Super Important AN: Due to a hilarious messup the raws of 96, 97, 98, 99, and 100 were posted. This has now been fixed, but you may have to go back and reread if you want the best experience. Though if you wanted the best experience you would be on SV so...

Regular AN: Sufficient Velocity and Space Battles are super far ahead, and the Pa tre on is on CH 129. You can find the link on my profile if you wanna just get there. You can even find side stories that aren't here!


Two hours.

It takes two hours to calm Ino down enough that she can make coherent words. It's somewhat awkward watching someone break down while she hasn't the slightest clue how to help, but since it's Ino she deals with it the best she can.

There's blubbering, an awkward amount of time brushing her hair - Ino is very peculiar about it so the hope is she'll snap at her and stop crying - and eventually Sakura abandons that entire entirely and pulls out her cooking skill instead. She makes soup, chicken and noodles and a thick creamy broth. It's what her mom used to do when she was having a very bad no good day, and while it doesn't work here, she does her best.

Ino has comforted her dozens of times, and she can return the favor for her best friend. She hasn't been a very good friend most of her life, so as out of place as she feels, she jumps at the chance to do something fo there.

When Ino does finally seem to come around, it's while resting her head in Sakura's lap. Sakura's palm is rubbing Ino's back in calming circles, and the weeping girl finds herself blinking up at Sakura with rosy cheeks and no small amount of meekness to her gaze. "You um… can we agree to forget about all that?"

"Forget about what?" Sakura asks, working in a slightly higher pressure into her hand's circling now that Ino's more awake. She gives Ino a gentle smile she's pretty sure she couldn't have managed two months ago. It's nice, but it's nicer to see Ino bury her face away from view without doing so to try and hide tears.

Sakura's used to overwhelming anxiety and blistering embarrassment, it's a massive improvement she's glad to see, when compared to catatonia. "Do you want to tell me what this was?"

"I thought you just said we could forget." Ino points out in a grumbly mumble directly into Sakura's leg..

"Well yeah, the events but the reasoning is probably pretty important." Sakura argues gently, prodding her cheek with a finger, "what's wrong?"

"You think I kidnapped you and now you hate me." Ino mumbles.

"Isn't that something I'm supposed to cry about?" Sakura asks.

"You said you'd forget!"


"So the official paperwork that was supposed to be sent to me was this." Sakura says, sitting in the Hokage's office with a nice cup of tea and several forms which detail quite a bit of information. Like several other recommendations that say what Ino said, but with more details, and even guided notes for how she should best use her time at home. For instance, Anko - someone she met during her sessions with Ino - suggested she work on baking. She's not sure why that would matter, but now she wishes she had worked on learning how to bake. "Why wasn't this sent to me?" There's even a recommendation directly from the Hokage in here, that she use the time to make friends with Chunin and learn about the exam coming up, as he very much wants her in the finals.

"It's not unheard of for the clerks to make a mistake, but in this case I think someone deliberately swapped the forms to try and create a rift between you and Miss Yamanaka." The Hokage says, lighting his pipe with a quick jutsu from his finger.

"Who would do that?" Sakura gasps, eyes widening immensely. First of all, that's a cool application of fire chakra she hadn't thought of. She doesn't smoke, she doesn't intend to smoke, and she doesn't know a whole lot of people that do smoke, but the concept of using elemental chakra to make everyday tasks easier like that is rather perspective changing. It's such a cool idea, and it fills her with inspiration. Crafting inspirations mostly. If she gets her fire chakra up she can cook and smith without the need of so many tools! She needs to grind that after the exams, it's a need now. "They'd have to be stupidly bold since you have the original forms."

"I have a pretty good idea." The Hokage grunts, looking away from her as if at a ghost. In this particular case, she's pretty sure he's looking at an Anbu. This is likely him signaling them to go check up on his hunch.

What his hunch is, well, they know but she doesn't and she's getting the intention that… "You don't intend to tell me?" She asks, furrowing her brow, twitching her nose, and falling into a pout that quickly overtakes her face. "I thought I was trusted."

"It's not that I don't think you deserve the information." He assures her quickly, using one hand to show her his palm, to stall her, signify peace, or maybe just buy himself a second to think. "I just value you, and I think you'd get yourself killed with it."

"Ah…" She has to readjust her thoughts at that. He values her? He's said stuff like that before but, being honest with her like this is trust too. So it's not that she's lowly, or useless or, maybe it is but he's not framing it that way. "Just a couple of months ago you had me interrogated. When did our standing change that much?"

"Sakura, you will know when you've been interrogated." The old man has the gall to laugh at her, "you can consider that a check-up."

"A check-up where I got kidnapped, chained to a wall, and then the diagnosis from that check-up was extended house arrest." She points out, poking the very papers he just handed her.

