuinely embarrassing how petulant their sensei could act. "Besides, 'sage mode' sounds even stupider."

"That's what it's called, you brat!" Tsunade snapped back. Sasuke imagined that vein in the woman's forehead was pulsing noticeably again.

"I'm still not learning it," Sensei repeated, like a child.

The Sannin growled again before taking a breath and exhaling. "Fine, let's use your argument," she said. "What are the ways you can reduce the chakra cost of a jutsu, hmm?" That was definitely a challenge. Sensei remained silent, and the woman made that noise people did with their teeth which suggested they were annoyed.

"Oi, Uchiha-brat, I know you're eavesdropping," she yelled up at him—not that she could see him from where she was on the ground. "Come down here and answer my question for your stubborn sensei," she ordered.

Sasuke sighed but dropped down from his perch. He used chakra to strengthen his legs and cushion the impact of his landing. Once he straightened from his landing crouch, he regarded his sensei in an unimpressed manner.

"With enough chakra control, a ninja can use the precise amount of chakra necessary to do an attack, thus saving them from expending too much. By recognizing the flow and manipulation of chakra through the body, a ninja can reduce the amount expended by expediting the chakra manipulation process so no unnecessary chakra is used beyond what is needed for the manipulation. By shortening the duration of a jutsu effect, a ninja can also reduce the chakra depletion of a jutsu," Sasuke recited in boredom.

"You've done the first two," Tsunade stated instead of asked. Sensei looked away from the Sannin in a stubborn manner. "That has gotten you to create the portal to and from that dimension without passing out. But today's experiment showed that the chakra needed to teleport from that dimension is proportional to the distance in space you're traveling," the woman reasoned. "If you are traveling lightyears away, you are going to need much more chakra."

"Not if I can shorten the duration the portal is open for, or even if I make the portal smaller," Sensei countered.

"You make the portal any smaller and someone's going to lose a limb," the legend countered. "If someone doesn't get through the portal fast enough, the same can happen."

Sensei glared off to the side. Sasuke could see his jaw was working in frustration.

"Then how did Madara do it? He has to have the reserves of a bijū?!" Sensei finally yelled what was truly bothering him.

"Madara is an Uchiha, you've told me before that it is more costly for you to use your sharingan than it is for an Uchiha to use it," Sasuke piped in.

"That would only account for so much," Sensei argued.

"You're both right," the legendary medic stated. "Madara has been around since the founding of Konoha. We don't know what he's capable of or how he's lived this long. He may have tapped into some unknown power, which is why you need an auxiliary source as well."

"Then order me when you're Hokage, but until then…" Sensei trailed off.

Sasuke watched the Sannin grit her teeth in frustration, and he wondered if she'd cave and forget the bet. "Fine, be that way. I'm writing Sensei," she threatened.

Sensei's visible eye widened in shock, and then Sasuke found himself being dragged through a swirling vortex and momentarily in the strangest place he had ever seen. Before Sasuke could properly adjust to the dimness of this new dimension, he was suddenly in the Hokage's office, and Sensei was unconscious on the floor next to him.

Sasuke blinked several times as the Hokage, who had been conversing with Nara Shikaku, stared back at him. And then five ANBU appeared with weapons poised to strike. Sasuke looked down at his unconscious sensei and sighed. The man was a child and a mad genius.

The Hokage waved his ANBU down. "Genin Uchiha, could you explain what you two are doing here?"

The boy sighed. "Tsunade of the Sannin is going to write to you requesting that you order Sensei learn how to harness natural chakra with the toads. He's been refusing by saying she's not his kage and therefore cannot order him. If you humor this request, then we'll lose leverage over her becoming kage," Sasuke explained tiredly.

"I see, but that was not what I meant to ask. I meant to ask, how are you two here?" the Hokage rephrased his earlier question.

"Oh." Had Sensei not filled the Hokage in on his progress thus far? "Sensei's learned how to teleport using his sharingan because Madara did the same to hide that Naruto person across the universe."

