Sakura Haruno The Gaming Addict, and Her Gamified Life - WitchAtTheEndOfTime (2024)

Chapter 1: The Start of an Adventure, now if only she was awake for it.

Chapter Text

Meeting Kakashi on the roof is nerve wracking for her. Sasuke by her side, Naruto even further away from her. The half oval steel beams floating above, holding up a sign right above the trees. Kakashi stands leaning against the railing, not a care in the world. It’s odd, he’s so arrogant, she can already tell, and yet she finds his obvious experience alluring. He’ll make a great teacher, she’s sure of it, if a lazy one.

Her analytical mind spins a million times a minute, trying to figure out why he couldn’t talk to them in the room when they were the only ones left. Why was he late? Why seat them so far away from him, and why did they listen without question? A commanding aura, perhaps a high ranking even among jounin? Did they truly get someone special, or is it all a really well held together facade that’s about to come crashing down like a cascade of novelty. Their time has been wasted, but maybe that was a test on its own. Did they fail by pranking him, or did they succeed by being clever? He had to have let the chalk eraser hit him, but why?

She rests in her own little world, pondering endlessly and contemplating what his statistics must look like if they were put on a status screen.

Yes, a status screen. Sakura Haruno, top kunoichi of her class, official leader of the Sasuke fanclub and academic genius, spends her nights tirelessly playing games. Not even necessarily good games, mostly old RPGs her parents used to gush about when she was little. The odd action adventure, maybe the odd dating sim if she’s feeling especially romantic any given day.

Fawning over the boy by her side - a total dark and brooding anti-hero with a tragic past -, being aggressive towards her blonde aggressor, even fighting with Ino, growing out her hair, buying the odd perfume; it’s all to hide where her time and money really go. Everything is to hide that she has an obsessive gaming addiction that’s eating up her life, her sanity, and her ability to function in society.

Fangirl is one thing, but if they really knew what a loser she was… The loser she is.
Laughter would be the last of her worries.
Wait, why is Kakashi looking at her?

“Oh, is it my turn?” She asks, jumping in place, her big green eyes wide in surprise. Her cheeks glow a little red, and her palms land on her bare knees. “I’m Sakura Haruno.” She begins, looking between them all to make sure they didn’t realize she wasn’t paying any attention at all. “What I like… I mean, who I like is…” Her eyes move between Naruto and Sasuke, clarity coming back. Right, Sasuke, it’s Sasuke!

She likes Sasuke, definitely not whatever gaming hero is in her head on a given day, the broody prick that’s given her about as much attention as he has mastering that awkwardly pensive pose. Okay, that’s unfair, Sasuke has depth and an ocean of emotion hidden under that cold exterior, and she does appreciate it quite a bit. Buuuut, if she managed to snag him he’d find out she’s a gaming obsessed insomniac so fast his rejection would make her head spin so fast her neck snapped.
“And, my hobby is, I mean, I run the Sasuke fanclub.”

“That’s you!?” Sasuke finally looks at her with something other than disdain, that’s progress! Disgust is progress! “What the hell! You all stole my toothpaste yesterday!”

“In my defense, your toothpaste cost more than my conditioner.” She quips quickly.
“Errp-” Realizing she just admitted it, and flushing harder than any tomato ever has.

The boy sighs, looking away from her. “At least you can steal.”

That actually wasn’t her, but they did report it to her, and well it tastes a bit like ice cream. Who buys toothpaste that tastes like ice cream? Spoiled rich kids with too many problems deep inside to count, that’s who… She kinda wants to know where he got it.

“My future dream is-” She takes a deep breath, so she can get a nice screech in there. It’s really convincing, she’s sure of it, that look of pure disappointment Kakashi is giving her could not be fake. Even with that mask she can see actual sweat dripping down the side of his face.

She’s a useless fangirl, she definitely doesn’t spend her entire night grinding mats and leveling up, only to crawl out of bed unsure when she got there each morning and force herself to school. That’d be a very odd thing for her to do, and she’s very normal. She likes boys, she likes Sasuke, and she gets tons of sleep!

“My first thought…” Kakashi begins. “Is that you’re lying.”
He really does stare her down.

“Errr…”

“I’m just not sure about what.”
At least there’s that.

She doesn’t even bother listening to Sasuke’s intro, she knows everything there is to know about him. Maintaining this cover has been a full time job for years now.
Now if only her grinding had actual real world applications…

Sakura Haruno
HP: 72
Chakra : 24
Strength: 27
Constitution: 24
Dexterity: 25
Agility: 27
Mental: 93
Control : 200
Charm: 6

A lot of information appears before her very suddenly. She rubs her eyes to make sure she didn’t pass out sitting down again, before parsing it while Sasuke talks. Not her problem, this is.

A lot of that info is as insulting as it is accurate, but it raises a few questions.
If her charm is six, does that mean everyone knows she’s lying and not just the awkwardly perceptive Kakashi? Are they just too polite to mention it?

Why is her Chakra identical to her Constitution? Shouldn’t it be some equation based on her mental and constitution, what with spiritual and physical energies?
No… It’s a mixture of the two, which means when she runs out of physical energy there’s nothing left to mix and she has no chakra.

She needs to do push ups, to do jutsu.
Why is her control so high, is that even a high number or are all her other numbers just really low?

More importantly, if Chakra works on an exact value, why does Naruto have so much of it when his mental score has to be abysmal? Yes, she’s noticed. She’d have to be blind to miss him actively failing basic jutsu from too much energy.

His stamina is commendable, and his physical scores are great, but he’s dumber than a bag of bricks trying to do calculus while flipped upside down. Perhaps these stats don’t work this way for everyone else?

Or perhaps she’s an idiot, and she forgot to sleep last night while binging a new MMO, and is now hallucinating while all three members of her team wave their hands in front of her face trying to get her attention. “I’m awake!” She shrieks, falling back and waving her own hands in defense.

“... Right.” Their teacher says, standing over her with one foot bent on the bench and the other awkwardly back. “Did she really pass?”

“Yep.” Sasuke nods quickly, quietly, boredly.

“You betcha! She’s the smartest!” Naruto praises her, and she actively has to suppress the power overwhelming level timidness trying to out her across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Scarlett is a beautiful color, and also the screen name of a trans Olympic Esports champion; it is not the color she wants her cheeks to be while her team stares down at her.

“Well, we meet at five in the morning.” Kakashi says, disappearing in an actual puff of smoke.
Leaving her to look at her two teammates in surprise.

“What’d I miss?” She asks, and they actually do look at her like she ate the whole stupid tree bark and all.

“Sakuraaaaa!” Naruto whines quite loudly. It’s enough to make her wince.
It’s less that a headache started, and more like she woke up with it and Naruto can’t help but prod it with a stick. She really should've slept last night…

<---Witch--->

She has a day to prepare before this test or whatever, Naruto described it very loudly and her head was throbbing so she might have missed some of it.

She’ll be sure to get a good night's sleep tonight so she doesn’t screw up whatever that test is. Today was embarrassing, and she’s a ninja now. She’ll fall behind on her grinding but, sacrifices must be made for her future. Besides, her mom was super clear, if she fails to become a Genin her computer will get taken away and she needs that or she’ll die. She can lose some grinding to be able to grind at all.

Now she just has to figure out what to do with her day besides sleep, so she can be productive, prepared, and then sleep. Doing that in the wrong order could be a problem…

“Skills.” She mumbles to herself.

Academy Taijutsu Style
Studying
Gaming
Clone Technique
Transformation Technique
Body Replacement Technique
Lying Badly

That’s not a good list. Especially that last one.

“Traits.”

No Life Gamer
Chronically Underslept
Sasuke Trivia Expert
Unnaturally Good Chakra Control
Cram Study Master
Double Life
Disappointment

“Okay.” She nods to herself.
“I can live with that. That’s mostly positive.”

She can probably work off Chronically Underslept by, you know, sleeping…
That last one’s a bit of a sore blow for no damn reason but that just means when she becomes a genin people will be all the more shocked and believe in her!

She just has to figure out what to do with today, so that she can become a Genin tomorrow.
Fuuuuck, she needs a nap…

<--->

One nap later, she wakes up in a tree. Why nap in a tree? Because comfortable sleep would steal her entire day, and she isn’t prepared for tomorrow.

“Status.” She grumbles, and finds the same information from earlier appearing in front of her. “So it’s not a hallucination… Or if it is, it’s persistent.” A part of her wonders if someone’s messing with her. A genjutsu to screw with her head would be pretty effective all things considered. That being said, who would do that to her?

No one she can think of. Ino would be capable, maybe, but Ino’s not malicious enough to try to make her think she’s crazy. Kakashi? He wouldn’t have singled her out, that’d be pointless.
Her parents might come up with something to try and steer her away from games now that she’s graduated, but doing it right now would just sabotage her and they do want her to succeed.

“No, this is real.” She decides, rubbing her eyes and taking a stand here in the trees. This is the training round Naruto said they’d be at tomorrow morning, so now that she’s napped, she decides to scout it out and see if she can come up with any plans. Her stats say her mental is her only real strength. Well, control, but that’s useless to her with so little chakra.

She doesn’t have to understand how the numbers work to know that her constitution is low. If her constitution is low, and her chakra is linked to it, then her chakra is low and weak.
Actually, she can make a pretty good estimate of how the stats work right now.

She gets a stick and starts drawing them out on the ground.
Maybe in a few months she’d forget, but right now is perfect. Excluding the clan kids and their frankly absurd advantages, she can pretty easily compare herself to other academy students that passed. She’s on the higher end of strength for them, most of them being from civilian families or disadvantaged in some way. She’s about the same speed as most of them with her hand movements, but faster than them in raw speed. She has a little less stamina, but not much.

With that math, an average academy graduate probably has about twenty five in any given stat. Well, no one is truly average, but as a base.

That makes her pretty much where she’s supposed to be everywhere but mental, control, and charm. Work ethic actually wasn’t that important in the academy. You either passed or you didn’t, so by passing she had to be average, it makes sense.

Charm is probably her ability to convince people of what she’s saying, or maybe her likability? Probably not, people like her, she thinks… but then what if they’re just putting up with her? It’s not like she puts effort into other people. It’s something to think about. If statistics like charm have passive effects, she might be lowering her team’s capabilities by not being very friendly. Top that off with being paired with two freaking monsters in their own right, and this might be a terrible situation.

Control is taught in the academy, it’s the concept of being efficient with jutsu and applications of chakra. Being efficient also means being effective, and such a high and overblown number gives her a lot of perspective on what she could be doing. She did think it was weird how easily she learned the academy three. Even Sasuke had to try, but she just kind of did it.

Mental is probably not directly intelligence. While she had perfect grades, she frequently made very poor decisions. She didn’t even sleep last night, and off the cuff decided to sleep in the damn trees. She lacks foresight, but has great in the moment decision making, so perhaps it’s about off the cuff moment to moment thought processing?

This is too much thought all at once. She grumbles, wishing for some caffeine or maybe a longer nap. She kicks the dirt to hide what she drew, lest someone connect what she did to a game system. It doesn’t take a gamer to detect gamer habits. She’s put a lot of effort in over the years to evade detection. Now, looking at her charm, she wonders if anyone believed her in the first place or if people just kind of stared and moved on when she made an excuse?

Does she come off crazy?
She contemplates her skills while wandering around the training field in hopes of finding a good place to lay a trap or plan an ambush for tomorrow.

The Academy Taijutsu Style has zero chance of passing any advanced test of capabilities. She’s not especially strong, fast, skilled, or tough, and it’s only meant to provide a basic ground to work from. It covers every area a little so that you can find matters you’re proficient in, and you always have a move that could theoretically reply to the one sent to you.

Against a jounin, it’s an automatic loss.

Studying is useful if it applies to stuff like this field, which it appears to. She can’t tell if it’s mental skills or studying itself, but she very quickly grasps the lay of the land and understands intuitively exactly where they should position themselves tomorrow if they get trapped or cornered. The exact terms of the test were not given, but she can make an educated guess that Kakashi will likely try to pummel them. Why? Because he’s a smart ass, and pummeling them would be funny. She knows the type, she’s gotten into enough arguments with them in various guilds and raids.

Gaming isn’t useful here unless he’s about to challenge them to a team fight in CoD or something. Perhaps some RTS knowledge could be useful while knowing the grounds, but without having any clue about their enemy’s statistics or her teammate’s statistics, no real strategy can be made. The best she can come up with is having a Naruto kite while Sasuke uses range and she oversees and directs them.

Actually, that’s a good idea. She has a few headsets, she’s sure they have something which can receive her voice without Kakashi hearing it. She’ll get that ready, maybe meet them early tomorrow and get them familiar with the devices. It’d give her away a little bit, but they’re gonna find out. They’re her team. She’d rather be the useful loser than the idiot who decided not to be useful who is also a loser.

Clone technique isn’t useful against a Jounin. He’ll see right through it. Even if he can’t literally do so, the moment they move he’ll know better. It’d be better if he knew some of their skills, but aside from maybe cloning a Kunai or trying to copy one of Sasuke’s fire jutsu so Kakashi dodges something he doesn’t have to, there’s really not a lot there… She will probably do that. She’s got amazing control, she can probably clone it after seeing it once. This is important, because having him do it before the training would waste his chakra, and every resource is invaluable.

Transformation isn’t useful right out, nor is Body replacement. While she could probably pretend to be Sasuke when she uses the clone technique, he’ll catch on if there’s two of them and that might kill the gambit before it starts. Body replacement means getting hit, and she doesn’t trust her twenty seven agility to keep her alive if Kakashi actually tries to hurt her.

Lying badly… Actually.
She might have a plan.

<---Witch--->

Standing in a full out clearing, headset on, Sasuke’s voice whispering into her ear while Naruto sets traps with a surprising skill she didn’t know he had, well, she can’t help but smirk when Kakashi arrives in front of her. “Not even going to try and run or hide, Sakura?”

“Nope.” She lies, grinning like a loon. “I won’t play your game, you’re playing mine.”

“You know, I’ve played a few games myself over the years.” He stands with his hands in his pockets, not even a care in the world. “You’re communicating with headsets, that’s fairly basic although those are very bulky.”

“It’s more comfortable for long sessions.” She admits freely. “I imagine this is going to be long.”

“Really?” He asks, taking one step forward-

“I would totally do that if I were you, absolutely undefended.” Sakura lies through her teeth. “Not a single plan.”

“... Sakura, after I send you back to the academy I’m recommending they give you a trainer for deception.” He scowls, taking a step back.

“Nothing that way either, nope.”

“...” He looks around.

“Not there, or there, or there.”

“You’ve booby trapped the entire area.” He realizes. “Dangerous?”

“Noooooo, why would I want to hurt you Sensei?” She asks, reaching down and collecting a bit of dirt in her palms. “Hehe, let’s be real Kakashi-sensei, you’ll see through anything I do.”

“...” He decides to stare for a moment, see where she’s going with this, or maybe analyze to see where her weaknesses are. If nothing else, he’ll assume the dirt means something. Making him overthink is her only real shot here.

“Which is why I’m not doing anything.”

“Wha-” It’s at that moment that the ground erupts from all around. He tries to move, and finds he cannot, his body won’t let him, even as he’s grabbed by a hundred blonds and dragged to the ground. They hang off of him, holding him in place above a massive pit. It’s so simple, with his arms grabbed, and his legs grabbed, and his entire body suspended above a field of thousands of blonds in all directions, for a simple kunai to fly by and snag the bells, bringing them to Sakura’s hands.

“As a Jounin, you would instinctively recognise what was and wasn’t stable ground without even thinking about it. Subconscious skills are great, they keep you safe, they work so well that they become automatic. I can’t even imagine how powerful you must be, or how above us you are.” Sakura cites. “But if you don’t consciously recognize it, you wouldn’t catch up to why you landed on that exact spot, or why I’m standing here without moving.”

She spins the bells in her fingers happily. “You’d land exactly where I wanted you to, because the entire field was a trap.”

“What if I had landed on you?” He asks.

“What’s a game without a little risk?” She can’t help the cackle that leaves her lips.

“You missed one small problem with that plan.” Kakashi explains.

“Oh?”

“You’re still a genin.” He winks, one eye smiling brightly at her after a moment. “This isn’t just a trap for me, you’re also stuck on that spot.” He points out the fifty foot chasm all around her. “It’s a trap for both of us.”

“Well yeah, but I’m useless.” Sakura says, spinning in place and hucking the bells as far away as possible. “As long as none of us attack you, you can’t use replacement. We’re both stuck here, while Sasuke keeps the bell.”

“And when I get out of this?” Kakashi asks.

“Winning was never an option.” She shakes her head, telling the truth for once. “You were either going to cheat for us by not trying very hard, like a miniboss version of a later challenge, or you were going to give us an impossible fight we were supposed to lose. This is your time to reveal that, Kakashi Sensei. Was the game rigged from the start?”

“Yes.”

“Wha-oof!” Her vision goes black as a foot places itself directly in her nose.

<---Witch--->

“It’s broken.” Sakura groans, lying in a puddle of her own blood surrounded by Narutos

“We won though.” Sasuke says from a little to the side, “good work, Sakura.”

“Thank you.” Another her might have just died.
She really just wants a nap. She stayed up all night planning that!
It’s way too easy for her to forget to sleep. “If he was gonna let us win, why’d he break my nose?”

“Pissed him off.” Sasuke shrugs. “Woulda pissed me off.”

“Yeah…” She agrees. “Naruto, good work.”
The overly excitable boy does exactly what she expected, and hops. Not just him either, a hundred clones hop. It actually shakes the ground.

“Carry me to the hospital?” She asks Naruto, and finds he’s a very useful pack mule.

Chapter 2: Heavy Emotions are Felt, and Sakura is given an elite solo mission: Sleep

Chapter Text

“I have failed every single student that has taken the bell test under me.” Kakashi admits while staring them down. The moon is high in the sky, the hospital trip taking an awkwardly large amount of their day. They tried to blame Naruto until she explained it was Kakashi that did it, at which point they stopped asking questions entirely. It turns out Kakashi could just go around decking students and everyone would assume he had a good reason and ignore it. To have that kind of respect from even random hospital staff is so absurd it boggled her mind.

“Then it's not meant to be passed?” Naruto asks, raising a hand as if he’d been called on. “It’s a trick question or something?”

“It is.” Kakashi is very honest as he glares at Sakura, before looking back at Naruto. “The bell test is a trick question, to pass you have to put your teammates above yourself even in a situation where you should be doomed by doing so. It’s designed to pin you against each-other, then require self sacrifice. Sakura had no idea this was the case, and just decided she didn’t really need to pass anyway.”

“I figured either it was rigged in our favor and you were lying, or Sasuke was who Copy Cat Kakashi wanted.” Sakura shrugs. Her nose feels great now, thanks for asking. “In either situation, Sasuke’s the fastest and most agile of the three of us. Having him run away while we stopped you just made sense.”

“Right.” Kakashi actually has to visibly resist palming his forehead, he can already tell this team is going to test his patience. “That doesn’t explain why Sasuke got both bells, and Naruto didn’t grab one.”

“I forgot.” Naruto admits.

“... I hate you.” Kakashi looks up into the sky. “I hate you both. Sasuke’s been brutally traumatized since a young age, left with no adult supervision with more money than god, and told he can do anything, and he’s the only one I like.”

“That really says more about you than me.” Sakura quips.
“Oww!”

And finds that yes, Kakashi can just deck her without moving from a rather significant distance. How? Who knows, hopefully she’ll learn it someday. She rubs her nose and admires the work the staff put in to make sure it wouldn’t have cosmetic damage.

“With that settled, Team seven has officially passed the bell test. You will be reporting to this training ground every morning at exactly seven sharp.”

“So we get here at nine.” Sakura nods- “Ow, f*ck!”

“Seven sharp.” Kakashi says sharply. “I will not be here. You will be physically training until around eleven, when we’ll take a D rank mission and get you familiar with mission structures and the way ninja are paid. If I find out any of you were not here on time, and training, I will hit you.”

“Because that’d be so dif-f*ck, why!”

“Sakura, maybe you should be quiet.” Naruto tries to help.

“No sh*t, Naruto, I couldn’t have guessed that!” Sakura groans from her place in the dirt.

Naruto flinches away, and pouts rather heavily, causing her to instantly regret her words. Why couldn’t Kakashi have hit her before she said that? She'll find a way to apologize once her head doesn’t throb.

<---Witch--->

Bell test complete, she can’t help but ask her parents.

“Hey…” She asks, spinning her fork at dinner. It’s not much, but she’s actively trying to find new ways to train her dexterity. She wasn’t given a level up system, so her stats have to level up based on training. Her Mental and Control are incredibly high, which means they’ll be difficult to raise. This means that the main focus, at least for now, should be constitution so that being hit won’t hurt so much, dexterity as it’ll help her deflect hits, agility as it’ll help her avoid hits. and charm as it’ll stop her from getting hit in the first place. “Is it normal to get hit by your jounin sensei? A lot?”

“Nope.” Her mother pretty instantly responds, but despite her response, she doesn’t look very concerned. “Most students don’t get sensei, they’re thrown right into the genin program and given temporary chunin sponsors who take a cut of their mission pay for teaching them a thing or two every other week.”

“Okay.. But like, say you did get a jounin sensei. How normal is it to get hit?” Sakura stresses. “This feels like child abuse.”

“Sakura, you’re not a child anymore, it’s regular abuse.” Her father explains, softly, gently. He’s always understood her feelings, so it’s a little weird to have her correct her like that. “And I imagine it’s fairly common to get physical with your trainees if there’s something direct you need to teach them.”

She’s not satisfied with her parents telling her it’s okay. They never hit her. She took plenty of hits growing up, the academy is filled with them. Spars are very physical, and you can’t even train substitution without someone willing to deck you. Most people find being your training partner pretty fun, and in retrospect the amount of people who really wanted to punch her should have probably tipped her off that she wasn’t very charming. Most people got a few yesses, people lined up to help her train. She just thought they were being helpful…

But her parents?
Never.

“I guess you’re right.” She sighs, “I just don’t get what he’s trying to teach me, and it hurts. I was excited this morning and now, tomorrow is scary.” She allows her gaze to soften, to show them her fears.

It’s a little nerve wracking, seeing no sympathy.
“You should ask.” Her father says, tempering his breaths carefully. “You should definitely ask why one of the most talented ninjas of all time is doing something you find odd. You should ask all the time, every day, every minute. If you find the man is breathing oddly, you should ask. This is a man who can probably teach you more about breathing, than I can the entire ninja field.”

“So I should just shrug it off?” Sakura asks, visibly a little uneasy with that idea. “That sounds like enabling.”

“No, you should ask.” Her father stresses. “Kakashi Hatake is one of the most talented ninja of all time. There is nothing he does without a reason, because if randomness was in his skillset, he’d have died by now.”

“I… Yeah.” Sakura finishes her food, unsatisfied with both her parents and the hospital just accepting this. Even if Kakashi isn’t doing anything wrong, even if she is learning some lesson, even if he’s being a great teacher and she’s just missing it because she has a charm of six which implies a massive social deficit which’d include social understandings and comprehension of social situations.

It still means ninja like Kakashi could totally just get away with doing it unprompted just to be a dick, and everyone would blame her. It makes her stomach flop. She always knew that jounin were valuable, but that’s, well, her worldview is expanding rapidly.

It’s not a good feeling.

<---Witch--->
She couldn’t sleep.
Seven O-clock sharp - maybe add on a few minutes - she’s at the wrecked training ground, watching Naruto do push ups and Sasuke practice Kata expertly without a single extra thought running through her brain.

She’d been so nervous about today, she’d stayed up all night playing the Resident Evil 4 remake. It’d uh, calmed her nerves a bit, then she’d totally forgotten to sleep.

Here she is, bags under her eyes, reality a little fuzzy, and feeling chipper.
First thing’s first.

“I’m sorry.” It’s hard for her to say.
It’s hard for her to grasp the words, and she spent a good portion of her playtime racking her brain on how to make things up to Naruto.

Standing above him while he does push-ups, a foot rubbing against her ankle, a finger twirling her hair nervously, and the thickest blush she can’t deny is the best she can do.

“For what?” Naruto asks, not even looking up at her. The sweat dripping down his brow, he’s likely been at this for more than the few minutes she was late. She really hopes Kakashi doesn’t find out about that, her heart is already pumping thinking about it. At least it helps her stay awake.

“For um, yelling at you yesterday. I’m really sorry, you were just trying to help and…” She can’t continue, she doesn’t have it in her.

For willing up the courage to try and make amends, and recognizing your social f*ck up, Charm has increased to 7.

Well that’s nice.” She can’t help the smile that works its way onto her face for that.

“It’s okay.” He says, his usual chipper smile has a crack in it, and she hates that she can see it.
Because it’s not a new crack, his smile has always looked that way.
It only took a charm of 7 to see it.

She was socially disabled. What’s everyone else’s excuse?
“No, it’s not.” She shakes her head quite forcefully. “I mean it, I’m sorry. I’ll try to be more considerate next time.”

“You think you’re gonna yell at me while laying in the dirt after Kakashi used a jutsu to punch you from a distance, again?” He asks.

“No-well yes, maybe?” She grits her teeth, why is this so hard?! “I more mean, the next time you make me angry, I’ll be less… mean.”

“You mean you’ll stop hitting me?” He asks.
And that makes her crack a little inside.
Could that be it? Has Kakashi watched them interact before?
Has he seen one of the many times she’s rejected him quite brutally? Could this be… No, that’s paranoia, she’s doing something to piss him off.

Naruto has never taken serious injury from her, he’s a stamina monster and she’s not even a genin in strength. It’s not like it really hurts him, is it?
She can’t take that risk.

“Never again.” She swears.

“What if-”

“Never.” She kicks the dirt, sternly. “Except for spars, I imagine Kakashi would get really mad at me if I refused to hit you in a spar.”

“So does that mean we can do that date?” He asks.

“No, Naruto, it does not.” Unlike Kakashi, she does facepalm, hard.
Hitting herself is better than hitting him, she decides.
<---Witch--->

When Kakashi arrives, she’s exhausted. Hours of working alongside Naruto have brought her to her limit multiple times. Luckily, as a ninja, those limits are high and her stamina regeneration is fast.

Unluckily, that means she has pretty much emptied her tank for the day when Kakashi shows up, and she feels like an idiot.

On the bright side, her constitution managed to jump to 25 already.
It seems training her stats is a lot easier now. Sure she’s never taken it this seriously before, but she’s also never progressed a solid twenty fourth in one of her abilities in one day before. At least, she’s pretty sure she hasn’t.

It’s with wobbly feet and a tired mind that she wanders over to him the moment he arrives.
He doesn’t even get to greet them before she’s bombarding him with her question, egged on by her father. At least, that’s what she tries to do.

In reality, from everyone else’s perspective, she gets up from a crunch.
Walks over to their sensei at a dead trudge, wobbling and staggering back and forth.
And then immediately collapses into his arms without saying a word. “Snnrrrgg-chest hard.”

“... Is she okay?” Kakashi asks, while her mind whirls and she takes solace in a place to rest her face that’s not the hard ground after a failure to complete the next set of whatever exercise Naruto pushed her on. “Did one of you do something?”

“Nope.” Is all Sasuke has to say.

“I might have pushed her too hard.” Naruto admits sheepishly. “It was fun, I got carried away.”

“Ah…” Kakashi looks down at the pinkette firmly passed out in his grip, shakes her a little, and then hands her off to a Naruto clone that spawns out of thin air. Naruto’s instinctive with those things, it’s scary. “You carry her while we go get our mission. We’ll be doing this hundreds of times, so it’s not like it really matters if she catches it this one time.”

“No problem!” Naruto seems very happy to get to carry his crush.
Sakura dreams of shooting ganados in the damn face with the red-9.

<---Witch--->

“Bang, bang, suck it loser! Double kill!”
It’s with those words that Sakura’s eyes snap open to find she’s staring directly into the raised eyebrows of the third Hokage. “Uhhhh-”

“Moving on.” Kakashi says, cutting her off. He can just do that.
Everyone in the room actually moves on. She’s never seen the third defer to anyone before, but he really does choose not to question her.

“As Team seven destroyed the training ground during their genin test, and that is official village property, we have two options.” The Hokage continues from wherever he was before, holding up a scroll. “This is the D-rank mission to repair your training ground. You can take it unpaid, or you can pay for someone else to take it. It matters very little to me, just that it gets done.”

Naruto really looks uncomfortable with that, Sakura can tell that much, which means everyone in a wide radius can. He says nothing, apparently even he understands that there can only be one crazy outburst within one Hokage statement before it’s a crime.

“It was my idea, Hokage-sama.” Sakura speaks up. “They should get to take a real mission while I clean it up.”

“No.” Kakashi bonks her! He actually smacks her in front of the damned Hokage. At least this time is incredibly light, it feels more like a rub than a smack. “Bad Sakura.”

While she is trying to figure out what the hell that was for, they accept their mission directly from the Hokage - apparently he likes to do all of the first few missions for teams, makes him feel youthful - and leave as quickly as possible.

<---Witch--->

“Kakashi.” She grumbles, rubbing her eyes.

“Yes, Sakura?” Kakashi asks right back, not a care in the world.

“Why are you carrying me?” She asks, looking down at her body in his arms. It’s a little awkward, really awkward actually. She’d really rather he not!

“Because when you tried to walk out of the Hokage’s office you fell on your face.” He explains patiently.

“Yeah, I got that, I mean, why are you carrying me? Why not Naruto or Sasuke?” At least he’s skilled enough that he’s sturdy, and she can close her eyes without being jostled around.

“Would you rather they do it?” He asks.

“No…” And that’s that.
She really can’t continue that train much longer.
So, she asks a different question. “Why do you keep hitting me?”

“...” He answers back easily.

It’s not the answer she expected.
Doesn’t really make her feel better.
When it becomes obvious he doesn’t intend to actually explain, she opens her mouth-
And he actually starts. “Do you really not know?”

He has the decency to look sheepish.
He genuinely does, she views it out of a lidded gaze and can’t help but be a little flabbergasted.
“The old proverb, I do believe, is “talk sh*t, get hit,” you shouldn’t intentionally antagonize someone you can’t defend against.” He explains. “That could get you killed, especially with the kind of ninja you’ll likely be interacting with as my students. If a few smacks breaks a dangerous habit and saves your life, I’m not going to apologize. If it doesn’t break the habit, you’ll at least get very good at taking a hit and that might save your life too.”

She doesn’t like that answer.
It doesn’t sit well at all.
But it is an answer, one she’ll have to take note of.

She can’t think of any time she’s been especially rude, but maybe that’s the point. She can remember getting hit. Maybe if she looks back on those times she can clue in to her mistakes and learn a lesson.

Or maybe he’s just an asshole covering for it.
He doesn’t feel like an asshole carrying her like this though. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” He asks.

“I dunno yet.” She mumbles sleepily. “I think I’m gonna fall asleep again.”

“Sakura… did you sleep last night?” It’s a striking question, one she’s very much not happy to hear. “Because I’m getting the impression you don’t sleep.”

“I’ll work on it.” She groans. “I was distracted - hey, why are we going a different way?” She eyes Sasuke and Naruto heading off to the training ground, while he goes… towards her house? “Sensei?”

“You’re officially barred from team activities until you can get your sleep under control.” He says incredibly sternly. “No training, no missions, no lectures. Anything I could possibly teach you will be worthless if you’re half dead all the time.”

“But, the mission…”

“Naruto and his hundred clones dug the hole, they can undig the hole.” Kakashi quips. “You’re going to bed. You’ll report to the training ground when you’re fresh and awake, or you won’t at all.”

It’s not the move she expected from a dude she spent all night terrified of.
It’s not exactly great either. Missing out on the first D rank mission means she’ll be behind.
What if this takes more than a few days and she ends up really behind?
What if she ends up left behind entirely?
She finds herself tearing up at the thought.

“I’m not abandoning you, Sakura.” His voice cuts through her half delirious thoughts.
“I just can’t teach you if you’re so tired you don’t even realize you’re being a liability.”

It’s not a line she likes, but it makes sense.
That seems to be the theme of her life at the moment.

Chapter 3: The World while Awake, and a Prophesy is Foretold.

Chapter Text

A week passes in relative silence.
Gaming during the day, trying to sleep during the night. It’s difficult, incredibly difficult, and despite his orders not to train she does it anyway.

Strength has increased to 31, for reaching Genin Strength, you have unlocked the “Genin Strength” trait.

Genin Strength: You officially no longer tire from medium encumbrance, and when testing your strength against anyone below genin strength, you just win without a contest. Your state does not matter, winning is set to 1 and losing is set to 0.

Dexterity has increased to 29
Agility has increased to 29
Constitution has increased to 26
Charm has increased to 8

She exercises a good part of her day away in between gaming breaks, and takes special effort to exercise before bed so she can collapse into it exhausted and empty.

She learns to juggle.
She learns she can sprint around her city block, and no one questions a ninja running around.
She even intentionally runs into a few walls mid-sprint, for constitution and asks her father to help her spar so she doesn’t fall completely behind her teammates. That was emotionally difficult, she’d never been hit by her father before and even in an intentional setting it felt really bad. He didn’t seem to like it either, but she can’t just fall behind.
She can’t be abandoned.

Charm was harder.
“I bet you’re talking like that because things are really hard right now, want to talk about it?”
She had to actually talk to sh*ttalkers instead of telling them she did their mom last night.
“Are you okay? I know things are hard, but I’m a person too. I understand you.”

Yes, she got these lines online instead of coming up with them herself, so they were worth less experience but… It helped. Charm 8 and she already feels like she understands what she did wrong a little better. She still thinks Kakashi was overboard, but she was antagonizing him. Nine? Just because she knew he wouldn’t be there at seven didn’t mean she wasn’t intentionally calling him out without an explanation. She challenged him, and he responded with a jutsu.

That’s what ninjas do. That’s what they’re taught to do. Ninjas aren’t like civilians, when you don’t have the tools to socially do something you have an alternate option, punch them in the face.
She still doesn’t like it, and she definitely can’t wait until the day she can deck him back, but that day isn’t today.

It takes a week, but…

Chronically Underslept Trait, Lost. Debuffs on all statistical applications removed.

She wakes up on day seven to that message. It’s a good message. She’s not sure how strong the debuffs were, but she’s happy to know they’re gone. Her actual statistics haven’t changed, so it must have been invisible.

And also this one.

Sleeping Skill Gained
At base proficiency, the Sleeping Skill increases the ease of getting to sleep, and shrinks the amount of sleep needed for a restore. You now awaken from a full rest with a reset state, meaning injuries, and debuffs, are removed upon waking no matter how severe.
HP and Chakra are set to max upon a reset.

A reset is accrued after a full 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep at this moment.

That's huge.
That one skill is so strong she spends over twenty minutes staring at it.
It doesn’t say she grows limbs back, but it might as well say that. Chakra is set to max, really?

They’re taught in the academy that your chakra pool is the effort of about three days of a slowly trickling force working its way into a pool. Unless you completely empty the pool like a dummy and accrue a debuff, you will get it all back within three days.

This means that she can use three days of chakra every day as long as she can get good sleep. This might be a real problem if she has to camp out behind enemy lines and has to sleep with one eye open, but in her daily life that means she’s actually working on almost three times her normal capabilities.

While she’s still limited by her chakra stat as to how much she can use in any one instance, her daily stamina overall just went up to incredible degrees.

All she has to do is get some sleep. Now if only she wasn’t bad at that.

