Kakashi looked up from his bowl of unfamiliar compressed grain bits and looked at his team, taking stock of the end result from Sakura's little temper tantrum the other day. Inari was being very quiet but a little more polite than previously, and occasionally talking to Naruto. The Orange Blur of Konoha was his usual self, loud and playful in spite of the long hours he had spent with Kakashi the night before, retelling the battle in full detail. Kakashi could see how the boy kept turning slightly towards the door, and he took it as a sign of unrest.
Sakura was quietly eating her meal, and spending a great deal of effort being as quiet and polite as possible, to the point of feeling distant from the others. And every few minutes, she would glance once at Kakashi, a tiny flick of her eyes, like she was waiting for his permission... or punishment.
Smart girl, he thought, taking a bite of what had been introduced to him as "whaet fleaks" by Tsunami and listening to them crunch as he watched Sasuke, who had yet to say a word to anyone. He was distant and quiet, and held himself apart from the others in his body language, same as always, but he looked... comfortable, as much as Kakashi had ever seen him, and even as he watched, Sasuke shifted, just slightly, towards Sakura. They're a little young for... that, he thought with a little internal giggle, but something must have happened between them.
Well, good, they'll all need a good mood for today.
Kakashi set his spoon down next to the empty bowl, ignoring the strange look he was getting from Tsunami, who had been watching him the entire meal, fixated no doubt on his unremoved mask, and stood. "Tazuna," he said to the old man, who spared him a glance. "Today, I will guard you myself, while my students train."
"What!" shouted Naruto, slamming his hand on the table, "But that Mochi guy and his friend could attack any time!"
Kakashi shook his head at the outburst. "No, they will not. Zabuza has been tricked, in a very obvious and, according to you, very painful manner. He will need time to heal, assuming he has no medic-nin with him, which is probable. Furthermore, he will need time to plan his assault, because now he knows that we are capable of using shadow clones as substitutes for anyone." And if he has half a brain, he added mentally, he knows we have at least one chakra powerhouse with us. Splitting his original clone into multiple clones had been a good move for Naruto to make, but it also gave away some of his strengths, and a smart opponent might spot this. Kakashi knew what it was to be underestimated, and he refused to make that fatal error against his foe.
"I will be giving each of you a task, and it will be upon you to train with it as hard as you can. You will do so in the area I bring you to, and will train until either I retrieve you, night falls, or you hear a disturbance that needs to be investigated or reported." He looked at each of them in turn, focusing on them and letting out a tiny fraction of his killing intent. "Your first priority, at all times, is this house and its occupants. Someone like Gato or Zabuza would not be above taking hostages or murdering families to win, and I will not have my team failing this mission to such a blatantly obvious concept." Each genin nodded in turn, and he grunted.
"Sasuke, come with me."
They stood on the dock outside, facing the water. "I dislike leaving you to practice anything in easy view," Kakashi said quietly, "as it gives away your strengths, so be aware of your surroundings, just in case." Sasuke grunted in annoyance, and Kakashi admitted to himself that it was an obvious point to make. He acknowledged the point with a shrug, and got a nod in return.
"Activate your sharingan."
Sasuke opened his eyes slightly wider, and Kakashi watched them turn red, two tomoe circling in one eye, and a third in the other. Not a complete set just yet, but it'll do for this.
"I will use a jutsu you are familiar with, the Great Fireball, which I understand you can perform. I want you to observe it carefully, especially the chakra that is expelled with it." Sasuke grunted again, and Kakashi performed the hand seals and exhaled a billowing cloud of fire that flashed into the lake, boiling the water beneath it. When the technique ended, Kakashi watched as several fish floated to the surface.
"What did you see?" he asked.
Sasuke let his eyes rest and thought of how to answer. The obvious answer, a cloud of fire sustained by chakra, was too obvious to require demonstration. Kakashi obviously wanted him to notice something, but what? Because he asked for my sharingan, he probably wanted me to focus on the chakra. There is a reason he did so. The amount of chakra is a measure of power, but not something I can improve quickly. The source of chakra is from the mouth, which did not need demonstration.
"Again please, sensei."
Sasuke watched, tomoe spinning, as Kakashi performed the move again. The fire flowed from his sensei's masked face almost like a liquid, rolling out in a ball shape that whirled with its own internal flow. The cloud expanded over the same patch of water, leaving the water sizzling and the already dead fish burnt that much more.