The Hokage looked blankly between Sasuke and Sensei while Nara Shikaku dropped his mouth open. "Excuse me?" the clan head asked. "How do you know about Naruto? And what do you mean by 'across the universe?'"

"Sensei didn't send an update, did he?" Sasuke guessed tiredly.

The Hokage sighed and pulled out a now familiar modified privacy seal and activated it. "Please, Sasuke-kun, fill us in since you appear to be privy to these matters."

"Well, we found Tsunade-sama in a remote monastery at the southern edge of Konoha. We made a bet that she would become Hokage if we each completed an 'impossible' task. Sensei then showed her the equation Jiraiya-sama had died getting, and Tsunade-sama recognized it as an equation for a location in outer space," Sasuke explained as best he could and shrugged as he described the absurdity of the equation's answer.

"From there, Sensei reasoned that Madara was able to teleport to this location in outer space with whoever that Naruto person is. Since Madara creates voids similar to the ones Sensei can make with his mangekyō sharingan, he's decided his impossible task would be to figure out how to teleport too. As you can see, he's done so."

"Ah," the Hokage intoned as if this made complete sense and wasn't absolutely insane. "Then Tsunade-chan has been harassing Kakashi-kun to learn sage mode so he will have enough energy to rescue Naruto-kun," the Hokage accurately guessed. Sasuke nodded. The boy noted that the Hokage appeared to be sweating slightly and had other signs of rapid chakra use. Hmm, maybe Sensei wasn't lying when he complained about how chakra intensive the anti-Madara-kamui seals were.

"Hokage-sama?" Sasuke said the title as neutrally as he could. He did not care for this man after all he had learned surrounding his family's massacre. "May I ask who exactly this Naruto is? I understand he is the Kyūbi jinchūriki, but Sensei and Tsunade-sama seem to have a personal interest in him."

The Nara clan head looked incredibly uncomfortable with the fact Sasuke knew so much. The Hokage looked more amused than concerned.

"They do, as do I," the Hokage confessed, and once more, Sasuke understood that this was more about who Naruto was and not what he contained. "Do you know who your Sensei's sensei was?" the old man asked.

Sasuke narrowed his gaze slightly at the question. "The Yondaime Hokage," Sasuke replied almost warily.

"Yes, and do you know who Tsunade-chan's grandmother was?" the Hokage asked next.

"I'm assuming, sir, that you are referring to the Shodaime's wife, Mito Uzumaki," Sasuke answered.

"Indeed, and she was the first Kyūbi jinchūriki, for the Uzumaki clan had both the sealing knowledge and potent enough chakra to handle the bijū. Uzumaki Mito eventually passed the Kyūbi onto a distant relation and last surviving member of the Uzumaki clan, Uzumaki Kushina." The kage dabbed at the accumulating sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief.

Sasuke furrowed his brow. Kushina…his mother had known a Kushina, had been friends with the woman even if he recalled his mother's journal correctly. That Kushina had died during the Kyūbi attack; mother had laid flowers for her at the Kyūbi attack's memorial during each anniversary of the attack. Did this Kushina die because the Kyūbi had been released from her?

"Did you know a female jinchūriki's seal weakens in childbirth?" the Hokage asked rhetorically, for there was no way Sasuke could know that, but the pieces were starting to slide and into place. "And do you supposed Minato-kun would have sealed the Kyūbi into just anyone?" the old man asked another rhetorical question.

"This Naruto would have been the only Uzumaki living," Sasuke reasoned.

"Yet every village has a jinchūriki and they do not have Uzumakis to house the bijū," the old man countered.

Sasuke frowned. "Sir, are you suggesting the Yondaime sealed the Kyūbi into his own child?" he asked the Hokage. Sasuke could see the logic if Naruto was selected because of his Uzumaki heritage, but why would a father do that to his own son? Unless…the father wanted to save others from such a fate and had faith in the abilities of his own son.