Genin strength is cool too, but auto-winning a situation in which she already won doesn’t feel like a huge win. No longer tiring from medium encumbrance is huge, but she doesn’t carry equipment at the moment so until she has the money to get equipment, she’s screwed.

She has missed the last seven days of missions, so she’s broke. She actually had to cancel her sub to FF14, which was painful but daddy Yoshi did say to cancel it when you need to, that it’s not a job and it’s okay.

It’s time to take drastic measures. Further drastic measures, pausing her sub hurt her soul.

<---Witch--->
“Fanclub, I call you all here today, because I need money.” She hasn’t used her status as leader in a while, and she can already tell they’re thinking of replacing her. Being Sasuke’s teammate is bad enough, the entire club relies on them having equal odds or it falls apart; being gone for over a week without so much as sending a text?

Scandalous.

They’re all here, including Ino, that’s helpful. Ino doesn’t normally come to meetings, she’s more an honorary member than an actual member. She finds their methods too severe, too creepy, and has said she all around despises whoever stole Sasuke’s underwear that one time.

Sakura kinda agrees, actually, this facade has gone on too long.
But dropping it before she can dismantle it from the inside would be irresponsible, so she’s gotta take this opportunity to do that.

Sasuke deserves better than her just dropping it and letting some crazy run the club. She’s managed to keep things largely safe, and contained. Largely, sometimes things get out of hand and while she’ll accept that’s partially her responsibility, she can’t actually control every crazy girl twenty four hours a day so she doesn’t feel too bad.

Ino looks really worried about her, but that changes very quickly when she actually looks at her face. Something about looking at her right now reassures Ino, and she suspects it’s the lack of bags under her eyes.

Has Ino been that worried about her?
Has everyone been that worried about her?

“And because we’re becoming adults, and some of us already are… I know some of you failed to become genin, but I believe in your persistence, your capabilities, and your perseverance.”
Drafting up this simple speech took hours, which is more shameful than she’d like to admit.

But her parents are very against her and this club so asking them wasn’t an option.

“I’d like to gather the funds to throw one last party, and then disband the club. We can’t have harassing a person be a huge part of our identities as adults, and Sasuke has shown zero interest in any of us. Ever.”

“That’s not true, he looked at me that one time!” One girl shouts.

“He was looking in your general direction, Nemi.” Sakura has to hold back the snark, make it sound pleasant. It’s so hard. “Sasuke is anti-social, he’s not interested in any of us. I think he’s into mature women? Maybe we try again in a more, calm, collected manner in a few years.” She suggests. “But for now, let’s throw a party, and move on with our lives.” Sakura feels really proud of herself.

Until the throwing starts.
<---Witch--->

“That was really mature of you.” Ino praises her, patting her shoulder while Sakura checks over the new shuriken cuts on her face with a mirror. They’ll disappear tonight, she doesn’t really care that much. It’ll also be proof that she’s not hallucinating. She’ll finally have real, tangible proof that her abilities are real.

“Didn’t work.” Sakura points out.

“Sometimes it’s the effort that counts.” Ino shakes her head, leaning against her and dabbing one of her wounds with a cloth. It feels nice to be cared for.

By being removed from the Sasuke Fanclub, and being honest about your gaming with your team - at least kinda - you’ve officially lost the Double Life trait.
It has been replaced by Undercover Novice.

Undercover Novice: You receive bonuses to skill checks related to maintaining your cover when pretending to be part of an organization.

“I thought you were great.” Ino continues. Sadly Ino’s praise does not remove disappointment, but maybe enough of it from enough people will. “That organization has done terrible things to someone we care about, and trying to dismantle it was the right thing to do.”

“I, don’t even like Sasuke.” Sakura admits, looking into Ino’s cute eyes. They always struck her as so pretty, and the girl has the kindest smile. She looks so proud of her, it’s rejuvenating.

“I know.” Ino says. “Me neither.”

“Wha-”

“We were kids.” Ino actually giggles, shaking her head in amusem*nt. “He’s kind of a dick. Like, a cute, very noble, broody dick, but still a dick.”

“Why pretend?” Sakura asks.

“Same as you.” Ino says.

“To hide something?”

“Mmhmm.”

Sakura doesn’t ask what, she doesn’t feel like she has that right.
“So are we friends again?”

“We never weren’t.” The hug from her bestie does warm her heart.
She hasn’t been this awake while talking to Ino in actual years. It’s so nice to actually feel the breeze, and feel her warmth.

“Thank you.” Sakura sighs happily.
Like a great weight has flown away.

“Now about you needing money…” Ino trails. “What are you doing with all your money? It’s not drugs is it?”

“I haven’t been able to do missions.” Sakura admits. “Kakashi gave me a private mission: learn to sleep. No missions means no pay.”

“...” Ino stares at her.

“What?”

“Sakura, you’re aware we get a salary for being Genin students under a sensei, right?” Ino asks. “It’s to stop students from starving if their sensei decides to postpone missions for a couple weeks.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Sakura instinctively salivates at the idea of money in her FF14 account, err, her pocket!

“Did you sleep through the Hokage’s briefing on it?” Ino laughs.

“Yes.”
Sakura hasn’t been reflexively slapped by Ino in a while.
It feels nice.
<---Witch--->
It’s a lot of money.
Like, far more than D ranks pay. She has two paychecks to cash at once because they got a paycheck on day one and it’s been a week. It’s so much money, she’s never held even remotely this much cash in her hands before.

It’s supposed to be used for living expenses, equipment, rations for extended travel, supplies, and to ensure their sensei cannot put them into a situation in which they can’t survive. Apparently Jonin used to do stuff like that, which means there are failsafes to prevent extreme sensei abuse.

Visiting a local blacksmith and a few other ninja shops - to be professional and responsible - nets her a traveling pack, an armored mesh undershirt, a freaking sword because swords are cool, and enough kunai to kill a hundred Naruto clones. She also now has a chain mesh netting on her legs, which draws a few eyes to them. It’s nice to be appreciated for being professional… She hopes that’s the case anyway. Freaking maybe perverts…

She doesn’t have the money to put in a special order to make the sword look like any famous blades from her favorite games, but to be fair she doesn’t actually know how to use a sword right now so getting all decked out in cool loot would just be a waste of money anyway. For now, the sword will hang by her side and on her wall until she can convince Kakashi to teach her how to use it.

Who knows, maybe he’ll tell her she’s an idiot and make her return it. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s called her out in recent times. Well, recently this week, he’s done it zero… It’s thinking about her team wistfully when she remembers something. Looking down at her paycheck, she can’t help but think about how uncomfortable Naruto looked at doing a mission unpaid. For her, it was whatever. One day of pay means nothing to her.

Sasuke’s rich, so it means nothing to him either.
But to Naruto, it looked like he was told to eat glass.

“I should go check on him.”
<---Witch--->
Finding out where her teammate lives was surprisingly easy. She had to formally tell Kakashi she’d be there at training tomorrow anyway, so asking him about Naruto was just a simple extra line. The man stared at her sword with a questioning gaze, but decided not to ask about it.

Standing in front of Naruto’s home, she’s actually pretty surprised. It’s okay.
She kinda figured he’d have painted it orange or something, but maybe his parents are very strict about the home life.

Knocking on the door, she’s met with a grouchy Naruto.
“I said I’d have it when I get my next stipend you-Sakura?”
His eyes light up from pissed to happy and practically glowing the moment he sees her.
She’s never seen him with that kind of face.
Looking behind him, she sees clothes stacked all over the place, dirty dishes, it looks like he hasn’t dusted in actual years…

“Naruto…” Sakura begins.
“Why is your home this dirty?”

“Well, um, I uh-”

“No, Naruto.” She places a hand on his shoulder, and spins him around to look at what she can see from the damn doorway. She can already smell mildew, and she’s sure there’s mold out of sight. “Why.”

“Well I don’t really know how to clean.” He admits.

“... Why not?”
<---Witch--->
It turns out Naruto’s an orphan in an overpriced home he moved to because he was annoying his neighbors with his boisterous attitude and loud training at all hours of the night and he was evicted.

She lives in a six bedroom house her parents purchased when young and in love because her parents genuinely thought they would have five kids, and then only had her.

It’s not a hard math equation.

“Mom, Naruto’s moving in.”

Announcing this at dinner may have been a bad idea.
Their faces are mixed, to say the least.

“Okay, let me rephrase that.” She takes a deep breath.
“Naruto lacks basic life skills, lives beyond his means, has no parents, is my teammate, and we have enough extra rooms to move my entire team in. What is the correct answer?”

“Ah…” Her mother takes a sip of her drink. A very long sip, super long.

“Honey, moving a boy in suddenly is uh…” Her father tries. “You have no idea why this is a problem, do you?”

“Nope.” She admits.

“...” Her parents share a look.
A very lengthy look.

Woo, matter settled! She praises herself for a job well done.
No rebuttal means she wins!
<---Witch--->

She’s not exactly sure what his neighbors complained about. Naruto is actually very quiet in his room, and sticks to himself. Maybe he learned the lesson but too late at his old place? Or, maybe he’s just older and smarter now.

That is before the whole family gets together and teaches him how to do laundry, how to clean his room, how to dust, and many other essential important factors he needs training on.

It was difficult at first, but once she explained it’s like training but for his life instead of his fists, he got really behind it. Watching him bond with her mother over small things like how to clean was really heartwarming.

Watching him create a hundred clones and suddenly clean their house to such a degree that the three of them can only stare in awe is a very different experience.
Phenomenal, might be a good word.

“Sakura.” Her mother says suddenly. “Naruto’s moving in.”

“I know.” Sakura nods slowly. “He already did.”

“Can he move in again?” Her father asks.

“Probably, he’s got clones…” Sakura trails, watching as their kitchen goes from normal to sparkling in seconds, and a roving band of house cleaners passionately turns the environment into something out of a fantasy novel. “He could make so much money as a cleaning service.”

“The world will be cleaner.” Sakura’s mother agrees. “We have made the world cleaner on this day.”

“Let the prophecy be fulfilled.” Her father croaks.

“So it has been foreseen, so it shall be.” Sakura finishes.
“Holy sh*t.”

Chapter 4: Her first D-Rank mission, and Discoveries are Made

Chapter Text

She’s practically vibrating when she arrives at the training ground at seven, it’s the fateful Monday where she’ll prove she really is wide eyed and bushy tailed and nothing can stop her. Which is odd, because before this gaming system she never woke up before noon without feeling like hell frozen over. The cuts on her face from kunai disappeared without medical treatment, which finally proved exactly what she suspected.

She’s probably not crazy. There’s always the possibility that the cuts are still there and she somehow hallucinated their disappearance, and no one’s reacting to open bleeding wounds…

But that’s absurd, and the most logical scenario is that she has gaming based super powers. It’s just what makes sense. She’ll be doing a mission today, so she spent a good portion of yesterday deep diving back into Streets of Rogue. As a mission based, objective based rogue-lite with a focus on hardcore consequences and fast reaction times in chaos, she figures the refresher’ll help in their hardcore missions. She also needed to remember how to get away from crazy nonsense in an emergency, because uh…

Naruto Uzumaki

Threat Level: Flee On Sight Order, Grade 2

She wishes she could say learning a new scan trait was a cause for celebration. Even if it's just “Scan Trainee” and all she can tell is someone’s full name and threat level, it’s an incredible proof of concept and that’s awesome?

But uh, Her parents were considered medium, the chunin she passed on the way here were dangerous, and Kakashi who is here early to make sure she’s okay and ready is uh…

Kakashi Hatake

Threat Level: Incredibly Dangerous

Remarkably less concerning than Naruto’s.
What the actual f*ck is with her new roommie that whatever’s up with the world finds Naruto scarier than Kakashi?

It gets weirder, she visited the library on the way here. The only other Flee On Sight Order issued by the ninja villages was a Grade 1, as in the only person to ever be more terrifying than Naruto by law, was the Fourth Hokage.

Her genin teammate is only considered marginally less soul destroyingly, quake in your boots, piss yourself and pray for death terrifying; than the most dangerous man to have ever lived.

Minato Namikaze once killed three hundred men in one fight then announced his warm up was done.

Minato Namikaze single handedly turned the tides of a war by being so scary the enemy just didn’t fight battles he was at.

Entire armies sh*t themselves and fled important strategic objectives at the mere sight of blonde hair and a strange kunai. The entire Yamanaka clan did better in the war because people were too nervous at the sight of them and their hair to think straight, giving them a strategic edge for the first twenty seconds of every engagement.

Minato Namikaze killed the f*cking Kyuubi. She’s not entirely sure the man died, it’s a popular myth in the academy that he’s just taking a nap because once you step that far outside the realm of human being you don’t sleep in the same timestream as everyone else.

And as far as her new powers are concerned, she should treat them as basically the same person.

Death itself lives a room down from her, and a room away from where her parents sleep.

So no, she’s not happy about Scan Trainee. It’s either lying to her or almost everything she knows about the world is a lie.

Naruto’s nice though, so surely that’s not important.

Eheh… Heh…

f*ck.

“Sakura, sword.” Kakashi points at her hip. Pulling her away from the other two while they got to work did make her cheeks a little puffy with indignation. It singles her out, and makes her look like a slacker. She wanted to get right to working out with Naruto, and showing that she’s gotten stronger.

Still, him taking notice of her new equipment is nice. “I thought I should get serious, and I figured, your bingo book entry mentions you used a sword so maybe you could teach me a few tricks?” Her smile is bright, her nose twitches, and she’s pretty sure he sees right through her. She thinks swords are cool. He’s totally going to tell her it’s not a toy and make her return it.

She’s waiting. Any moment now, anyyyy moment.

“I could.” He agrees.

She finds herself startled enough to blink a few times, before taking a step back, then taking it forward again. “Really?”

“Kenjutsu is not to be taken lightly, so I’ll need you to return that piece of scrap metal after today, but yes.” He says, eying the piece at his side with his one good eye. “I have dozens of much higher quality blades lying around, and I’d rather you practice with a wooden sword anyway. It’ll allow you to train with your teammates without worrying about holding back.”

“Don’t I need to learn the weight and stuff?” She asks.

“Yes, but as a ninja, learning to follow through is actually significantly more important than technique. Most of our fights are not resolved with a swift strike or a good parry, they’re decided in a moment of distraction. Catching your opponent off guard is how you should always be fighting, it’s your intent from moment one and you should never let it stop being your intent.”

“All that to say…” She trails, scratching her cheek a little.
She gets it, and it makes sense, but that doesn’t explain why she can’t use a sword to train, which sucks, because swords are really freaking cool and swinging them in the wind was half of the point.

“If you train against your teammates with an actual sword, you’ll learn to stop your strikes before they’re hurt. That means you’ll die.” He manages to say that without sounding too sarcastic.

He is quite blunt though. She appreciates it. “Like, die, die. No respawning.”

She does idly wonder if she can respond-”Ow!”

“Reality is not a game.” He scolds her, holding a wooden sword he got from who knows where. She didn’t see it, but that’s kind of cool. “You’ll train with an actual sword for kata and technique, you’ll use a wooden sword for sparring. Now, you’re going to repeat these next six movements for the next three hours straight. Watch closely.”

He takes a step back.
Takes hold of the hilt with both hands. Raises the sword, swings down until right around her thighs - a strike meant to bisect her but not go any further and waste movement -, he then spins on his heel and holds the blade up to block something that isn’t there, before spinning around and slashing from left to right, before spinning the blade just enough to change its direction, and using his grip to completely switch directions for a slash just as damn fast as the first.

He jumps forward a little, pretends to clash with another blade, then throws a textbook kick meant to hit someone’s hand, before following up with a full on slash from top right to bottom left.

“Am I supposed to take special meaning from any of that?” Sakura asks. “That looked cool and all but a little strange.”

“No, none of that is important.” He says sternly, looking directly into her eyes.

“Then why, um, Sensei?” She gulps.

“They are marginally complicated movements that would be useful to know how to do, set up so that you can tell how to flow between one and another. I don’t care if you memorize those, or if you decide to go read a kenjutsu book and learn a bunch of basic techniques. What I do care about is that you can flow between a set of movements that are comprehensive and on the fly.”

“I appreciate the importance, but why learn that before actual technique?” She asks.

“Because I don’t have ten thousand hours with you, so I need to make sure you can actually learn Kenjutsu before I start. If you lack the flexibility to flow between a set of six movements interchangeably, every single thing I teach you is a waste of both our time. We’d both be better off just teaching you ninjutsu.” He pats her shoulder. “Now get to work, I have a date with my dead friends.”

His single eye makes a smile at her, before he poofs away like fainted pokemon porting back to its ball. There’s even a red light, making Sakura vaguely suspicious for a second.

Luckily having slept recently gives her the clarity of mind to recognize that no, Kakashi is probably not the Hokage’s favorite pokemon.

Well, time to get training and prove she can waste her time efficiently.

It was not a waste.

First, Dexterity rose to 30, that’s nice.

Skill Learned: Kenjutsu Basic

You officially know the basics of Kenjutsu. The weapon flows in your hand in a way it didn’t before, you no longer suffer as many negatives in combat for the awkwardness of a weapon you don’t understand, and you do half damage to yourself in the event of a sword accident. You are no longer more dangerous to yourself than the enemy with a sword.

Just the half damage to herself is incredible, but a few practice swings show that she just probably learned a few hundred hours of training in a few hours. She’s still bad at this, but there’s no way in hell that’s natural. Thinking about that led her to the discovery that she has traits she isn’t aware of.

Trait Discovered: Chunin Mental

Learn skills below Chunin level at 10x the speed. (Does not apply to Traits or Stats)

That’s bullsh*t, she feels like a cheater.
She doesn’t like cheating, but she can’t get rid of the ability so there’s not much she can do.

Trait Discovered: Jonin Control

Perfect Control of Chakra Techniques below Jonin, once learned to at least Medium proficiency.

That’s probably worse.

But it’s actually a pretty good time, now that she knows how to investigate skills and traits, to look into the skills and traits she doesn’t have a description for and figure them out.
Laying in the grass, sweating a river. She’s not pretty right now, but she at least needs to catch her breath before Kakashi shows up so he doesn’t send her home before her first mission.

Skills:

Academy Taijutsu Style: You are significantly proficient in the Academy Taijutsu Style. The groundwork has been completed for you to learn other, still low complication, Taijutsu Styles much faster.

Studying: You possess a great capability to amass knowledge on a specific topic you are in search of. You know where to look, what’s relevant, and understand a multitude of different study techniques.

Gaming: You are highly proficient in gaming, and improve significantly quicker than most at any game you put your mind to. You’re naturally more skilled than most, and are successful at most gaming avenues. You couldn’t go pro, but you could probably make a decent streaming career if this whole ninja thing doesn’t work out.

Clone Technique: You are highly proficient in the E rank jutsu, Clones Technique. You do not currently possess the chakra capacity to evolve this technique.

Transformation Technique: You are highly proficient in the E rank jutsu, Transformation Technique. You do not currently possess the chakra capacity to evolve this technique.

Body Replacement Technique: You are highly proficient in the E rank jutsu, Body Replacement Technique. You do not currently possess the chakra capacity to evolve this technique.

Lying Badly: You are really bad at lying.

Traits:

No Life Gamer: You put all of your efforts into gaming and you’re still only a few steps above a filthy casual. You’re who people on the internet joke about, and the worst part is they’re not totally wrong.

[Negative], [Can Be Worked Off by either Getting a Life or Becoming a Professional Gamer]

Sasuke Trivia Expert: You know everything you think there is to know about Sasuke. His style, his interests, his mannerisms, you even know what his toothpaste tastes like. But have you actually had a conversation with the boy? You should.

[Neutral] [Can be Worked Off by either ignoring Sasuke for too long, or Upgraded by getting Sasuke’s Trust to Friend]

Unnaturally Good Chakra Control: You’re a freak of nature and no one is sure why. You have Jonin level chakra control as a Genin, and it’s not because of hard work.

[Positive], [Can be Upgraded through Hard Work]

Cram Study Master: Nothing says passing like shotgunning an energy drink and studying everything you need in the last thirty minutes before a test. You have shown an incredible proficiency to cram knowledge down your throat like a breakfast burrito, and gain big bonuses to last minute information gains. Events must be significant for this trait to take effect.

[Positive]

Disappointment: A significant portion of the people in your life find you are not living up anywhere near to your potential. You’re not impressive, you don’t stand out, and you need a shower.

[Negative] [Can be worked off through reputation gains and basic skills learnt]

Now she’s pretty sure she takes enough showers, but Disappointment still really hurts. Quite a few of her traits do. It’s not where she wants to be in life, and it feels like before today she didn’t even have the option to know what a screw up she is.

“That’s probably the point.” She jokes, while stabbing the air above her. “Hehe, point.”

Well, it’s eleven and Kakashi isn’t here yet so, time to go talk to Sasuke. Maybe her skill is right, maybe she does need to be friendly to people.

“Heya Sasuke, how’s the training going?” She asks the boy who’s currently doing some sort of exercise she doesn’t know the name of. His legs are hanging over a branch on a tree at around his knees, and he’s pulling himself up with his waist alone. At least, that’s what it looks like. There could be chakra involved in some crazy way.

She’s never seen him sweat before, but there’s so much. It makes his shirt a little see through, and she has to look away with a blush. He of course sees that blush, which means she’s already off to a great start.

“Same as yours, why?” He asks. Which is actually more acknowledgement than he gave her the entirety of the academy. “I can’t help but notice your rabid pseudo-clan has gotten worse in the past day.”

She winces instinctively at that. “I tried to disband the club.” She admits. “They didn’t like that.”

“Too bad they didn’t hurt you.” He says aloofly.

“I’m sorry, what?” She blinks right up at his moving form. Forget the shirt, he’s an asshole. Always remember Sakura, he is an asshole.

Naruto is death incarnate but Sasuke’s a dick.

“Well, if they hurt you, we could both press charges.” He explains. “You’re a ninja, and the moment they’re a violent organization, they’re a violent organization that’s targeting both of us.”

“Harassment isn’t enough?” She asks, very suddenly wishing her powers weren’t real, if only for a moment. If she said they did attack her, evidence would be requested. She’s pretty sure Ino’s testimony would be enough, but then there’s the question of where the damage went. She didn’t go to the hospital, and her parents don’t know medical jutsu, so…

“No, you can’t actually harass a public figure in the same way you can a civilian. I’m the last Uchiha and a ninja, and you’re a ninja, so we’re both public figures. Violence is prohibited no matter what though, at least aside from training purposes.”

“Ah.” She stares a little slack jawed. “So you don’t want me hurt?”

“Why would I?” He asks, continuing what looks like the hardest exercise, in the freaking world. She is not happy to see that she’ll be doing that someday. That looks like the worst thing ever.

“Ah, right. Sorry.” She turns away and starts walking.

“Sorry for what?”

“Nothing!” He’s not an asshole, apparently. Her bad.

She flows from movement to movement like a natural, the air moving for her, a little dance making her feel alive. Performing has always been something she’s loved doing, and her traits were right, streamer was actually one of her back up plans if she failed the academy.

To have Kakashi’s eyes on her while she uses her blade to perfectly portray the movements he told her to learn, in random orders that shift perfectly, is magical. If she wasn’t so exhausted she’d be pretty sure she died and went to heaven. There’s nothing in the world that could make this better.

“She learned really fast.” Sasuke praises her to Kakashi. “It’s all gibberish, but she learned it.”

“It reminds me of some of your clanmates.” Kakashi says. “I had to show her once and now it’s rote.”

“That’ll be me one day.” Sasuke points out.

“But not today.” Kakashi pats him on the back, and for his credit, Sasuke nods to himself.

She genuinely managed to impress her sensei and teammate. If nothing else, it’s probably credit towards working off Disappointment. The description doesn’t say it has any real negatives to it, but she hella wants that off her sheet. It's a very sore point for her at the moment. “Today, Sakura’s the Uchiha with the magic eyes.”

“Wish I could argue.” Sasuke says simply. Admiring her in a way she really didn’t expect from him, ever. Why isn’t he being a dick?

There are two universal facts she knew before today.
Naruto can eat a lot of Ramen, like an absurd amount, like too much god damn ramen. And Sasuke’s a dick.

She’s gonna have to buy Naruto Ramen to make sure she didn’t warp dimensions in her sleep. Her poor paycheck…

Her first mission is simple. It’s also incredibly disappointing. Naruto made it sound awesome, like they were saving princesses and killing demons and conquering border territory.

As it turns out, Naruto is a much, much, much better liar than she is.

Her first mission is to pull weeds from a farmer’s potato farm. Large green roots and tops stand up to about her knees, and she’s pretty sure they’re not supposed to. She’s never seen a fresh potato plant, but she has eaten a potato, and these are huge.

These potatoes could probably end world hunger, if it was a big problem.

With chakra farming that issue kind of evaporated quite some time ago. Food bills are rather cheap, and there’s so much excess that the needy have no problems. Most farmers pay their taxes in excess food which is routed right to orphan and homeless mouths.

At least here in fire country, these potatoes are more weird than useful. The strange part is that she’s having problems finding actual weeds. “Naruto?” She asks, looking up to check with them all. Ten Narutos and not a single nod, just a lotta shakes and a pissy Sasuke. The boy looks like he’s about to use a fire jutsu and torch the whole farm, but that’d likely end up with another unpaid D rank mission to find some way to compensate the man. Possibly several, since it’s his livelihood and Konoha’s reputation would be at stake. They might end up unpaid servants for years… Or at least until Sasuke got fed up with it and dropped enough money on the man to make his roof collapse from the weight alone.

The air is warm, it always is here in fire country, but she can’t help but notice it’s a little warmer than it probably should be. “Sasuke, nooo!” She shouts.

Earning herself an odd look from eleven genin - err, two, and nine clones.

“What?” Sasuke asks. His hands are still resting by his side, and one of his brows is raised rather high. “I thought you said you were awake?”

“I am, I just, it’s hot.” Sakura admits with a flush, one that steams across her cheeks and torments the bridge of her nose like molten iron. “I thought um, fire chakra.”

“Why would there be fire-wholly crap!” Sakura for the first time in her life, witnesses Sasuke fall back and land on his tush with genuine fear in his eyes. In another setting she might clap. It’s a hilarious sight, and Sasuke’s superiority might genuinely be challenged if the now unofficial fanclub saw this. In another setting, in this one, she’s terrified.

She whips out her janky sword that Kakashi will probably scold her for using, and jumps to cut a giant potato in half. Why? Because that potato is six feet tall and just shot flame breath at her teammate.

Why?

How?

Who cares? She’s got her weapon half lodged in the monster from head to root, when her blade gets stuck, and she’s already kind of got a grasp on what Kakashi meant about her weapon. “sh*t.” She jumps up in the air and kicks off of it, holding her weapon with both hands so that it flies away with her. A hasty flip is realized mid-air, and she lands just in time to realize she managed to cut into her leg during her kick.

It barely hurts, lucky her, another injury she’ll have to explain tomorrow morning when it’s missing. At least it doesn’t seem very deep. “Naruto!” She shouts. “The potatoes are attacking, make like a thousand clones and get weeding!”

“Alrighty Sakura!”

The fact that such a simple statement is said with the deafening power of a stadium filled to the brim is good enough for her to book it towards Kakashi, at the farmer’s house. A combat roll to the side - after being sure to put her weapon away to avoid mishap - is completed just in time to avoid a fireball that scorches the land and burns the devil crops.

As it turns out, lying about what your mission entails is a crime.

It’s also incredibly common, like, the main reason genin are required to have a higher up for any mission outside the direct confines of the village, common. Her first D rank is a C rank, she really hopes that’s not indicative of a pattern or anything. A girl like her thrives off plans. Having nothing go according to them really bothers her in a way she can’t quite describe. It’s why she doesn’t play a lot of team games, others add randomness she’s just not very comfortable with.

MMOs and run and guns are one thing, but if teamwork is actually required she’s probably trying it solo despite having a team, and even then, she’s got her mic on to trash talk her bad teammates into submission.

Which is why she’s doing just that tonight, playing a nice run and gun extraction shooter while enjoying the catered experience of the bayou. The thick swamps, the horrifying abominations, the sounds tickling her ears and the distant gunshots are identifiable because every single gun in this game has its own unique sound. If she liked teammates more she’d probably be really into this game. It’s fun, it’s gritty, it’s got excellent sound design and her footsteps feel real.

As is, going solo kind of sucks. You never know when you’re going to - “gaah, damn-it!” She groans as she’s shown her death screen, nice and red and oh great she’s being burned.

Her rando probably won’t even revive her.

She grabs her energy drink while looking at just who killed her.

[Go-To-Bed-Sakura]

That’s an odd screen name.

She looks at her hand, shakes the drink a little, and decides to put the rest in the fridge for the morning.

Best not to tempt fate.

Chapter 5: Self Care, a Dramatic Spar, and the Friendly Fire Kunai

Chapter Text

“Am I pretty?” She can’t help but ask herself while looking in the mirror. Dull eyes have turned colorful and vibrant, looking right back at her like little gems. The bags under her eyes are gone, her skin has cleaned up, even her forehead looks less big with giant bags no longer such a big part of her defining features. Her skin feels better cared for and the vibrance is back and alive. Yet somehow, she can’t help but feel like the mirror is saying no. Pointing out the places where her lack of efforts have resulted in dead or dying parts. Like the mats in her hair, for instance.

“Should I start caring?” It’s an odd question. She has no one she wants to impress. Making Ino compliment her looks would probably make her feel nice, but everyone else in her life either already thinks she’s pretty or doesn’t care in the least how she looks.

She could care for herself, and it might help her mood… “That’s it, starting tomorrow, I’m gonna stop procrastinating and buy quality hair products if nothing else.” She uses her brush for the first time in months, if not years, and finds she has her work cut out for her.

It’s going to suck fixing that, but she likes her hair enough she’ll spend the hours to fix it without removing it. It’s pink!

It turns out her Dexterity was low enough, and her constitution low enough, that spending three hours gently coaxing knots out of her hair without destroying it gave her a level in each.

Her Constitution is now 27 and her Dexterity is 31.

Here’s the thing.

Genin Dexterity

You officially no longer ever fail Academy Student Dexterity Checks.

You do not have to notice the dexterity check is required to pass it.
You do not have to make an attempt, your body will automatically react should it be a check that is considered positive to succeed, or negative to fail.

You can still intentionally fail, if the intentional failure is still an Academy Student Dexterity Check

She’s a fan of that. Trying it out in her bedroom she is officially significantly better with her kunai out of nowhere, and her sword feels more natural in her hands.

On the other hand, “Oh sh*t, it’s ten.”

Jumping out her window doesn’t count as a Dexterity Check, that’s Agility. Luckily, 29 is okay for a two story drop.

“What’d I say about seven?” Kakashi asks her at the training ground. “Did you oversleep?”

“I was training my dexterity and performing self care.” Sakura explains while standing rigid. “Please do not hit me.”

“Why do you think I’m - oh right I said that didn’t I.” She can almost see a laugh, not that the mask shows much. “You know what, I am going to hit you.”

She flinches instinctively, drawing her sword to deflect or block or maybe just not get hit in the face.

“With your teammates.” Kakashi explains. “I’m going to hit you with your teammates. You’re sparring before today’s mission. Here.” She finds a wooden sword suddenly appearing in her hands.

No, that’s not accurate. It’s more like she catches it out of nowhere without even knowing it was there. “And I’ll take that.” Kakashi uses the moment and her shock to take her crappy sword from her. “I’m going to go return this, since you clearly forgot. When I return in an hour with an actual sword, you better be worn out from your teammates' punches.”

“Understood, Kakashi Sensei.” She has to resist a salute, as he takes off whistling.

The wind in her hair, her feet firmly on the ground, her wooden sword in her hands and her eyes fully focused on her raven haired teammate; Sakura is scared.

Her hands shake, her boots feel too loose, her new armored equipment feels too heavy and her tunnel vision is screaming at her internally.

He’s better than her, she knows that. She wasn’t here to set up traps, she doesn’t have a plan, and she’s entirely sure he can work around a wooden sword. She hasn’t been training jutsu or taijutsu or even kenjutsu against real people so she has no idea how this is going to work. Her breathing is uneven, her heart is beating in her ears, and Sasuke just moved like a lightning bolt. Focus, think - she hears the slight crunch of a leaf behind her, and she moves automatically into the motion Kakashi made her memorize. Spinning on her heel and putting her wooden sword up to deflect behind her. She instinctively lowers the wooden blade just enough to match a kick that sends her skidding across the grass even without losing her stance. The force makes her hands throb, echoes and vibrations hitting her core through her bones.

“Good.” Sasuke says, foot still outstretched, his dark eyes focused right on her emeralds. “You aren’t as bad as back in the academy.”

“I fear that I won’t be impressing you for long.” She huffs, trying to control her breathing and calm the shaking of her hands. She knows he sees it, why isn’t he criticizing her?

“I don’t care.” He admits, lowering his foot and palming a kunai. He spins it with the ring in his fingers, giving it his attention over her. “You’re improving. With our team goals, that’s all that matters.”

“Team goals?” She can’t help but ask, racking her brain for when the hell that came up. It’s not like she’s been here every waking moment, but she has been here some while asleep, so she should know what he’s talking about. The fact that he doesn’t makes her nose scrunch, and she can’t help but notice the eagerness to Sasuke’s figure.

He’s shaking too, but not out of fear.

Naruto shouts out for her. He’s got a dozen gender altered clones with pigtails in cheerleading outfits cheering her on. It’s cute and makes her blush, even if it’s too stupid for her to give much attention. She can feel the way the air moves around her, he’s going to move soon, and she needs to intercept it.

Now.

Her step forward and slash is just in time for him to dart towards her. Their distance was great, but he’s incredibly fast, meaning that by the time her follow through is completed he’s had to jump to the side entirely. A kunai is thrown at her side, and she deflects it without even looking at it. Her hands move on their own, the blade of her wooden sword catching the ring of the kunai as it passes. Her next move is instinctive too, she spins just enough to get a nice additional motion to the sword, and she uses that attack to send the kunai flying back at him just as he charges at her.

All around, she’s not sure how badass that looked, but she really hopes Kakashi is secretly taping this so she can check.

Thunk

“Gah-”

Thud

Her blinking at his form on the ground is only as awkward as Naruto’s cheering getting louder.

“What?” She can't help but ask, as he pushes himself off the dirt, a kunai embedded very seriously in his arm.

“That was awesome.” Also not the feedback she was expecting. “How’d you use enough force to knock me over?”

“I ate my wheaties.” She shrugs.

Just in time for him to glare at her and for the tone to shift in an instant.

He darts in and she is barely able to block one punch, block a second, and have to jump back before a kick would crush her ribs and send her out of the fight. Possibly the day. She’s pretty sure Sasuke’s not supposed to go that hard.

She’s also pretty sure she pissed him off. Was that not okay?

Talk sh*t, get hit? She thought he’d appreciate the joke!

Another kick lands right where she just was, her body only barely dodging to the side and sending her onto the ground. Rolling over is just well timed enough to get out of the way of a downwards kick that breaks the ground and kicks up dirt. “sh*t!”
Yeah she pissed him off.

She throws her sword up so she can use both her hands to push her up when she rolls over. She has to use all her strength, which sends her a little in the air, which means flipping to get her orientation correctly. She manages to catch her sword on its way down, but not in time to avoid a kick to the side of the head that sends her spinning. She tastes iron, a little copper, and far too much rage to control herself.

