Sakura woke to Ibiki.
The boy was crying, sobbing, begging—
Covered in blood—
"This is a genjutsu," Sakura said. "And not a very good one."
The scene shifted.
A man—the creepiest man Sakura had ever seen—grinned at her.
"Genjutsu."
The scene shifted.
Sakura flexed her hands, but something had definitely been done to her chakra—not a hint of control.
Shit.
"Genjutsu," Sakura said to the image of Orochimaru, of him approaching her with his favored scalpel.
Really, all this did was make her feel like her medical records really were kept more secret than she'd expected—all the attempts so far were the obvious ones.
The genjutsu, as far as she could tell, ended.
She was blindfolded.
"Hello?" She said.
No one answered.
She was grabbed, shoved against the wall, made to kneel, position her hands over her head—a stress position. Ren had taught her this one, said it was a favored technique pre-interrogation.
Sakura settled in for the long haul.
.
Ibiki bounced happily as he and Aunt Akina reached Konoha's borders. "Sailing was fun! I hope we can do it again!"
Aunt Akina laughed. "Doubt your guardians will agree; you look like a tomato!"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Nothing, I suppose. Oh! There's Juro!"
"Uncle Juro! Uncle Juro! Guess what! There was this, this miniature sailboat, and it was small enough for one person to do everything, and I only capsized four times!"
"That's great!" Juro said. "You're sunburned; come here."
"Oh, that feels better."
Juro cut a glance to Akina, but Ibiki couldn't bring himself to care—she'd tried to get him to wear sunblock, mostly, but there was always something more interesting to do. Anyway, Juro's medical chakra had just healed the burn right up, so it wasn't that big a deal. "Where's Aunt Sakura?"
"She's still in the second round, kiddo."
"Still? The third round's in two days!"
Juro shrugged. "The second round takes as long as it takes, nothing you or I can do about that."
Ibiki frowned.
"I do have some good news though. Akina, you'll like this too—there's another one of your relatives who's come to visit."
.
Sakura stretched her arms above her head, cracking her neck as she did.
She was smiling.
Fujio, who had been the one to officially tell her she'd passed—he'd been helping test someone else who'd failed and asked for the honor, snorted. "You know basically every single Yamanaka passes the second round?"
"Still, it's over with. And—what, two days to prepare?"
"Eh, thirty hours, give or take."
"Good enough. Home?"
"Yeah—there's a surprise for you there."
"Oh? Did Ibiki and Akina get back from their sailing trip?"
"I mean, maybe. Not the surprise I was referring to, though."
"Oh?"
The Yamanaka Compound was busy when they arrived. Midsummer was always busy—the start and end of the school year, the various exams, the surprisingly high number of children born around that time (Sakura blamed the current trend for autumnal weddings)—so it wasn't too much of a surprise to all but feel the high spirits of her relatives.
It was only as she approached her home and heard the distinctive laugh of her father that she broke into a run.
"Tou-san!"
"Sakura!"
Sakura's father had actually been able to visit more frequently in recent years, but usually for only a few hours at a time. The last time he'd visited—just before Orochimaru's escape—was the first time Kamui's son had seemed to recognize him, and now the boy sat cuddled in his grandfather's lap.
Sakura's mother may have, later in life, begun to find the number of her children overwhelming, but Tou-san only spoke more eagerly of his upcoming retirement and the greater time he'd be able to spend with his kids and grandkids as the years passed.
Of course, kaa-san had also done much of the hard labor of raising them, and Sakura had never had so much as an inkling that the woman was less than thrilled with her life circumstances, so she'd never been able to resent her mother as so many of her siblings had.
The important part, or at least the part of her father's visit that had caught Sakura's attention, was that he was here today. It seemed incredibly unlikely that his boss had given him today off but not tomorrow, so he'd actually be watching her Jounin Exam!
…Actually, now that Sakura thought of that, it wasn't necessarily a good thing.