This also explained why Sensei was so dedicated to finding this Naruto. If he was the last remaining family of the Copy-nin's sensei, the last tie to his former team, then why wouldn't the masked man look to the edges of the universe to find this Naruto?

The Hokage just smiled around his pipe and nodded. "I do hope you will keep this secret—should our enemies in Iwa learn their greatest foe had a child…" he trailed off as he sobered.

"May I inform my teammate?" Sasuke asked. Even if he didn't have permission, he'd still tell Sakura. Something in the Hokage's returned amused smile suggested Sasuke's insubordinate thoughts were clear to the old man.

"Of course. If you have been privy to circumstances around Naruto-kun's disappearance, then I'm sure Genin Haruno has been too." The Hokage then lifted the privacy seal and noticeably look relieved to have done so.

"Now, why don't you and your sensei go to the hospital and get treated."

"I'm fine," Sasuke replied.

The Hokage frowned slightly. "Genin, your arm is broken."

"Yes, and until Sakura can heal it and break my other arm, I'll be working on one-handed signs."

The Nara clan head jerked in shock and looked briefly appalled at Sasuke, but the Hokage nodded slowly.

"Your impossible task is performing one-handed jutsu with each hand, I'm guessing?" the old man asked.

"With my current jutsu repertoire, yes." Sasuke answered curtly.

"And Genin Haruno is to heal you?" the Hokage asked.

"Perform the mystical palm jutsu consistently," Sasuke corrected.

"And when is your deadline?" the Hokage asked.

"Before the third round of the Chūnin exams," Sasuke replied.

The Nara clan head started choking on either spit or air, Sasuke didn't know or care which. The Hokage ignored his Jōnin Commander. "I know Kakashi-kun's progress on the bet, but how is yours and Genin Haruno's progress?"

"Sakura is working on reviving a fish. I've refined my chakra control and manipulation to the point that I can do one-handed signs for the academy three." Sasuke paused and looked off to the side. He felt heat rise to his cheeks. "I'm struggling with my family's fire technique."

"Hmm, and have you done much elemental chakra manipulation training?" the Hokage asked with mild curiosity.

Sasuke felt his blush deepen. "I'm more suited to lightning chakra than fire," he explained quietly.

"And I imagine Kakashi-kun has been too busy with his task or unconscious to help you with elemental manipulation."

Sasuke looked at the floor and shrugged. It was true, but the Hokage didn't need to know that. "Kakashi would be the best teacher for elemental manipulation, but while your sensei recovers, how about you meet with my son?"

Sasuke furrowed his brow. "Team 10's jōnin instructor?" he asked. Wouldn't the man be working with his genin team?

"Team 10 is currently participating in the second task of the Chūnin exams, so Asuma-kun is free. I believe he's in the jōnin's lounge two floors below us. Shikaku-kun, would you escort Genin Uchiha there?"

The Jōnin Commander began to move toward Sasuke, but the boy shook his head. "I should stay with Sensei," he announced.

"Kakashi-kun will be alright. His comrade will keep watch over him," the Hokage assured Sasuke while making some unrecognizable hand sign. An ANBU operative appeared and picked up Sensei. Sasuke tensed and wanted to fight this, but the operative was being gentle with Sensei and, if the second task of the exams were already underway, then it couldn't be much longer until the final round of the exams took place.

With great reluctance, Sasuke followed the Nara clan head out of the Hokage's office and down to the Jōnin lounge. If nothing else, then Sasuke could try to take advantage of this impromptu return to Konoha by getting advice on fire chakra manipulation from one of its best users.

…

Sakura knew she should have been worried, especially when several days had gone by without Sensei and Sasuke returning, but she had faith in them. Most likely Sensei had panicked after the Devil had threatened to pull their commander-and-chief into the argument. Sensei had grabbed Sasuke to guard over his unconscious body after he finished teleporting the two of them to wherever—Sakura would bet her commission from the disastrous Wave mission (her largest paycheck to date) on them having returned to Konoha, so she was sure they were safe.