She’s never been hit that hard before.
Not once.
Kakashi’s definitely holding back, and that makes her more angry than it should.

She manages to stay standing after her feet touch the ground and skid, just barely, blinking bleary tears from her eyes and ignoring the sting just as his foot tries to imbed itself in her face again. She barely has time to adjust her footing, sidestepping the kick, and slam the sword into the bottom of his knee. It’s enough to hear a crack, and more than enough to stun him.

He’s better than her. That much is clear.

What he’s not, is used to taking a hit.

She’s learned to do that pretty well recently.

She takes his moment of being stunned to dart forward the small distance between his knee and his face, raising the sword, and smashing his nose with the handle of the sword.

The crunch she hears is definitely way too far for a spar, Kakashi’s gonna be pissed.

In her defense, Sasuke started it. Hot blood splashes her face and covers her arm, and she can’t help but feel really bad watching him squirm on the ground. He’s leaking like a pissy octopus, and she can’t help but look to Naruto for help.

“Sorry, Sasuke.” She finds herself slurring, her own words half gargled. She reaches up, and she’s bleeding a lot more than he is.

Her entire mouth is pouring.

“Kakashi’s gonna be pissed.” She groans. That’s a tooth. Who the f*ck kicks their teammate that hard?

“Okay, now that we’ve all received medical attention.” Kakashi glares at them with his domineering single eye, but she can’t help but smile so brightly. Her smile’ll be better tomorrow, she’s sure, she’s not looking forward to explaining how her tooth is back.

She doesn’t care that she’s got a big fang missing, she’s super giddy. “Kicked Sasuke’s ass.” She is so proud of herself.
And oddly enough.

“You did.” Sasuke is too. “Sorry about that, you surprised me.”

“I noticed.” She titters.

She was gonna spar Naruto next, but uh… Ow. She is sad she didn’t gain any skill points from that, but she can’t get something every time she swings a sword. She’s sure she gained tons of experience towards Con, Agi, and Dex though.

“Sakura, here is a real sword.” Kakashi says as he hands her something incredible.

The bright red tassel tips her off, as does the dark red scabbard. It’s a rather plain design, but it’s one she recognizes easily.She unsheathes a blade, admiring how it's practically glowing with blood red markings and glowing symbols all the way from its tip down to a little before the two handed handle. It requires her full grip, and she has to admire it with a few swings quicker than reason would dictate for such a big sword.

“Did you get me the chaos blade?” She can’t help but ask, her cheeks hotter than a summer day, the flames spreading down her neck aggressively. “This is way too much…” She gulps, it looks so professional. It’s not just custom made to fit an iconic weapon from an iconic game.

It looks master crafted, and she can feel its weight in her hand like it’s an extension of herself. It feels good, really good. Incredible. “Why do you have this?”

She knows he didn’t get it for her, she showed up with a sword yesterday and having a custom made blade of this quality would take weeks at the least. Months even?

“I have my ways.” He winks at her with his one lone eye, and for once instead of annoyance at it she can’t help but feel a little spark of worship. “Now you have it. Be careful, I hear it’s thirsty.”

“Haha, Kakashi…” She has to wipe away some tears that threaten to flow from her, for the second time today, though this time is very different. “I’ll make you proud.”

“I’m sure you will.” He reaches out, and pats her, unable to miss the way she flinches even while smiling like a loon and holding his gift. “I should lay off on the smacks, huh.” He decides quickly. “Ready for your second D rank mission?”

“You mean my first?” She jokes.

“Yes.”

“I was going to ask for a C rank mission, since you all did so well last time.” Kakashi says, while holding out their D rank document for them. “But since I can’t trust you to spar without ending up in the hospital, I don’t want to know what happens when you fight bandits.”

Sakura wishes that wasn’t fair.Unfortunately as she’s learned a lot recently, reality doesn’t work that way. “I defended myself.” Sakura huffs, unable to look Kakashi in the eyes as she spouts some bullsh*t.

“I got a little carried away.” She really doesn’t like Sasuke being so agreeable.
Really scares her. “But she definitely broke my nose on purpose.”

“I mean, yeah but…” Her cherry cheeks are not helpful to her level of portrayed confidence.

“So a D rank mission, so we can train in some teamwork and basic respect.” Kakashi says. “It is only your second day as an actual team, it’s understandable.”

It’s not. They f*cked up, bad, and Kakashi is being really nice. She mopes in being in the wrong, and reads their mission.

“We need to open a pickle jar?” She asks. “A jar.”

“It’s a hard job.” Kakashi says.

“So do we need to use a special technique or…” Naruto asks.

“Just a really tight jar.” Kakashi denies. “It’s enough of a pain that she paid for a D rank mission, so expect a fight.”

“... A jar?” Sasuke agrees with them in the only way possible.

Pure befuddlement.

“Do-do-dooo!” Kakashi is skipping behind them with all the childlike glee and wonder of Naruto in a candy store. He finds the concept of them coming all the way out here for a jar that exciting, that while they trudge like half dead corpses, he could not be happier without coming off cartoonish. He even has his own little jingle he keeps whistling and mumbling whenever they so much as look at him.

“This is ridiculous.” Sasuke grunts, glaring at the air in front of them like it insulted him personally.

“I bet it’s gonna be a really hard conquest.” Naruto is ever optimistic. “I bet she has multiple jars, and each one is harder than the last. Like some kind of jar based trial.”

“I wish I shared your enthusiasm.” Is all she can say. “But that’d be illegal, since she clarified one jar.”

“Not true.” Kakashi says. “Lying about the mission details is not a crime.”

“Wha-”

“It’s to prevent forgetful old ladies and terrified people with bad memories from being punished, and to stop ninja from abandoning missions if things go a little off plan.” Kakashi explains. “Mission details are to help you decide to do the mission, and to help you prepare for the mission. It’s only a crime when the omitted or lied about detail changes the rank of the mission.”

“Ah…” She can understand that, kind of.
Sounds kind of dumb though. Who buys a mission without being sure what the mission is?

“Part of your job on a mission is evaluating what you actually have to do, and determining if the mission is within the boundaries of that mission class.” Kakashi continues cheerfully. “It’s why you write reports. The village trusts you, you’re its private ninja, the village doesn’t trust them.”

“Does that mean Anbu don’t write reports?” Sakura asks.

“I hear they do-” Kakashi seems rather befuddled by everyone’s immediately snickering, but continues anyway “- but only to ensure the Hokage and direct superiors share all that important information from the super important mission. The reports are burned quickly thereafter, to prevent identities from being leaked if the stack of paperwork is ever discovered.”

“Right.” Sakura teases, “that makes sense, you totally just figured that out and heard about it.”

“I did.” He defends. “I heard that with my own ears.”

None of them decide to finish that sentence, specifically the part about how it was from the Hokage when learning about his new job.

“How many is a C rank?” Sakura asks.

“How many what?” Kakashi asks.

“How many jars before it’s a C rank?” She continues.

“...”

“It’s my job to evaluate, how many jars, Kakashi?”

Their sensei dead sprints away, causing them to run after him shouting “How many jars!!”

Things make a lot more sense once they get to the house. They’re met outside by an older lady with hair so gray it’s white, enough wrinkles to make a tree look smooth, and a cane that she’s putting most of her weight on. The house behind her is massive, and shows off a lot of wealth, wealth that Sakura can’t find the ‘how’ for. This isn’t a farm, it’s really outside town so there’s no way she’s a merchant, and there’s no evidence of hired employees or family anywhere around. In fact, if there were hired employees - implicating some business - she likely wouldn’t have hired them.

All this to say, an old lady alone in the woods with a lot of money hired them for something simple.

That makes sense, that’s what a D rank is supposed to be.

Sakura finds herself equal parts disappointed, and relieved. No flaming potatoes today. They chased her for a while, Naruto was not efficient at stopping their onslaught and Sasuke’s fire was meaningless.

Following the woman in, she’s clearly not hiring them just for a social moment as she leads them right to this demon jar. The jar of no-opening, the enchanted Plus three jar of never release. Some use glue, some use friction, and some use magic.

What’ll it be? No one knows!
She does, it’s friction. But she could be wrong! And that idea is very exciting. Naruto jumps right at the jar, while she tries to calm the customer with her potent social skills. “So, where are your kids?”

“Dead.” She rolled a nat one! She did it everybody!

“Dead as in, err, to you? Like-”

“Eaten alive by ferocious beasts.” The woman says quickly while someone bangs the jar around behind her. The objective was to open the jar, not shatter it, but the client isn’t speaking up so it’s not her job to stop them.

“Well that’s just sad.” Low charm or not, she’s pretty sure this one isn’t her fault, just bad luck. So she gives a sheepish laugh, rubs the back of her now smooth hair as of this morning, and cringes when she hears a glass thunk and kunai tear through flesh. She spins on a dime to see Naruto bent over on the floor out of breath and laughing at the last Uchiha like he just saw the funniest thing ever.

She gets why. “Sasuke, why?” She observes the now bleeding boy, observes his arm, observes the exact same spot she stabbed him earlier and notes the exact same kunai is embedded there again. He should probably throw that one away, it’s the friendly fire Kunai.

She then stares at the undefeated jar that just assaulted him with his own kunai.

“I thought the kunai ring would shatter the glass.” He admits, blade still stuck in his arm. To his credit, he barely seems to notice it. “Naruto, wasn’t getting it.”

“Naruto, go clean Sasuke up in wherever this woman’s bathroom is.” She orders, and doesn’t think much of it when they both run off. Kakashi has his eye on her, but that’s okay. She’s been the limelight of his attention a lot recently.

“Please do not sword the jar.” Kakashi feels the need to say as she approaches it.

“I’m not stupid, Kakashi.” She snickers, while immediately moving onto Plan B. She settles her fingers on the jar, and gets a faint quirk of Kakashi’s fierce gaze when the lid begins to spin. She barely has to channel her chakra at all, isn’t even sure how she’s doing it until she takes a moment to pay attention and feel it flowing around.

Click.

Pop.

She lifts the jar up, admiring how her chakra has it stuck to her fingers, and smiles brightly as the old lady claps for her.

“Now I can eat my pickles!”

It’s a dumb victory, she can’t say she’s proud of herself, or that she made a significant impact on anyone’s life. But she did figure out a new technique.

She can now provide downward force, magnetic force, and swirling force with her chakra, and it really only took a few seconds to figure out all three. Two Hundred Control is no joke.

Now if only she knew how to explain that to Kakashi without sounding actively crazy.

sh*t.

Chaos Blade
Epic

A blade that gets stronger the more awake and alive the user is.
It feeds off its users strength, meaning prolonged use could result in untimely demise.
Should be used with furious badassness, and excessive caution.

It’s thirsty.

Friendly Fire Kunai

Uncommon

Some say this Kunai thirsts for blood, but it’s actually just owned by a moron.

Chapter 6: The Waves of Bloody progress Begin

Chapter Text

It's not all amazing, but it is progress. Great progress.
Time to go kill Ita-wait, no, time to escort a drunk.

Chapter 7: Death Does Not Distinguish Between The Feeble Or The Brave

Chapter Text

Chapter 8: Tears are Dried, and the Training Begins!

Chapter Text

What was she supposed to say? She’s not sure, but she knows it wasn’t the stuff she did say. Can she really be blamed for that though? One person is allowed to have a breakdown at a time and she’s pretty sure it was her turn with the breakdown stick, she f*cking died! Who cares if some random ninja offscreen saved her, she ceased living. It wasn’t even a big fight where she didn’t measure up, or some final battle, she got thwacked out of existence by a spinning sword some guy threw. It was the equivalent of a giant kunai. Who dies from a kunai?

She was an afterthought, and she died. All her training, all her efforts, all her clever strategies and planning, gone in an instant on the whim of a random encounter she spawned by being a little too far from her village.

On that note, what the actual hell? Sure. Wave Country is another country, it’s in the name, but it’s not particularly far from Konoha. They’re a week from home, two days without Tazuna to slow them down, and Jonin are showing up?

She’d thought these powers were a boon, but it turns out they are going to kill her. The worst part is, she’s not sure if the ninja that saved her was a respawn mechanic, or if she just got lucky. It’d be so much easier to get over this if she had a respawn mechanic. Instead, she spends more than an hour out here in the rain, under tree branches and leaves, rocking back and forth with her arms around her knees and her knees held to her chest. Her face rests in her legs, and her breaths are as twitchy and broken as her tear stained gasps are.

“Sakura, you need to come inside.” Kakashi’s voice barely even reaches her, but she’s so used to quipping back at him it doesn’t even get to her brain before it leaves her mouth.

“It’s my turn with the stick!” She shouts.

“Sakura that doesn’t make, okay…” It takes him a moment, she doesn’t really care what he’s doing. She cares a second later though, when something pointy pokes her face. She looks up to glare, and finds he’s prodding her with a sturdy wooden pole.

A stick, to be exact. “You can have the stick, just come inside,” he says, “We can’t both be sick, Sakura, someone needs to keep those two from doing that dumb thing where they die.”

“Oh, so you care about when they die, but me, I’m just complaining?” She shouts, fire in her eyes. Even without the Chaos blade tainting her essence, she can feel the sting of red enter her eyes. It’s changing her, and she should probably get that checked out by someone that grasps how magic swords work, but that’s not a today problem!

“When you die, you’re annoying.” He says. “When they die, we’ll wish they could be.”

It’s a few seconds, just staring between them. A few seconds of honest contemplation.

Before it clicks, and just like that, she reaches up and she takes the stick.

“I’m not human anymore.” She says, a sniffle stealing her whole breath.

“I know.” He says gravely, and yet, she believes him.

She believes he knows, because he doesn’t look the least bit surprised by her emotional confession. He’s staring at a monster, and she understands that because she feels the same.

“My life’s a game now.” She tells the truth. She looks him in the eye and she tells the truth. “I have stats, and skills, and traits, and my money is held in an invisible prompt box so it doesn’t weigh me down, and, and, and I heal when I sleep.”

“That’s smart.” She says, finally picking herself up, and stabbing the stick into the ground.

“You don’t have questions?”

“I could ask you one question per minute for the entire rest of our lives, and I don’t think I’d run out.” He says, helping her up despite his relative weakness. His hand is warm in hers. It reminds her that she’s not alone, just like Naruto, she is wanted. “I don’t like wasting my time with futility.”

“That’s a lot of minutes, Kakashi.” She points out.

“It’s a lot of questions.”

“Kakashi-Sensei, why are we getting ready to train on a mission?” Sakura asks. “You said we shouldn’t do that, because we’ll be tired when something comes up suddenly.”

They stand in a field of trees, not a particularly new field of trees either. She can see where she was crying just last night, and that unnerves her a little. Breaking down isn’t something she’s done in a few years now. She normally has her games to delve into, or trolls on the internet to make fun of to make the pain fade away.

Last night was the first time in a long time that she’s been pushed to her limit while too far away from her gaming systems to jack in and lose all concept of time. Her Switch died days ago, her battery packs were only really enough for three days of the week-long trip, and while she’s sure there’s a place for her to plug it in here… She’s also a little terrified to check on it. Her sword went through her, through her pack, and into the tree behind her. She hit the tree so hard that she’s pretty sure she broke bones despite the pack taking the brunt of it.

Her Switch might be dead, really, really dead.

No Ninja Tracking Unit is gonna save her Switch.

“Because I’m injured, and I need you all to be able to support me if Zabuza comes back.” Kakashi says.

“You didn’t kill him?” Sakura asks.

“He killed him.” Sasuke asserts.

“I watched you kill him.” Naruto agrees.

“Yeah, that’s the thing though, I didn’t kill him. A ninja tracking unit did.” Kakashi explains. “The same ninja tracking unit that saved Sakura.”

He says that as if they’re supposed to grasp something, but all she can ask is “What’s a ninja tracking unit anyway?”

“Not someone that saves random leaf ninja.” Kakashi deadpans.

“So…”

“So Zabuza’s alive.” Kakashi is very clear. “Do I need to repeat it?”

“Nope.” Sakura sighs.

The monster that killed her in one second is still walking around, and likely going to come back for more. She could not be happier to have this new information, it really makes everything better on her trauma cream sandwich. “I don’t think we can get strong enough to handle that in the time we’re here, Kakashi.”

“Why not? By my estimates, we have at least a month before the bridge is finished.” Kakashi says. “He’s probably not going to be quick to attack. He’ll wait until we’re complacent, which means we might have the whole month.”

“I don’t think a month is going to change the outcome of that fight.” Sakura’s surprised to see Sasuke nod along with her, but things have changed in recent times. Maybe not last night recent but, well, she needs to apologize about that when she gets the chance. It wasn’t fair how she treated them, and their questions are valid. It just sucks she doesn’t know how to explain it. She really needs to figure it out though, they deserve to know. Ninja are allowed their secrets, but her secrets are changing their odds of survival in drastic ways. She’s putting them in real danger, and they have no idea why.

“Not a normal month, no.” Kakashi agrees. “That’s why you two are going to practice a technique I think you’ll benefit greatly from, while Sakura and I do more one-on-one training.”

“That’s no fair, Sakura’s already pulling ahead!” Naruto shouts, throwing a fist up in the air. “Why does she get super special training?”

“Because she died yesterday.” Kakashi says it.

And no one has anything to say to that. Not even her, it lingers in the air like a bad smell. “She didn’t listen to me when I said to get down. She realized Tazuna might not be able to get down in time, and blocked something she shouldn’t have to protect the client, and she died for it.”

Their faces can’t fall, they already did, and Sakura resists the urge to point out that’s not what happened at all. She forgot Tazuna existed, it was all about her boys. She kicks herself internally for that.

With her Genin Agility, getting out of the way would have been trivial.
She should have trusted them. They’d be so mad if they found out she got hurt because she didn’t trust them to take care of themselves. Just another secret to take to the grave. This one, actually, to the grave. Her new gaming powers, she just needs to find the right time.

“A little bit of competence is a dangerous thing.” Kakashi says. “You all knew to get out of the way because you understood instinctively that you were outclassed. Sakura didn’t, which means if she doesn’t get stronger, she’ll die when Zabuza attacks again.”

“I can learn to dodge.” She mopes, her head falling as well. “I promise.”

“Besides. We have a lot to talk about, and it’s a good excuse to be alone.” He says. “It’s not every day your student bleeds to death and is still walking around to talk about it.”

His eye smile is unnerving in a way it has never been before. Sakura is sure of it, this is going to suck.

“I need an adult!” Sakura shouts.

“Too bad there’s no one for a hundred clicks that could save you.” Kakashi answers back.

“Kakashi, that's really creepy…” Naruto trails.

“Too far?” Kakashi asks.

“Way too far!

“Why did you really pull me aside?” Sakura finds herself asking mid mope. He’d given them instructions on how to do something called tree walking, it looked interesting.

“To begin, you already know tree walking.” He says. “You used it on the jar mission with your hand. If you want to learn the technique, I have no doubt you could learn it on your own rather easily.”

His confidence in her makes her blush, but that doesn’t stop a flare of anger for being split from the group. Her dumb boys are hers now, she doesn’t like being singled out. She’s never liked being singled out. Her favorite type of project back in class were group projects, because she was smart so people would flock to her. She could do all the work while they pretended to take credit, taking focus off of her. It was nice for her anxiety, really nice. She did the work, someone else presented, simple.

“Then there’s this whole, your life is a game matter you said yesterday.” He says. “Was that serious, or hyperbole?”

“Serious.” She can’t look at him. “I have stats, and other stuff. I thought I was hallucinating at first but then I got a skill that heals me when I sleep and... You know, I keep healing when I sleep.”

“That’s not conclusive evidence, but I understand why you might take it as such.” He says, stopping suddenly. They’re in a field of trees and ground, not a lot of bush or anywhere to sneak up on them from. It’s big, wide and open, a friendly reminder of what nature will do if given time and a little bit of groundwork is done.

“What else could it be?” She asks, summoning up her stats box and moving it around with her hand. “I can see and feel it, and it’s altering my reality.”

“You could be in an elaborate genjutsu. Weeks can pass in such a thing, I might not be real.” He suggests. “Maybe you’re in a coma, or a deity beyond our comprehension has decided to mess with you.”

“If it’s a genjutsu I can’t break it, if I’m in a coma I can’t wake up, and if it’s a deity I have to work within the blessing given.” She says. “Nothing changes in either scenario, the only move is forward.”

“That’s one way to look at it.” He agrees, resting his hands at his side. “The boys will be training their chakra control and general movement over the next while. Working on the basics means a lot for boys like them who ran past the basics to try and get stronger faster.”

“You think what they know will mean more once they’ve practiced?” She asks.

“Yes… You on the other hand, learned too much of the basics and never strove for any greatness at all. Your new desire for Kenjutsu is impressive, but as you learned earlier, it’s not enough. It being your only option can even lead to being impaled by your own sword. Imagine if instead of a sword you had used a rock ninjutsu to block.”

She bites her lip, thinking about it, remembering. It hurt so much, and every single second is burned into her memory in a way she’d rather forget.

“Our goal for these coming few days is to learn what your elements are.” Kakashi says. “Then I will teach you how to waterwalk. If we still have time and aren’t in mortal danger yet, I’ll then teach you how to make your own jutsu.”

“I, what?” Her head spins at that. “I thought creating ninjutsu was restricted to Jonin for safety reasons.”

“It is.” He stares at her sternly. “We know exactly how much chakra any jutsu already made costs, we don’t have the slightest clue how much chakra a new jutsu could cost. Someone trying a relatively basic concept with an absurd cost could lose limbs, or wind up in the hospital for chakra exhaustion if they mess up.”

The stare is physical. She can’t help the sweatdrop that rolls down her cheek. “So what you’re saying is…” Her feet clack against each-other, the awkwardness taking a toll on her health and energy. There’s nothing worse for a gamer than a very, very awkward moment without a clear puzzle to solve.

“You got pinned to a tree by your own sword, ripped the sword out of your body on your own, and then passed out in a pool of your own blood.” The stare continues. He’s expecting something from her, but the words are stuck in her throat as a lump. “And then you got up and walked around six hours later. I think I can trust you’ll be fine learning how to shoot water out of your hands.”

“I’m gonna make pokemon moves.” She admits.

“Not yet you’re not.” He says. “Right now, we’re going to test your affinities.”

“I don’t have chakra paper.” She says.

“You don’t need it. You have a gaming system.” He prods her forehead suddenly, causing the slightest flinch but she doesn’t fear pain like she used to. She died yesterday, she fears death a lot more than a Kakashi hit. Luckily, he doesn’t see fit to give one. “I’m going to teach you a very basic jutsu for all five elements, and you’re going to practice them until you are alerted you’ve developed an element. Then we’re going to continue that, until it’s very obvious you’re not going to develop it for one of them.”

“And if I get them all?” She asks.

“Then I’ll accept that you have a gaming system in your soul.” He says rather bluntly. “That’s just not something that happens.”

You have gained Water Affinity Level 1, all Water jutsu will be more effective and cheaper.

She expects Kakashi probably didn’t think she’d reach it in one day, but it sets a good precedent for the others. If any of them aren’t learned after two full days, she probably doesn’t have that element. With that she gets up, and decides the boys could use some water. She can still hear them, quietly arguing in the distance. The forest carries sound well, making her feel like she was right next to them.

It’s not long before she sees them through the treeline, and not much longer after that before she’s standing at the bottom of the trees watching the two boys collapse onto the dirt on their backs. “Do you two need water?” She asks, jingling the flask.

She’s surprised to see them both nod, but neither move. “Are your legs not working?”

“Not much.” Sasuke says. “I’m exhausted.” It’s good to see Sasuke with humility, but it’s actually not that uncommon an occurrence recently. She thought he was growing as a person, but she knows better now that he’s expressed his concerns about her. He cares about her, and wants her to know that. Expressing weakness is a good way to show you trust someone, and she’s pretty sure someone told him that at one point.

He’s an idiot but he’s a sponge. If something is important, he’ll never forget it, and that means if she grinds her own social skills up she can probably help boost him too. “Then let me help.” Kneeling by his side, she brings the flask to his mouth and takes some joy in watching him drink.

“Hey no fair, I need water too, Sakura!” Naruto groans slash shouts from his place on the forest floor. “My legs aren’t working either.”

“Somehow, I feel like your issue is less from a lack of stamina and more from falling on your head so much you crippled yourself.” She quips, quickly refilling the flash with her palm after pulling it away from Sasuke.

“That’s fine, just let me sleep it off. What do I need, six hours?” He jokes.

She shakes her head, crawling over to help him. She rests his head in her lap, and brings it to his lips, helping him along. She’s gotten a lot more intimate with him over the past month. He responds very well to physical affection, and once he stopped badgering her about dates it became easy to see he hasn’t the slightest idea what a date is.

For years she’s thought he was sexually harassing her.
Turns out he’s an idiot and thought that’s what friends do. He’s also a sponge, and someone said the words ‘friend date’ around him once and quickly changed their dynamic for years to come. Not that he isn’t interested in her, she’s pretty sure he is, but he loves the gentle kindnesses far more than his puppy crush.

Who knows, maybe one day she’ll find she’s interested in him too.

It’s not today. “Have you two made any headway?”

“No.” Sasuke grunts. “Kakashi was too tired to teach us, so he disappeared back into the house almost right after he got back from you.”

“Baah, haah, well, we learned if we put too much chakra in we go flying.” Naruto says, pushing the flask away with a hasty draw of breath. “You might like that one. It hurts a little but…”

“I’ll try it.” She agrees. “And if you put too little in, you fall off. Is it just about the amount though?”

“Huh?” Naruto asks.

“I mean to say, is chakra quantity the only variable that’s important to sticking to the tree, or is there a secondary or tertiary objective like conforming your chakra to the shape of the bark, or trying to make the chakra sticky?”

“...” That’s the sound of crickets, crickets and silence.

Neither boy has anything to say to that, honestly, neither does she, the idea that they wouldn’t think of that, well, it sounds like Naruto and Sasuke.

“f*ck.” That’s Sasuke clapping his hands over his eyes.

“I promise, I tried really hard.” Naruto mumbles.

“Okay, let me figure this out and then teach you both, okay?” She gently rests Naruto’s head back on the grass, and gets to her feet.

She runs at a tree, and finds herself at the top a few seconds later. It was as simple as breathing, a technique she already knew instinctively. She started with a little too much chakra, but was able to adjust to match in real time until each step was incredibly easy and movement was simple. The issues didn’t begin until she reached the top, when momentum was canceled and suddenly she had to float there on her own merit.

She found she had to increase the chakra for a second to stop from falling, before she could flood the area under her with controlled essence and conform to the shape beneath her. It was less digging her chakra in and more creating a friction barrier that stopped her from falling. She imagines it’d be harder to do on a wall where the holes are microscopic, but it should be doable with some practice.

It’s all about feeling her chakra, and latching on graciously while ensuring it sticks.

“Oh, boys…” She sighs to herself, looking down at their jealous faces. “There’s a secondary and tertiary objective!” She shouts down.

“We got that!” They both shout up at her.

Chapter 9: An Edgy Girl gets a Quest, and Finds her Old Gameboy!

Chapter Text

“This smells, bad.” Sakura enunciates, her nose wriggling and wrinkling while she tries to block out the offensive odor of the town before her. It’s old, and run down, and she can’t help but notice the poverty stricken homeless at every turn. Children, old men, strong men who could make a better life for themselves if they were just given an opportunity.

She’s not exactly a prim princess, she’ll admit how just a little while ago she wasn’t even brushing her hair. Even by her standards, this is disgusting. She doesn’t even want to lean against the walls when they stop for a break for Tazuna’s sake, because the grime and dirt is so thick and malleable.

They’re here to buy ingredients for dinner. Tazuna has the money - unlike most of these people - to splurge occasionally and having a bunch of ninja protect him has his hopes up enough he’d like to do just that. She can’t fault him for it, living an okay life is not something to feel guilty about. It’s not like he’s got money overflowing and he’s criticizing the homeless. He actually looks like he feels quite bad, but one cannot let themselves get distracted by those only a category below them. It’s a good way to self destruct, and you’re useful to no one when you helped so many people you yourself became a burden. For Tazuna, that number is probably three.

“What’s happening here?” Sakura asks, after a very long walk where Tazuna hasn’t said a word. “Tazuna.” She finally asked his name last night, and by the way he perks up she’s glad she did. “You know, right?”

“I, would rather not get into it.” He sighs as they walk right into a run down storefront. There’s nothing here. They’re supposed to be buying ingredients, but there’s a leek there, a rotten apple there, a cinnamon stick - not sticks, lone, one stick - and from what she can see there’s a few spices in the back that are covered in dust. No one buys them anymore, they’re too busy focusing on survival.

“You’re going to have to.” Sakura asserts. “Or I’m going to report this to Kakashi. This isn’t about bandits.” Bandits can’t do something like this, bandits can harm the individual, bandits can harm trade, bandits would be murdered long before they could systematically dismantle a town to the extent that there’s not even things to buy. The shopkeeper is here for no reason, none, they likely wouldn’t even stop someone who came in and stole what was left.

It’s something to do, in a life with nothing else. A precious relic of their past they can’t let go of, now that the rest has turned to dust. “Please don’t do that.” Is Tazuna’s response. Not denial, not begging, a simple request.

“I don’t want to.” She says. “I want to solve this. I’m not a pretty little girl, I’m a pragmatist.” Her hand lands on her sword handle, and she can feel her rage bubbling up from deep. It helps her channel herself, feel centered, but she’s also pretty sure it infects her with something in exchange. Her eyes changing a bright red every time she channels it, and sometimes without, cannot be mistaken for benevolence.

The moment she gets back to Konoha, she’s finding a master smith and having him tell her what the f*ck is up. For now, it’s comforting and she needs it. For now, it’s what she’s relying on to get her message across to a stubborn old man who won’t even look at her while denying her the information she needs. A little bit of blood makes her eyes glow, and that’s what she needs for her words to really land.

“I don’t want to walk away from something like this. A princess might be scared, but me, Tazuna, I’m pissed. There’s a rage bubbling up from deep within me and it whispers into my head. It’s saying to kill, it’s saying to burn, it’s begging me to find every single person responsible for what I’ve seen today and leave them in a pile of broken bones so that when I cast my first fire jutsu its to the sound of a hundred screams, each one just individual enough for me to make out the lingering loss of evil as it leaves this world.” She needs to learn a fire jutsu now, because that sounded cool. She’ll ask Sasuke after she gets the fire affinity training done.

She takes a step towards him, and watches as the man flinches. Her sword makes a slight shing as it begins to leave its sheathe for dramatic effect. She’s watched enough dramatic cutscenes to know how to make a stage play. “You will tell me who did this, or you will be amongst the crowd as just another bystander doing nothing while a little girl came to the rescue. Can you live with that?”

“I…” He gapes. “Sakura, that man’s robbing you.”

“Tell me if my switch is broken!” She shouts while looking behind her at a man ruffling through her pack. He looks stunned, but flabbergasted is probably a better word for it. He’s a bit older, and he’s got his hands deep into her stuff. She’d really like him to answer so she can spare herself the horrifying check, but it really doesn’t look like the older grizzled man is going to say explain the state of her recently sworded pack.

“What’s a-”

“f*ck it.” She spins on her heel, kicks out his knees, and then slams a hand into his chest as he falls. His crash into the wooden floorboards below are enough to shake the store. She held back, noting his age and not wanting to shatter him in places he couldn’t possibly recover, but then if he didn’t want to get hurt he shouldn’t have robbed a ninja.

The fact that she’s not obviously a ninja right now, what with all her armor and stuff still sworded in the pack, doesn’t pass her by.Back to her original stance, she glares at Tazuna. “That doesn’t just happen, what the f*ck is going on here you drunken bastard?!”

“You Konoha ninja are needlessly intense.” Tazuna coughs, a hand over his mouth. “Wave’s shipping prices are larger than its gains, we’re slowly dying, that’s why I’m building a bridge.”

Her gaze softens, just a little. But it doesn’t fade completely. “You’re hiding something.”

“Aren’t you?” He asks.

It takes her a second, but she fully hilts her blade, letting her beautiful eyes return to their pretty innocence. “Fine.”

It’s not five minutes later that she’s observing the wreckage of a once vibrant town - it had to have been, it couldn’t have gotten to this size if it wasn’t - and angrily scowling at the remains of what once was. Color comes from creativity, creativity comes from joy and safety. Nothing here is safe, nothing here is happy, but the variance shines through to tell her of a once thriving community. She’s staring at a graveyard of freedom, of peace, of prosperity in a way Konoha barely manages on its good days.

It’s rotting, and there’s nothing she can do about it.

She feels something behind her, and this time she’s a little calmer, it’s easier to pay attention to him, and get a proper measure. “It’s a child.” She says suddenly, looking behind her at a surprised boy, ensuring Tazuna she’s not about to wreck this kid for fun. He looks relieved, which is enough for her.

“What do you want?” She asks the boy, girl, whatever, standing behind her as she fully turns around.

“Uh-” His voice cracks a little before a full word gets through. She’s decided he’s a boy, he can correct her if he feels like it.

“He wants money, Sakura.” Tazuna says gently, knowing this is just more evidence on the pile that something is wrong. The moment lingers. The child looking a little guilty at her gaze, but not running away. The very chance she might give him money instead of hitting him is enough for him to stay even with her hand on her sword.

Death by sword is preferable to starvation. She understands, she just doesn’t want to. She wants this to never have been an issue that would require understanding. Sadly, her life a game or not, she doesn’t seem to have control of the plot.

He holds out his hands. He looks so dirty, so scraggly. His hair is tangled, and his gaze is cold and burdened by pain despite the cutesy style he manages to fake. He’s in ratty clothes that cover down to his ankles, and she casually tries to pretend the holes littered through them wouldn’t make it worse at protecting him from harsh nights.

“This is all I have. Tell your friends if they try this again they’ll die.” She says, her insides squirming at the threat. It’s easy to threaten Tazuna and mean it, it’s easy to hit some older guy robbing her.

It’s another thing entirely to threaten a child, and she knows she’s bad at lying so she has to mean it for it to be taken seriously. She’s not sure she pulls meaning it off. She’s not sure she wants to have pulled it off.

He brightens up at her words, latching onto the implied concept that she’s going to give him something. So when she does, he’s over the moon. She plops a whole damn wallet in his hands. “Take it and run.”

There’s a silence after the kid runs away, a moment where she has to catch her breath and remind herself why she’s here. That she did the right thing there, and that the overwhelming coldness flowing through her from her heart is a defense mechanism, not guilt. “Why’d you give that kid a wallet?” Tazuna breaks the silence after a long moment.

“Wasn’t mine.” She admits with a shrug, its owner is dead, why shouldn’t it help someone live? It’s a ding that gets her attention, and without a moment of hesitance she looks up at her new notification. “Who’s Gato?”

“Huh?!”

[Quest Alert: Free the Land of Waves

Description: Clear Gato Tower Dungeon and Eliminate Gato.
Objective: 0/1 Gato Killed, 0/1 Gato Tower Dungeon Cleared
Bonus Objective: Clear Gato Tower 5 times to “find” his hidden treasure, and restore Wave with it]

“He’s responsible for what’s happening here, right?” Sakura asks, taking note of the quest alert. “You have to know something about him. Don’t lie to me, Tazuna, I spoke on this just a minute ago.”

“So you did know…” He looks away from her, reaching up to scratch the back of his head awkwardly, his demeanor shifting seriously. More serious even than back in the store. Perhaps it’s being small, or young, but even with blazing red eyes he couldn’t truly consider her a threat.