Then he focused on the fish, and saw what he was looking for.
"It's a cloud, and like a cloud, it touches a large area, but not evenly. The fish in the middle were burnt, and the ones outside were much less burnt."
"And what was I shooting at?"
Sasuke looked again. "You were aiming for the fish," he hazarded. Kakashi nodded, and waved a hand at the water.
"How effective was this technique?"
Sasuke snorted in amusement. "Not very," he said. Kakashi hit more water than fish, and all that effort was wasted. Then his eyes narrowed. If this was an ineffective tool for catching fish, how effective would it be against a ninja? He looked at Kakashi, who was waiting patiently for him to make the connection.
"Konoha teaches those who have an affinity for fire in many techniques, and every one of them can essentially be considered the 'Grand Fireball only More So' jutsu. It is ludicrous. Sometimes, you need a net. And other times, you need a spear."
Sasuke stared into the distance, thinking. "How do I do that," he asked himself, unaware he did so out loud.
"Your training is to figure it out." Kakashi was already walking back towards the house. "Gather the fish you kill, no point wasting food. Oh, and Sasuke?" He turned and Sasuke swore he could see the man beaming through his mask. "This is a reward. I don't know what you said, but you managed to get through to your teammate. In doing so, you make them stronger. In doing so..."
"... I make myself stronger," Sasuke said, slightly annoyed that Kakashi was still pounding it into his head, and even more annoyed the gray-haired bastard was so damned right. He grunted out his annoyance and turned back to the lake, mind already dedicated to the task ahead.
"So, what am I learning, sensei?"
Naruto was fairly bouncing as he walked along with Kakashi into the woods. Kakashi was scanning the trees looking some something, and when he found it, he jumped ahead. Naruto ran to catch up, and found Kakashi standing in a field, a long branch over his shoulder. He tossed the branch to Naruto, who stepped aside and let it fall to the ground.
Kakashi smirked under his mask at the fine and quite shinobi-like degree of caution. "Pick up the stick," he said, taking a ready stance, "and hit me with it." Naruto looked suitably nervous, but he bent down and hefted the stick, which was almost twice his height. "I don't know if I can hit you. Not as in 'oh no, not my sensei,' more 'I doubt this will work,' Kakashi-sensei."
"Fair enough, Naruto, but try as best you can."
Naruto charged, stick held at one end, arms wide to support the weight, and before he even got within range he began bringing the stick across in a sweeping arc, starting the blow early so it had time to be in place when he got close enough. Kakashi jumped straight up, just high enough to pass over the stick, and as he came down, he was pleasantly unsurprised to see Naruto's leg lashing out into a kick even as he continued his turn to bring the stick back into play, exactly as he had described the previous night.
On the next pass, Kakashi caught the stick with a grunt, stopping Naruto dead in his tracks. "Naruto, have you ever fought someone who used a over-sized stick as a weapon." Naruto made a confused face and shook his head.
"How about someone else, who used a different over-sized weapon." Kakashi expected the boy to remain confused, and he was not disappointed. He waited a moment, and tried once more.
"Like, say, Zabuza?"
"Huh?"
Kakashi sighed and ran a hand over his face. A tree does not grow overnight, he told himself, fighting the urge to raise his voice. "Naruto, you fought just then exactly like you described Zabuza to fight. I think you managed to pick up the basics of his style when you fought him."
"But... I only fought him once!" Naruto shouted in confusion.
"No. By my understanding, you fought him nearly one hundred and twenty times, one clone at a time."
Naruto brightened. "Like how I started to get how Hinata-chan's moves worked once we started sparring!" Kakashi nodded, but his quiet acknowledgement was ignored by the loudly celebrating genin. "Yeah!" he shouted, spinning in place, "I know how to sword fight now!"
"Not in the least, Naruto."
Naruto tripped over himself and planted his face into the ground.
"You do not know how to fight with a sword, Naruto. You can do a convincing job faking it, but it's only an act, and a real swordsman would spot it in an instant and gut you like a fish." He reached down and helped Naruto up, noticing the frown on the boy's face. "But that does not mean it is useless."
He handed Naruto the stick. "I want you to use your clones and try to figure out some ways to counter the sword Zabuza uses, which we will then discuss with the team each night to see if any of them are viable. In doing so, you will develop your taijutsu to some degree, practice developing strategy and tactics, and more importantly, you may give us a major advantage in the fight we'll face quite soon."