She was getting nervous though when a week had passed and her teammates had still not returned, but she spent most of her focus on healing this damn fish and was too mentally spent to give the matter much thought.

Sure, she had passing thoughts about her teammates over the course of the day, but she reminded herself that they were probably in Konoha, and Sensei was probably in a chakra coma because such a far teleportation would have knocked him out. She probably shouldn't be as blasé about his chakra exhaustion issues as she was, but at this point it just felt like a fact—just like how humans need air to breathe, Sensei would inevitably use his sharingan too much and pass out from the drain.

It was when they had two and a half weeks left in the bet that Sakura began to get too nervous to even concentrate on her part in the bet. She was able to consistently revive the fish by this point, which made the task take less concentration, and thus meant she could focus on other things, which then meant she'd think about her missing teammates. Perhaps it was paranoia or some lingering trauma from Shin's death, but her thoughts had started to turn…dark.

Had Madara intercepted Sensei and Sasuke? Were they dead in that weird prism filled dimension? Had Konoha been invaded while she was on this remote mountaintop? Had sensei over used his sharingan to the point it exploded?

"I can feel your anxiety," the Devil snapped. The blonde was trying to meditate—why the woman decided to do it where Sakura was working with the fish, she didn't know.

"Then meditate elsewhere," Sakura shot back.

"You keep practicing that with distracting thoughts in your head, and you're going to burn the fish up," the Devil warned.

Sakura glared back at the woman but didn't respond. The Devil sighed after a beat and then stood up in a single fluid motion. Sakura hoped that meant the woman was leaving to find a new spot.

"Alright, kid, get up," the Devil ordered with her hands on her hips.

"I'm not moving. You find another place to meditate," Sakura snapped back.

The Devil rolled her eyes. "You need a distraction that's actually going to take your mind off of your teammates." Sakura scowled at the response and continued to glare at the disappointing legend. "How about I show how to properly fight with my technique?" the Devil offered mockingly.

"I don't see what a drunk could possibly teach me," Sakura countered. That got the Devil's vein pulsing—Sakura was always proud when she could do that; it made her feel like Sensei would be proud of her for annoying the blonde Sannin.

"I'm sober as death, pinky," the woman retorted.

Sakura scoffed. "With your liver cirrhosis, your death is going to be far from sober."

"Tch, you think I'd let my liver deteriorate like that."

"You certainly drink like you do," Sakura shot back just as quick.

The Devil smiled. Sakura knew what was incoming when the woman made that half-sadistic, half-amused look. Sakura flipped out of the way as the earth cracked open beneath her. The fish she had been reviving fell through the fissure.

"Now I'll have to go down the mountain to find another one!" Sakura complained as she dodged to the side of a strike. The Sannin was purposely moving slow so Sakura could dodge—it always made Sakura feel like she was a mouse being preyed upon by a bored cat.

"The exercise will do you good!" the Devil said with a grin.

Sakura's eyes flared with anger. "Cha! Are you calling me fat?!" she yelled as she charged at the woman.

"That or lazy," the Devil retorted.

Oh, she was going to hit that woman in her perfectly unaged face! Sakura did her best to dodge the fissures in the ground and the various backhanded strikes from the woman—because Sakura still hadn't gained the respect to be punched but was at least beyond the finger flicks. She, in turn, pockmarked the courtyard and then mountainside with craters from her fists. A couple times, the Devil Sannin let Sakura hit her only to insult Sakura's form or the strength behind the attack.

And then something shifted, and the Devil stopped playing around so much. Sakura found herself bracing her legs as she was met with the brunt of the Devil Sannin's kick. She didn't fly back like usual, but she felt a sharp pain radiating up her forearms from where she'd blocked. Intuitively, she knew her arms were broken. Sakura ducked under the following roundhouse kick and then darted off to the side before running into the cover of the trees below her.