No, it takes her a moment to put it together, but he still believes Kakashi’s story. That she had gotten impaled to protect him, and not her boys.

He thinks she’ll die for him, why would he be intimidated by anything she does? If only she’d realized that before she probably gave the shopkeeper a heart attack.

“He’s a very bad man trying to keep wave like this. As a shipping magnate, he’s made it illegal for boats to leave that aren’t his, holding a huge tax on all exported goods, and on imported goods.”

“So you told the truth in the store, just not the whole truth.” She surmises. “Building a bridge will really help that much?”

“It’s either that or kill him, and I couldn’t hire assassins, that’s too much even for me. Principles are all an old man like me has.” She has to hold back a laugh at a drunk saying something like that. “Wave was barely holding on before he took over, we’d had a poor few years due to some internal strife and bad winters, so what you see around you now is a slow economic death brought about from years of breaking a little less than even. As people eat less, they work less, and slowly but surely…”

“So the bridge’ll help.” She asserts. “But money would help faster.”

“An influx of cash would be useful, but without the bridge, we’ll end up back here eventually no matter how much money we get. To be truthful, I imagine an influx of food would do us better than any cash.”

That’s fine, she thinks. Gato’s dead the first clear anyway.

Five clears… how does she justify to her team five clears of the same dungeon?

How does that even work, will it generate more people for them to fight? Probably, that’s how it works in every game she’s ever played. She does have to wonder how it’ll do that though.

But that kinda guy has to have real protectors, especially if his treasure is hidden there.

“Don’t worry, we’ll free this land. It’s what leaf ninja do.” It’s not. Historically there’s been very little freeing of anything, a ninja’s version of liberation is to blow it up. She’ll change that for Wave though, at least this time.

The earth release training technique is even more simple than the water technique. Instead of filling a flask with water, she touches the ground and moves it without strength. The idea is to channel her chakra into it, then move it with her hand. If it moves like air, she’s put enough chakra into it and converted it to the right chakra. It’s a low level ninjutsu mostly made to help builders fix foundations and make dirt roads, but it has a lot of utility. It’s mostly overshadowed by much better landscaping ninjutsu, but it’s where every earth based ninja starts.

A lot of ninja learn it just for a back up job for if they get crippled on a mission. She probably doesn’t have to worry about that though…

She masters it within a day just like water, and finds herself very happy to see the familiar alert.

[You have gained Earth Affinity Level 1, all Earth jutsu will be more effective and cheaper.]

It really isn’t even effort. It’s like her body was made for Earth.

“I really hope they all come that easily.” She looks hopefully at the box.
A lot of Ninja only have one element, she’s really lucky to have two.

She won’t be satisfied until she has them all.

“Inari.” She wanders into the boys room without the slightest care in the world. He looks up quickly, frightened but mostly distressed by something beyond her imagination.
Or it would have been beyond her imagination, before today. “You’re scared?”

His fragile nod makes her heart twinge a little. “Can’t talk about it because your grandpa told you not to?” The next nod makes it break.

“Tell you what, let’s calm us both down. I’m a little jittery myself.”

It only takes her a few seconds to pick the boy up, sit on his bed, and place him in her lap. Before he can ask what, she places a rectangular box of joy and justice in his hands. “This is a gameboy.” She explains. “Hold it like this, and press the buttons to make things happen.”

Going through her pack sucked, but she had to do it to make sure that guy didn’t get any of her essentials. The moment she’d gotten home she’d gone through it to count the casualties. Just like she’d expected, her clothes are f*cked. They got cut in half, and torn to bits by her energetic, ridiculously angry sword. Her switch was comfortably cushioned by the clothes, thankfully it wasn’t sworded.

It was impaled by a little black box of metal she’d forgotten she’d stored in there just in case over a month ago. That box contained righteous glory, and her only salvation in a world without.

It contained her gameboy, and a ton of batteries. It’s not as high tech or stunning as her switch, and it definitely loses out on a sheer race of fun, but if it’s her gameboy or nothing, she’ll let Inari play some damn Mario while she watches.

Some might think Sakura’d wanna play, that she’d intrude on the boy’s first experience. She’s happy to watch, just like she’d be happy to watch any streamer’s first time playing a cool and exciting new genre or game. It’s fascinating how a newbie views the world, it’s more fascinating how much a child can struggle with something so simple as how to jump or run in a game. Simple concepts she doesn’t even need the most basic tutorial for now are so foreign she has to help him run through it. She’d always thought of games like Mario as very beginner friendly, so having to explain the controls to him again and again is novel. “I guess I’ve taken for granted what’s confounding to you, huh. I guess that’s this whole situation, isn’t it.”

At his awkward nod, she squeezes him.

“So you’re not always rude.” Tsunami’s voice catches her by surprise. Sakura thinks it’s Tsunami anyway, the older woman from dinner the other night. She didn’t really ask, she had to catch it in passing. And this boy’s name is, Inari, right? He responded to it earlier, it has to be something close.

Tsunami, Inari, Tamaru? No, no, Tsunami, Inari, Taazuma? sh*t, she already forgot his name again!

“No, I am.” Sakura says after a long silence of thought. “I barged in here without asking. We just don’t respect the space of a child the same we do the space of an adult.”

“Don’t ruin the moment.” Tsunami says.

“Sorry.” She helps Inari jump onto a platform, showing him how, then jumps down and makes him do it.

She’s got a lot of smiles in her soul today, Today she’s gonna try to learn fire, but first, Naruto didn’t come home last night. He hasn’t come back since Kakashi started him on this damned tree walking jutsu slash technique. While he’s doing much better after she explained it to him, he’s still struggling to comprehend her explanation. Sasuke’s had it for a while now, which only makes the blond boy angrier. Luckily, it seems she’s his true rival in recent times, so he’s not taking that anger out on Sasuke. Siblings can be angry at each-other, it’s okay.

She’s got breakfast in her pack for him, and-

-she hides behind a tree. “Who…” There’s a cute girl talking with Naruto while holding a basket. Her outfit has some pink to it - something she appreciates - but she looks a little too nice for Wave. Wave is dirty, Wave is destroyed, Wave doesn’t even bathe that regularly despite literally being called Wave. This girl is clean, she’s kept, she’s pretty. She wasn’t even clean, kept, and pretty until recently and she wasn’t even in a destroyed village.

That’s five seconds.

[Haku: Chunin level Boss Fight

Threat Level: Notably Dangerous]

“Naruto get down.” She’s fast, she can give herself that much credit. Maybe she’s not a chunin, but with Naruto’s help it shouldn’t be that hard right? Drawing her blade as she runs is like breathing. It leaves its place in her sheath before the third step, and is in a full swing just before she reaches them. She’s not sure why a ninja is talking to Naruto, but if it’s not Naruto, Sasuke, her or Kakashi, they’re either a random encounter or with Gato or both and like hell she’s losing her teammate to some subterfuge bullsh*t!

The sword flares to life with power before the swing is fully completed, and she’s happy to see it go right through the enemy and not Naruto. He can listen to hasty instructions like that, unlike her, so Naruto’s on the ground watching.

She wishes she didn’t have to warn Naruto like that and give her attack away, catching the enemy by surprise is very important, but there’s just not much she can do about that without a silent means of communication. She’ll need to work one out.

She has a brief instant to begin a smile at an easy victory, before she realizes how little resistance that gave. “Wha-” Water splashes her, and she has just enough time to turn on a dime before a kick lands right in her face and sends her flipping. This time she knows better, this time she doesn’t drop her sword. Instead, before she hits the ground she stabs it into the dirt and uses it to slow her down, skidding across the ground and cutting a brazen path of dirt and stone. This cool new technique lets her land on her feet instead of face first into a tree, even if it’s dramatic as all hell and probably bad for her sword. Her vision is blurry, but she can vaguely make out the ninja standing behind Naruto. She can’t speak, the words get garbled in her throat while the threat grabs Naruto by his neck, picks him up from the ground, and positions a senbon at his eye. “S-sakura we were just talking, could you both um…”

“Shut up, Naruto.” Sakura grunts, lifting the hungry sword vibrating with energy. She knows her eyes have changed again, but she doesn’t care. There are some heavy implications to Kakashi giving her this sword. Was he trying to teach her some lesson, or was he trying to get her killed? Is she lucky she happened to be given an incredibly powerful weapon that works well for her but wouldn’t most people, or was that the game system influencing Kakashi’s choice? How far does it go? At what point is it Kakashi being a dick, or Kakashi being helpful with a dickish choice her powers made him choose?

Is she a Diety’s plaything, or is she Sakura Haruno, leaf ninja and Naruto’s teammate?

She doesn’t have the slightest clue, but she does know is Naruto’s in danger, possibly because of her. She’ll die again before she lets him get hurt.

“You’re doing well.” The girl says with a voice that hits her as oddly androgynous. In fact, a look-

“Holy sh*t it’s a femboy.” Sakura’s eyes widen, and she manages to choke out an exclaim even she wasn’t expecting. “You should start a streaming career, I’d watch you.”

“... Sakura, is this really the-”

“Look how pretty he is!” Sakura gasps, sword’s power flickering a little as her excitement goes in an entirely different direction. “Would you like some fangirls? My teammate has a lot of them and we’d like to offload them, no refunds.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.” The femboy says, with that pretty face, those pretty lips, and those pretty eyelashes. “Trying to deescalate after you escalated?” Those pretty eyes look her right over, trying to figure out who she is, what she is, what her sword is. She sees right through her, she just has to hope they want the same thing. “We can do that. I’d rather not kill either of you. Especially not after I went through all the effort to save you.”

“It was you.” Sakura says, not letting the sword blaze out but lowering the power in it enough to let her own eyes return to their normal colorful innocence. At least she hopes she does, that’d really help matters. It has to have a minimum threshold, right? “Why?”

“We’ll trade info for info.” The femboy says with a simple smile, lowering the senbon from Naruto’s eye to his neck. He actually tickles Naruto with it, causing the boy to twitch awkwardly and hold back a laugh. She’s glad he can maintain comedic sense in a situation like this. She’s not sure if that’s her fault or if Naruto is just goofy by nature. “You were almost dead when I found you. How are you up and on your feet and looking fine?”

“My life’s a game and only the last hit point matters.” Sakura says without flinching. She can’t lie, Naruto’s in danger, she has to tell the truth and she doesn’t have nearly enough time to come up with a lie that’s technically true enough. She’ll have to work out a few, for future use. “I’ll always get back up unless you take me down permanently, and I’m actually not completely sure if I really die even then.”

“If you’re going to mock me-” The boy’s hands bring the senbon back up to Naruto’s eye.

“I think she’s serious,” Naruto gulps, “Sakura can’t lie.”

“... I see. I’ll explain here tomorrow, today’s mood is already too hostile,” with that Naruto’s thrown forward, Sakura drops her sword to rushes forward and catch him in her arms, “arrive alone.”

Sakura holds him close, as the dangerous boy disappears into thin air. She squeezes him, sighing in relief and taking in how her own hasty actions almost got Naruto hurt. Is the sword influencing her aggression, or just helping her do what she would have wanted to do anyway? That was stupid.
That was really stupid.

“Sakura, that was really scary.” Naruto whines into her.

“I know, Naruto.” She rubs his back, as the sword loses the rest of its power on the ground. “Excited to do it again tomorrow?”

“Wha, no!”

Chapter 10: Team Bonding, a Wild Haku's murder button is broken, and a Random Encounter has Implications

Chapter Text

The fire jutsu is even more simple than the earth jutsu. It has three parts but they’re all stupidly simple and kind of the same action. First, she must convert chakra into fire chakra, then she has to layer her hand in fire chakra, then she has to send all the excess into some stones in her hand until they’re red. The important part is getting the stones hot enough that she needs to protect herself with what’s in her hand and then gauge how much of each is needed, and that’s the part she’s failing.

Six hours in, and she’s gotten them hot enough to feel uncomfortable. It’s progress, but she’s so used to learning everything almost instantly that it’s really disheartening. She doesn’t know how to keep herself motivated trying the same thing for hours. Even as a gamer she’s never tried speedrunning or anything, she’s just not used to this kind of failure. She succeeded with valor regardless of the challenge, and she wants to continue that pace as long as possible.
It turns out, as long as possible, is about until fire chakra.

“Which is why I’m asking for help.” Sasuke looks genuinely distraught with her explanation. She’d call it angry if she didn’t know him better, he just looks confused, a little worried, maybe even disturbed.

“So, let me get this straight.” He stares deep into her eyes around their campfire. Sneaking out of Tazuna’s house to hang around Naruto as he tries to get this tree walking thing perfected is automatic for them. He can do it now, they all can, but Naruto’s never been one to be happy with just being okay at something, and Sakura’s here for it. “In one day, you’ve managed to go from never having molded fire chakra at all, to heating these stones enough that the air around them is visibly distorted.” Sasuke points at her hand, and the little waves in the air that signify her minor accomplishment.

“Yes.” She nods.

“And you’re discouraged?” He asks.

“Shouldn’t it be faster?” She asks, awkwardly rubbing her arm with the hand not holding stones and molding chakra.

“No!” Sasuke palms his forehead quite forcefully. “No it shouldn’t! You know how long it took me? Months. It took me months to learn how to mold fire chakra well enough to cast my first real fire jutsu, and I’m a natural fire element. All Uchiha are natural fire elements.”

“That sounds painful.” She admits with a harsh wince. “Is there like a cheat code?”

“Yes.” She’s surprised enough by his blunt answer to set the stones down. “There actually is, it’s just stupid.” At her eager look, he realizes he’s spoken too much, and decides the rabbit hole should just be opened directly. “Forget the objective, and focus solely on generating fire chakra as an automatic response. You’ll do this by focusing on generating the fire chakra around your hand, and sticking it directly in fire. Either you’ll succeed, or you’ll get burned. Repeat until you can do it for long periods of time without getting hurt.”

“I thought you didn’t like me hurting myself.” She points out.

“I don’t.” His disdain is clearer in his tone than his eyes. He’s a scary boy. “But you’re going to do it anyway, you should probably be good at it.”

“Ah. That makes sense.”

“So, my life is a game.” It hangs in the air, resting there awkwardly. A team meeting in the woods at five in the morning wasn’t how she expected to make this reveal, but if she’s going to be giving it out to random strangers like this Haku, even if it’s to protect Naruto, then her team deserves the details.

“Sakura, I have a great guy I talk to.” Sasuke says, somehow even more awkward than her. He’s sitting in the grass, while Naruto stands sideways on a tree. He figured out how to just hang there last night, and now he’s using it as a core exercise. She should probably do that, the effort to stay sideways has to be an amazing work-out. The fact that he’s flapping his arms like a bird and making the occasional rooster adjacent sound only makes it better. His sense of humor hasn’t gotten a lot better since becoming a part of her family, but it has gotten a lot more bold. It makes her snicker. He’s able to be this happy almost directly after a senbon was held at his eye.

Actually, all things considered, he was stupidly calm yesterday. Has he been threatened a lot? She needs to investigate that too when she gets home. Sword, Naruto, how to get away with murdering people who threaten her boys, in that order.

“Unfortunately for us, I think she’s telling the truth.” Kakashi says. Injured or not, he’d never pass-up a team meeting when he can move. They brought his sleeping bag out here to the forest for him, and he’s resting in the fluffy blankets like a caterpillar about to change into a butterfly and destroy their enemies.

“Kakashi…” Sasuke sighs.

“I mean it. She’s gained two elements in three days, and learned how to mold fire chakra while she was at it.” Kakashi says bluntly. “Those three days were not peaceful village days under a powerful tutor either, they were a day after getting stabbed through the gut, with a teacher who was bedridden and couldn’t help her much.”

“So she’s a prodigy, she can still be crazy.” Sasuke points out. “In my experience, most prodigies are up the wall bonkers and chewing on a stick.”

“Oh believe me, I know.” Kakashi laughs pitifully under his blanket. “I know. But this is a different kind of crazy. She can’t lie, we know this. Either she’s telling the truth, or she believes she’s telling the truth.”

Sasuke doesn’t like it, she can see that much. But he stops arguing, and merely looks at her with great concern. “I have stats.” Sakura says.

“Everyone has stats, Sakura.” That’s Naruto, she’s recently gotten him into some fun co-op RPGs like dark souls, and while he’s very, very bad at it, it’s been a lot of fun teaching him cool new concepts like the statistics menu and leveling up. She figured it would be nice to help him understand before she had to spring this on him, now she’s not as sure. “We grow stronger when we do things to get stronger. Like um… push-ups give you strength, and thinking real hard gives you intelligence?”

“Yes.” She gives him an approving nod, she’s happy he’s learning, even if it’s a thorn in her side at the moment. If she could see his statistics, she’s pretty sure he’d be so much better than when she first got him. Kakashi’s been very helpful for her and Sasuke, but she’s been very helpful for Naruto. Watching him tremble and struggle to stay upright against the tree is hilarious, he looks like he’s going to fall apart any second, but he’s persevering in a way she likes to believe she’s contributed to. “But mine are different, I can see them, and they seem to be going up faster than they should be. I’m almost half again as strong as I was when I graduated from the Academy a month ago. Years of my life, nothing compared to recent weeks.”

“You’re also pushing yourself a lot harder.” Sasuke points out. “And doing psychotic things.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Sakura winces. She didn’t apologize, or even touch on his concerns the other night, and that eats at her in a way she wishes it didn’t. Life was so much easier before she grasped social convention enough to recognize when she’s done something wrong. Empathy sucks. “I’ll try to be more careful, your concern was valid, and I shouldn’t just forget you have feelings like that.”

Your Charm has raised to 11

Congratulations, you have achieved Academy Student Charm

Academy Student Charm: We didn’t think we’d have to make Academy Student Traits, but here we are. Someone’s mood will now appear beside their head in one of those mood chart pictures if you’re struggling to identify their expression.

It’s nice to see her efforts helping, though it’s sad that such a simple statement is enough. To think, her charm is almost double what it was a month ago. She’s starting to understand facial expressions now, and not just the monotone ones one sees in a game like ‘that guy is angry because he has an angry face.’ She hates to say it, but that skill will probably be really helpful. She’s such a lost cause, or was, now she just has to get better.

“I don’t have a good way to convince you.” Sakura admits, while Sasuke’s emotions flicker behind his eyes. “And it’s okay that you don’t believe me. I just felt like you needed to know. It’s not fair that I’ve been hiding something so big, when you were so open about your brother.”

She knows she hasn’t won, but she can see it now. Sasuke wants to believe her, he just can’t. He’s seen someone he believed in lose it before. “Now for the real reason I called this meeting.” Sakura stands up, just as Naruto loses his grip and crashes into the dirt in a sprawled penguin-like position. She has to hold back a snicker, this is serious but his groan is funny. He’s just flopping around over there trying to find purchase like his legs don’t work anymore. “Yesterday, I met the enemy. Today, I plan to meet the enemy again, and I really don’t want to be alone when I do that… I don’t want to die again. Help me.”

Her team is hidden. Naruto and Sasuke are pretty far away, because they’re not particularly stealthy, but Kakashi’s a jonin and is very good at stealth. He’s got a nice signal jutsu planned for if they have to fight, so the boys can join and they can handle this together. It’s with that knowledge that she allows her feet to walk into what might be a very dangerous scenario.

She hopes that if things go wrong, Kakashi’s in good enough health to turn the tide, but he looks so hurt even after all this time. It wasn’t until seeing Kakashi so injured for so long over something so small, that it really clicked with her just how overpowered her sleeping ability is.

To think she went so many years actively trying not to sleep.

Haku is waiting there for her when she arrives, standing tall and patient. It’s a little intimidating, when so shortly ago Haku had Naruto in his grip. She doesn’t believe she could have won that fight, reflection on it is pretty clear, Naruto could have died because she was impatient and reckless. She needs to learn patience, even if it means spending time away from her sword.

It’ll be easier once she knows exactly what it’s doing, and if it’s the sword at all. She could just be seeing her natural borne impatience in the field, and blaming it on magic because magic is a very convenient explanation. Knowing the difference will be very valuable.

“You actually came alone.” The boy stands in the same clearing, waiting for her while she approaches. “That was stupid.”

“I trust you.” She avoids saying anything that’s a lie. She genuinely does trust him. He could have killed them, he could have just not saved her. They’re still alive, this boy can be trusted.

“You shouldn’t.”

“But I do.” Sakura leans against a tree, sword still completely sheathed. “I owe you my life, I’m pretty sure that counts for something.”

“Without us you wouldn’t have been injured in the first place.” This Haku’s expression is so stone, she could learn a thing or two from those pretty cheeks and well formed face.

“That just makes it all the more confounding.” Sakura says. “Why save me if I’m the enemy? I’ve played enough games to know that you’re not evil.”

“You’ve what?”

“You’re the secret character you get by making all the right choices.” Sakura explains. “I don’t think I’m gonna get you, I’m not very good at making the right decisions, but… I do think you’re too good natured to hurt me unprompted. You wanted to talk, so I’m here, let’s talk.”

“You're different.” Haku decides. “I am Haku.”

“Sakura Haruno.” She introduces herself. “I believe you owe me an explanation?”

“I said we’d trade, you gave me nonsense.” The boy crosses his arms across his chest. “I do not like being mocked.”

“I’m not sure what to tell you.” Sakura shrugs, slowly, evenly. Her breath hitches harshly as she realizes that if Sasuke doesn’t believe her, why would a random enemy? “I told you the truth. My life is a game, and every step is another portion of a quest. Gato is going to die, and with him, Wave will be restored. It’s that easy.”

“Say I actually did believe you,” Haku begins, “what would that even mean for me?”

“It’d mean you’re doomed to fail. You’re the antagonist, and the whole system is based around a goal you’re actively fighting.”

“And if I killed you right now?” He asks.

“You won’t.” She doesn’t even reach down to her weapon at the threat, there’s no point. Even if he did, Kakashi would save her… probably. She hopes.

“Kakashi makes my skin crawl, Sasuke makes my heart beat faster every time he glares, even Naruto can raise my blood pressure when he’s in a bad mood. But I feel nothing from you, not the slightest presence of desire to kill. The anger that dwells within every ninja, ready to lash out at the enemy and commit atrocity for their village and their people, simply doesn’t exist within you. You’re a ghost.”

“You’re stretching.” Haku says. “And a bad liar.”

“Really bad.” Sakura laughs, “soooo bad.”

“But you’re right.” It’s that statement hanging in the air that allows Sakura to breathe.
The tension within her fades just a little with every filling of her lungs. “I believe you.” The boy nibbles his lip, looking down to her hip where her sword lays pointlessly. He seems to be remembering something, probably the same bloodbath that haunts her dreams. She’s had problems sleeping again lately, but luckily she only needs six hours so once she finally manages to get to sleep after a couple hours of laying there she’s good. “I saved you because I don’t want this.”

“Don’t want what?”

“This. Wave, all this suffering, all this death. The children can’t even afford to eat, and even if they could, the shopkeepers don’t have food to sell them.” Haku says, voice quivering ever so slightly. His eyes look damp in a way she hasn’t seen in quite some time. Ninjas don’t cry from emotions, not normally. That kind of reaction is trained out of them in the academy. Aside from when it was her turn with the stick, she can’t really remember the last time she cried. “You’re not strong enough to pose a threat, so why let you die? Why let another person fall pointlessly for a goal I don’t even want?”

“I feel like your master wouldn’t be happy to hear this.” Sakura says.

“He knows, he just… we need the money.” Haku says. “I won’t turn against him, you won’t have my aid. But… if you were to try to solve all this, I might be able to turn his attention away from your actions.”

“I’m not ready.” She says.

“Then get ready.” There’s a growl there, under his tone. An angry chart face appears next to Haku’s head, and she has to hold back a sweat drop. It’s so big and needless and colorful. The overly pronounced expression of the chart face looks nothing like Haku’s diligently held together features.

“I will return here every few days. You will leave a note for me when you are ready to accomplish this quest of yours. Once you have confirmed that I have collected your note, you will have a short time period to do what you want. I can promise no more, I will not betray my master.”

“Why even do that much?” Sakura asks.

“Because if Gato is gone, we can leave.” Haku says. “A mercenary’s word is all they have. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't go back on the mission while Gato is around.”

“But if he’s dead, then you can go. Why not kill him yourself?” Sakura asks.

“Are you deaf?” The femboy asks. “I said our word is all we have.”

Even Sasuke’s advice isn’t working.

Well, okay, it is. On the surface she’s made a lot of progress in just a few short hours, nut deeper, she really hasn’t. If her goal is to accomplish every element before she has to make the dungeon crawl, she has to hope lightning and wind are easier than fire. If they aren’t, it’s far more likely she’d benefit more from doing physical exercises like Naruto and hoping to etch out just enough extra advantage to go on the dungeon crawl.

The bright side is that now that she’s talked to her team, she doesn’t have to make the crawl alone. The relief that comes with standing by their side is palpable, it helps her breathe, it helps her think, it helps her exist. She’s very happy about it, and she probably should be.

“Now that I think about it, where is the dungeon?” The quest is nice and all but if she doesn’t know where she’s supposed to go, then things’ll be really complicated.

Tomorrow, she’ll train physically while searching the island for potential locations. It’ll give her a much needed stat increase - she hasn’t had a real one in a long time - and give her information she needs. Sasuke can help her search, he’s a good teammate. Maybe not a great friend, he’s a bit too blunt for that at times, but a good teammate.

Sitting with Inari and playing games with him really takes the edge off a day of training.
That she can do it while playing with the rocks is a bonus. He’s gotten somewhat good at this, and watching him play makes it really easy to zone out and fade into the background.

You have unlocked Proto-Fire Affinity, level 1. Reach level 10 to unlock Fire Affinity.

She jumps at the sight, startling Inari who drops the system. She catches it with her free hand, happy to help and deposits it back in his hands a second later. “Sorry about that.” She says, “I just got startled by something.”

Proto-fire affinity. That’s different to water and earth. It implies that if she doesn’t naturally have the affinity, she can earn it. She’ll need to tell Kakashi about this, and maybe Sasuke as well. Naruto’s getting rather jealous of her power, even if she feels like he’ll lay off now that he knows it’s actually magic, she has no reason to make his day worse by bragging to him.

It’s about respect, respect and a sense of comradeship. She will say with Naruto’s impossible stamina he really doesn’t get to be jealous, but it is what it is. “Oh wow you’re getting really good at this!”

“Thanks!”

Searching the island isn’t as simple as she’d like. Sasuke went one direction while she went another. The idea being that if he spots anything crazy and huge or out of place he hunts her down and tells her so she can check it out. She imagines the dungeon will tell her, but it won’t tell Sasuke, so it’s not as efficient as two of her but she has to work with what she has.

She’s been afraid to check her stats since she got impaled. What if she went up like six points in constitution, or worse, didn’t. In one way she has to accept that her power has been permanently stained by her untimely demise. In the other, she has to accept that all of that wasn’t even worth a stat point.

She’ll definitely have to check on her points tonight though, she needs to know if all this exercise is making her any better. High knees, latching onto trees and mimicking Naruto, swinging from tree to tree with her arms like a monkey, jumping around at a speed that’s borderline sprinting to get her legs an extra burn. It’s mostly strength and agility training, but any training is important. At her stats before this mission, a single point is only about a three to four percent increase, but getting multiple of those is a combat multiplier she can’t afford to ignore.

The perks at certain thresholds only makes it more tantalizing, and it helps that even when she messes up and hits a tree or something it does so little damage her constitution skill negates it entirely. She can train in a way normal people simply can’t, and she has to abuse that while searching.

It’s a nice thought that resonates through her wonderfully as she lands in a clearing and takes a moment to catch her breath and stretch.

Random Encounter Started: Goblin Horde

“I’m sorry, what?” She doesn’t have a lot of time to be startled by the notice before she’s dodging a rock thrown at her from a tree. The entire area around her morphs quickly, lighting up as little green men spawn into existence. There’s a fire, there’s a chest, there’s archers and swords and trip wires and pit traps and it’s all clearly meant to be against her.

“f*ck.”

Chapter 11: Goblins Slaughtered, a Dungeon Found, and Kakashi f*cks up

Chapter Text

"Think Sakura, they're goblins." As more and more of the small creatures appear in the air like it's just a normal thing to do, they start to get a little more active. At first they were very static, as if loading in, but their patterns are getting more and more complex by the second. Twitchy is a good word she'd use to talk about their sporadic increase in animation.

She's right in the middle of their camp, which is probably the worst way a random encounter system could function. It also raises a lot of questions about her other encounters, like why is this the first time she's being given a notification about it, and why are they fantasmal creatures instead of nuke-nin? She reaches down for her sword, only to have a brief moment of quivering will. The sword is changing who she is, and it's doing it very fast. She can't blame the sword entirely, the system is impacting her ways of thinking and her experiences are also making huge changes, but she doesn't really want it to be her one and only option if the changes are even remotely what she estimates. Relying on a corrupting source is kinda how Siegfried turned into Nightmare.

The sword wants blood, but she can be more than that. Kakashi already scolded her about over reliance on any singular technique, and she's learned three jutsu already since she got here. Small and largely pointless, that doesn't mean she can't use them. That's it, she'll get through this fight without her sword. They're goblins, they're low level mobs in every game that's ever existed except maybe some of the less savory ones on the internet.

Challenge Alert: Eliminate all 26 goblins without drawing your sword.
Reward: 200% exp for any skills used during the dispatching.

That kind of solidifies her goal. Instead of her sword, she draws two kunai knives. She knows the theory, but was always below average on putting the kunai into practice. The difference between theory and reality is effort, and her efforts went towards games and hiding her true nature for so long it became a second nature entirely.

She doesn't even have a kunai related skill, so at two hundred percent exp in active combat, she should get one. With that resolve understood, thought through, and fully realized, it's time to move. She thinks very quickly, it allows her to take much longer thinking - to her time perspective - than most people, but even that has to end and it does with the sound of a bolt firing from behind her.

Goblins with crossbows? That's not fair. She spins on her heel, figuring out the angle based on the sound of its release and the way it wizzes through the air. Adrenaline, a quick mind, and a mixture of Genin Dexterity allows her to kick its side and send it off into the dirt without even having looked at it. Could she have done that before she got these powers?

f*ck no. Not a chance.

That was some nonsense, but it's just the first nonsense among a hundred other nonsenses to enter this fight. Sasuke is nowhere to be seen, Naruto's back with Tsunami and Inari, and Kakashi's likely napping like a babe in his dark dwelling.

Can she take on twenty six weak opponents herself?

No.

Can she do it with several conceptual skills giving her massive advantages against weak opponents, and a proactive go getter attitude?

Yeah, she imagines she can.

A quick blur of glances marks them all in her mind, a photographic memory helping her in a way she's pretty sure is cheating even without her powers. Eight in the trees, five with crossbows, three with rocks. Sixteen on the ground, charging at her from all directions.

A camp with a campfire, traps around the edges, a bear trap, wire traps- she's on the move. The ones she runs right towards are surprised for all of a second before they have their scrappy swords slashing at her. They're of no consequence, she speeds up from a mild run to full speed instantly using Genin Agility the moment she's within range and jumps right on over them. She uses her dexterity to roll as she lands, grabbing a bear trap and hucking it right at them. It snaps shut just as it lands on the face of a little green man, and the gruesome crunching of bone and rending of flesh is a little much even for her. "Holy sh*t." She's stunned just long enough for her Genin Dexterity alone to save her from another bolt, her head tilting aside just in time for it to miss and embed itself in a tree.

She wants to grab it and huck it back like a kunai, before her brain connects the dots and remembers that she just has kunai. "How long has it been since I've used these?" She asks herself, implanting one of the two already drawn kunai in the skull of the nearest green miniature trying to take out her legs. She jumps back, leaving the clearing entirely and entering the thick tree line so most of the shooters can't get a bead on her. Then it's simply a matter of running right up a tree and launching herself off of it with silent steps. She watches as they follow her into the trees, looking around all confused as to where she could have possibly gone.

She's happy to learn goblins are stupid, and starts to creep along the branches in an effort to get to one. She finds it's easy to get behind one without an issue. The remaining drawn kunai inserts itself in his throat. She takes just enough time to grab his loaded crossbow, before she lets him fall into the clearing below a bloody gurgling mess. It takes a moment longer than she'd like to figure out how to aim the crossbow, but luckily not so long anyone notices. She manages to get a bolt through one's forehead before the corpse she just made hits the ground with a wet smack. The next falls with his crossbow, removing that option, but that's fine. She just wanted to see if she could. She tosses the now ammo less weapon down below, and gets back to climbing so she can sneak up on the remaining six highly alert entities in the trees. They've clearly noticed the demise of their two friends, so she has to be careful.

It's not hard to get a shuriken into each and every one despite caution slowing her down. She gets above them in the trees, and simply throws down. She should have really trained shuriken throwing more than the academy required before this, with more alert opponents it wouldn't work at all, but her powers deemed it reasonable to give her an incredibly easy engagement. Throwing down works, and soon enough ranged support is eliminated like the joke it is.

An easy breath of relief leaves her. She could leave now if she wanted, but her quest notes she's only eliminated ten of twenty six, and she has the height advantage.

She reaches into her shuriken pouch, and channels fire chakra as strongly as she can into the metal. It's probably not good for the pouch, but she hasn't gotten it to the point where anything is catching fire so it should be fine.

After a few moments of catching her breath and focus, she does the most Naruto thing she can think of. "Shuriken jutsu, waste all the shuriken!" She announces with fervor, using her new technique name to grab and huck as many red hot shuriken down at the pissed off lemmings as she can before her pack is out.

That turns out to be more than she expected, but less than she wants. With all her ranged weapons gone besides one kunai she'd rather keep for fighting when she gets down there, she's reduced to six goblins. Most of which with horrific burns, and agonizing death screams she's happy she doesn't have to hear anymore now that they're very dead.

She imagines if she'd had a level system, this'd be worth a lot of experience at least. At least her skills are gaining exp. "f*ck it."

None of her jutsu are useful for range. The best she can do is drop down to the ground and engage them directly. She can't use her sword though, so it's best to try and get an advantage. That thought has her using the normal clone jutsu to create two versions of herself.

The clone jutsu is normally rather useless. It doesn't cast a shadow, it doesn't move grass, it doesn't smell or talk or make sound and attacks pass right through it because it's basically mist traveling in the wind. With goblins, she gets the feeling she'll fool them just fine. They idiots split up into groups of two to charge them each. Unfortunately clone jutsu does exactly what you do with no variance, so she can't make them be evasive while she eliminates her two. She just has to hope the brief delay until they figure it out is enough.

One takes a swing at her, and her dexterity kicks in without a thought. Her foot kicks out, slamming against the side of his sword and quickly overpowering it. The sword drops to the ground, held underfoot by her heel and a powerful application of tree walking keeps it there. Her second foot finds itself embedded in the creature's face, sending it rolling with more than enough time for her to react to the second's attack. She parries it easily with the kunai, sliding along the blade as she darts towards him. The sparks of the two blades dragging along each-other are vibrant and bright, but not as bright as the light that leaves his eyes. She finds herself several feet away, holding a severed head and holding back retching.

She doesn't have time for that.

She looks back at the four that remain with urgency and a readiness to create a wall to block them. She even has the earth chakra already built up in her hands.

Except, it's not needed, as she finds them still rapidly stabbing her non-tangible clones to death. If the situation were any less disgusting, she would sweat drop. "Oh wow, they really are that stupid. I have vastly over complicated this."