Naruto saluted, stick still in hand, and Kakashi was forced to duck under the swing. He then stood, and his face grew dark. "Meanwhile, I will need some more clones from you for a separate purpose." He sighed inwardly as he waited for Naruto to produce his copies. This is going to be rough all around.
Sakura looked around at the trees surrounding her, her heart filled with icy dread once more. The area Kakashi had led her to was gloomy and dark, filled with briers and dead leaves underfoot, an untamed and unpleasant deep forest. She followed him closely, nerves taut.
This will be punishment, she thought as she stepped around a tree, it will be. A ninja cannot lose control. To lose control is to fail the mission. To lose control is to die. To lose control is to kill your allies in error. Her mind continued to whirl, dark thoughts flitting in and out of her head even as she stepped around the worst of the detritus on the ground.
Kakashi stopped and turned suddenly, and she felt the ice in her chest spread. He was looking down at her, and not just literally. His eyes were cold and distant, all the worse because she knew the warmth they usually held. She offered a short bow, and continued to hang her head as she rose from it. "I did something wrong, Sensei, and I know it to be wrong. I will be punished, and it will be just, because I know you will make no decision or punishment I do not deserve. I am ready."
Kakashi sighed inwardly, his eye narrowing at her. A good act, a properly demure Yamato Nadeshiko, which means nothing for a ninja. Even the lowest monster can show contrition afterwards. "Sakura," he said quietly, stiffly, "you know already what you did was wrong, and pretty words cannot change anything. You are as much of a danger to your friends and your clients as to yourself, and no words can change that either. I cannot let you endanger the team." He stood slightly taller, his head rising, as he pronounced his judgment. "I brought you out here to spare your dignity, not to train you. I am forced to remove you from Team 7. For the rest of this mission, you will remain at the house, not as a guard, but as a civilian. When the mission is over, you will return with us to Konoha, as a civilian, there to determine if you wish to enter the Academy again." Kakashi walked over to her, reached up, and pulled off her forehead protector, the very thing that told the world what she was... what she had been.
"You are dismissed, civilian."
Sakura's head whipped up, eyes wide, and she stared at her former teacher. But his gaze, his voice, his will did not waver, and she let the tears form and fall from her eyes without a word of dissent. No gasp, no shout, no wail. She suffered silently, and he nodded once, both in dismissal, and in recognition of her composure, her last act as a shinobi. She turned and walked away quietly, refusing to make a single sound save for the tap of her feet and her tears on the forest floor.
And just as she reached the point where she would be hidden from view, where it would be acceptable to let out her suffering, she heard him, quietly, so quietly she wondered if she should have heard him at all.
"Jumped-up fangirl."
She whirled into a crouch and lunged, her voice returning in a guttural scream, hand curled into ineffective claws, indignity and hated and red red rage filling her mind and body, screaming for the blood of her tormentor. Her hand came around in an arc, nails out, knowing she could never kill him but desperately swearing she would scar him at the least.
He caught her hand without effort. His other arm shot out, grabbing her by the hair and tearing out several strands as he jerked her forward, until she came to a stop, forehead thumping solidly on the metal plate of the protector over his own forehead, her right eye to his left, the whirling red pinwheel spinning, engulfing her vision.
"What is the lesson you need, Sakura," he asked, with the same cool tone.
She panted, dangling in his arms. She wanted to bring her knee up and crush his stomach, his family jewels, his throat...
She wanted to bring her other hand into play, to slash at his face, to rip that damned mask off, to rip out his throat with her bare hands...
She wanted to pull a kunai out of her bag, stab his hand, his arm, for daring to stop the justice of her attack, to plunge it into his chest, his gut...
She wanted...
She wanted...
"... Control," she breathed, barely pushing it out through her throat, tight as it was in her fury. Her face blazed red in shame, her jaws ached from how hard she was clenching her teeth, but at the very least, there were no more tears.
He dropped her and stepped away, and to her credit, she did not stand. Far from it, she pulled her legs under herself and sat properly, nettles digging into her shins and knees. It took her nearly a minute to still her breathing, and when she unclenched her fists, her nails came away with blood underneath them from her palms.