Sakura ran through the necessary hand signs and began to circulate healing chakra through her hands to fix the small breaks in her forearms—it was incredibly painful but she pushed past the pain. Just as Sakura finished, she had to leap backwards away from a massive boulder flying toward where she had been headed, and then the girl was being slapped out of the air.

The Devil's hand caught her in the face and sent her crashing into the ground. Sakura's jaw dislocated and might have shattered had she not reinforced her bones with healing chakra. Hell, her neck could have snapped from the force of the blow if Sakura hadn't prepared herself and reinforced her body with chakra.

Her teeth cut the insides of her mouth and blood began to well up. Sakura spat it out as she once more ran through the necessary hand signs and healed her jaw. The Sannin, who had been about to kick down at her prone form, froze and paled.

Sakura scrambled away from the woman and got in a ready stance, but the Devil didn't move. Her gaze was transfixed on the ground where Sakura had spat.

"I thought you were trying to teach me a lesson," Sakura shouted as she pushed back her unease at the sight before her. The taunt had no affect; it was like the woman couldn't hear Sakura. Wait…was…was the great medic Senju Tsunade afraid of blood?

Part of Sakura felt sorry for the woman. If you were the most revered medic in the world but your loved ones consistently died, wouldn't you too become afraid of seeing blood—specifically, afraid of seeing them bleed out before your eyes. But then the larger part of Sakura felt unjustifiably angry, but she couldn't place why or what exactly was the source of her anger.

"Some medic you are, afraid of blood? Really!?" Sakura taunted louder because she couldn't stand the look on the Devil's face. "How pathetic."

That got the woman's attention. "Say that again, brat," the Sannin hissed.

"You're pa-thet-ic," Sakura over-emphasized.

"What's pathetic is this little girl who thinks she can be me," the blonde retorted, her gaze fixed on Sakura. "She can't even take a slap right."

"Who would want to be a lonely old drunk too lost in her own grief?" Sakura shot back.

"Let me show you just how 'lost' I am, little girl," the Sannin growled and charged at Sakura faster than the genin could see, but the girl was already running through hand signs for the mystic palm.

The Sannin's open palmed strike hit Sakura in the chest. The girl's clavicle broke, and the top of her ribcage cracked, but she had already begun healing the damage before her ribs could puncture her heart or lungs. She was then kicked in the side and sent flying since Sakura had not grounded herself. Still channeling the healing chakra, she fixed the lower ribs the Sannin had broken. Sakura did a handspring and landed back on her feet before darting to the side as the Sannin performed a drop kick at the place Sakura had been milliseconds earlier.

Sakura punched the ground and created a cover of dust to dart around behind the Sannin. The woman saw through the subterfuge, and Sakura was being slapped again; but, this time, the girl caught the Sannin's arm and stood her ground against the force of the attack.

The blonde smiled down at Sakura with a sadistic sort of glee, which Sakura returned along with a knee to the woman's gut. Of course, the Sannin wrenched her arm free from Sakura and did a sweeping kick that Sakura jumped over. This, however, left Sakura's torso open for an attack, and the genin was once again struck with an open palm—this time in the stomach.

Without anyway to ground herself, Sakura flew meters backwards until she collided with a tree trunk. She also began to throw up from the force of the attack. Already, she could tell her spleen had burst and the force of her back colliding with the tree had led to a vertebrae cracking. She gasped and gaged through the pain and vomiting. Nonetheless, Sakura was already running through the necessary hand-signs (in her haste, she dropped several signs that intuitively did not seem necessary) and then began healing the internal damage.

The Sannin kissed her teeth in disgust. "You got sick on my shoes," she muttered.

Sakura laughed and got back to her feet. She was feeling woozy after that last mystical palm use. "They were out of fashion fifty years ago," she insulted.

"You are a glutton for punishment, brat," the blonde said with a feral smile that Sakura couldn't help but match.

"I'm still standing, aren't I? Can't say your 'punishments' are really that, now can I?" Sakura couldn't help but antagonize the woman.