"Did you pass?" Ibiki asked, at the same time that Kamui interjected—
"What do you want for dinner?"
"Dad's staying for the entire weekend! Can you believe it?" Sayuri—she must also have organized her free time for the Exam—added.
"I'm glad to see you're doing better." Dad said.
"Thanks, tou-san. I did pass, and whatever's good with me, so long as I don't have to cook it."
Fujio snickered—he was an equally reluctant cook.
After a few minutes everyone was finally around the dining table, already stacked high with food (Kamui had apparently only asked perfunctorily; the meal was already cooked)—fourteen of them today, and every one louder than the last—and Sayuri was explaining something about her summons to Ibiki while Ren commiserated with Fujio over the latter's latest relationship drama (Fujio was still convinced he was going to find his perfect match, and Sakura was still convinced that such a thing didn't exist) and Yumi tried to get Kaede to eat his dumplings (the toddler had recently decided that he didn't like eating food he couldn't see) and Sakura chatted with Rento over a breakthrough in his one-way transparent seal progress and Juro advised Yoriko on how to deal with a recent and unusually bad bout of acne and Akina and Kamui argued about cooking techniques for fish and Tou-san asked Ikue about how her painting hobby was going and—
Sakura had always liked the noise of the family.
She barely even considered the hundreds of ways things could go very wrong in less than twenty-nine hours.
And anyway, it was good, to have her family here.
.
Because the chief purpose of the third round was to display battle skill, spectators were restricted to those who were on the shinobi career path (and, of course, loyal to Konoha.)
There were many people that met this definition.
Sakura took a breath from her position in a locker room under the stadium, trying to steady her nerves once more and ignore the mass of chakra signatures above her.
Sarutobi Koduka, Sakura's first opponent, sat on the bench opposite her.
Frontline fighter.
Lightning expert, which Sakura just had to believe was intentional.
Second try at the jounin exam, first time making it past round one—he'd needed some time to mature.
Really wanted to be a jounin instructor.
Had a lot of chakra to throw around.
Pluses and minuses, but Sakura wasn't particularly concerned about round one.
It was the next two that were the issue.
You only got to know your first opponent ahead of time, and regardless of how well you did the following two were (theoretically) randomized out of all the applicants.
You had to compete three times, fight three times, regardless of how bad or good you did in any particular battle.
Did you trounce somebody? Great. Do it two more times.
Did you lose? Fine. Just make it clear that was a fluke.
The room was sealed to sound—no need to give competitors an advantage against earlier fighters by hearing some of their technique—so Sakura and Sarutobi only knew it was time to go when the little green light at the top of the door flickered on.
"Good luck."
"Good luck."
.
Yamanaka Kenta sat bracketed by the three of his grandchildren who were allowed to spectate alongside him. His children—those that had the time and clearance level to watch—sat all around them, passing flavored shaved ice between them as the latest of the jounin matches wound to a close (the Uchiha/Hyuuga battle had been close. Too close, actually; both had utterly exhausted themselves, and would no doubt perform worse in the two matches to follow.)
Kenta stretched his neck, allowing Ibiki to lean over to grab Rento's offered lemon-flavored ice as he did.
He loved his family, his grandchildren.
It would be some years yet until he was able to retire—he was only fifty-three—but he deeply hoped that when he had served Konoha enough, he'd be able to spend his remaining time with his family.
He'd always wanted a big family.
His parents hadn't been much for it—had only had three children, each five years after the last—and Kenta had yearned for the easy camaraderie that the siblings around him showed no matter how many times they argued and fought.
But when his uncle had suggested infiltration to him at age nine, told him he had the charisma and nerves to pull it off, Kenta hadn't once considered the downsides.
Not until it was too late.
He could have, he supposed, asked to transfer at several points in his career.
He'd considered it, when he and Kaoru had begun dating and he'd been, in his oldest brother's words, acting like a smitten lovesick fool.