Kakashi sat across from her, nettles digging into his shins and knees, hands open and resting on his knees. "Sakura," he said, his tone now carrying a touch of his old warmth, "before we begin, there is one thing to understand. You have not been removed from the team. As you may have guessed by now, that whole thing was a test, and yes, it went very poorly for you." She shuddered at his words, tears flowing freely, residual anger and shame warring for her mind.
"You are no victim, Sakura. You cannot ever claim that these outbursts are uncontrollable, or acceptable, or necessary for your fighting style. Any of those excuses are garbage. When you get angry, it is your fault. When you lash out at me, it is your fault. When you try to strike a civilian child for speaking back to you, it is, undeniably, your fault." He watched her body shake as the adrenaline left it.
He took a deep breath and let it out. "That said, you are also not completely to blame. You have been training with the Inuzuka, who are famously vicious fighters who also famously tend to be loose, if effective, cannons, and who use their emotions as a source of strength, letting their inner animal out to fight. Furthermore, when the team was formed, I did receive files on the medical status of my students. I am fully aware that you are beginning to... change." He coughed at this, slightly put off, and was glad to see she did nothing but blush slightly at the comment, rather than the grievous assault he would normally expect. "Control becomes harder. In normal teens, this means bad choices, bad misadventures, and bad stories to tell some day to their own children, because they have the luxury of a world where errors in judgment are not deadly."
He rested his hands on her shoulders and gave her what he hoped was a stern yet friendly look, such as the Hokage had often given him. "You are not justified, and you are not to blame, Sakura. I am proud of your efforts to gain strength and become a true shinobi, and the lengths you are going through to get there. But learning how to fight as an Inuzuka is always a struggle between animal instinct and human control, and you've learned far too much and too quickly to adjust readily."
"Do I need to stop training with them?" she asked, eyes shut, disappointed but accepting.
"No."
She breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thankfully, you're not inherently violent or uncontrolled. This is not a biological problem, or an upbringing problem. It is a learned trait, and what you learn, you can unlearn, mostly through practice. Naruto, please come out."
The clones came out of the surrounding trees, ten in all, tentatively, as if they wanted nothing to do with this. I told them, not the original, what was going to happen, thought Kakashi as Sakura looked around. That way, he could not give himself orders to the contrary. Just in case.
"Sakura, your training for the day is simple. Do. Not. Kill. Any. Clones." He stood, hands on hips, looking down at her again. "That is your only goal, and it will be hard, because these clones are ordered to do their best to infuriate you through any means necessary just short of permanent injury, on pain of having the original removed from the team for disobeying a direct order."
After a moment's pause, held a hand out to her. She took it, arm shaking, and he helped her stagger to her feet. "Make no mistake, this is a serious task before you," he said lightly, smiling behind his mask. "I've seen you two interacting before." Sakura let out a small laugh, shaky as a leaf in the wind, but a laugh none the less.
"Yes, sensei," she whispered.
He held out his hand, and she took back her forehead protector, staring at it briefly before tying it back into place. She looked up at the clones surrounding her and nodded, a little of her old fire entering her eyes. "I am ready," she said, even as Kakashi vanished from the clearing.
Sasuke looked like hell when he walked into the house that night. His face was red and peeling in places, like a terrible sunburn. His lips were cracked and bleeding slightly, and his hair was slightly singed in a few places, giving him a cologne of burnt human hair that dominated his surroundings.
He turned to Naruto and grinned just slightly to see the blonde looking as bad as he felt. Naruto was covered in bruises in spite of his unusually strong healing ability, and he was holding one of his arms oddly, clenching it tightly to his chest. Sasuke suspected it had been dislocated at one point.
"You look like shit, Dobe."
Naruto grinned back. "You look and smell like it, Teme, so I'd be quiet, or Sakura's gonna..." His voice dropped out as he saw the front door open, and Sakura walk into the room, followed by ten clones. Naruto and Sasuke shared a look, and the look said, We had a good day.
Sakura looked awful, just awful. She was covered head to toe in mud and filth, nettles and thorns. There were many, many places where she was bleeding from those thorns. Her hair had gone from a untamed mane of pink to a ungodly towering tangle of pond scum and sticks, leaves and all. But the worst was her eyes. Her eyes looked like she had been crying all day, red and puffy and painfully sallow at the same time. She looked around the room with her emerald eyes glittering. They lingered on Sasuke for a moment, then on Naruto. She turned to the clones, who were shuffling behind her, eyes down. "Dispel, please, one at a time," she said, turning back to the real Naruto, looking him in the eye.