With that realization she walks up behind them, and jams the kunai into their spine one after another. "Yeah, waaay too overcomplicated. Next time I'll try stabbing first."

Congratulations, you've killed all 26 Goblins in this Random Encounter, and earned 200% exp for doing it without your sword! Please open the random encounter chest!

Looking for the chest, she can't help but be distracted by the messages popping up.

You have gained Novice Short Blade
You have gained Novice Throwing Weapons
You have gained Novice Stealth
You have gained Clone Technique Intermediate
You have gained Novice Crossbow
You have gained Trait: Neck Snapper

"... I didn't even snap any necks." She points out, sighing to herself before shaking her head and putting on a smile for all those skills. She doubts she would have gotten them all without the bonus, and she's not about to complain about progress.

As shown at the end, that didn't need to be as hard as it was. Her reliance on her sword alone is what caused that, and she could improve greatly from branching out a bit before she becomes an idiot impaled to a tree again.

She chooses not to check her stats yet. It's just not time. Her finger hovers over the button to check, but the fear inside her wells up physically, and she just can't.

She'll check them, she's sure she needs to.

Just, not now.

Her eyes catch onto a bronze glow, and her feet take her to it. It's a chest. A straight up game chest, like the kind you'd find in a dungeon or when raiding an enemy camp. Filled with jewels and magical gear, she can't help but shake in giddy excitement as her fingers land on the top and begin to pry it open.

"Is that…"

It's not much. The chest has exactly two items inside it.

A thick scroll with no small amount of ornate symbols on it and a golden lock shimmering with magical excitement waiting to stop her from prying it open, and a lockpick.

"You gave me a damn skill check!?"

Pocketing both items, she resigns herself to learning how to pick locks soon. Or getting Naruto to do it, she's pretty sure he can pick a lock. The lock on his door at home is a bit of an odd one, it likes to lock itself and then they have to get a bunch of tools and undo it when they need it. Naruto's never once had that problem, and it's kinda been a month. She was meaning to buy him a replacement lock, but he just hasn't brought it up so it slipped her mind.

Until now.

The bloody scene around her slowly disappears. It starts in glints of light, flowing upwards into the sky and evaporating as if it was never here. First it's the weapons, then it's the bodies, then the camp. She watches the fire flow away as a last vestige, not even the blood coating her left remaining to tell the tale.

It says a lot. This whole scene says so damn much and she likes none of it. The demon twins didn't dissolve, she wasn't informed of them, she didn't find a chest or get a rewarding quest while fighting them.

They just existed, and then she snuffed them out. Does that mean they were real, or that the system is changing to better understand games? The fact that the goblin encounter was technically weaker than them despite being this far out has a lot of say in which is which, and her blood curdles a little bit just thinking about it.

It's not killing them that bothers her. Enemy ninja deserve to die, they're taught that in the academy. Even if it's not explicitly true, enough training is given on the concept that she knows how to shut out any sort of guilt.

It's shrugging off her teammate's worries that bothers her.

If they were real, if they weren't created just for her, then Naruto and Sasuke must think she's batsh*t. Thinking on it, they don't believe her about the gaming system yet. Even if they weren't real, her teammates think she's batsh*t.

It's while she's collecting her shuriken and kunai from the ground and distracting herself with counting them and scurrying around, that feet appear behind her. "Found it."

"What?" She looks to the cool looking, not at all disheveled from a random ass goblin attack, Sasuke. "What do you mean you found it? How would you know?"

"It says dungeon." Sasuke clicks his teeth.

"... It what?"

"This is ominous." She says, looking at what amounts to a dark cave with an incredibly large entrance mined into the rocks that surround it. "I figured it'd be a tower or something."

"It looks like a secret entrance to a building we can't see." Sasuke says. "The neon sign saying dungeon is a bit of a nice touch."

"Yeah it's not neon for me." She says, having absolutely no idea what he's talking about.

Gato Tower Dungeon, Level Recommendation: 20
Please ensure you are on level and have equivalent quality gear that is in top condition. There will be no leaving to rest once you have entered.

"Gato Dungeon. At least we know it's the right place." She says. "Level twenty… What level do you suppose we are?"

"You're the one with the gaming addiction." Sasuke points out. "I wouldn't have the slightest clue what that even means."

"Right, remind me to at least invite you to Mario Party sometime." She sighs at the thought. A whole month with him and she hasn't included him in her hobbies. She's not a very good friend, she regrets that. She'll need to be better for them. "It says we can't leave until we complete the dungeon, so we shouldn't go in to check it out."

"That's too bad." He says. "But how could it possibly stop us from leaving?"

"Rock cave in, magic wall, portals, could even place level ninety nine guards with laser rifles intending to stop us."

"I don't want to know what those words mean." Sasuke admits. "We should probably ask Kakashi about this before we go into a strange place anyway."

"Agreed."

"We found Gato's dungeon." Sasuke has no sense of tact. She thought she was bad, and maybe there was a time when she was worse, but Sasuke manages to surprise her. "Or, its entrance. It's a cave to the north. It doesn't appear to go anywhere."

"How do we know it's the dungeon then?" Kakashi asks.

"It says dungeon." Sasuke blurts. "Sakura sees something different than I do."

"It declared the dungeon as level twenty." Sakura says, leaning against the wall while overlooking her team. Kakashi's almost back to normal, sitting around instead of laying back. Naruto's doing push-ups even indoors, not a care in the world in that one's head. He has a single-minded focus on getting stronger in a way she could never mimic. If she was even half as dedicated as Naruto, she'd be a Chunin by now. That thought makes her stomach waver a bit. Just how much is she disrespecting him with her power? How many others just like him exist, who she's surpassing with half the effort?

Poor Naruto. She decides she'll have to start training a bit more with him again.

"The issue," Sakura continues, "is that my system hasn't included levels yet. Skill levels, in small variations, ability tiers, sure, but even my scan ability only gives me a basic danger rating."

"You can check danger ratings?" Naruto asks, jumping right up from a push-up with one hand, she's pretty sure he'll be doing tongue-ups before long. The thought makes her flush for reasons she's not sure about. Darn internet, ruining her mind. "What's mine say?"

She's thought Naruto's danger rating was weird since the very first moment she's taken a look at it. It says he's a beast among men, a walking force of nature that cannot and should not be contained. It tells her to run, to hide, to scream and never stop her feet if it means just one more step away from the boy that sleeps a room away from her. She figured maybe the technique is malfunctioning, or maybe it's rating him higher because she promised never to hurt him again so maybe he simply cannot be beaten by her.

All doubts are lost when she catches Kakashi's eyes. Yes, eyes. She's never been sent a clearer message in her life. Even without the odd picture that appears behind his head of a very threatening Kakashi head, it's clear what he's trying to convey. The man raises his headband a little bit, to stare into her soul unbeknownst to the others with his Sharingan spinning to life. It's actually the first time she's seen it, and she can't help but find it mesmerizing. Sasuke'll have that? His poor fangirls are going to grow in numbers.

Even with the mask, she can tell exactly what his facial expression looks like. Strained, panicked, urgent and worried. He's contemplating if he can shut her up faster than she can speak, or if he should trust her.

Whatever is wrong with Naruto, Kakashi knows, and he's telling her with no uncertain terms that she will lie right now or face trial for treason. Which is a bit of a problem, because she can't lie.

"You're pretty scary." She laughs a little, "you're really getting a lot stronger, Naruto, I can see all those gains working for you." It's half true, and luckily for her, Naruto's not much better than she is socially. He believes her, or at least by that half-fake, half earnest smile taking up his excited face at her praise, she hopes he does.

Sasuke seems to catch on that something is up, but by the time he looks at Kakashi, the headband is back down and the man is acting like nothing happened. Her heart is still trying to beat out of her chest, but everything is back to normal.

"Have you tried going as a team?" Kakashi asks. "It may be a bit before your time, but a lot of older RPGs had teams of three instead of four or five. Maybe it'll change if you have a full party of three?"

"That's really stupid." Sakura rolls her eyes, even as she uses the moment to appease her own shattered nerves. Her sensei just threatened her, and she's not even sure why. She's happy for the excuse to flee. "Let's go Naruto, we have to check just in case."

"But you said it's stupid." Naruto says.

"My whole ability is stupid, he's probably right."

She could not be happier to walk out the damn door before she vomits all over Tsunami's nice floor.

Kakashi watches them leave with a little regret in his heart. He hadn't intended to do that, he'd panicked and overreacted. Sakura's not dumb, she wouldn't tell Naruto about it right in front of Sasuke even if she did know. She'd understand that village secrets are not to be spilled casually, and yet, when faced with being loyal to his village or her, he'd chosen without thinking. Those that abandon their village are trash, but those that abandon their comrades are worse than trash. Minato would be disappointed.

Not much to do now but be happy he hadn't done anything irreversible. He'll have to talk to her later, apologize, maybe figure out a way to make her understand the severity of the moment and that he wouldn't actually hurt her.

He'd be lying, but unlike her, he can lie. He lies to Naruto every day, just like it looks like Sakura is. Her face when Naruto asked revealed more than a thousand words ever could. Her ability has told her something about him, and that info alone proves her powers more than anything else she could do. "Tsunami!" He calls out. "Do you need any help with dinner?"

He needs to do something to get his mind off of this. He was Anbu for years, of course he'd overreact to village secrets a little, no one could blame him. Except him.

Chapter 12: Sakura's Sword's Origin, hell training, and a sleep-over with Inari.

Chapter Text

Kakashi has a lot of time to think about things while he’s injured. Some of those things are simple. Naruto probably knows about his condition by now - the Hokage was oddly vague about that - but Sasuke doesn’t, and Sakura probably doesn’t, and keeping it that way a little longer so they can bond before the truth comes out would be quite nice.

Then there’s the issue of if he doesn’t know, how would he reveal something like that? He’s holding so many things from his team, so many from Naruto, it’s hard to remember when he’s lying and when he’s not.

Then there’s that sword Sakura has. The Chaos Blade, or as it was called originally, Hunger. It’s easy for Sakura, an obsessed girl who’s afternoons have been about games since she first entered the academy, to have made the assumption that he got her a replica Chaos blade. It’s very easy for him to pretend that’s exactly what happened.

She’d be wrong, and he’d be lying, but it would be easy for those events to happen.

The reality is much more sinister. Zoning out while helping Tsunami with dinner, he can’t help but remember exactly how that sword came to be in Sakura’s hands. The sword the Chaos Blade was based on.

“Junk.” He groaned, returning from the training ground with a grimace. He couldn’t help but judge the garbage in his hands. He’d taken this ‘sword’ from Sakura just a few moments ago, a slab of metal that should have been illegal to sell as a novelty, let alone call it a real sword. As a kenjutsu master, his pride was damaged beyond repair that this passed for craftsmanship in this day and age, and his irritation was enough to cause his fingers to grind in and bend the weapon without much thought. That was fine, returning it was never really going to happen, it’s not like he needed the money.

“Maybe a normal masterwork?” He rifled through his old sealed weapons with one grimace after another. Nothing really fits Sakura, and that’s saying something because the girl doesn’t have a lot to fit with. She’s a fresh genin trying out Kenjutsu for the first time, anything should work, but nothing felt right. With a sigh, he pried prying open a floor board. Lifting a box out, he pulled a very unique weapon from it. He looked it over, recoiling from its sheer shine just like the first time he saw it. Bright and light, Beacon, was an enchanted sword of blinding light and was said to increase a wielder’s natural luck and prosperity. It’d be good to give her something like that, any genin could use a little luck, especially one with lofty goals like killing Itachi Uchiha. She’d need luck just to not get murdered by the man well before she was strong enough to hold a torch.

He was just about to leave with Beacon, when he heard a crash downstairs. Living in his own home, and knowing damn well no one was invading it, he couldn’t help but set Beacon down and continue down the steps with Sakura’s slab of garbage pretending to be a weapon. He’d use it to beat the intruder to death if there really was someone brazen enough to break into Kakashi Hatake’s home on a random Monday afternoon. It’d be a much better use of it than anything else he could imagine, a blunt instrument meant to make a brutal point.

“Is that…” His eyes took in the room and found it to be mostly the same it had always been. A mostly empty place with a simple shrine committed to three people. His old teammate Obito, who had given him the very eye that rests deep inside his skull.

His old teammate Rin, who’d suffered a very gruesome fate in a way that still haunts his nightmares to this day.

Most importantly, at the center of the shrine, was a blond man with spiky hair and an unnervingly enthusiastic smile. Confident to a fault even when marching to his death, his old sensei, Minato Namikaze. What caught his attention in that moment was not the shrine itself, but what was mysteriously resting on top of it.

Hunger. It didn’t sound particularly special, in fact it sounded like Naruto after someone offered to buy him a bowl of ramen. Hunger was a rather obscure sword, a few games had made similar designs or based a weapon off its concept over the years, but it wasn’t famous.

The one time it was used, it’d killed everyone who could have made it famous.

That was before Kakashi killed the one using it, sealed it in a scroll, then threw it in a vault.

It’d driven a man to madness, turned him into a puppet, used his very life essence to drive his rotting corpse onwards to kill more, and more, and more, never satisfied, always devouring, never-endingly violent.

“How are you-” Without a moment more to think about it the sword moved.

The weapon launched itself out of its sheath and flew towards him like the spirits the shrine commemorated were forcing an issue with sharp edges. He didn’t move, he didn’t need to. He knew exactly where the sword was coming, and with awe, he watched as Hunger ripped Sakura’s junk out of his hand, and impaled it to his wall. It spurred to life, grinding the piece of crap all on its own as if given a blood sacrifice it hadn’t tasted in years.

Kakashi had never been a particularly superstitious man. He believed in the true supernatural ridiculousness that permeated his world. He wanted to believe his team had gone to a happy afterlife of some sort, he had incredible respect for the dead, but it was not the fear of reprisal that caused him to spend hours of his day mourning those he had lost.
It was regret, and guilt that led those actions. Guilt at still being alive, while they rotted and disappeared.

But that?

“Yes, Sensei.” He bowed to the shrine, before grabbing Hunger, and going out to quickly get a new custom sheath made for it. If he was giving her Hunger, it’d need to look a little more like something from a game so she’d get excited and treat it with respect.

He’d also need to play with the sword a little to make sure the effects it had weren’t instantaneous or prone to actually take Sakura over. It’d overtaken a civilian, but at her age he was definitely capable of resisting a low level demon sword. She should be too, right?

Then he’d be watching her, to make sure the weapon didn’t destroy her anyway. He wouldn’t take his eyes off her for quite some time, ensuring she remained human in a way its previous owner simply hadn’t.

[Gato Tower Dungeon, Level Recommendation: 20
Level of current party: 18

Please ensure you are on level and have equivalent quality gear that is in top condition. There will be no leaving to rest once you have entered.]

“You guys seeing that?” Sakura asks. “I mean I assume no but-”

“Yes.” It’s Sasuke’s voice that cuts through her doubts and makes her gawk.

“You mean like, the thing right, not the odd cave in front of us?”

“I mean the level notifier.” Sasuke says. “We’re eighteen.”

“I feel like we should be above eighteen.” Naruto says. “In the games Sakura and I have been playing, you reach level twenty in a couple of hours. We’ve trained our whole lives.”

Sakura chooses not to point out that she has not trained her whole life, unless training meant scaling buildings in Assassin's creed and stomping out Ganon like an old man needing to be taught the same damn lesson all over again. Not for the first time, she feels like a cheater. She shouldn’t be standing on their level, Naruto shouldn’t be jealous, Kakashi shouldn’t be giving her one-on-one training and Sasuke should be their team leader.

Doubts boil up until they’re an ephemeral layer of skin covering hers.

Sasuke’s hand on her shoulder snaps her out of it, and a simple nod from him calms her nerves.
It’s normal to feel a little overwhelmed from time to time, she knows that.

They need to get stronger. “I don’t think we’re ready.” She says. “Looks like we really need to train. If we can complete this before he attacks, we never have to worry about Zabuza.”

“Can we?” Sasuke asks. “Naruto’s right, we’ve trained our whole lives. Even if we assume levels are gained with similar efforts and there’s no sense of scaling to make matters harder.” Sakura chooses not to cut in that there probably is a rather significant one. “That’s still an eleven percent difference we’d have to gain in, what, a week?”

As surprised as she is to see him use math, it’s rather overtaken by the fact that it was incredibly unnecessary. Sasuke using math for no reason? She instinctively tries to break a genjutsu, and gives an awkward titter when Sasuke glares at her.

“Getting stronger is the easy part.” Naruto says. “We just have to push ourselves like we never have before.”

“Easy for you to say.” Sasuke scoffs. “There was an entire year in the academy where I set up a bed in the training field because I didn’t have the energy to get home each night.”

There’s that guilt. She doesn’t belong in this position. She’s never done anything close to that. Well, not because of training.

“See, that’s where you made your first mistake, one we won’t make here,” Naruto quips. “you slept.”

“Get to work making the race track, Sakura.” Kakashi orders her, as he begins giving the boys some quick one-on -one training to make up for a bit of her personal time. She finds it hard to complain, she’s gotten a lot of his attention since they got here while they’ve mostly been forced to climb a tree for hours on end. While it’s very good for their chakra control, she can’t help the nagging guilt that seeps into her blood while she works.

It’s hard work, using a lot of chakra she’d really rather not have parted with so early in the day. Despite the task draining her quickly, it’s very easy to watch them while she works, which she finds herself very grateful for. It looks like simple repetitive motion training, teaching them both how to run in place and correcting their running forms by making them try it again and again until he’s satisfied. What they could get out of that, she’s not sure, but he’s the jonin not her. She’s just a genin who lucked into some absolute nonsense. The fact that said nonsense makes her happy and stronger and shatters the laws of the universe under her foot like it’s nothing only serves to accentuate the difference between them.

If Kakashi had gotten this ability, as a true genius, Konoha would own the world by now.

Oh well, it’s her ability and she won’t be giving it up. There’s no point to thinking of what ifs, not when they have so little time to get stronger.

At about halfway done with the replication of the Academy race track, Sakura can’t help but fall over and gasp for air. Three times her chakra in one day, and yet she can only do half. It’s stupid how much she can feel it inside her, how exhausted she is from such a simple action.

She finds herself fading, and accepts the nap for what it is. She’s with her team, she’s safe.

When she awakens, it’s to the team still working, and a notification about six hours having passed. The sky is a lot darker, but that’s not important. She gets back to her knees, and gets to work. Kakashi barely gives her a glance in her direction to approve of her actions, telling her she’s doing the right thing with an eye smile.

She’s only mostly exhausted when she finishes the track, which is odd because she really had only done exactly half before. Then again, she’d done a bunch of training before the goblins, so maybe the training plus the random encounter had tired her out more than she’d realized.

Whatever the case, it’s while she’s catching her breath and drinking from her flask that Kakashi approaches her. “Sakura.” He greets, a glint of seriousness in his eyes. “Are you ready to do something forbidden?”

“Not now Kakashi, wait a few years at least.”

“Wha-no.” Seeing her Sensei clap his hand over his face and grip the bridge of his nose is totally worth it. She can see an exasperated face appear beside his head, like she needed the help or something. “I don’t like that that’s your answer to that, but I’m going to move on because I only have so much energy in a day.”

She snickers out loud, at least letting him in on the fact that it was a joke. She can make those, she promises! “There are very specific rules on how hard a jonin can work their genin. These rules were put into place because clan era shinobi sometimes worked their students to actual death. They’d call them weak, and move on. It only took a few times before the reigning Hokage had to make a ruling.”

“Sounds dumb.” She says.

“It was, but clan era shinobi were a very different kind of insane.” Kakashi explains patiently. “You have to understand that In a ninja village, for every rule that sounds dumb, it was created because in its absence someone died. Normally that someone was a genin or academy student.”

“Yeesh.” She plops back, pouring some of the water on her face to cool her hot skin. Chakra exercise is still exercise, and boy does it suck. She hates it so much.

“I’m going to ignore the law while we’re outside of the village.” Kakashi says. “I’m going to work you so hard, anyone else would die. You won’t get strong enough in time unless I do.”

“I’m not gonna like what you say next, am I?” She asks, looking at the training field and already having a pretty good idea of what he’s about to say.

“Nope, but I don’t really care.” Kakashi admits. “You’ll be learning the lightning training jutsu while running the track with Naruto. You will be trying to outlast him.”

“That’s impossible.” She shrugs.

“I didn’t ask.” His ominous statement lingers in the air. “When you pass out, Sasuke will take your place until he needs rest. You’ll cut the affinity training and carry Sasuke as if he’s a wounded teammate while running, shortly before you run out of Chakra.”

“... Kakashi, that’s absolutely insane.” She deadpans from her place on the ground.

“Didn’t ask, get up and go!” It’s with that, that he does several hand seals and a nimble and bright lightning whip appears in his hand. It drips towards the ground, but the message is clear. Run or get the crop.

“Oh, screw you.”

“Less whine, more run!” The first whip hurts enough she doesn’t learn what the second feels like.

The lightning jutsu is a subtle jutsu to try and use lightning to alter the nervous system and accelerate its function enough to increase awareness. It’s incredibly taxing, and just not that effective for long term engagements, but is helping her get the gist of lightning chakra.

Sakura had originally asked if f*cking with her nervous system is a good idea, and Kakashi waved it off, asking her what the worst that could happen would be. He’d told her to take a nap if she collapsed, unable to move, like that wasn’t already what she was going to do.

Naruto’s naturally faster than her, but she’s getting the hang of lightning chakra somewhat quick and is capable of using it for a lengthy period of almost ten minutes. Using it allows her to keep up with him pretty handily. “You’re getting faster.” Naruto compliments her.

“I’m cheating.” She reminds, biting her lip hard to ignore a twinge of pain caused by a misfire from her jutsu. Talking makes it hard to concentrate on jutsu this complicated, at least without a real affinity. “It doesn’t really count.”

“We’re all cheating in our own ways, Sakura.” Naruto says, a knowing glint in his eyes. She recognizes that expression despite her relative difficulty with stuff like that. Guilt, it’s the same thing she’s been feeling about getting so strong. She can’t figure out what he has to feel guilty about though, it’s not like whatever makes him so dangerous is something he controls. If it was, they wouldn’t have been level eighteen at the dungeon, because she’s pretty sure anyone ranked ‘run away’ is above level twenty on their own.

“I guess so.” She decides not to pursue that line of questioning. Naruto probably doesn’t even really know about whatever it is, he’d have surely explained to try and impress her by now. Far more important, is Sasuke panting and exhaustedly sprawled out in the middle of the track. She disengages the lightning jutsu to swoop down and scoop him up as she passes. “Having fun, Sasuke?” She asks.

“Naruto’s exhausting.” He says from her back. The first time he’d taken the indignance with quite some difficulty, now he lays there and waits without much to say. You can only be yelled into compliance by Kakashi so many times before you just do what the crazy guy with the whip says. “How is he still running?”

“He really doesn’t have to sleep, I guess.” Sakura shrugs, knowing she’s falling behind her blond teammate, but also knowing there’s really not much she can do about it. Sasuke isn’t a heavy enough load to slow her down, but she hopes it still trains strength. Without the lightning coursing through her body, she has no chance of keeping up with Naruto. It’s just not possible and Kakashi accepts it so she’s certainly going to.

When it’s not running laps, it’s running up and down trees as fast as possible. When it’s not running at all, it’s push ups, it’s crunches, it’s weight lifting using Naruto clones as dumbbells. She’s not really sure how they have his weight being constructs and all, but she’s not about to question another teammate’s bullsh*t when her own is so prevalent.

Naruto supposedly sleeps during some of her rests, but she doesn’t see it, and she can’t help but let her mind wander. While Naruto and Sasuke are working within reasonable limits given by Kakashi, the two have a lot more stamina than her. They actually spend a few hours working at a time before the man uses what little he knows of medical ninjutsu to heal them.

The issue is, that’s not actually a lot. He’s an offensive ninja first, and his support level is far below average for a jonin. He’s still better than most chunin though, which leaves Sasuke receiving a lot of attention and Naruto almost none.

There’s a reason Sasuke’s almost always begrudgingly smooshed into the dirt somewhere whenever she wakes up.

She only tends to get a half an hour to an hour of this all out crazy training before she is taking a nap. Kakashi says it’s still more efficient than what the boys are doing, because she’s fully healing in between training sessions while they are very much still hurting from before and pushing themselves less.

It doesn’t really matter what he says, - besides the obvious - it only matters what her ability thinks. She’s not sure yet, she kind of wants to see all the training through and then check.

Sakura stumbles into Inari’s room, panting and holding the door. “You winning, kid?” She asks, watching the boy play her gameboy. He does in fact seem to be getting better, and he’s immersed too. It takes him a second to realize she’s there and jump up. “Oh, Sakura! You’re alive!”

“Well, duh.” She snickers, holding back a deep breath that seeks to push itself into her lungs. It turns out there is a limit to how much she can grind in a short period abusing the sleep before it argues with her. This time, she only woke up with half her stamina and chakra restored.

She can’t really complain though. Three days of straight training, she’s not actually sure how many training sessions it was but basic math says it was around ten. Even the most strenuous of missions should be completed before ten freaking cycles in a row. Then there’s the possibility that they lied to her about how long it was to make her feel better, and it was twenty or thirty cycles or something.

With that announcement, and having finally gained the lightning proto-affinity, Kakashi finally let her go. Everyone is kinda happy about that, Kakashi included. It was getting kind of ridiculous.

She collapses next to the kid, hugging him close while idly watching the game over his shoulder. He’d moved on to one of the other cartridges, and she’s much too tired to pay much actual attention to it. Someone warm that isn’t her training buddy is more than enough to try to lull her off to sleep again. Nope, she decides, now’s the perfect chance to check how much stronger she’s gotten. “You’re really taken to the gameboy.” She says, “I’ll have to come visit and bring you a real gaming system some time after we save this island.”

He says nothing at that, simply frowning. She knows he wants to warn her to run away, whatever this Gato did to this kid must have been rather personal. His grandfather asked him a lot when he told him to keep his mouth shut. It’s not actually necessary, now that everyone on the team is aware of the real situation, but she’s not about to disrupt the peace by announcing that. A ninja’s secrets are also their power.

First, her stats.

She can’t help but be impressed by her new statistics. Even for the hell she just went through, that’s an absurd boost, and for the fiftieth time she kind of wishes she could check the statistics of her teammates to make sure they are getting stronger too. She’d hate to find out she’s sapping their gains or something through cosmic scales.

Most importantly though, are the skill and Trait changes.

[Clone Technique Intermediate: You are extremely proficient in the E rank jutsu, Clone Technique. You do not currently possess the chakra capacity to evolve this technique.]

[Tree Walking: You have learned the ins and outs of walking on trees, walls, people’s weapons and various cave structures. Learn how to do it on Water to Evolve the Skill]

[Novice Short Blade: You have started on the path of the short blade. Self taught and without much training besides what you needed to pass the Academy’s not so strict criteria, you are very unlikely to cut yourself but earn little other benefit. Gain a 25% to Dexterity while trying to deflect with a short blade. ]

[Novice Throwing Weapons: You have started on the path of the throwing weapon. Self taught and without much training besides what you needed to pass the Academy’s not so strict criteria, you are very unlikely to cut yourself but earn little other benefit. Gain a 25% to Dexterity while trying to land a blow from short range with a throwing weapon.]

[Novice Stealth: You are learning how to sneak up on an enemy, and your academy days have made your footsteps light and bouncy. You can now see basic sight lines, and are aware of how much noise you’re making while trying to stealth.]

[Novice Crossbow: You can shoot a crossbow, and you’re willing to kill with it. You aim 25% faster and deal 25% more damage with a crossbow as long as you’re in an advantageous situation.]

Reviewing them all, she can’t help but feel her head spin a little. That’s so much, and it’s all technically useful. She’s not sure what crap it’s talking about the Academy, they required her to get quite proficient with kunai, though nowhere near as proficient as Sasuke. He had clan techniques though, so that’s not exactly a fair comparison.

Tree walking will have to be evolved the first chance she gets, sight lines are ridiculous enough to make her roll her eyes, but it’s the crossbow skill that has her gaping enough Inari looks over questioningly. “You’re just really surprising me with your new skills.” She manages to lie. Not convincingly, but enough a little boy doesn’t question her.

It’s not an incredible ability or anything, she has no intentions of using a crossbow and she isn’t even aware of what it would consider an advantageous situation. It’s just, crossbows aren’t used by Shinobi because they have a set strength. Academy student or Jonin, a shot to the face from a crossbow will do the exact same amount of damage. It’s a stable weapon without any influence from the user besides its aim. Many of her skills have had a phantasmal, fantasy effect on her. Her sword does less damage to her, her armor is calced in a strange way, she can smash into a tree and not care about the damage.

This is the first ability that directly influences someone else. It has implications, and she’s not sure she likes them.

She shakes that off, before getting to her traits.

[Sasuke’s Close Confidant: An Upgrade from Sasuke Trivia Expert, you’ve officially earned enough of Sasuke’s trust to be considered his friend. Romantic options are enabled, and the effects of teamwork are greatly increased while interacting with him. You’re at the top of the list for ‘people he wouldn’t mind rebuilding his clan with someday.’ It’s a very short list.]

She barely has time to gag a little before she realizes something.
The next trait is Neck Snapper, not Disappointment. She looks at the traits list over three times, it’s gone. She is no longer a disappointment, and while it doesn’t have any tangible benefits, it makes her kick her feet and squee like one of Sasuke’s fangirls after he did something broody. Inari shoots her another questioning gaze, and she points to the game. He’s suspicious, and she doesn’t really care. She’s not a disappointment!

[Neck Snapper: Deal 300% damage when attacking from behind while undetected by the target. Caution, do not use it against allies, they will die.]

No sh*t. She glares at the screen, she’s not an idiot. She has ninety eight Mental, which is a lot. Chunin rank mental, her traits have told her. With a shake of her head, she moves on.

[Sister to a Fox: The Prankster of Konoha has been likened to a sneaky little fox many times, and just like a sneaky little fox, you’ve gone and earned its loyalty so it’ll stick by your side until the day you die. Romantic options are enabled, and the effects of teamwork are greatly increased while interacting with him. You’re at the top of the list for ‘people he wouldn’t mind rebuilding his clan with someday.’ It’s a short list, but it’s longer than Sasuke’s!]

Okay, so both her teammates want to do lewd things to her someday. That really makes all that getting sweaty and running around with them kinda awkward. It also raises questions about Naruto having a clan.

Luckily it’s not her problem right now! She’ll revisit the idea when she hits that phase of girlhood where she’s fawning over every guy with chiseled abs. Everyone of her ex-classmates except Ino appear to have hit that stage a year ago, so she’s not actually sure she will hit it. Either way, she has something much more interesting to focus on, traits.

Or, she wishes she did. The remaining new stuff is just her Academy Student Charm and her affinities. Water Affinity and Earth reached level two, proto-fire and lightning are still on one.

She closes her eyes at that, saying screw it.
She’ll nap next to the kid, he probably hasn’t had a sleep over since all this Gato business, he probably won’t mind.

Chapter 13: Urgency arrives twice, The Bridge becomes a Problem, and the Dungeon's entrance is imposing

Chapter Text

Returning to the training ground bright and early in the morning, she’s surprised to not just find Naruto and Sasuke napping in the grass, but to also find a random Haku. The boy is rather impatiently tapping his foot against a stone while she approaches, looking like he has very little time for this and would rather be literally anywhere else.

“Are you here to take me up on that streamer idea?” Sakura asks as she approaches. “I really feel like I’d do a pretty good job as a manager.”

The boy’s expression - aided by the cute little Haku picture beside his head - tells her he’s about as impressed by her idea as Naruto would be. “No.” It’s simple, it’s direct, it’s Haku. His voice is so pretty though, it really does make her wanna record him and play him through her headphones while taking a nap. “Zabuza-sama is up and around. You’re running out of time, and testing my patience while you are at it.”

“We’re doing the best we can.” Sakura shrugs, looking at the boys to make sure they’re actually napping and not brutally murdered or something. She doubts it, but with enemy ninja it’s always worth a check. Their chests move up and down, and that makes her smile. “We’re not relaxing, we’re training our butts off in the hopes we can get strong enough fast enough. Besides, Kakashi’s almost better too, if he thinks he can take Kakashi, he’s welcome to come and waste his time.”

“Stupid girl…” Haku growls at her a little, balling his fists and holding back a rage that has so little killing intent to it that Sakura can’t help but find it adorable despite the difference in strength between them.

“You get you’re more bishonen and less yandere, right?” Sakura teases him pointedly.

“I don’t know what that means, but I really feel like you just insulted me.” Haku takes a deep breath to calm himself, before stepping forward into Sakura’s personal space unprompted. Sakura chooses not to step back, if only because that’d be admitting she’s scared, and she’s kinda not. Haku really has left the threat stage of her thinking of him, and while her ability says he’s a chunin level boss, she’s kind of used to ignoring the threat level for harmless boys by now.

“A little.” She admits, her cheeks heating up just enough to admit to the world that she did wrong and got called out on it in the same breath. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you,” Haku’s face gets awkwardly close to hers, his expression pensive and aggressive, his eyes gazing directly into hers in a way she’d call romantic if she knew the first part of identifying romance. Statistically humans are very bad at figuring out whether someone is flirting or not, in fact, they’re below fifty percent, she’s not about to assume she’s above an average level, “to come up with a plan of action.”

“Is this when you kiss me?”

“Wha-no!” She finds two hands slam into her chest, sending her sprawling flat on her back. “I’m trying to intimidate you!”

“Oh!” She nods to herself, like this is a sudden realization. Haku clearly thinks she’s mocking him, but unfortunately she really is just now realizing this.

“You need to come up with a plan to stall my master, or I will kill you when he strikes.”

“The hell am I supposed to do to trick a jonin?” Sakura asks. “I can’t even lie to you.”

“Ehh…” The boy taps his cheek for a second, looking around. “What about your teammates?”

They ended up settling on a rather funny plan. There’s a hundred Naruto clones Henged into Kakashi running around Wave doing odd jobs and making everyone’s life easier. The idea is to try and convince Zabuza that Kakashi isn’t just better, he actually has that much energy to spare. Zabuza should wait until he is in tip top shape before he moves out to start engaging the clones, at which point they’ll have a pretty hefty warning when the clones start dying left and right.

The point is that it buys them time, and Haku seemed happy with the plan enough to listen to her gush about idols and streaming for almost a half an hour. The boy seemed to be actually interested by the end, if only he was extremely interested, or signing a contract. Sakura’d love to see if her gaming powers influenced contracts and stuff, given it’d be a second job she has to keep up with.

Sakura is spending her once again free time on the water, feet planted in it and focusing her hardest on not falling in. She can’t move yet, at least not while training the wind jutsu, but she has two goals and not a whole lot of time to do it so like hell she’s missing out on the chance to train them both. The issue she’s finding is that the wind jutsu seems to be even harder than the other four. It’s as if wind is the exact opposite of her natural inclination, it fights her like nothing else ever has.

Every hour of practice on the water makes her noticeably better at balancing on it. She hasn’t even fallen in the last hour, but she’s made about as much progress on the wind jutsu as she has keeping up with Naruto in physical training. That boy is a freaking monster, and this jutsu sucks. The idea is really simple, she has to create a circular wind going outward around herself. When someone in a movie has a breeze billow their cloak, or move their hair, or dramatically spin a tornado around them to flare their abilities, they’re using some form of this.