Kaoru hadn't seen the point, however, told him she treasured their time together all the more because of his absences, and he'd believed her.
Of course, she had been telling the truth.
The problem had really only come with the children.
Throughout most of the twenty or so years that they had children, Kenta had been able to regularly visit every few months. While a child hadn't come after every visit—particularly when Kaoru was already pregnant—they had kept on coming.
First Ren.
Two years later Sayuri, two years later Aoi, one year later Kaede, one year later Kamui, two years later the twins Akina and Arato, two years later Ayame, two years later Fujio, one year later Kohana, one year later Sakura, two years later Himari.
At the time he hadn't seen any reason to question the status quo. Kaoru had said (had believed) that she'd wanted a large family too, like her own, and she'd never complained, never taken any of the birth control options that were available.
So Kenta had kept happily along, stopping by as frequently as possible and memorizing everything he could about his children every time, so that when he became homesick he could close his eyes and picture them exactly.
But Kaoru had been there, had been raising the children, had been working on her career.
They were both Jounin, after all, both very capable.
And there was the rest of the Yamanaka to help too.
(They had helped, Kaoru told him. And so had the older kids. It hadn't solved the problem.)
Kenta had never questioned the status quo, but he should have.
His wife had fallen in love with him when he was gone more than he was there, had been more than content in that sort of loving relationship.
And then the household had grown, and grown, and grown, and no one had left, and Kaoru had loved them, did love them—so she'd buried her feelings of being overwhelmed, being burnt out, told herself she was imagining things.
Told him nothing.
He should have asked.
If he had, he might have been able to transfer, might have been able to take a perfectly acceptable pay cut to switch to some sort of in-city career, allow her to be the one on long-term missions.
He hadn't asked.
The war—her taking off—the lack of initial worry, because it was a war, because everyone was reassigned—the letters, heartfelt but increasingly rare—the end of the war—the increasing clarity that Kaoru did not intend to move back, did not intend to live with her children again…
It had destroyed his wife's relationship with her kids. The tendrils were still there—enough for her to be invited to weddings, enough for her to receive yearly update letters—but—
And Kenta knew that she wanted more than that.
Knew because they'd never broken contact, because he'd spent the past years dividing his time between his wife and kids because they were in different places, in different mindsets.
He'd tried to encourage Kaoru to give rebuilding the relationship another shot, tried to assure her it was possible when she'd broken down and admitted that she missed them, that she didn't believe they'd ever see her the same way again—
She hadn't listened.
She still didn't, still couldn't see.
It wasn't a pleasant recollection, and not one he should be thinking about sitting her now, anyway, with his children and grandchildren around him and his third youngest daughter about to start her first battle.
He could see Juro across from them, sitting with several of Sakura's friends from school—Kenta recognized Aburame Bokuso, but not the man's Aburmae wife, and Utatane Aiko alongside her husband Yasuo as well as a few other familiar Yamanaka faces.
They were standing in the front row already, though spectators were only allowed to jump in the fields for celebrations after the third battles.
The mass of people already congregated, however—already at least five deep—was the reason Kenta had chosen to sit so much further up, alongside his second-youngest grandson Ibiki; the boy could very easily be crushed, and none of the other family cared much about getting close enough to feel the blood splatter.
Sayuri—his eldest daughter—leaned over his shoulder, trading her berry ice for Fujio's flower ice, and the gong sounded to announce the arena was clear.
Sakura and her opponent, a solidly built Sarutobi, stepped out and the spectators screamed their support for one competitor or the other.
Ibiki had leapt to his feet—alongside everyone else, because a new round was starting—and then scrambled onto the bench to get an even better view, leaning over Kenta's head as he watched his adoptive mother fiddle with one of her many hidden pockets.
The competitors stood in the middle, back-to-back. The referee counted out their paces—one two three four five six—and then both stood, staring at the walls.
The gong rang.
The battle began.