One by one, they dispelled. Naruto examined their memories. That one had called her forehead, like he had seen Ino do. That one had asked her on a date, once per minute, for the entire time. That one had deliberately wound nettles and sticks into her hair. That one had picked her up and bodily dunked her in a pond. That one had... snapped her bra against her back whenever she had turned away from him.
I'm dead.
Naruto's face flamed as he received the memories of the clones and the terrible things they had done to her. It was like a 'Best Of' reel of the things Sakura hated him for, and things he would never do to any girl, never mind one with a love of violence. The kind of reel they play at a funeral, he thought. Poor Naruto, he had a good life, cut tragically short...
Eventually, all the clones were finished. Sakura started walking forward, one ominous step at a time. Naruto was rooted in place, terrified, and even Sasuke stepped aside as she passed near him. She reached out her arms, her scratched, filthy arms, and draped them around Naruto's neck.
She pulled him into a hug.
Naruto stared over her shoulder at Sasuke, mouthing silently at his other teammate, 'what do I do?' Sasuke shrugged in return, hands and arms out, just as confused.
"I'm sorry, Naruto," she said quietly, hugging a little tighter. Naruto raised his arms and gave her a small pat, high on the back, his other hand hovering, unsure what to do in the madness that had become his world. "I'm sorry I hit you all the time," she said. "Sorry I was so mean to you, sorry... sorry I deserved that... so sorry..."
Some laws of the universe are unbending, and the Law of Narrative Causality is one of them. Thus it was that Kakashi chose that moment to walk in the door, to find Sakura clinging to Naruto, covered in filth, and with no clones in sight. Tazuna was with him, and with all the tact of an old man in love with trouble loudly shouted out, "Wow, so they're a couple now!"
Naruto flinched. Sasuke flinched. Kakashi flinched.
Sakura let out a snore, out like a light.
And all was right with the world.
"Promise, Kakashi-sensei, she told the clones to release right there in front of me. All ten were there."
Kakashi looked at Sakura, who, after some difficulty and more than one amusing moment watching Naruto try to find a safe place to put his hand to support her weight, was now in bed, still covered in filth and leaves. She looked tired, drawn out... but she was also smiling in her sleep.
"And she didn't attack them, in any of your memories?"
Naruto shook his head. "She yelled a lot at first. Especially when I..." His mind froze in reflexive terror, refusing to permit himself to speak of the dreadful snap of elastic. Kakashi raised a worldly eyebrow to new heights, and Naruto backed up, arms crossed. "No way. Don't even tell me what you're thinking, because whatever it is, so much nope." He turned away from the dreadful eyebrow. "Anyway, she spent most of the day crying, really. I think that was right after one of my clones pointed out that she earned it."
Kakashi sighed. "You never indicated what you meant when you said that, did you?"
"Huh?"
"She thinks you did it because of how she treated you in the past, not because of Inari."
Naruto looked down at her sleeping form, at her wrecked hair and ruined cloths and red rimmed eyes. "Not even if she did earn it," he said quietly to himself, and Kakashi nodded, satisfied.
"I'll clear that up with her in the morning," said the jonin, waving Naruto out of the room. When they had both stepped out, Kakashi closing the door silently behind them. "We'd best let her sleep," he said quietly, leading his genin down the hall. "Now that we have that sorted, we need to talk about your clones..."
EDIT: Thanks to Pom Rania, who has now gone over this chapter in an effort to finally stamp out the early installment weirdness *GLUG*
Author's Notes: I suspect most of the readers might know, but for those who do not, Yamato Nadeshiko is essentially the traditional ideal of Japanese womanhood, with an emphasis on the appearance of weakness outside of one's family while having the strength to carry on in spite of the challenges of life. Essentially, Kakashi is commenting in how Sakura is trying to act demure and in a respectable manner in the face of her certain punishment for stepping out of line, and considering how she normally acts, he is mentally calling bull-feces on the act.
Oh... about the Whaet Fleaks. In watching the show, I follow the assumption that food in Naruto's world follows largely non-western food trends. Here, at a trade port, cheap cereal might be the best thing to be had, the experience of new food is often amusing to write, and frankly, I'm a terrible, terrible person who loves dumb jokes. If even one of you groaned to yourself when you verbalized the mangled food name, I consider my duty done. That's Naruto for you. Sometimes, the jokes are terrible.