This makes it the ability she wants to master the most, because the ability to do a dramatic stage pose on command would add to her invisible coolness stat by several magnitudes over. Movie ninja pretty much all know the wind affinity training jutsu, which begs the question, how does one get a job as a movie ninja? That sounds a lot less stressful than all this Gato and Zabuza crap.

“Oh crap.” She realizes exactly how long she’s been lost in thought, as she loses her footing and splashes into the water. It only takes her a moment to climb out, but she wore herself out too much to dry herself off which sucks.

It means she’s passing out on the dock drenched.

Beats passing out in the water. Kakashi and Sasuke would scold her if they saw that little mishap she just had, so she’ll have to let it be her little secret.

“Change of plans.” It’s Kakashi’s announcement which gets her attention mid-race with Naruto. Practicing the wind affinity jutsu while she runs doesn’t make anything any easier, and she finds she’s pretty annoyed about that.

Mostly because Naruto started to try it too after she explained how cool it is, and by the way she keeps having to use Genin dexterity to deflect twigs and stuff, he’s already got it down. It was like twenty minutes. He beat even her earth score by like a thousand percent.

Worse off, instead of a small gust of wind, when he does it he creates a miniature tornado. She’s not even completely sure it’s the same jutsu! She’s been thinking about this the entire time she’s been chasing after him and constantly getting whipped in the face by branches and run-away clones swept up in the current of ridiculous Naruto shenanigans.

She can’t help but think about what she learned yesterday as she looks at her team. They both want to restart their clan with her? She’s not dumb, she knows what that means, it’s just, not something she can imagine with them. It’s not something she can imagine with anyone.

Is she weird for not having feelings like that? Is it weird that she’s more weirded out than flattered? At least they’re not treating her differently, or expecting anything from her. She’s not sure she could handle that if they did.

Regardless of her thoughts, she does have to stop her fierce, almost concerning amount of introspection to address Kakashi. She stops the race and approaches, just as Naruto cancels his showing off and lets all the twigs and branches and an awkwardly out of place and very confused squirrel fall to the ground. It scrambles off just as Naruto spots it and rubs the back of his head sheepishly.

“Yeah, Kakashi-sensei?” Naruto asks first, skipping over to him like he didn’t just let out enough chakra for ten minutes that Kakashi’s probably jealous.

“Your plan was very creative, and I want to commend you.” Kakashi says to Naruto. Sakura chooses not to point out that it was her plan, she’d gain little and Naruto looks so proud of himself. She wouldn’t take that smile away for the world, let alone correcting her sensei. “But Zabuza won’t be fooled by it for long. We need to officially start guarding Tazuna when he leaves to work on the bridge each day.”

“That’ll cut into training.” Naruto points out.

“That’s a problem we’ll have to accept.” Kakashi says a little sternly, eying Naruto as if to try and will away any further objections, strangely enough it works perfectly. Naruto shuts up, and Sasuke doesn’t have anything to say either. The boy is eerily silent, Sakura actually has to check to make sure he’s listening and not napping in the grass again. “One of you will be coming with me each day, while the other two train. Your job will be to get Tazuna away and protect him from bandits while I deal with Zabuza.”

“That sucks.” Naruto echoes her thoughts perfectly, she chooses not to tell him that.

The next week passes by very quickly, training water walking and the wind affinity jutsu whenever she gets the chance. She gets down Water Walking pretty quickly, evolving Tree Walking and celebrating her victory with a box of pocky from her bag. Luckily a lot of her snacks weren’t destroyed, she doesn’t know what she’d do without a sugar boost every now and again throughout all this ceaseless training. Shove raw ground up sugar into her mouth, maybe?

It really does drag on in a way she finds makes her quite weary, especially now that she knows she can’t just do it constantly and spend most of the day passed out. It was like living in a haze, she barely had to actually experience the actions. It was nice, but also terrifying. It’s probably the difference between her photographic memory and actual photographic memory, the ability to fade out. She knows she can’t have actual photographic memory, it’s not in her traits list.

It reminded her of countless nights of grinding to fight super bosses, or learning cool tricks in a shooter and getting it down pat. The hunter training from L4D2 is a pretty good example, there was a modded map one could use to learn hunter tricks and perform an obstacle course to get better at lining up movement for the Vs mode. She spent a lot of time on that once, and it felt pretty much exactly the same as her few days of track training and lightning grinding. Though, the track grinding was probably worse, as she’d do the hunter training again but f*ck that.

Unfortunately, her physical training has to be cut loose pretty hard. Naruto’s either with Kakashi, or Sasuke is, and they have to make occasional rounds to ensure no one attacks Inari and Tsunami in their home. She’s not sure what the likelihood is that they'd actually catch an attack, but Kakashi said the idea was to show the enemies that the home isn’t unguarded, and less trying to get lucky enough to intercept a mid-day slice and dice.

That and leaving a Naruto clone back at the home makes her feel a lot better. She’s grown rather attached to the little brat, and Tsunami’s done a whole lot of warming up to her too, even if she barely sees either of them enough for it to matter. She won’t see them at all soon, that’s a sad thought. She likes it here, even if she misses her mother and father a whole lot more.

Homesick doesn’t begin to cover the feelings she’s had the last few days now that she’s slowed down enough to think.

It’s harrowing, she’s never been far away from her parents. Even when they were active ninja they took jobs just outside the village so they could always get back to her in a heartbeat. They also took jobs in such a way that one of them was always home should she need them. One would do in village D ranks, the other would do something like gate guarding or border patrol or bandit hunting.

She’s never gone more than a day without seeing at least one of her parents, even in her deepest gaming binges they’d slip into her room and give her a hug before they went to bed.

It’s been a couple of weeks now, she’s pretty sure. It’s hard to tell, what with several days in there being a blur of motion sickness and ugly stat grinding, and another being a moody panic after getting stabbed to a tree by her own sword.

Her days actually at the bridge are wasted. Inari lets her borrow her own gameboy back for the bridge since she can’t train, so she spends most of her day scanning everyone in sight in the hopes it levels up.

It does not. At least she can check Inari’s progress on stuff every few days.

Which is what brings her to this moment, walking in circles on the water while accepting that wind is beyond her for now. Even Kakashi can only use four elements, so she’s read, maybe she has to accept she’s not some super ninjutsu master in training?

Well, she is, but it’s going to take a lot more work than she wants and that’s saying something because all she has to do is move some wind around in a circle!

At least she can mold wind chakra, that’s a step forward.

“Hey.” It’s that sweet, sweet, cute bishonen voice that catches her off guard and makes her look up. Luckily her control is great enough with water walking that she doesn’t even dip a little bit into the water. She’s got it down. She already knew that since the notification to tell her she’d evolved Tree Walking into Water Walking came a day ago, but it’s very satisfying to have a real life example of something instead of words on a floating invisible page only she can read. “You’re out of time.”

“What?” Sakura can’t help but blink at the boy, looking as pretty as ever on the dock just a few short feet away. He’s in a dress today, she chooses not to question him. If he wants to embrace the femboy, he can embrace the femboy. “Kakashi’s actually at full strength now, is he crazy? He hasn’t even started killing clones.”

“I think he saw through the gambit.” Haku admits, chewing his lip a little. Her?
Should Sakura say her when Haku’s in a dress? She’s really not sure if cross dressing is indicative of a momentary gender switch or just a cute thing to do, and she’s not about to add that complicated bag of questions to her already broken social skills. She’s not gonna ask. Haku’s a guy until further info is given, simple. The point is Haku looks really pretty in red, that’s all there is to it. “Kakashi is not known for creating so many clones, perhaps you went too far?”

“Maybe I did.” Sakura grumbles, conceding defeat there. “So you’re here to kill me? Like you said?”

“No. I think I can delay him one more day, but you have to do whatever you are going to do now. Come tomorrow, if Gato still lives, I will kill you.” Sakura can tell two major things.

One, that Haku still lacks killing intent. There’s no desire to harm her, no inner rage, no bottled up seething hatred trained into him from the academy, ready to explode out in an instant like she did to the demon twins. She tries not to think about them, they're a touchy subject in her mind right now. She hates that, she’d do anything to avoid it.

Her first kills were real, and her boys judged her for it.

Two, Haku is totally serious.
They will kill her. She will die. Naruto will die. Sasuke will die.

Kakashi will probably be fine.

While Sakura would have loved for Kakashi to tag along for the dungeon, the reality is that someone needs to guard the damn bridged builder just in case Haku’s lying and wants to use this for a planned attack. So it’s the team of Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura standing in front of the dungeon that Sakura checks back in for. She’s been a bit dissociative lately.

She’ll need to fix that once they get home, and she can hug her mom and tell her all about this craziness. Maybe she’ll leave out the part about dungeons and numbers and blacking out only to train again the moment she wakes up. Maybe she won’t.

Her mother yelling at Kakashi about this sounds really soothing to her nerves.

[Gato Tower Dungeon, Level Recommendation: 20
Level of current party: 20

Please ensure you are on level and have equivalent quality gear that is in top condition. There will be no leaving to rest once you have entered.]

“Wow, we really got eleven percent stronger.” Sakura says.

“You, got eleven percent stronger,” Sasuke grunts, “I’m stronger, but I don’t think anyone can train as hard as you besides Naruto, and he’s already too strong to advance like that so fast.”

“Wouldn’t that mean she’s stronger than eleven whatevers?” Naruto asks, “since it’s probably averaged between all three of us?”

“Sakura, how much do you remember from the last time we looked at this cave to now?” Sasuke asks.

“Uh… we started training, and then I met Haku, and then I stood on a bridge a little, and then I met Haku again.” Sakura recites. “There was some training in between, I think.”

“You don’t remember the training.” Sasuke quirks his brow. “At all?”

“No, I remember some.” Sakura’s hand rubs her arm awkwardly. “I think.”

“Don’t you have a photographic memory?” Sasuke asks.

“I ran out of camera film.” Sakura jokes, watching as neither seem to get it.
Or maybe she didn’t tell it right. “It’s fine, I never have to do that ever again. What are the odds we get another A rank mission the next time we step out of Konoha?”

Naruto starts to open his mouth-

“Exactly, zero!” Sakura doesn’t let him talk. “We can train at a normal person pace back at home, and I can do that thing where I repress most of this mission directly after I give the Hokage my report, you know, like you do with a test or horror games you played as a child.”

“That explains so much.” Sasuke says, twitching quite visibly. She tilts her head to try and proc the facial chart, but it seems to think she should just get this one since it’s not helping.

It’s not important, what is important is they have a dungeon to clear. “You boys ready? I’m ready.”

“What are the odds this place is empty?” Naruto asks.

“None.”

Chapter 14: Into the Dungeon: Gato Tower

Chapter Text

Stepping foot into the dungeon, Sakura can't help but take in how different it is than she thought it would look from outside. It's oddly structured, almost cave like but not quite. The walls are a lot more straight than a cave should be, and even the ceiling is barely a circle at all. The ridged rocky ceiling is more of a pattern than an actual random cave, and it's much better lit than a cave should be. She's not sure where all the light is coming from, but it's here and she can't help but take notice of it.

It doesn't feel like the manor it should be, that's for sure, it's more insidious and weird. "If I didn't believe you before, I do now." Sasuke says.

"You didn't believe me." Sakura points out.

"I do now."

Despite the apprehension built upon entering, they're met with silence for quite some time. Too alert to talk, too quiet to not talk, they're stuck in an awkward place where they won't even look at each-other. At least the rocks get a little more like chiseled stone and a bit more clearly not a cave as they go on. Eventually they're met with torches, and that gets rid of the old question of where the light is coming from. Well, it doesn't for that part of the dungeon, but she doesn't have to think about it anymore which is basically the same thing.

There's a crack that echoes behind them, then a rumble, and she looks behind her just in time to see a cave in. Rocks fall and slam into the rocks below, seemingly endlessly dropping until the space is taken up and it has reached the ceiling. There has to be several thousand rocks there, each blocking the way quite firmly.

She nods to herself, having fully expected this. Naruto and Sasuke, not so much, she can hear them arguing behind her about ways to get out should it come to it. Naruto brings up her new ability to manipulate earth, which makes her feel nice and tingly inside at the recognition, but most of the conversation is about their respective skills.

She lets them argue for some time while walking over to test her ability. Grabbing a stone in her hand, she can convert it to dirt, which means she could probably tunnel their way out of here. There's no saying it wouldn't just refill itself while she was at it, but it's an option to test in an emergency.

It's while she's testing this that Sasuke suddenly speaks up, ending their pragmatic argument very suddenly. "Incoming." It's all he has to say, before they're both alert and the sound has started. Skittering, scratching, stones being dug into and passed by rapidly. Creatures are coming from deeper in the cave towards them. "That doesn't sound human." Naruto gulps.

"Didn't say they were." Sasuke grunts, while she draws her shuriken, already applying fire chakra to some to make them hot to the touch. It's a relatively cheap technique, not very effective either but for a prolonged dungeon it's optimal.

That is until horrifying abominations appear from the walls. "Spiders?" She asks, not sure what the hell those are. They're like spiders, but they ooze black goop everywhere they step. They climb on the ceiling, on the walls, skitter across the floor towards them. They're huge, with dozens of eyes and pincers. They're covered in gray fur, and have so many legs she feels her whole body shiver instinctively. It's like if spiders also managed to cause an uncanny valley.

Sasuke prepares a fireball jutsu, and Sakura gets beside him instinctively, ready to throw at a moment's notice-

When spikes erupt from all sides, massive gluttonous blades jutting out and impaling dozens of creatures ahead of them. A wall of steel is erected, screeches and terrified screaming fills their ears as hundreds of monsters are torn to bits.

"Hey guys." Sakura clears her throat.

"I think there might be traps in this dungeon."

"Uh-huh…" Naruto says with a half breath.

Sasuke takes a moment to grunt, before dropping his hands and staring. The blades slowly draw back, disappearing and taking the corpses with them. Leaving only money littered throughout the ground, like drops in a game.

"I'm not picking that up." Sakura says. "Naruto, clones?"

"Hell no!" Naruto shakes his head furiously. "I remember all that stuff, remember? I don't want to die a thousand times for some money."

"That's fair…" She says. "I don't have a trap detection skill. Do either of you?"

"Not at that level." Sasuke says, hands dropping into his pockets as he realizes this might take a while.

"I do." Naruto says, heading ahead cautiously. "You two just stay back, I'll find the trigger and deactivate it for us, or at least figure out how to get past."

"Go Naruto!" She says. "But use clones."

"Right, right, forgot in the moment." He's clearly shaken, she can't imagine Naruto ever forgetting about his clones, but he quickly returns to her side and spawns a hundred physical entities to go do all that. Naruto's clones are interesting. The Shadow Clone technique, unlike the normal clone technique, creates physical clones which suffer none of the weaknesses of the normal clones. They can't be seen through as a genjutsu, they can't be ignored because they're not there, and they possess an actual ability to do damage to you so they're a force multiplier instead of taking from your chakra pool for very little effect.

If she could do the Shadow clone jutsu, the goblins wouldn't have even been a question. She could have beaten them all down bare handed, and gotten some cool taijutsu skill instead.

The issue is that the time she tried to learn it from Naruto, she woke up in Kakashi's apartment, being scolded by the man for being an idiot. It turns out just one shadow clone possesses more chakra than she has total, and Naruto just sent out twenty of them like it was nothing to go check for traps.

Stamina nut doesn't begin to cover it, and she is sure as hell looking into the Uzumaki when she gets home to find out what kind of crazy bloodline they possess to let him do that. She has a lot of stuff to look into at home, like the demon twins. She doesn't feel bad about killing them, even if they were real people, their bios really were so cartoonishly evil that it was natural to assume they weren't real, but she can't move on until she treats their deaths with some respect.

As for the trap and the money, he can have it he can deactivate the traps to grab it, because she's sure as hell not going anywhere near that while it's active, and if it's deactivate it's his spoil anyway.

It's remarkable how good Naruto is at that kind of thing. Sitting back with Sasuke while watching Naruto work is easy. She's never been good at spotting traps and the like in games, and puzzles have always bothered her despite her high intelligence. She's very good at thinking inside a box, and puzzles tend to try and push the boundary. If she had to guess, after a certain point, her intelligence stopped making her smarter and started making her faster. It's probably why she doesn't have jonin mind despite being incredibly smart, some of it is clearly personal aptitude, but on a stat level, it's about speed. She's just not as fast as Kakashi, and she's not sure she ever will be.

That's okay though, being as fast mentally as an average Jonin would be fine with her.

Naruto's hands blur along the ground, then the wall, eventually he walks up it and starts checking there too. He's looking for something, but what, she has no idea. It's not important, only one of them needs that particular skill. She's happy to let Naruto be useful, it'd be far better for her to focus on his weaknesses than getting jealous and trying to match him everywhere.

"The Dobe's checking for pressure plates." Sasuke explains after a moment, seeing something she's not. "That's far too elaborate a trap for it to only be intended to go off once, so it has to be a plate or something spring loaded, it can't be wires because wires have to be replaced."

"Where'd you get that from?" Sakura asks.

"He's played quite a few pranks on me over the years." Sasuke admits, "avoiding traps means learning a bit about them."

"So you're both trap masters?" Sakura asks.

"No. I just learned how to not get covered in paint. I never learned anything special because Naruto never did anything special. Traps can only go so far before they become dangerous, and he doesn't have a malicious bone in his body." Hearing that from Sasuke of all people leaves her with a lot to think about. He's not normally so verbose, but then, why complain?

Still, "that's rather wordy for you," Sakura points out, "I rather like the soft boy broody Sasuke."

"Right." Sasuke drawls, calling her on it the moment it leaves her mouth. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't know how to stop a blush, that skill just never came up before. "Complimenting my teammates is something I've been working on with a guy I talk to, back in Konoha." He explains. "He says that admitting competency in others helps you see it in yourself."

"And that's a problem for the great last Uchiha?" Sakura asks. "I thought you had an ego."

"Oftentimes, it's those who assert themselves the most, who have the least confidence." Sasuke lets that sit wordlessly, just as Naruto pressing something on the ceiling, and the spikes jut out again.

"Found it!" Naruto says.

"You can have the loot then!" Sakura calls out, waving at him. "To the victor go the spoils!"

Naruto is quick to pocket it all and put it into specially designated bags. He's got a marker he uses and a brown sack is officially labeled 'spider money'. She figured he'd add it to his wallet, a 'Gama-chan' if she recalls, but he doesn't.

Maybe he's worried the dungeon money will be different? It's not important, what is important is their feet soon take them to a four way intersection. Behind them is the entrance, so she knows that's not the way forward. Forward could be the way, but that could also be way too obvious, if the dungeon is designed like a real game dungeon it could be left or right.

She could use the maze method, which is following either the left or right wall until she reaches her destination. If she never changes her direction she can't get lost, it's not physically possible. The dungeon would have to be infinitely generated for her to not eventually reach where she needs to go, and she's pretty sure her power hasn't figured out the answer to entropy. Something that figured out entropy wouldn't have opened up giving her traits like 'disappointment,' it would be too far above it.

Smart people don't insult others, dumb people who think they're smart do.

She's just about to open her mouth and bring the maze method up, when Naruto speaks up, "it's forward."

"It is?" She asks.

"Look," Naruto points up towards the ceiling, at one very particular part. It's a little smooth, straight, well angled, and after a good look it turns out to be metallic. She would never have spotted that given a million years, and she kind of has to wonder whether there is a perception skill, trait, or hidden stat she needs to get a hold of. Naruto has it, she doesn't, Sasuke's not even pretending to look so clearly he doesn't have it either. "I don't see the activator, but that panel moves when triggered to release something dangerous. It likely goes off when we start moving forward, to try and stop us from going that way."

"Meaning someone doesn't want us going that way." Sakura concludes. "How do we get past it then?"

"We find the trigger," Sasuke says, "or we shoot it with a fireball and hope that sets it off."

"We could shoot it with a fireball," Sakura agrees.

"I say we shoot it with a fireball," Naruto repeats.

"Good idea, Naruto," Sakura reaches over and pats his shoulder, causing Sasuke to scoff and roll his eyes.

"So, left or right?" Sakura asks, after a moment to stare at the plate and hope it gives them its secrets. The reality is that she wouldn't have thought of that. She has a higher mind than Naruto but that's clearly not how cognitive function works, or at least not the only variable. Traits, skills, and some hidden stats have a huge impact on their thought processes and not just in that personalities are unique and experiences are a huge part of them.

Naruto is better than her in moment to moment thinking, that is obvious, but does that actually convert into stats or is it just his impulsiveness given form from a trait having a secondary benefit? Can she get better at that without a trait, or does she have to train it as a skill? As much as she's grateful to have Naruto there to advise her, it'd be nice to not totally suck when he's not there. There's always the possibility one of them gets promoted before the other, or she gets recruited into ANBU for her powers once Kakashi reports them. She sure hopes not, but it was always a risk when she revealed herself, she knew that.

"He said forward." Sasuke points out stiffly, showing the awkwardness on his face as both Naruto and her stare at him like he's an idiot. "Is it not forward?"

"The way forward is forward," Sakura explains patiently, slowly, deliberately, "but we want the loot."

"You want to purposely have a harder time with this because you might find spoils?" Sasuke asks, "that seems a little… crazy."

"It's not just that," she admits, rubbing her arm a little at the call out, "we don't have a lot of opportunities to get live combat training. The next clear of this dungeon will probably be more difficult, and I don't want to have to go through our oh so fun training arc again because we skipped out on combat right now."

"So… right or left?" Naruto asks, repeating her earlier conversation.

"Left." Sasuke says, after a moment, to ponder it as if it's a serious question with all the weight of the world on it. Without any further deliberation, Sakura shrugs and starts walking down the left path, smiling brightly when the two of them take their place behind her.

If she's the tank, Naruto's the rogue, and Sasuke's some kind of cross between a mage and a ranger. Rangers technically have magic in most settings, so maybe he's just a ranger? His clan techniques give him a lot of advantages with kunai and the like, so it's not an absurd concept.

After a rather long walk, the left side leads to a wooden door that's barely held together. It's as easy to open as it is to break, as Sakura finds out when she puts pressure on it to pull it open and hears the snaps. She's careful about it, trying not to alert whatever's on the other side, and she's relieved to see no one noticed when she has it open enough for them to peer through.

Armed men are walking around what appears to be a small campsite in the middle of a mining area. Veins are glittering and glinting in all directions, and she kicks herself internally for not thinking to invest in a pickaxe for her travel gear just in case. Despite being a mine, no one has any gear for it, and she can only think that's typical and unhelpful.

Instead of mining gear, they're in higher quality armor and have shiny swords and axes at their side that must have been polished and sharpened recently. "Gato outfitted them nicely, this must really be his cave dungeon leading to his tower." She mumbles, observing them a bit closer with a tilt of her head. They have red sight lines drawn on the floor, as well as circles around them to notify of their direct ability to sense someone entering their space. They're not very big, and no one seems to have great sight with the helmets they have on, but that doesn't stop her from noticing something interesting. "They're automated," Sakura says, "not people."

"Sakura…" Sasuke sighs.

"Not delusional, I'm serious this time, this is not a repeat of the demon twins." Sakura says, not liking the way her stomach churns at the thought. "They're moving in perfect patterns without any variation."

"Boy, I hope some action turns up soon." One of the bandits says.

"No kidding, I'm bored out of my mind, I can't wait to violate someone at the slightest provocation." Another says.

"Dude, have standards." A third says, before the entire group laughs.

"See? No one has a conversation like that." Sakura says. "It's a genre specific mocking of bandits, they're not real. We can kill them all we want."

"And if you're wrong?" Naruto asks.

"Then we kill some bandits and someone doesn't get violated at the slightest provocation." Sakura deadpans.

"Works for me." Sasuke is already making hand seals for one of his fireball jutsu before they finish talking.

"Wait, I have a stealth skill," Sakura interrupts him, placing a hand on his hands to stop his seals, "and I'm willing to bet Naruto does too."

Naruto nods.

"We can probably take two out before the fighting even starts. There's only six of them, so if you blow someone up the moment we're caught we're down to three only, whereas if you shoot now we have to fight five." Sakura holds his hand steady, seeing Sasuke contemplate it for a long moment, before he lowers his seals and takes a deep breath.

"I thought the whole point was combat experience." Sasuke says, while she can't fault him there, Naruto apparently can.

"Sneaking up on people is combat experience, it could save our lives at some point." Naruto says. "Besides, it's fun."

"Fine, go ahead." Sasuke leans against the wall with a click of his teeth, and they're through the door and trying to creep up on someone well before he can change his mind and get started with the fire apocalypse. Six men, four wandering around in a giant square around the room, two lazing about at the center camp laughing while having a quick drink. It's not complicated, and it doesn't have to be, they just need to get in and do it.

She has to put a bit of effort in to avoid overlapping sight lines and circles, but she uses that extra time she's navigating to pull a kunai and superheat it. While it's not as effective as if she had gotten an actual fire affinity, and she's still working on mastering the jutsu, it's still more than hot enough to steam if applied to water and she's pretty sure that's good enough to add some power. The moment she gets into the circle of her target, she sees it start to change color from red to yellow, then to green, implying that her stealth skill can allow her to circumvent it if she's careful and deliberate.

It's nice to see how mechanics work instead of having them explained to her in a wall of text, it makes her grin a bit, makes her feel a bit more like she's in a game and not in some dangerous situation. She sneaks up just a little closer, wraps her left arm around his neck from behind, pulls up and back to draw his head into the right position, and inserts her burning kunai where she's created an opening. The steam is first, the gurgle is second. His clunking to the ground is a bit loud, and it's only then that she realizes she should have coordinated that with Naruto.

Looking over to him, she finds his target is already on the ground, and he's got a hand on his forehead, as if questioning why she would let him drop. That was dumb, she now realizes that was really dumb. Dropping an enemy in a game has never caused a problem for her, and she really needs to get her head out of the game and into real life.

Of course the system would be different in real life, if games were completely realistic they wouldn't be fun. Naruto's adjusting better than her because his predispositions aren't nearly as strong, and that's something she needs to learn from him.

Sure enough, before she can make a move, she hears weapons leaving sheaths and sees the sight lines shoot towards her, just before Sasuke's voice cries out and flames bathe the area in hellish fashion.

"Time for a fight." She draws her own sword, and charges.

Chapter 15: Through the Dungeon: Gato Tower

Chapter Text

Bright and powerful, Sasuke's flames bathe the room and force the remaining three enemies into a corner. The screams of their fellow nameless mook echo in everyone's ears, but no one's taking a moment of pause. It's just another hint that they're not real, and another reason she doesn't have to worry about it. Naruto engages two while Sasuke immediately gives ranged support, which means it's her time to take some aggro away from the duo. She wastes no time darting in at top speed, unsheathing her sword with a thick grin. It feels good to hold, to give into it just a little, but she's not dumb.

Something is wrong with this sword, and there's no point to giving it blood here, so she refrains and asserts dominance over it for a moment. She can use it without giving it a reward, and it'll just have to deal with that. It's not like wasting blood this early in the dungeon would be a good idea, and she doesn't just get her health back if she wastes it willy nilly. She can't afford a six hour nap in the middle of the dungeon floor anymore than she can afford to let it have her.

Once in Konoha, she'll have it checked, or maybe she'll corner Kakashi and ask him what the f*ck. Whatever the case, she's quick on the offense because they have to clear this five times and that's gonna suck if they rush, if they take forever with each one it'll become their new day job.

She's pleased to see that instead of instantly spamming shadow clones against the two trying to skewer him, Naruto's dodging and getting a few hits off every quick round. Shadow clones are expensive, and having it as a trump card instead of a first technique is so much more valuable. Talking caution into him was difficult, but games helped her do it.

For every slash they make towards him, he's got a kick in one's face and a kunai embedded in another's arm or leg. It's the third trying to sneak up on him that she intercepts, arriving like hell is on her heels. With an intense flicker of her chakra, her sword glows a little with lightning, while Sasuke's flames continue to burn corpses and fill the air with the putrid smell of death.

She can't charge it much yet, proto-affinity is nowhere near as strong as she'd like, but like hell she's missing a chance to grind it in combat. Just as she'd expected, when she gets close he slashes out at her like he doesn't even see the sparks flying off her evil blade. A part of her wonders if it's because this is a dungeon and he's not supposed to adapt, but the sound of his screams rapidly inform her that he at least recognizes the effects of potent lightning chakra flowing down his weapon and shooting into his flesh through his grip. His body clenches, holding it all the harder and allowing her to channel more of her chakra into him like a river of poison. "That's enough." She grunts, releasing him from his newfound agony prison by spin kicking his weapon away from him with enough force to shatter his hands in the process.

"Better put you out of your misery, huh." She follows up by slashing her sword horizontally using her momentum to rend flesh, armor, and bone alike.

She doesn't even look at him as he falls in two pieces, quickly observing the other boys and their battle.

She's happy to see they're already successful. Naruto eventually did decide on using a couple clones, who are currently poking and prodding their unconscious enemies. Unconscious, not dead, Naruto's such a softie. It makes her smile even as her opponent's blood bathes her from his still spewing body..

She's less happy to see their disturbed, judging stares. "What? I wanted to try it. He's not real damn-it!"

"Uh-huh." Sasuke grunts.

"He's not!"

"Let's just move on." Naruto gulps, looking away and heading towards the door.

"There's gotta be loot here though!" She points out. "Let's look for a chest or something."

"Nope, I'm out, this room smells like burning flesh," Naruto does as he says and leaves without regard for her loot desires.

"Dobe's right," is all Sasuke says before walking away from her himself, exiting out the worn down door quickly enough, abandoning her to do the scavenging herself. Jerky teammates… You try one technique. She's not even the one burning people to death! That was Sasuke!

"So unfair!"

As they skipped out, she got all the treasure to herself. Which means she left empty handed because there was no loot. The only guy who looked like he had anything valuable on him was the guy Sasuke hit with a fireball, and even she wasn't poking through charred, sizzly flesh for a trinket.

Going back to the center and taking the right path instead of the left leads to a similar situation as the left had. Instead of a mine room, they discover a treasury, but its contents - beyond armed guards - are, well, peculiar.

"Why would they guard a room of blow up toys?" Naruto questions, smacking an inflatable hammer against his arm. It makes loud boppy noises every time it lands, making her smile quite brightly. "This is like the most random thing I have ever seen."

"It's completely useless." Sasuke sighs, eying a pile of inflatable shuriken. "Why?"

"Not necessarily." Sakura says, lifting a golden sword - well a balloon but it's gold trimmed and looking sweet - and waving it around. "I bet Inari would love this."

"You get he's not actually related to you, right?" Sasuke asks. "Are you going to get attached to every child we do a mission near?"

"Yes." She answers without even the smallest bit of shame. She's got a balloon, she's got a dungeon, she's happy. All she needs to complete the set is an energy drink, some cocoa, a bag of chips and a keyboard. "Besides, it's not just him, there's tons of bored kids in Wave with nothing to do. Just because something's not treasure to you doesn't mean it's not treasure. We could probably raise the average morale of Wave an entire percentile with this, maybe several. Adults might enjoy this stuff too."

"Sakura… How do we even get the toys out of here?" Sasuke drawls, "and please remember we had to take people down to get here, people who might wake up if we take too long." It's true, everyone that was taken down here is just unconscious. She stayed back and let them do it this time, since they were too busy being the judgment squad and turning their gazes towards her to do a dungeon properly. She just really wanted to use her techniques more and apparently using techniques is 'brutal' and 'intense' and 'maybe a little excessive.' No one cared when Sasuke shot a fireball… She doesn't understand, and maybe she will in time, maybe it's a low charm thing. She's working on it, she wants to get to Genin charm before the chunin exams, just in case their crazy teacher wants to shove them into it.

She sincerely doubts it, but Kakashi is Kakashi, and that guy is nuts.

It's gonna be a sore spot for a while, she's sure of it, these boys are just too moral. They've never done a full night binge grinding adorable creatures for special loot or burnt something cute and listened to it scream for an achievement.

Gaming is hell, and they just aren't ready for it.

"What are the odds there's a real sword underneath it all?" Naruto asks. "Like a mask for if anyone took out the guards?"

"Are you really going to make me search through childrens' inflatable bonking weaponry?" Sasuke already knows they are before he says it, so their expectant gazes only make him rub his face. "Fine."

"Told ya." Sakura gloats, skipping along happily while examining her new bright and shiny hand crossbow. It's got metal plates all over it, and the bolts are gem tipped like some kind of special game bolts. They're beautiful, but she's far more concerned with what kind of crazy nonsense they're gonna do when they shatter. They remind her of the old Runescape bolts, and those did not play around.

"This is awesome." Naruto's more than happy to spin his new nunchucks. She's not exactly sure if those are a good idea for him to have, but she trusts him not to knock himself out with them at least. Besides, hers is far more impractical, and she's pretty sure the loot was altered by her new skill. The odds just don't make a lot of sense otherwise, crossbows aren't exactly common. Hand crossbows even less so, though she does have to wonder why it's not more common among genin. Crossbows can ignore personal strength, and they're more than enough for an agile and determined genin to take down a bandit or two. They wouldn't even be that expensive to have made, so D ranks would pay for it quickly enough even if you had to use your entire stipend on living expenses.

"I hate you both." Sasuke managed to find a pair of goggles that have the strongest glass she's ever seen. Sasuke called dibs immediately, citing that an Uchiha's eyes are more valuable than their legs. She somehow doubts that's actually true, but the conviction he said it with was more than enough for her. If she'd known Sasuke wanted goggles, she would have bought him goggles. Or, maybe learned to make them? They can't be that hard, and she has been wanting to get into crafting. Once she gets home, she's checking on the sword, getting a hug from her mom, and buying crafting supplies to see if she can get a skill.

Besides, folding to his desire for goggles let them go ahead and grab what they wanted. She even managed to bargain with him until he was willing to carry around all the inflatables for her cooperation in ensuring Naruto didn't argue too much. He used to wear goggles and was quite attached to them, so it wasn't surprising to see him kinda want invincible glass.

The inflatables, much to Sasuke's ire, are stored in sealing scrolls they found underneath it all. They found two, and after using them to steal all the inflatable toys, they were only mostly filled up. The children of Wave are going to be so excited, and she gets to rub it in Sasuke's face!

Who's a good big sister? Not her, because she's not related to any of them, but they'll be calling her big sister after she's done with this haul! It's gonna be amazing. Her eyes sparkle just thinking about all that innocent fun. She's already planning on coming back to Wave sometime to check in on Inari and bring real gaming equipment, now she'll be the girl who also gave him and his friends a hundred toys.

"It is pretty stupid," she agrees, humming a little to herself as they hit the intersection once again, "so who's activating the trap so we can finally move forward?"

"Me." Sasuke's already halfway through the hand signs before she can say another word.

Flame leaves his mouth, the air itself ignites, and Sakura has just enough time to use her Genin Agility to full sprint tackle Naruto to the ground. The air burns above them, flames spreading like a toxin and coating the room with enough heat she can feel her clothes charing a bit above her. Tsunami is gonna be so mad about her top.

"I'm okay." Sakura shouts, after she finally feels the heat above dissipate and let her be.

"I'm under Sakura!" Naruto decides to inform them.

"It's just fire," Sasuke says, "I've been protecting myself from fire with my chakra since I was ten."