With (what observers might call deranged) cackles, the two collided again. Sakura got two punches in, and the Sannin gave the girl another slap and two kicks before Sakura couldn't heal herself anymore.

Well, actually, she did heal herself, she just passed out afterwards from chakra exhaustion. She was fine with this and maybe that suggested there was something wrong with her team—then again, Sasuke hadn't passed out from chakra exhaustion yet, so maybe it was just her and Sensei? Regardless, she had a smile on her face as the last of her chakra healed the broken bones in her leg after the Sannin's last devastating kick.

Shizune watched her lady carrying the unconscious Haruno girl back to the mountain temple. The monks of the monastery were frowning that the devastation wrought onto their courtyard and then to the mountainside near their home.

"I am deeply sorry for my lady's destruction," she addressed the head monk while bowing.

He hummed. "Do you suppose Hatake-san will be back soon to fix up the courtyard?" the head monk asked.

Shizune paled. "I…could not say," she settled on.

The monk hummed again and nodded. "Well, I'm sure your lady and her new apprentice would not mind repairing the damage they have caused. They certainly have the strength necessary to carry and cut the stones needed for this courtyard." He smiled at Shizune and then wandered off back into the temple.

Shizune dropped her head forward. Tonton made an inquiring squeal. "Nothing, just another mess Tsunade-sama is not going to be happy about cleaning up," Shizune said with a sigh. And this time her lady's drunkenness was not to blame nor were any handsy perverts at fault either.

As her lady approached the temple, Shizune wondered if Tsunade would offer to repair the courtyard herself with an earth jutsu like Hatake had been doing, or if she'd actually go through with the manual labor just to spite the Haruno girl. Shizune would have been rubbing her temples at the thought had Tonton not been in her arms.

"Shizune? What's wrong?" her lady asked once she had reentered the courtyard with the unconscious girl on her back.

"The monks would like their courtyard repaired. If you do not feel up to using jutsu to do so, they intimated that you and Haruno-san could go to a quarry," Shizune said neutrally.

Her lady appeared to be thinking for a moment before sighing. "Let me put the kid down, then I'll fix the courtyard." So, her lady was feeling magnanimous today and not petty; Shizune would never have known based on the portions of the fight she had just witnessed.

Shizune nodded and decided she would follow her lady so she might attend to any of the girl's injuries. However, after the girl had been set onto the bedroll in the guest room, Shizune discovered the only issue the girl had was chakra exhaustion. "Did you already heal her?" Shizune asked her lady.

"No, the kid did it all on her own," Tsunade stated, and Shizune could have sworn her lady sounded…proud.

"Then she has met her part of the bet as has Hatake-san," Shizune stated.

"We still have to see how she fairs healing someone else," her lady replied, though Shizune could tell this was not a protest. No, it almost seemed as if her lady was accepting the possibility that she would lose this bet (like she had many others but still).

Before Shizune could question whether this meant her lady was prepared to return to Konoha, she saw two figures behind her lady at the door to the room.

"Maa, we saw the courtyard," Hatake stated—he was pale from chakra depletion but still upright. "Is my genin still in one piece?"

Tsunade whirled around and began to harangue the masked jōnin. "You reckless idiot! Where did you teleport off to? How could you leave behind a student too! Were you really so fearful of our conversation that you had to run away like a child!?"

"See, I told you it was childish," the Uchiha (who looked paler than usual) told his sensei while Shizune's lady continued to rant unimpeded by the interruption.

"Worse than your thoughtlessness, you failed to send a message to update anyone about your survival. For all any of us knew, Madara had gotten you two while you had jumped dimensions. Do you know how worried your genin was?! And after she had already lost one teammate! How could you be so thoughtless and cruel?"

Hatake, for his part, just took the tongue lashing with a bland expression and his hands shoved in his pockets. The Uchiha at his side eventually side-stepped the angry Sannin and knelt beside Shizune to observe Sakura.