"That's a bit of an exaggeration, it was village arrest at worst." Hiruzen jokes with a little bit of a flippant tone, but the mood chart beside his head tells her he's feeling rather tense so the joke is most likely meant to mislead her, "it was determined that you could use the downtime. Most Ninjas go years without seeing the kind of violence you did in a very short period of time, and at your age, with the nature of the memories you made with that violence, we wanted to ensure you were safe and weren't about to do anything rash. A couple of months is nothing, you have a very long future ahead of you."

"Do anything rash?" She asks, "sir, I don't understand what you mean… Aside from the glass - which was very much with a goal - I've never harmed myself."

"There's an old phrase that's survived quite well into the modern age. I do not want to die, but I do not want to live either." He huffs his pipe, the tobacco glowing a bright red. "There is not a lot of difference between turning a kunai on yourself, and not moving out of the way of one flying towards your neck. We had reason to believe that if we continued to push you without a pause, you would reach a point where you might not move out of danger. If you recall your own mind didn't move out of the way and stabbed you. Two months to ensure you live and serve for tens of years, that's not even a trade, it's a steal. I would make that decision every time."

"But…" She doesn't have a lot to say to that. She wants to, she has so much to scream, but so little to say.

"You didn't lose those two months either. You took classes, trained your abilities, made friends, you even made allies with the Inuzuka and summoned an incarnation of their dead. You achieved more in those two months than most do in years, and that again, brings us back to one of the very reasons I signed off on making you stay in Konoha. You're experiencing an accelerated frame of time, every day is huge for you. I want you to have as many of those massive days at home as you can."

"I'm a ninja, not a kid." She points out with an indignantly pouty puff of her cheeks.

"We're not at war, Sakura, not today. If that ever does come to pass, I would like someone as strong and loyal as you to have fond memories of home to look back on. I do not need your forefront memories to be about killing vampires, going blind, or hurting yourself in your own head. I stand by the decision. You matter."

"But if you stand by it… it can happen again." She holds back a soft sniffle. "I can't… I can't accept that."

"You don't have to. Continue to take care of yourself, maintain your friendships, keep a healthy mind, and I'll never order such a thing again. Not for that reason at least. Besides, once you hit Jonin you're allowed to go crazy, so if it worries you that much you just have to advance. Your sensei once did multiple years of consecutive suicide missions for fun."

"You mean because he didn't want to live." Sakura points out.

"You're paying attention! Good." He claps for her. "Go home, make-up with miss Yamanka, and let me take care of this security breach for now. Someone has hell to pay."

He's such a nice old man.

He does scare the absolute fucking shit out of her though.


"So, I wanna play a prank on the boss." Konohamaru approaches her during one of her rare times at the dinner table where she's not there explicitly for eating food. Admittedly it has gotten less rare as of late. Sometimes she just likes to hang around, especially with her house being as crowded as it is on the regular now. She doesn't actually talk to anyone, but she feels like being around so many people is probably grinding her charm and why not grind charm while reading a book?

She's very quickly learned that while the exp requirements for increasing a stat do go up with each level, the actual ease with which you grind a stat also goes up as the stat does. She can do a lot more exercise now than she could when she started, so she's getting a lot more experience a lot faster, so her actual effort to reward ratios aren't actually completely separated. It's like how in most games stronger enemies give greater experience but the experience to next level increases too. The higher costs are largely there just to stop you from grinding to max level on low difficulty enemies. Challenge is reward, and while that challenge is framed differently as you get stronger, and it normally doesn't perfectly even out…

Well, there's just no way she could have done this with her starting charm, and she's warming up to people being around her. She's pretty sure she'll always be more comfortable in her room, in the dark, curled up with a book or a handheld or something, but this isn't so bad either.

In fact… "That's stupid." The girl at the other end of the table doesn't bother her at all. "Why would you prank him? I thought he was your friend." Hanabi has become somewhat of a fixture in her life. She's under the impression this might be forced. If the Hyuga want her favor that much, and Neji screwed it up enough in their opinion that they sent him to her house with expedited shipping - or slapping as the case may be - then why not send the spare heir to hang around her? The worst she can do is teach her uncultured things, and she's sure they have classes to fix that. There's no way the Hyuga don't have training to be as stuck up as they are.

"Because pranks are fun! The boss loves pranks!" Konohamaru fist pumps in the air, and Sakura can't help but nod along.

"So what were you thinking and how can I help?" Sakura asks.

"I was thinking we'd make a fake rock and follow him around." The boy explains, "and you seem smart, I figured maybe you could help me with the rock."

"... Yes." Time to learn carpentry or stone working or craftsmanship or something! Crafting time, crafting time, everybody gather for crafting time! She's already doing a Haruno wiggle, she can feel it without looking down. The mortified stares the kids are giving her only further confirm it.