He really is standing valiantly like nothing happened, even as the walls, the floor, and the two of them are covered in soot. "Bastard." Sakura and Naruto manage to speak at the same time.

Their steps take them down a long hallway, and then another, and then another. It's long, it's awkward, but none of them are any stranger to walking. Especially recently, Sakura feels like she's taken more steps since coming to Wave than in the entire rest of her life combined.

Click. Click. Click.
The sound catches her ears instantly, something slotting into something else, and then with little to no warning, soaring through the air. She can hear the force tearing through the path on its way towards them, and without thinking she draws her sword.

She doesn't have to look to her right to slash thrice, and send three now in half arrows cut right down the middle to the floor behind her. Her gaze is instead focused on the left side, where she can see a dead end and several more arrows flying towards her. With a flourish they're dealt with too, her hands moving her blade like one might a gentle conducting pointer through the air during a musical. Then before her ears even pick up on it, she's dealing with a volley from the right side again - then the left side - then the right - like an automation, a neverending current of projectiles is dealt with and wood litters the ground in such a way that every step of her footwork makes a crunch beneath her feet.

"Sakura-jeez-" It's Sasuke's voice that breaks her out of her sudden stupor, and his hand that grabs Tsunami's burnt shirt and drags her across the intersection and out of the way of the arrows.

"That was cool." Naruto praises her.

"And completely needless." Sasuke chuffs. "It was a narrow path, we just walked across."

"Sorry, I don't know what happened there," she looks back, where arrows are still flying through a hallway she hadn't even fully looked at.

The funny thing is she does know what happened there. She got trapped in a loop of instant successes from Genin Dexterity. Surely she would have gotten herself out eventually, once she realized, but what if that had been more dangerous?

Could an enemy abuse a mental loop like that to trap her in place while they set up something scarier? "I'm just glad I have teammates that'll look out for me," she decides to say, "thanks, Sasuke, Naruto."

"Mnn.." Sasuke looks away from her, but Naruto.
Naruto gives her a big thumbs up and a grin that could make the gods smile.

Did the game system pick her teammates as well? If it did, she'll have to thank whoever gave her this ability. She wouldn't trade them away for anything, and they were just bonus! Well, maybe she'd change a few small traits here and there, but not the people.

"This is it." Sakura says, staring at a giant door at the end of the tunnel. It's silver, and shiny, and about as imposing as any door can be. It's the simplicity that gets to her. Between the traps, the spiders, the mine and the random toy room, she expected something equally ludicrous here. If the dungeon isn't seeking to make a lot of sense or be consistent, why is it trying to lull them into a sense of normalcy here at the end?

This is what a dungeon room's door should look like. Wide enough for all three of them to slip in at once, weighty enough to require more than one of them to open it, tall enough for them to stand on each-others' heads and still not touch the top.

"The boss room?" Naruto asks.

"No, the pre-boss room, room." Sakura says. "This'll hold Gato's elite, and likely the key required to access Gato."

"That's stupid." Sasuke hasn't been taking to all this very well. She gives him an apologetic smile, and wishes him luck internally. It's not his fault he's using real world logic. Why would they hide the key right in front of the door, with a horde of enemies? That doesn't make a lot of sense, but here, this is her domain.

It makes sense to her, and that's all that matters. "Get ready." She says, grabbing a handle on the massive door. "This fight is going to be a lot harder than the other two, and there might even be a trap or two in there."

It's Naruto who takes the other door, while Sasuke starts intertwining ninja wire with the loops in some shuriken. He's got an idea, and she's sure it'll be great, so she doesn't question him. Well, she doesn't question him until he pulls out a kunai she recognizes. "No." She asserts.

"Huh?" Sasuke looks up from his work to gaze into her demanding eyes.

"Do not use the friendly fire kunai in a dungeon semi-final room." She taps her foot on the stone floor to show she's serious, like a mother scolding her child for trying to wash the dishes with grease.

"Sakura, that's dumb." He glares at her.

"Different, Kunai." She points, and much to her relief, he does in fact put it away and grab another one. She lets out a sigh to say as much, before bringing her attention back to the door, and finding she left it at some point to scold Sasuke. It's still open though, "Naruto…" It turns out even his shadow clones are as strong if not stronger than her, as a single one was all that was needed to do her part. "I get you're a one man army, but you need to conserve your chakra."

"I don't think I do, Sakura." Naruto rubs the back of his head, and unlike with Sasuke she relents. She has no evidence Naruto doesn't have infinite chakra. She's never seen him run out, in any circ*mstance, ever. It raises a lot of questions, and his trait name is odd too, but she needs to research in Konoha before she comes to any strange conclusions like a crazy person.

"Let's go."

The only mandatory dungeon room is expansive. It's a stone floor just like the rest of them, but while every other room and pathway in this dungeon was a stone floor because they didn't make a floor and the cave happened to have a stone bottom, this one has inlaid stones and many of them. The stones glimmer with an odd light second to second, telling her there's some kind of enchantment on them, and the walls do much the same. The ceiling is the same as the rest of the cave, but that doesn't surprise her, which surprises her.

Most of the dungeon so far has worked off game logic, that normal logic she could instantly logic out applies to this room is a terrifying prospect. It'd be very difficult to replace the ceiling, and might result in cave-ins, it'd be better to just leave it. Which is why it should be different, because games like spectacle and flexing on that kind of thing is exactly what they'd do.

She gulps at that, slapping herself a little so her red stinging cheeks can bring her back to reality. This isn't a game. It's real life with game mechanics, she needs to get her head on straight.

There's several tables littered throughout, a few beds in a corner, what appears to be a research station and gold threaded green carpet overtaking about half the room right in the center. At the end of the carpet, she can see an even bigger, more imposing door than the one they just opened. That's the boss door, surely, which raises a question as to where everyone is here.

There's pillars around the room, seemingly randomly, holding up the ceiling while obscuring vision. It's possible the enemies are behind the pillars, but she can't see anyone. "Naruto, can you check?" She looks at him, and he nods without a word. He already made a shadow clone, so that entity runs out to the center of the room. He steps on the carpet, and walks over it while she watches eagerly, awaiting whatever madness is about to happen.

When nothing does happen, the odd tension building up inside her like a tidal wave refuses to leave. "Am I wrong?" She can't help but ask. The eerie silence doesn't answer her, and with more than a little trepidation she starts her walk towards the center of the room to meet her teammate's physical illusion. She grabs Naruto's hand as she passes him, dragging him along, and looks back to Sasuke to ensure he's following. "Be careful, this is probably a trap." She commands, squeezing Naruto's palm a little before bringing her attention back to the room. Every corner, every glinting tile, the curves of the pillars, the door, it's all terrifying. Something should have happened by now, and games didn't prepare her for the tension that a lack of release might bring.

It's not till she steps into the very center of the room and meets with the clone that she hears a click, followed by the sliding sound, that she finally gets to turn a little of that apprehension into jittery energy. "Be prepared." She asserts, eyes still scanning every which corner.

"Sakura, can you let me go?" Naruto asks, using his free hand to point towards the door, "it's the door, it's opening."

"You'll react to a trap better than I will." Sakura defends herself, while inwardly hitting herself for trying to use him to calm her nerves. Of course it'd be weird for him, they're siblings now, he has two reasons to misconstrue her intentions instead of just one. "It could be really bad if I get caught up in another loop like earlier."

"You were fine, we just needed to go." Sasuke scoffs. "Let him go or he can't react at all if something happens."

It's with no small amount of reluctance that she opens her hand and lets Naruto jump a few feet away with a red face. He doesn't have a long time to be awkward though, because he was right.

The imposing door makes another click, a clack, and begins to open towards them. She steels her stance, waiting for something like a giant snake to slip through. There were spiders at the entrance, and they've seen none since, it's a bit odd and she's not about to let her guard down and be surprised by more random nonsense.

Balloon weapons, spiders, men stationed to guard almost nothing?
This isn't even following game logic, it's just absurd. It's the eccentricity of a madman with too much money, twisted by an illogical system into a dungeon that's more mocking than difficult.

Anything could come through that door, and she's ready for it. So when what comes through is a short, well kept man in a business suit, a cane, and a mustache that frankly hurts her… It points out in both directions, less a mustache and more a whisker, and not a whisker in the same way Naruto's facial whiskers are. His hair reminds her of a mad scientist, bushy and wild in all directions.

She's unsure, nervous, and frankly a bit annoyed.

He looks out at them, well, she thinks he does. He has small circular sunglasses over his eyes so she can't see what he's doing with his gaze. "You have invaded my lands, killed my men, and now you're breaking into my tower." The man scolds with a stern voice that makes the jittery energy inside Sakura explode.

"It's the boss, it's Gato!" She cheers, vibrating in place while one hand rubs her still stinging cheek from earlier, and the other lands on her evil sword.

"Silence girl, silence all of you. Or better yet, talk all you want, it'll be the last words you ever speak." The man raises his canned hand to point at them with it, "get them."

"Minion boss!" She realizes, drawing her sword just in time for armored goons to come running out from the dark room behind him. They'll have to make this quick, or be overrun.

Chapter 16: Dungeon Boss Fight: Gato Tower

Chapter Text

Jumping back with her readied sword, Sakura can't help but notice that there's only three goons charging at them to start. She decides not to use any special tricks on this one, there's a whole boss fight and she needs to save lightning blades and bloody swings for him. It's strange that the boss fight started in this room, it kind of put a hole in her sails to be wrong about the entire reason for where she stands, but it's probably a balancer for their first clear. She'll need to expect more on the second run through, and if this is Gato, she wonders who'll be here then.

She trusts in her team to handle the other two while she darts into action. Kakashi taught her to be quick and decisive with the blade, it's no use stalling if you can take out the enemy in one swoop. That doesn't mean she never trains defensive combat, the time will come where she's overwhelmed, but it hasn't been incredibly relevant yet and she's hopeful it won't start here. She summons a little water onto the edge of her blade, slashing it towards his sword knowingly. An opportunity to use her techniques like this doesn't come frequently. The live fire nature of this dungeon has helped her grow in leaps and bounds she's sure, and she's not about to waste the chance to get in a little extra training.

Just like she thought, he doesn't take the water into account at all, finding himself surprised when instead of hardening her strike or pulling some kind of crazy jutsu, it harmlessly splashes off of their clash and hits him in the face. It's not a long moment of surprise, but it's enough for her to pivot to the right, leave their clash, and behead the man. She barely has time to take a breath, before another is approaching her, and she definitely doesn't have the chakra to do that forever. "Oh that's not good."

A third is out before the second even gets to her. "Taking them on one by one isn't an option." She declares, holding her sword heavily with both hands and glaring at the boss. "We need Ah Oh Ee."

"Ah Oh what?" Sasuke asks.

"Crowd control." She explains, dodging a slash and downing another weakling, just for two to take his place. Sparks fly as she moves and cuts, like the elements are guiding her movements and the elements are very pissed off. "I need you to try and bunch them up and take them out at once while I go after the boss."

"Or we could just outlast them." Sasuke says, as she hears the thud of one of his opponents hitting the ground. "They're not strong."

"He could have an infinite amount." Sakura says. "If we were in the real world I'd agree with you, but here in a dungeon they really could be endless, we can't take our understanding of physics for granted and assume they apply where they demonstrably do not."

"I guess they are fake." Sasuke grumbles, spearing another man with a threaded ninja wire and a swung shuriken. He's swinging it around in circles, having it flow like a river of blade and slit throats as easily as she slashes. "I don't like this."

"Neither do I." Sakura doesn't wait for him to say he'll do it, she takes one passing glance to ensure Naruto's holding his own before she's darting past the next group and closing distance on the boss.

She doesn't look behind her, she trusts in her team to be able to handle the horde. Instead she focuses all the stops on him. Her blade wreaths itself in lightning, weak or not, it should be enough for a man who doesn't look like much of a fighter. He stands still and watches her, eerily, uncaringly, like she's insignificant and small. It's unsettling, but nowhere near as unsettling as when nothing happened at the start of this room. Her nerves have already been fought back, so she's not about to falter here. "Die!" She lunges at him, swinging her sword with all her might in an attempt to decapitate and electrify him.

Clang.

She finds herself stopped still mid jump, hands shaking, electricity waning. His cane stands between them, and she didn't even see it move.

[Gato: Chunin level Elite, Bandit Lord]

"Oh sh*t." It's all she can say before he steps in towards her, pushing her off balance, and swings his cane just right for her block to send her skidding backwards across the glowing stones. Her hands throb from the vibrations of blocking a strike meant for someone several times stronger than her, and she stands steady, relenting on her own limiters and sending her life force into the sword.

It glows at first, before it shimmers to life in acceptance of her offering. It tints a mere moment later, reflecting the evil nature of their bargain. She's never really tested how far she can take it, or just how much of a force multiplier every drop of blood actually is in a quantifiable manner, but it makes her stronger and that's all that matters in a fight like this.

The ground beneath her scrapes against her footwear as she slides her footing into a proper defensive stance. Taking him out fast isn't going to work, she has to be tactical, and trust in her team to handle matters until she's succeeded.

She started this mission not trusting in them to take care of themselves, and she got hurt for that assumption. She'll learn from her mistakes, she has to. No one will suffer because she stagnated, not her teammates, not Kakashi, not her parents, not even Haku. She will grow, and she will tower above her foes if it's the last thing she does.

"That won't work, little girl," Her foe laughs at her with a toothy grin that would fit well in a horror game about surreal experiences. "You think a man like me deals with mercenaries without having insurance for if they turn on me? A man doesn't live very long with that kind of attitude."

He's not attacking, just using the opportunity to send more men towards her team. It's odd, he's not even trying to send them to her, like he doesn't care. It's irritating, but mostly it's telling. She's not strong enough to do this alone, or at least he doesn't think she is.

"I don't have time to listen to your prattling." She exits her defensive stance, knowing it was a wasted movement if he's not going to move, and launches herself back at him. The force of her steps alone crack the ground below her, and she brings her sword around for an overhead swing. "Block this!" With a mighty crash, the bloodied blade sends an haunting amount of malice into the air. Her eyes glow a bright red, and her hands grow stiff like iron, stopping her attack from bending or breaking despite putting her all into it.

There's just one issue. Gato swings his cane up to block her, and then doesn't move. Wind blows around her, a shockwave heating up the air around them as if an explosion has gone off. He doesn't move. She jumps back, channeling her chakra to her feet to help her next charge, and with everything she has she tries again, launching herself back into the fray to bisect the man.

He swings his cane to meet her with a bored expression, flame erupts from the force of their clash, but he doesn't move. Again, and again, he meets her all and finds her wanting, pushing her back with simple blocks that make her bones feel weary and her muscles tear.

He continues to gesture with his free hand, absent mindedly calling her a fool with his actions alone, and summoning more and more minions. "This is bullsh*t." She grunts, jumping away and readying herself.

There's no way Gato is this strong, this is a dungeon gimmick meant to be handled with teamwork. He's not repelling her with power, that'd cause his hands to wave or his body to strain, he's repelling her conceptually. It's the same concept as her Genin Strength, he's above her and she cannot harm him alone.

He's a minion boss focused on teamwork, the gimmick is obvious to an elite like her, it's also difficult. "I need help!" She shouts, digging her heels into her pride and ripping away for salvation. She's never liked teammates, she's always tried to solo, even in missions in real life she's done her part and let the others do theirs.

Their plans have revolved around everyone doing what they do best, working together only in theme. "I can't do this alone!"

It hurts, it stings her eyes and she feels her heartbeat race, but she has no choice.
It's fail, or be a team, and she really hopes no one teases her about being a damsel in distress when this is over.

She barely has time to get over herself before she feels a familiar hand on her shoulder. "What do you need?"

This really isn't who she expected, strong hands and supportive grip aside, Naruto should have come to her aid not Sasuke. Sasuke's got the AOE, and- a simple look back explains it.

There's not just a few clones, there's not even dozens, there are hundreds of her brother there in the mix beating on bandits and knocking them to the floor. She's not looking at a bar brawl, she's looking at a one man war made trivial in a way she can only call impossible. "He's truly inspiring." She gasps, catching her breath while Gato ignores them. He sends more men, again and again, she gets the feeling he would happily do that forever if given the chance. Attacking isn't on his agenda, and she's okay with that. It gives her time to recover.

"More like impossible," Sasuke grunts, "you ready?"

"Yeah." She sprints into action once again, this time without adding blood to the sword. If it's conceptual, the amount of power she throws into it isn't important, and a quick look at her life shows she wasted half of it during that last attack. She can't afford to just waste life force like that, even if her HP is significantly higher than when she came to Wave.

Despite her pragmatism, a twinge inside her looks to Sasuke for just a second, tempted to signal the sacrificial technique they'd practiced despite his complaints. It worked on the demon twins, and it is teamwork, but guilt reminds her exactly why she shouldn't. Sasuke let her into his feelings at that dinner table, and she can't trample on that. Not in the same fight she begged for his help.

Besides, she shouldn't be jumping into his flames casually, that should be saved for real emergencies. Instead, she clashes blade against cane, and finds the result is exactly the same. All the additional power in the world didn't help her before, and it wouldn't now. She made the right decision, and finds herself quite proud of her deduction as she clashes against him over and over. It's fast paced, and astounding he can keep up, but that's the nature of a dungeon. Like an enemy that's invincible during certain phases, or attack patterns, it makes sense and she wishes she'd figured it out sooner.

Sasuke sends a kick from behind him, and she's surprised when it lands on the man and actually tips him forward a bit. That doesn't stop Gato from spinning around and smacking Sasuke out of the way, before parrying her strike at his back by sending his cane under his arm. Another spin has her flabbergasted, before with an additional strike against her she's sent back.

He's not being taken down, but he's stopped summoning, and that's enough to give Naruto time.
That's all they need to do now, buy him time and maybe take him out if they find the opportunity.
Sasuke dives back in, and finds himself hit in the stomach by a kick, while the man flimsily strikes her sword and sends her back several steps all over again. He's sloppier, slower, but they're taking damage and that's not fair. This is a businessman! They're ninjas, Sasuke's trained harder than anyone she's ever known and he doesn't even look like he walks to his destinations!

"Grrr, eat this!" She distances herself from him again, hilting her sword in its scabbard and pulling out a forgotten relic from ten minutes ago. Shiny crossbow gripped in one hand, she slots in a blazing ruby tipped bolt, takes aim, and waits just a moment for Sasuke to make his starting hand seals before she fires.

It's clear the man isn't sure what to do, so in his moment of confusion he does the best thing he can, he uses a swing to knock the bolt out of the air. A smirk finds its way onto her face as the ruby shatters, and in game-like fashion, a jutsu emerges. Not a weak one, not even a strong one, a medium size and proud of it explosion of fire that overtakes the man the instant it lands. "Call me goldilocks because that was just right!"

"That was bad!" She hears Naruto shout from behind her, and she has just enough time to puff up her cheeks indignantly, before she hears it.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Jutsu!" Sasuke's shout feels like it should shake the room, and the lack of earthquake to accompany it tires her nerves. Instead of firming her footing, she watches as a giant fireball launches itself towards Gato. She's rarely gotten a chance to see the Uchiha rite of passage, he's never used it on her during training, and watching the devastation it brings on impact alone, she's grateful he cares about her enough to hold back.

For if the engulfing madness that captures the dungeon boss, charrs his flesh and makes her gem tip look like a match stick is to be understood, she would have died a lot earlier than meeting and being attacked by Zabuza.

"I guess we got him." Sakura sighs in relief, palming her knees and looking at her crossbow. That was simple, it just required teamwork and an uncharacteristic amount of violent intention from Sasuke. "See? Not even the one burning people to death." She blinks her eyes, wipes her face, and takes a deeper breath than she's taken in days. Even when training until oblivion, she didn't feel this exhausted. The tiredness that comes from victory engulfs her rapidly, adrenaline fading and a dopey smile overtaking her face. That is, until she looks up, just in time to see the smoke clear. "Well that's just not fair, or realistic." She grumbles pitifully.

Instead of the ash she expected, she sees a burly figure with ripped muscles. The business man is twice the size he used to be, and while his skin is bright red and suit is completely destroyed, that only shows off the raw power of his muscles. He looks like she imagines Maito Guy's student looks, underneath the spandex. The crazy man has caught her eye a few times in her training so far, and he's left about as much impact as this is about to.

The burly man poses dramatically, and despite her newly renewed fear, she can't help but notice it's not all bad. None of those poses are drawing in new minions, which means they seem to have passed the minion phase.

This idea is confirmed when she hears her teammate's feet hit the ground beside her. "Need help?" Naruto asks.

"Yeah, I get the feeling this is about to suck." She says.

Gato poses at them like an old man in an anime and places a hand on his bulging biceps. His grin splits his face from ear to ear, and she can't help but feel a little spiteful that her very first dungeon has this kind of crap. "Here I thought I was in an adventure but it turns out I'm in an overblown drama."

The man doesn't pay her anymore mind, in fact, he bolts away from them at top speed. It's enough to make her blink, "huh?" before she spots his fist about to embed itself in Sasuke's face. Her raven haired teammate is stricken squarely, throwing him back before Gato is back on the offensive and is forcing him from side to side like a chew toy in an enthusiastic dog's mouth. "Grr-" Sasuke barely manages to grunt in between attacks, being pushed back well beyond his limits in a very short timeframe. She can't use her crossbow for fear of hitting Sasuke, but at that speed of combat she's not sure she can get involved either.

She stills herself, takes a deep breath, and tries to send the lightning chakra she's been practicing through her limbs. Being faster is a requirement, even if it wears her out faster than she'd like. What's the point of being in tip top shape if Sasuke's hurt?

What's the point of even being a team if she's not willing to burden herself to help those she cares about? She sees Sasuke take another hit, harming her concentration but not shattering it. She just needs to focus, she just needs to give it her all.

She wills herself to be better, to pull off the jutsu to its fullest without spasming or hurting herself. She only has so much life to give, and this has to work for her to be able to contribute. She can't hastily waste even a drop of chakra or HP, and yet she still has to rush enough to get in the way and protect Sasuke before the worst happens.

She watches him with desperation, screaming inside her head to finish it so she can move her cute tush and knock that jerky shipping magnate into oblivion.

All her internal screaming does nothing at all to make watching Sasuke take a hit to the stomach any easier. She watches him ragdoll backwards, she watches him flip in mid air and slam into the stone ground below hard enough for it to shatter like glass. Glowing shards stick into his teammate from all angles. "Figured out what the glowing floor does." She hears Sasuke grunt like his life isn't in danger. He bleeds like any other, he loses HP like any other, just because they can't see his statistics doesn't mean she's not mentally calculating where he must be at after an attack like that.

Gato steps towards Sasuke, and Sakura sees nothing but red.

Chapter 17: Dungeon Boss Fight End and Aftercare: Gato Tower

Chapter Text

For Sasuke, this whole fight has been nonsense. People die when they are killed, things burn when they are burnt, and there is no such thing as an infinite swarm of henchmen willing to run directly into the grinding meat hooks of Naruto's clones.

But here he is, standing just a little bit away from the fight, staring at a muscled giant of a man that poofed into existence from thin air and a tiny old guy. Even as he flexes, Sasuke can tell there's hate in the man's eyes, and that hate is directed towards him.

He breaths heavily, unable to keep up with the pace of what's been going on around him. Sakura, for all her earlier fangirl habits and all nighters playing games, doesn't seem to have lost ground at all despite his harsh training. He spent night after night pushing himself throughout the entire academy until his sweat turned to blood and only enthusiastic nurses could stop him from training more. He was never willing to rest on his laurels as the last Uchiha, he had goals, and those goals would require more tears than he could shed in a life-time. There wasn't time to slack off, because he didn't have enough time even if he didn't slack off. Itachi is incredible, Itachi was the pride of his clan while he, Sasuke, was worthless to everyone in comparison.

The girl on his team has more stamina than he does despite what she thinks. She's stronger too, depending on the situation. The only leg up he has on her is that his ranged abilities and Shuriken play is leagues above her, so of course she managed to get a hold of some magical crossbow that can shoot fireballs. That's fair, nothing weird about that at all!

It's not a bad thing for her to grow strong, especially when she's agreed to help him fight Itachi, but when her gains come out of nowhere it's enough to make him a little jealous. The last two weeks not withstanding - poor girl - she's spent her whole life playing games and treating training like a fun side activity.

Yet here she is, standing there, looking like she's ready for round two despite being in the same fight he's been in, she's enviable. She's a genius, and that terrifies him as much as he wants it. It won't be like that for long though, he'll just have to try harder until they're on equal footing.

He won't be pushed back. A lesser person might call it unfair, he calls it motivation.

It seems like Gato agrees he needs harsher training, because instead of rushing for Sakura or Naruto, the older man with the muscles to rival a body builder jumps into action in a dead sprint for him. He lifts his kunai, ready to deflect the cane, and finds it's a fist launching right towards his face instead. He barely sees it, he's too slow and it's too fast. He's sent flipping back, only landing properly because of years of training. Tears reflexively build up in his eyes, and he wipes them away without a second thought because he doesn't have a second to lose focus.

His vision clears just in time to dodge another stroke, and even dodging it, it still grazes his cheek enough to send him back a step, and the follow up blow is just as fast.

One after another, each strike stinging his body from near misses he doesn't have time to react to. It's intense, like sparring with Sakura when she's angry or a dozen Naruto clones, but unlike with them losing isn't acceptable.

Losing is death.

He hears lightning, Sakura's coming to save him, they don't trust him to handle this on his own and he's not sure he can blame them.

His stomach takes a hit strong enough to send him up in the air, and another strike hits his face hard enough to send him rolling back across the stone flooring before he has time to feel pain. It shatters like glass underneath him, shards littering his now bloody body. "Figured out, what the glowing floor does." He manages to grunt, as if he's not quickly losing control of his limbs. Twitches run through his body, and Gato arrives before he can fully look up, with a kick that's, oddly slow.

He watches it rush towards his face at a snail's pace. An oxymoron of combat mocking him. He tries to chide the man, prove that he doesn't need pity, but all he gets out is the slowest single sound imaginable. His words aren't coming, and the sound of Sakura's electricity has slowed too. His body isn't moving very fast, but he knows what he's reacting to with plenty of warning, and just barely manages to roll out of the way.

Getting to his feet is another story, but he doesn't need to do that yet. Sakura's jumped onto Gato's back, wrapped her legs around his waist, and started stabbing. Her blade has thrummed to life even as she sparks potent lightning chakra, she stabs down into him again, and again, and again, harshly bleeding power into their foe like she has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Gushes of life flow from the man, body mass cutting away without even the slightest dramatic flair. It's brutal, it's rabid, it's like what he's seen her do to a training dummy but a hundred times worse in every way. Her body twitches uncontrollably from misfired electricity, telling him she came before she had it fully prepped. Her sword glows with bloody hatred, and her eyes are so red he feels like he's staring into an old family member. There's an odd bit of nostalgia there, a consequence of losing so much blood he's sure, but what's important is that for all her brutality, for all the reckless inhuman malice she throws at the man, she's beautiful.

She's sacrificing what little she has left in her to give him time to get to his feet, and it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. She gets about eight massive stab and rips in before it happen. Like a light switch, he watches her eyes go dull, hears the electricity stop, and sees his teammate fall over.

The sword still in their foe, Gato doesn't hesitate to spin just enough for the back of his hand to strike Sakura's chin.

He's glad it's only a back hand, because in all his time with Sakura, he's never once seen her go flying like that. She probably did with Zabuza, but he sure as hell didn't see it, and Kakashi informed them just a little while later that she might have died.

It didn't make a lot of sense at the time, but now that her life is this nonsensical, maybe she really is immortal. He hopes so, because the crack that her neck makes upon hitting the floor face first fills his heart with fear. He watches every moment of it in slow motion, burns her dull, lifeless face into his memory, and feels his hatred erupt. Naruto's clones move to protect their downed teammate like they're not in danger, and that's the last thought Sasuke has before he's lifted himself up on one hand. His other hand is a little dangly, but that's fine. His kunai missing is a little more of a problem, but that's fine too. He reaches down to grab a shattered, sharp rock from his leg.

His eyes burn, and Gato looks back at him with a malicious grin.
That's okay though. "He's bleeding a lot." Sasuke announces to Naruto. "We just have to keep him still until he falls. Can you do it with clones?"

"You know it!" The world is bathed in orange.

"Damn-it," Sakura groans, "I got taken out again." She wriggles a little, before opening her eyes to find the oddly pleasant feeling on her forehead is Naruto's hand. "Kakashi's gonna scold me."

"I dunno, Sakura, Kakashi-sensei seems pretty happy when we act as a team." Naruto says. "He might let this one go."

"We just won't tell him." Sasuke scoffs. Her eyes dart towards him, apprehension growing in her chest despite knowing he's okay. She needs to be sure, and sure enough, the boy's standing just a little away with his hands in his pockets. He's trying to remain aloof, even now, but she can see how stressful that all was for him. He cleaned up the blood, he got a bandage for his cheek, but her eyes see something so much more indicative.

"Congrats." She mumbles.

"For what?" He asks.

"Your eyes look like mine when using my sword." She explains, smiling ever so gently. "You're finally a true Uchiha, Sasuke."

She can't read his expression, she never can, and no amount of mood chart is going to help her with that one. But, he's happy, she knows that much. He's not surprised though, just happy, he already knows. Doujutsu use a lot of Chakra, so he probably kept it on just for her. "I think it's more that your eyes look like mine, Sakura."

"Hehe, maybe," She snickers to herself, "now you get to cheat even harder than me, haah, between the three of us, you with the Sharingan, Naruto with infinite stamina, and me with all of this, we're gonna be a legendary team."

"Maybe." Sasuke says, as he lifts something into view for her. "His body melted, and this was all that was left. Any idea what it could go to?" A golden object, narrow and thin, with little ridges along one side. A key, just for them.

"Yeah. I think I have a pretty good idea."

Opening the way forward is a bit of a harrowing experience, if only because it lets loose the flood of it all into her brain. After that last room, they have so many questions and not a lot of answers. Was that actually Gato? Did her dungeon pull in someone from the real world and change them to act like a boss? Why was Gato even here, technically there are potential reasons but there's also plenty of reasons for him to not be here. What if he had decided to go on a trip after the dungeon was introduced but before she did it? There wasn't a time limit introduced on the dungeon, could she even fail or or make it disappear or was Gato always going to suddenly be here when she went through?

Thoughts like that swirl through her as they open the door forward, and find a small office. A nicely lit desk with a lamp, an organizer for tons of paperwork labeled by country and location, and a safe in the back with five holes. "Huh." It's Naruto that slots the key they got from Gato's corpse into one of the holes, and turns it. With a loud click, the key explodes, and the lock disappears, leaving four holes in the safe.

"That was magic," Sakura says, "that was just straight up magic, there's no denying it."

"Right, because this wasn't entirely magic up to this point." Sasuke snorts.

"Do you think I can pick it?" Naruto asks, and before Sakura can say anything he's pulling out a torque wrench and a classic lockpick, a little rusty but clearly well cared for. It's just old, not much you can do about that. "Let me just…"

"Naruto, I somehow doubt the magic safe has a-" Sakura begins, before the object inserted into the safe glows brightly. Naruto doesn't even have time to react before it explodes into a million tiny pieces. The hole is still there, ominously teasing them.

"That was expensive…" Naruto groans, looking mournfully upon the chest.

Sakura's hand lands on his shoulder, soothingly rubbing it and giving him a gentle squeeze.

"It's alright, Naruto, have another one." He was probably expecting a lot of things, but Sakura holding out a prim and shiny pick for him likely wasn't in that list. Watching him brighten up at the new tool gifted to him by one of his favorite people, that was absolutely in her list of expected outcomes. "I got it from some goblins."

"Right, hehe, goblins." Naruto laughs, reaching up to rub one of his eyes for some reason, and taking the pick. "I think I'll hold off on trying that again."

"We probably get a key from the boss every time. The quest did say to clear it five times." That does raise serious questions as to what's gonna be here next time though.

Will it be Gato again? That'd at least prove that it's not really him, as her power certainly isn't resurrecting people, or, at least it hasn't shown the capacity to do that for anyone but maybe her, yet. Even then, it used someone to save her as a convenient excuse, if she really did die and Haku didn't actually save her.

It's all very confusing, and she really doesn't want to think about it. It's crazy, it's odd, and the power is going to work how it's going to work whether she understands it or not. "Let's get out of here," Sasuke speaks up, and she finds she agrees with him completely.

The boys are practically skipping with excitement as they pass through a more normal route on the way home. The walk up to this point has been somewhat nervous and awkward, everyone expecting some dungeon trap or spawn to show up out of nowhere and reveal to them that it's not actually over and the dread is just beginning. The cosmic nature of what just happened doesn't seem to bother them, and maybe that's something she should mimic. She's too nervous these days, jittery to a fault she'd call it. Ino will surely notice if she doesn't manage to calm herself before she gets back home, and her mother will interrogate everything out of her the instant she arrives if she doesn't center herself. She needs a hug, and some gaming, the interrogation needs to wait a few days.

Dying changed things, but what really changed things was all the training. A few days or a week of pushing herself shouldn't have that huge an effect but for her, it made everything so much more real. She's never suffered before, not like that. She's never pushed herself through something so difficult it made her want to cry and never stop crying, and then when she couldn't push herself anymore, someone else picked up the slack and pushed her more. She's always known being a ninja was going to be difficult, but that really put things into a new perspective for her.

Seeing all that pain and perseverance - even if assisted - pay off in that dungeon run is so much more powerful than reading some numbers in a flat screen floating above her head or in front of her face. Her only regret is that she didn't know any earth jutsu that would have actually been useful. Even the ability to make an earth pickaxe would have been amazing.

"Oh." Her eyes catch something fairly new as they walk through their training grounds, well, not new in the chronological sense so much as the unexpected sense. Haku's been here before, it's not strange to see him here, but it's still a surprise. She figured the boy would be half-way outside the country by now, not standing around waiting for her with his beautiful black hair rustling in the wind.

"You two go ahead." She says to her boys, "Kakashi probably wants to know what just happened and I kinda like talking to Haku."

"You don't want us to stick by your side this time?" Sasuke asks.

"No, I really believe what I said, Haku won't hurt me." The uncertain look they share before taking off tells her many things. Things like, Naruto's probably sending shadowclones back to watch her, and Kakashi's hearing about this. Nothing she won't be self reporting in a few minutes. It feels nice to know her team is that worried about her, even if a part of her wonders if it's because she's a girl.

Probably not, she is engaging the enemy alone. It's difficult to avoid intrusive thoughts like that though, because sometimes it's true.

"You really did it." Haku's words catch her by surprise. Mostly, it's the excitement in his tone, that girly twinge to his voice that's just innocent enough to make him sound a little more pretty than her. Her own girliness, or lack of, isn't something she likes to do a lot of thinking about. She tries, a little, but it's never been a priority of hers and now she's not sure who to ask for advice. Maybe Haku can help, but, probably not. He's the type to be naturally cute and pretty. He's probably never played a game in his life, which is just another charm to that streaming idea! They can make a whole series about him learning basic concepts and then explaining his process!

"I did." She agrees, standing just a few feet away from him and looking out at the sea she's spent so long walking on. "Gato should be dead, assuming that I didn't kill a clone."

"He's dead," Haku confirms, "he was found collapsed in his quarters without a wound, no one's sure what happened, except you."