"Chakra exhaustion?" the boy guessed.

"Yes," Shizune confirmed while giving the boy a speculative look. How could he tell just by looking at her?

"Do you think our sensei is teaching us bad habits?" the boy asked next.

Tsunade stopped her ranting upon hearing the Uchiha's question. She then asked Hatake slowly, "What bad habit is he talking about?"

"Maa, I don't have any bad habits," Hatake said, while his student replied.

"Sakura's trained herself to chakra exhaustion, and Sensei's been doing so too."

The vein in her lady's forehead was pulsing. "And have you trained to chakra exhaustion?" she asked the boy through gritted teeth.

The Uchiha shrugged in a non-committal way while his sensei held up a hand. "Now, wait a moment. That's only because of that cursed seal and my removal of it," Hatake said defensively.

"Cursed seal?!" her lady exclaimed before dropping to her knees beside the boy and beginning to do a scan of his body. "As in Orchimaru's cursed seal? The one that killed his students?!"

"Anko survived, but yes," Hatake corrected almost flippantly. Shizune stared with her mouth open at the jōnin.

"And to your earlier complaint about how long we were gone, you can blame your former teammate. We would have left over a week ago except Orochimaru bit Sasuke-kun and hospitalized a decent jōnin."

"Asuma-sensei is more than decent. Stop being petty," the Uchiha snapped at Hatake while also slapping away Tsunade's hands from their examination of his person.

"Listen to that, calling someone else sensei!" Hatake exclaimed with mock hurt. "My cute genin is so cruel to me! Even after I spent a week finding a way to break that cursed seal."

Shizune's blinked uncomprehendingly at Hatake while her lady froze. "What do you mean you broke the cursed seal?" the blonde asked.

Hatake gave that eye-smile of his and nodded. "I created a containment seal before Orochimaru's charka could fully rewrite Sasuke-kun's chakra pathways, and then I began working on a counter which made the cursed seal null. From there, I examined both Sasuke's and Anko's cursed seals and devised a way to siphon Orochimaru's curse and chakra out of those seals and into a new containment seal. Then I burned the scroll the cursed chakra was sealed in. As such, I broke his cursed seals."

For doing something that had been deemed impossible not even a decade ago, the man was being far too chipper and blasé about his accomplishment. The Uchiha, however, was not happy with this. In fact, the boy was pouting and even had his arms crossed over his chest. "I had to retrain my chakra pathways and lost almost all my progress on the bet!" the boy complained.

"Maa, but now you won't be tied to a creepy old man with a penchant for experimenting on others," Hatake countered.

"I have two weeks to relearn how to do fire chakra manipulation!" the boy yelled.

"But I've completed my bet, so you'll have my undivided attention, and I'm a much better teacher than Asuma-san," the jōnin said with an eye-smile.

"No, you're not," the boy retorted.

Hatake played up being wounded by the comment again. Shizune found herself blinking uncomprehendingly between the two males in the room as they proceeded to bicker.

"I'm too sober for this," her lady announced to the room.

"Agreed," Shizune muttered. She got up from her seiza and went to find the sake she had hidden from her lady. Her lady followed after her a bit dazedly.

"We should start planning for my coronation," Tsunade murmured. "And make plans for overhauling the hospital. I don't think they've updated anything since I was last in Konoha."

"I'll start drafting some curriculum for the medics," Shizune said. Her lady just nodded.

"Do you think all the current Konoha teams are as crazy as them?" her lady asked.

"I hope not," Shizune replied faintly. It would be difficult leading such a shinobi force if that was the case. Neither woman was directly addressing the fact that Tsunade had already accepted her loss with the bet.

When the five of them left for Konoha a week and a half later, Tsunade put up no fight and only insisted that they travel by foot and not Hatake's newfound teleportation ability, especially since any travel greater than ten kilometers greatly decreased the man's charka reserves. It seemed Senju Tsunade was finally returning home.