"Oh, I don't like that, I don't like that at all." Sakura grimaces, as a flood of questions comes running through her all over again. That says so much, but also so little. So he really died when they killed that demented version of him, that's an answer, but does that mean anyone could theoretically just die like that? Is that why people die for 'no reason at all' sometimes? She's read about that, that's a real thing. Were they butchered in a dungeon by some girl who didn't know what she was doing?

Probably not, as far as she can tell she's the only one with this power, but…

"Regardless, he is dead," Haku says, "and I am in your care."

"You're in my, I'm sorry, what?" Sakura asks, staring directly into the boy's tilted face, and those crooked, heavily amused eyes. "Could you roll that back for me?"

"A scourge of the planet has been removed from it, do not overthink it." Haku says as softly as the wind.

"N-no, I got that, um, the part after that."

"Care?" Haku asks.

"Including that but before." Sakura winces.

"Your care?" Haku teases.

"That's part of it." She gulps.

"In your care?" His eyes are filled with so much mirth, she wasn't even aware the boy had it in him.

"Most of it."

"I am in your care." He seems so pleased with himself as he says it, like a preening bird. He takes a step in towards her to send her off her balance, and this time it works.

"That, that part, yeah… Could you uh, explain that?" She asks, twitching at this point.

"My master decided he didn't need me anymore," Haku explains, "he said he was sure Gato's death was my doing, and he had no use for a broken tool."

It's those words which have Sakura moving on her own. It's not a step, or even two, it's her arms wide and wrapping around him before she even realizes what she's doing. She holds him tight to her, squeezing him, and barely takes notice of the heated red tint that overtakes his cheeks and covers his nose. It spreads down his face, takes over his neck, and highlights his ears. He's not used to touch, and in a way neither is she.

"A person can't be a broken tool," She mumbles in his ear, chin resting on his shoulder, "you have to be something to be a broken version of it."

"I-" His hand lands on her back, as he hesitantly accepts his new position and gives back what he can manage one second and one shaky breath at a time.

"It just sounds to me like you grew up, and he needed a child." She whispers softly. The decision is made before she's even let him go.

"Go get your things while I talk to Kakashi," Sakura says, scowling a little but trying to hide it by looking away from the soon to be streamer - if she has her way - she's practically kidnapped from his master. It's dumb that it went this way, even she can admit it. The whole thing feels too clean. Go into a magic dungeon, free a village from an evil dictator via magically enforced murder, skip the bigger boss fight and get the secret character all in one?

No game does stuff like that, well, no good game. Something's on the horizon, she can tell, this isn't over and she has her doubts things will just work out all wrapped in a convenient bow. If this Zabuza guy knows, then he probably knew all along, which means he's had a lot of time to think things over. She'll have to tell Kakashi of her suspicions, but chances are he already knows too. The man told them to look underneath the underneath once, and while that was a really stupid line as underneath is an adjective not a noun, it fits this situation perfectly.

Haku takes her order seriously, disappearing like a sad puppy to go get his things. She can't help but say her thoughts outloud the moment his back is all she can see in the distance. "I hope Zabuza at least waits until we're outside Wave to do whatever he's planning." Enough people have gotten hurt here because of Gato and his mess, waiting until bystanders are no longer a worry is better for everyone. She finds herself staring off into the gorgeous sky, happy to see it once again after that short but intense dungeon.

This time she'll actually get down when Kakashi says to.

Chapter 18: Clear 2-4 and a real nice soft Chapter with the soft boy and stuff

Chapter Text

"So, let me get this straight." Kakashi starts, staring the two of them down like a true military officer might after an especially ridiculous report. "You were approached by the enemy after eliminating the target, and have decided to adopt the enemy."

"Yes, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura nods happily, seeing nothing wrong with this even while being scolded, "one bishie obtained."

"And you're just okay with this." Kakashi's lone eye travels over her new business partner's face. "This is not a ploy, act, or otherwise an attempt to infiltrate Konoha."

"Konoha has a front door." Haku reminds softly. "If I wanted to infiltrate Konoha, I would walk in."

The staring match between them is rather intense, but Sakura's too busy looking over the new contract they just wrote up to care that much. Her ability did get involved, helpfully giving her information on what each clause of the contract would do just before they signed it, and how to not get screwed over. It was pretty nice, if not incredibly blunt. The last hour of her life was spent sitting down with Haku and a pen, writing out contract after contract and scribbling them out over and over again as her system told her in no uncertain terms that this was a slave contract or that would do absolutely nothing.

Then there was the friendly reminder that Haku has a status called 'oath breaker' for leaving Zabuza's side, and any contract entered into is about as useful as a pile of hundred-year-old textbooks. It told her this every single time Haku got ready to sign one of the drafts and wasn't exactly useful for morale.

She's just glad it was a helpful series of prompts and not an entirely new system. That would have been a bit much for her so recently frazzled brain. She's also happy the system doesn't enable her to enforce a contract magically or anything, as that would be terrifying in a way she's just not ready to deal with. Murdering people through the veil is already enough for her head to spin and she's not recovering from that realization anytime soon. Haku may think it's a good thing, but the implications are severe. It means anytime she goes into a dungeon she might be murdering someone, and one of her friends could drop dead at any time from any other people with this power around. She's yet to find evidence others exist, but if she does, she might have to kill them on the spot to stop random leaf deaths if they happen to be from an opposing village.

"Fine, but as you are not an official member of team seven, you are not authorized to guard the bridge builder," Kakashi says with a sternness Sakura isn't used to from him, "you will remain at the home guarding his family, or with Sakura at all times."

"Understood." Haku raises a hand and salutes him.

"Are we supposed to be doing that?" Sakura asks, "I don't think I've ever saluted you. I'm going to start saluting you."

"Please do not." Kakashi's forehead ticks.

"It sounds fun."

"Do not."

"I think I'd enjoy that." Sakura beams.

"... I hope you don't think my word is law on this matter," Kakashi says, ignoring her and looking back to Haku, "the Hokage will decide what to do with you once we get to Konoha. He may even decide to turn you in for your bounty and give it to Sakura."

"I have thought of that possibility," Haku admits, standing tall, "I do not think that will be the case, Konoha is well known for being compassionate, and I am technically not a missing-nin."

"Oh?"

"To be a missing-nin you have to be a ninja in the first place," Haku explains, "I was taken in by Zabuza-sama well before I would have done that."

"That may well work in your favor," Kakashi says, "now go, having you here is a liability to our mission. Do not approach the bridge again, or I will consider you hostile."

"Understood." Haku salutes him again, and while he seems fine with that, Sakura notes he looks quite annoyed when she also does it. Oh well, they're leaving anyway, he'll forget by the next time he sees them. It makes her feel giddy!

What's he gonna do, train her harder? She's not worried.

For Haku, sitting around in this dinky old home isn't a bother. Today the boy has donned a purple skirt and gentle blouse, and is walking around barefoot enjoying the feeling of nicely laid hardwood beneath his toes. The people here are nice, that Tsunami woman made him a warm dinner and that Inari kid showed him all his progress in some game about some green guy with a sword. He hasn't spent any time with the bridge builder, Kakashi going out of his way to ensure they're nowhere near each other, but that's okay.

Their mission is to protect him from Haku and Zabuza. It makes sense Haku isn't allowed to help guard, even if he kind of wants to. It would allow all three team members to train while he accompanies Kakashi, and being of use to them would make him very happy.

"Haaah…" A cup of tea is nice, especially when it's made by someone else. The kind woman doesn't seem to hold any ill will towards him, even though he was originally here to kill her father. He wonders if they told her, or if she's just that forgiving. Maybe this whole area is forgiving. The heated liquid is like a warm welcome from the populace, and he can't help but feel guilty about their goal here all over again. So many people were hurt by Gato, and if he was going to get disowned anyway, would it have been better for him to kill the shipping magnate quite a bit earlier?

How much pain did his pointless compliance cause to the very woman in front of him, or those without homes to rest in?

Haku clears his head with another sip. Tazuna's safe, and Gato is dead, that's all that matters.
"It's too bad you're smaller than me." The woman speaks up, causing his trained and honed gaze to flicker to her. "I have a few dresses I think you'd look very pretty in."

"Ah." Haku nods slowly, softly, and everlastingly gently. "Thank you for your consideration. Am I to assume you gave the same offer to Sakura? All of her clothes were destroyed in a battle shortly before she came here."

"Nope, she just stole mine." The woman says. "Didn't even ask, she's ruined several sets of my clothes too, I hope she's willing to reimburse me before she leaves."

"You should mention it," Haku says, "she's a little odd, but she's a good person. She might not realize she should if you don't say anything, but she'll be happy to pay you back if you do."

"..." The woman cuts something over there, contemplating the world it should seem.

"I thought you already made dinner." Haku points out.

"I make a second dinner for their team and my father when he gets home," Tsunami explains, "they'd forget to eat if I didn't. Especially that Sakura girl. The others'll sneak something late at night but she'll go to bed hungry if I don't shove food in her face."

"You think she's habitually neglecting herself?" Haku asks, taking a sip of his drink with a soft smile. It is very good, or at least good for a humble household like this.

"I think she has a caring family at home and hasn't thought of things like food, hygiene, and rest as important yet," Tsunami says, "it's not that concerning, a lot of teenagers are like that. It's only an issue because she's a ninja, and her team isn't going to act like her parents."

"Huh." Haku stares into his cup, contemplating that. "I wonder if her village will let me come along with her on future missions, as her guardian."

"You'd like that kind of thing?" Tsunami asks, turning to give the boy a raised brow.

"I would go as far as to say that kind of work is my place in life." Haku says, pensively wondering how Zabuza will fare without him to wake him up on time every day, make sure he eats, and care for his wounds.

"Sakura," Haku greets his new contractual guardian the moment she arrives at home. The girl has wet hair littered with mud spots, one of her shoes is missing, and - "you smell."

"Ah, um, well, yeah." Sakura reaches back to scratch her head reminiscent of her teammate, they're made for each other, and Haku can't help but hold back an exasperated sigh. "Training is rough, I can't be perfect all the time."

"Will you be heading right for bed?" Haku asks.

"Well yeah, I -woah, what are you doing?" Sakura asks as her arm is grabbed, and she's dragged across the house with quick efficiency. Haku's done this before, and it shows, not a wasted step needed because he knows exactly where he's going. "Hey, that's-" Sakura groans as she's led into a bathroom. The bath is already drawn, and the steam hits her face in a way that makes her skin tingle nicely. "Haku?"

"Get in." Haku is already starting on her clothes, working on -

"Hey, I can undress myself!" Sakura eeps, jumping to the side with a face so red it feels like the boy poured magma on her.

"Are you sure?" It's the lack of malice or ulterior motives in Haku's eyes that does it for Sakura.

"Yes, go away!" Pushing him out the door is all she can do before the simmering red face takes over and she slides down the door to the floor, her back against the wood and her hands palming her cheeks. "What have I gotten myself into?" She groans. "That was so weird!"

"Why is Gato undead?" It's pretty disturbing, watching the man that was so scary before, point at them with a rotted bony finger and summon a horde of shambling undead. "Sasuke you think you can um…"

"On it." He shoots a fireball at the horde. Their burning corpses fill the air with a putrid smell, but they're pretty easy to clear out, nothing like the last time, and the key zombie Gato drops fits into the safe just fine.

[Zombie-Zombie-Gato]

"He's a Zombie Zombie now?" Sakura sighs, staring at the horror show without a head that wobbles around in the boss chamber.

"Well we have killed him twice." Naruto points out. "That'd make him double undead, right?"

"I don't like that that's a thing," Sakura grumbles, "like, really? Do you think he's stronger now?"

"I bet he's fire-resistant," Sasuke says. "Let's try it."

He was not.

[Zombie-Zombie-Zombie-Gato]

"Dude…" Naruto grunts. "Why is he red?"

"He doesn't even really have a body." Sakura points out. "Bone armor too, that's crazy."

The creature in front of them is red and almost spectral. Bone spikes stick out of him in every direction, armor plating covering every part of his body in a way that sends waves of dread down their spines. The previous two Gato have been a joke. Summoning a horde of undead may be a terrifying concept in a game, but when they all have ranged weapons and jutsu, it's kind of pathetic.

This one changes that. "Should we leave?" Naruto asks.

"We can't leave." Sasuke points out.

"What if I made a hundred clones and cleared the rocks?" Naruto asks and finds the silent, unknowing group doesn't answer him.

"He can't be that much harder," Sakura points out, "he's still dead. He's just a zombie zombie zombie now."

"You say that but he looks intense." Sasuke says.

"Well, we'll never know unless we try." With a wreath of lightning chakra around her sword, Sakura rushes in.

"That was stupid." Standing over the corpse of their bubbling, melting foe getting eaten by the ground in much the same way as someone from Resident Evil 5, she can't help but feel cheated.

It was intense, it was scary, she would even go as far as to call it very difficult, but there is no sense of accomplishment. They killed him again, and next time he'll be here as a zombie-zombie-zombie, and as terrifying as that is, it feels dull. "We got another key." Naruto points out, holding their fourth prize.

"That was a lot more difficult than the other two zombie Gato." Sasuke groans, kicking the red bubbling corpse.

"Well, he actually fought back, and his zombies were fast and strong this time." Sakura says with a lengthy sigh. "Next time will probably be as hard if not harder than the first boss fight since it'll be the final challenge."

"What do you think is in that safe?" Naruto asks.

"Something stupid," Sakura says, "it's supposed to recover Wave so it's probably not just money… Let's not be hasty. We should train before we come back here for the fifth fight."

"We've been training." Sasuke grunts.

"Yeah but like, for a while," Sakura explains, "we've been doing a run every day, and the bridge isn't finished yet so we're rushing through it with afternoon energy because someone has to watch the bridge during the day. We can hold off."

"Why not just bring Haku?" Sasuke asks. It's not the first time he's brought it up, but it is the first time she hasn't shrugged him off. She contemplates it, visibly bothered and willing up the words she needs to say.

"I don't want to." Is what she ends up with.

"You don't… want to." Sasuke stares quite dumbfounded.

"This is our team," Sakura explains, "I don't want to call in outside help and cheat our way to victory. Completing this dungeon was our first big accomplishment as a team, why taint it when I don't have to?"

"This isn't about us, it's about Wave." Sasuke reminds.

"And I'll ask Haku if we don't feel confident before we leave." Sakura relents. "But Wave is already recovering, kinda, now that lower-cost shipping is allowed. No one's starving to death, it's not urgent."

"Ahhh-" Naruto lifts a finger.

"No one who wouldn't starve to death anyway." Sakura rolls her eyes. "I'm not going to fix the homeless problem by opening that safe. Every civilization turns its backs on some people, it sucks but nothing in our power is going to change that. Not, just by fighting one battle…" Her expression falls a bit as she talks as if she doesn't want to believe her own words. "And if we're that worried about it, Naruto can distribute some soup or something with clones."

"That's not a bad idea." Naruto says. It does little to help the pit in her stomach, but her convictions are solid. Haku is Wave's enemy, and making him fight their battle for them will only tempt the boy to run off with whatever the prize is when they have access to it. And what right would she have to say Haku doesn't have a right to the prize if they only defeat the final fight because they were there?

It's not just about team seven, it's about Wave.

She just hopes she's doing what's best for everyone, and not speaking hollow words that never quite settled inside.

[Proto-Wind Affinity Level 1 Obtained]

It's enough to make her cry. Two days of sitting around doing nothing but training wind, and she has it. She finally has it. She can finally be a movie ninja intern! She can still only create a gust of wind from her hands, and even then her control over it's only enough to ruffle her hair or shake her clothes, and it's kind of expensive so she's unlikely to find it worth overcharging it with chakra to try and pull off some sudden but costly gambit.

But she officially has all five affinities, three of which only in the barest sense but still! Rushing to meet Kakashi on the bridge and show off isn't even the first thought she has, because that would imply thinking. One moment she's practicing water walking while trying to create a gust, the next moment she's on the bridge seeking out her mentor and ignoring a catcall. It's a little awkward for a grown man to do stuff like that, but it's not her fault their mothers never taught them better, and she's not about to play that part and teach them either. New hires are all over the place, meaning with Gato gone more are willing to help with the bridge, which should speed all this up. She just moves on and finds her damned sensei among the honorable men, perverts, and jerks, if only she was completely sure which he is.

Finding him reading p*rn instead of watching Tazuna doesn't fill her with confidence either way.

"Kakashi!" She jumps in place when he notices her, lifting a palm and sending up a miniature gale that blows her hair out of her face and sends some dirt off her bangs to the bridge below. "Look!"

"You did it." He says, eying the bridge more than her for a second before his eye focuses on her palm. "In less than a month you've accomplished something almost no one else has ever done."

"Well, it's only proto-affinity." Sakura points out, her free hand scratching her cheek. "It's not like I've mastered anything."

"I doubt all the jealous Jonin are going to care very much about the difference between a proto-affinity and a real affinity." He says. "Technically to be a jonin of the leaf you have to be able to perform at least one elemental jutsu of every type, showing an understanding of each chakra manifestation, even if only at its most preliminary level. But Jonin is a title for those in their twenties and thirties, and very few of them would claim to have even the most basic affinity in even four of them, let alone all five."

"But they can do it." She points out.

"With five to six times the chakra and ten to fifteen years of practice, yes." Kakashi appears to be trying to get something across to her that's just not clicking with her.

As is life. "So you'll show me how to make my own jutsu now?" She asks.

"Tonight, after Tazuna has gone to bed." Kakashi nods to her, "get some rest, you'll need all the chakra you can get." Get at least six hours, is the clear message there.

Chapter 19: Making Jutsu Past Midnight-thirty, traumatizing Tazuna's family, and it's Now or Never.

Chapter Text

Sakura meets her sensei fresh and lively at the crack of midnight thirty or something. She's not sure what time it is, just that it's really dark, everyone else is asleep, and she's got her training shoes on. Not to be mistaken for her normal shoes. They are technically the same thing, but it's a mentality, one decided when putting them on. One must always decide beforehand whether they are in their asskicking outfit, or in their go for a walk outfit. The clothes are about as important in that choice as the difference between an eight Kay television and a four Kay television, it's a mentality and unless you're truly in the top percentage of professional players it'll stay that way.

Does she believe Serral could benefit from a better visual setup than is normally humanly possible to benefit from? Yeah, totally. By the time you can spot an observer passing by your overlord by the shimmer it makes in the air during the eighth of a second you happened to scroll over it, human limits aren't in the equation anymore.
Could she?

Tangent aside, the point is she's here and she's ready for whatever absurdity Kakashi plans to throw at her. She won't falter, she hasn't before and she won't now. Somehow she's earned the respect of their teacher, and she's not immune to the fluffy feelings that creates in her gut. She won't lose hold of that, she'll work harder to keep it than she's ever worked before.

"Sensei." She greets, walking around the final tree line to get to their designated training ground. The boys aren't here this time, they're nestled in bed now that the urgent training is over and they can take things at a reasonable pace. No one wants to work themselves like that forever, it's mind breaking and not in that good way people on the internet talk about but refuse to elaborate on. She might be a little worried that Kakashi plans to punish her for her earlier shenanigans on the bridge. Later thought let her realize that was a little dumb, as he's taught her several times that he will hurt her for antagonizing a bigger beast.

Kakashi stands at the center of their race track, looking oddly thoughtful for once. The man is normally so confident in everything he does, this is one of the first times she's seen him question himself. She wouldn't call it pensive, that'd imply he's not sure he's about to teach her, but he is certainly going through the motions to figure out how best to implant the knowledge he must in such a way that she doesn't explode from it. Or, maybe he's trying to figure out the way to talk the absolute least while simultaneously giving the most poignant explanation. "You can have confidence in me." She asserts before he even says anything. "I won't do anything hasty."

"You say that, but you immediately went back into that dungeon the day after you all completed it." Kakashi says. "I didn't miss how you and Sasuke couldn't meet each other's eyes anymore, something scary happened in there. That's before I consider that he unlocked his Sharingan, which is an entire bag of worms on its own."

"Eheh, well, he got cornered when I wasn't ready." Sakura excuses, sheepishly able to look anywhere but at Kakashi. "And Naruto was busy I think, so… actually what was Naruto doing?" He'd already taken out the stragglers, right? Why weren't there a dozen Naruto's backing Sasuke up, why did it come down to her? She can't really remember, not with the head injury she took during the fight. It was all so fast even excluding the tiny gaps she has, and Naruto already had such an important job she wasn't thinking of him at all. It's hard to reflect.

"Naruto has gotten a lot better at knowing his limits, unlike the two of you." Kakashi says. "He was more than likely looking for an opening."

"Yeah…" He definitely wasn't letting Sasuke die or anything, that'd be absurd. They're a team, she needs to get that kind of thought permanently bleached from her head. She shakes it off, smiling to herself at the memory of how concerned they both looked when she woke up. "Jutsu, Sensei?"

"Jutsu." He agrees. "It's time to teach you how to make your own techniques. We call it a secret but it's not particularly hard to do." He lifts one hand out of his pocket, and begins slow, methodical hand signs. Funny shapes aside, they have meaning to her that she instinctively remembers from childhood. Ox, Boar, etc. "Do you remember why we make hand signs?"

"Because manually controlling your chakra takes an incredible amount of focus." Sakura recites, "and jutsu need to be formed very quickly, doing it too slowly will cancel out the effect and reset the formation. Hand signs are used as a way to form chakra in one moment, it's not that the hand signs themselves are important, technically anything could do it, it's that we are taught to mold our chakra in the way the hand sign indicates from a very young age so that later on making the hand signs and the chakra molding pattern to match is so instinctive that we can learn jutsu through that instead of a mechanical precision process for every part. It cuts training down from years to months, in some cases weeks or days." She looks proud of herself, she's sure, but she's prouder that Kakashi's stare only makes her flush a little bit. He probably didn't expect her to go off in such a long winded way.

Technically it's more than jutsu are written using the hand signs, so even if a more efficient method was developed, it would need to be painstakingly transferred over and would likely cause a skill gap between generations that'd only grow the more efficient or hard to learn the new method is. Skill gaps aren't great for the predictable nature of soldiers a nation needs to continue to confidently make the moves it needs to in its day to day.

"Correct," he says after a long second, "but if they're just shortcuts, does that mean someone could learn to cut out hand signs, or remove them entirely?"

"I've heard it's possible, and I bet Tsunade of the Sannin could do it with any random jutsu with practice." She says, "but the amount of control that would require for even basic jutsu you're not familiar with, I can't imagine it."

"That's funnier coming from you than I expected it to be." Kakashi teases. "Hmm, but that wording, not familiar with, do you think you could do it with a jutsu you were?"

"Given enough time." She says. "None of the techniques I've been learning recently require hand signs, just molding the chakra and commanding it to do something in a way I want."

"So you already know how to make a new jutsu." He says.

And waits-
And waits-
And waits-

"Wait…" Her brow furrows, as she thinks about it, running through her new skills she's gained recently. It's true, in none of the techniques has she used a hand sign, or any sort of formal instruction, each one was purely focused on learning how to mold and control the different types of chakra manually.

"I will leave you to that." He says, walking away faster than she expects, like he's worried the whole area is going to explode or something. "Good luck, have fun!"

"But, Kakashi! I don't know where to start!"

It's just like him to give her the first step of a task and then disappear, it's kind of how he teaches.

It's not really teaching at all, if she was the one who got to define it. Unfortunately she's not, and she's sure the Hokage is fine with this method as long as they get stronger and stay unhurt.

She bets her parents' Chunin mentors were more helpful.

"How did I not figure that out on my own!" She shouts at herself, tearing at her hair in frustration the moment he's out of sight.

The bridge's completion catches Sakura by about as much surprise as it does anyone. Even Tazuna looks incredibly unsure of himself as they lay in the last piece of the structure, looking around as if ready for something to attack and show them all that the effort was futile all along. Nothing happens, not even after several minutes of waiting. The eerie silence stretches on for quite some time, only broken by the ambient sound of lavender town. She probably could have chosen a better place to play around in, but it's Inari's save and he's the one who's save is here, it's not her fault! She chose not to move forward in his game, just grind a little, lest she ruin his first experience. It's not like kids like grinding, so he doesn't complain or even seem to notice the extra odd level on his side Pokemon. He's not leveling them up evenly, as is customary for someone's first playthrough, so she's just making sure they don't fall too far behind and become a burden.

The least she needs is him getting stuck and getting discouraged. Especially with all the new toys she brought him and his friends from the dungeon. He's so active now, playing outside and running around and bonking his friends when he's not hanging out with her and playing the game. It's enough to etch a permanent smile on her face, at least when she's watching him.

She'll be sure to harass her parents about why they never gave her a little brother to spoil, after she's done introducing them to Haku and getting lots of hugs for her and Naruto that is.

When nothing happens for longer than anyone can handle, Tazuna finally raises his hand. "I now declare our bridge, finished!" The roars of excitement deafen her, but she doesn't shy away from the celebration. Even if it is a little much for a hyper focused person with enhanced ninja senses like her, she's pretty sure it's the shut-in part of her that hates this kind of thing, and she's made an active effort recently to avoid letting that get the mood down. This is a huge moment for Wave, and she couldn't be happier about it. "From now on, Wave can export via caravan. Should Gato turn out to be alive and in hiding, he'll stay that way, as his reign of terror is over. He can hurt us no more, stifle us no more, the people of wave are free!"

She didn't take Tazuna for a man of speeches, but then, he hasn't had a lot of chances to show it off. He's been scared sh*tless by Gato for so long that even news of his death didn't make it disappear. There was disbelief in everyone, fear that she was lying and that the man was only silent because he was planning his next act of extreme cruelty. Even as shipments of food came in, and the people stopped starving, there was always that thought in the back of their minds that the looming threat could reveal itself any second.

For them, it was Gato, for her, it was Zabuza.

The man who killed her, and then the man who gave her Haku without a fight. He didn't even come to say hello, or threaten her into taking good care of his son or whatever they are to each other. It's so anticlimactic it doesn't feel real, and so while she knows Gato's dead for a fact - she's killed his zombie-zombie-zombie version - she can't blame them for their doubts and uneasy feeling of dissatisfaction.

It'd have been much better if she could have hung the man in town square, or let the children beat him with the inflatables like a pinata… Actually scratch that, that would have been horrifying.

"I now name it, the great Sakura bridge!" Tazuna shouts, and she hears a hundred shouts right after.

"I'm sorry, what?" She spins around on her heel, the news finally clicking after several seconds of brain fizzle. She's not used to that kind of spectacle, or the eyes that land on her as if she should have expected this.

"Is this because I announced Gato's death? Because I really feel like that was a team effort."

Her footsteps had been rather harsh. While the boys had thought ahead and gotten clean before arriving at the house, Sakura did no such thing. Sakura had gotten right to training the moment she was done introducing Haku to Kakashi, meaning she was still sweaty and drenched when she arrived at the home shortly after nightfall.

She opened the door quite forcefully, finding Tsunami setting a table for Tazuna and the boys, and both civilian gazes landed on her immediately, not even flinching away when the door she pushed open loudly smacked against the doorknob stopper. She tracked dirty footprints along the hard wood, and Sakura's gaze landed squarely on Tazuna with enough frosty focus to freeze the man's breathing in place.

"He's dead," She said, her tools clacking a little as she reached into her pouch to pull out the prize she'd had Haku go get her.

"Please don't do that." Sasuke gulped, seeing exactly where her head was going. He may not have known the exact details, but he'd gotten rather good at detecting when Sakura was about to do something very disturbing without thinking about it.

"Ah." She agreed, nodding to his superior experience, and put the fleshy object back in its wrapping inside her pouch.

"Who's dead?" Tsunami can't help but gulp.

"Gato." Dull red eyes from training with her sword so soon after that chaos reflected a sureness and blood lust that made the young woman twitch on the spot. "We killed him."

"Uh… Is that, um, him?" Tsunami asked, pointing at the young girl who shambled into the house, dreadful and weary. It was only then that Sakura looked down at herself and grasped what everyone's lack of celebration was about. Before this moment it didn't make any sense that despite her joyous news, everyone looked like they wanted to vomit.

She had person on her.

She was not sure if she borrowed a red outfit from Tsunami this morning, but she was sure it was red now, not a single spot of it wasn't painted by her glorious combat. Her footsteps tracked blood into the house, ruining someone's cleaning job with splattery madness that seeped into the wood further with every moment, permanently staining it with the death of their enemies.

Her hair was wet and weighed down, not with sweat like she thought, but enough matter she was pretty sure something physical remained tangled in her knots and she was too afraid to check.

"Yes." She asserted, realizing she had no recourse but to accept it as she stared out at the civilians and her judging team. "This is probably gato, I imagine this came from when I climbed on him and started stabbing."

"That was um, like six hours ago." Naruto pointed out with several twitches and green cheeks.

"Shut up about me, Gato's dead." She growled. "He's gone, the village can get food, the bridge is uncontested, celebrate!"

"Y-yeah, that's, I'll get the good tea!" She watched Tsunami run away, presumably to get the good tea.

"We should get Inari, he'll want to know," Sakura said, "we brought presents for him too."

"Shower first." Kakashi scolded. "Do not approach a little boy like that."

"Understood!" Sheepishly, Sakura couldn't help but agree that approaching Inari like this would be a terrifying thing to do. Even if she was pretty sure he'd appreciate the news of the bastard's demise a lot more than he was disturbed by the proof. Maybe she's not a master of child psychology.

"It's now or never." Kakashi asserts, standing over them at their training ground and tapping his foot pointedly on a hollowed out rock she made just the other day with yet another experiment. She's been using it as a water bowl to play with and wash up with, after that very weird event with Haku, she's gone out of her way to avoid a repeat and has been proud to show up squeaky clean lest he draw her another bath. The extra water control training doesn't hurt. "We leave in a few days, either you complete the fifth dungeon clear or you don't."

"I could always come back on vacation when I'm a chunin." Sakura points out, "I doubt it's truly now or never."

[Dungeon Expiry time: 3 Days, 2 hours, 32 minutes, 27 seconds]

"Nevermind…" Sakura sighs at that, "alright boys, we rest up tonight and attack tomorrow, since we need to be fully rested and prepared for the trek home in case of ambush or if Haku tries anything funny."

"You said you're sure he won't." Naruto points out.

"I'm sure, but Kakashi's not." Sakura pointedly points towards their sensei. "If we're not prepared he's gonna punish us."

"I will punish you." Kakashi explains, and despite repeating what Sakura just said, it couldn't be more menacing coming from him. Even with the mask on, they can tell he's grinning and happy about the prospect of a chance to enact some fearsome sadism on them.

"You hear that, he'll punish us." Sakura says.

"I feel like he might punish us." Sasuke says.

"I'm getting the feeling he might punish us." Naruto nods sagely, earning a pat from Sakura and a rub of his hair with her fingers. Watching him accept her soothing touch is always therapeutic for her. It seems every other day she's disturbing him in some way, some part of her lacking humanity in a way she doesn't grasp and probably never fully will. It's not intentional, she didn't ask to be desensitized by the academy in a way no one else seemed to be. They showed them horror, they showed them bloodshed, the academy made it clear every single day of their lives would be bathed in violence if they took this route and sought advancement instead of a cozy life guarding the wall or something.

She wouldn't say she took to it, she just internalized it in a way that she assumed everyone had. Gaming made it easier, she could use tactics she learned in the academy to get a one up or end a virtual life and while she wouldn't say that gaming makes taking a real life any easier, she would say that the combination of intentional desensitizing from her superiors and teachers and having a practical application of that knowledge made it all the more effective.

Naruto trusting her makes her feel a little more like a person, like she's not that different.
She'll need to hunt Iruka down and ask what the f*ck when she gets home. Surely most students took to it like she did, and Naruto and Sasuke are different…

Surely.

Chapter 20: Back into Gato Tower: The Final Push

Chapter Text

The wind blows kindly on her bubblegum hair, her two teammates standing directly behind make her feel like she's being escorted by an elite party and she's the hero approaching the end of a journey. To say she's been anxious about what lies in front of them would be accurate, but not the whole story. Nervous energy flows through her, setting her nerves alight and casting doubts on her accomplishments, but the anticipation inside of her is molten and sparking deep.

They've been in Wave for a little over a month, and in that time she's come a long way.

[Dungeon: Gato Tower Final Arrangement, Level 22

Party Level: Level 22

There will be no escaping]

The new claim is ominous, but she knows she has to do this. "We managed to get high enough level." She says, looking back at her team with joy in her eyes and a bright smile on her lips. "I'm not the only one who's gotten stronger, this time."

"Nope." Sasuke agrees, a smirk assuring her he's never been more ready.

"I would kick earlier me's butt." Naruto proclaims without a second thought. "We're so ready."

His confidence is infectious, he's their rogue, their bard, their crowd control, and in some ways he's their tank. Sometimes Sakura wonders why she's even here, but then the answer reveals itself in the little moments of vulnerability he shows.

She's here because he needs her to be. The first time they cleared this dungeon, Naruto revealed to them that his chakra is truly endless, but chakra is just one resource they need to persevere. "That's good because we need you to help clear the chafe so we're at full strength for the boss."

"You know it!" His fist pump is accentuated by the summoning of about thirty blonds that quickly rush into the dungeon before them.

"Let's do it." Sakura reaches out towards the illusion that is the entrance, and steps forward.

The scent of copper hits them before they take the first steps, the eerie red mist blocks their vision and the sound of bats scraping along instead of spiders catches them by surprise.

The layout appears to have changed too, which means they have at least two clones ahead of them at all times and their weapons are never not drawn as they go deeper. Her crossbow is hooked into a leather pouch tied around her shoulder, and her hands hold her sword in front of her like it's a sole lifeline. Traveling one step at a time only makes the nerves all the more frantic, and even the Naruto honor guard doesn't help her as they go deeper into their potential grave. She might come back if she dies, will they?

Ching

An arrow falls to the floor after an automatic deflection, not even having to see the attack is bullsh*t, but not as bullsh*t as the horde that falls on the enemies as soon as they reveal themselves. An orange tide surges, greater and more ferocious than the spiders they've led into the first area's traps time and time again. That it was bats this time didn't matter, Naruto just hucked cloned shuriken into the horde and it was dealt with like it never existed to begin with.

She doesn't even get to see the beasts they slay, the howls and roars from the thick mist chill her blood about as much as the curdling cries the monsters make as they're put down. They've avoided this kind of methodology the last few times through here, the combat experience was too valuable to lose out on, but this is no longer a training mission. It's a challenge they have to overcome, and there is no escape. The final key lies beyond a large door somewhere through this mist, and that key will open a safe thats contents will supposedly save Wave country.

She's not so sure, if her power wanted her to save this country it could have handed her the answer, there's no reason to go through all this nonsense. It sets her on edge, and not being able to see more than a few feet in front of her isn't helping with that.

"Hey." A hand lands on her shoulder, and she turns to see the original Naruto standing behind her with a big confident grin. "It's okay."

"I'm fine." She lies through her teeth as easily as breathing, sighing as a little pressure falls off her chest at his support, only for a loud screech in the mist to make her jump and bring it all back.

"You're shaking." He points out, and it's all she can do to look down and see her sword seeming to shiver in her grasp.

"Yeah." She admits. "Thank you, Naruto, I'll be fine."

"No." He doesn't normally put his foot down with her, but Sasuke's grimace behind him tells her all she needs to know. "We should stop."

They all need a moment, she's just an excuse, she can be their excuse. "Let's take a break." She agrees.

The mist only gets stronger as they approach the boss door, and she's not so happy to open the double door with Naruto and see exactly what lies beyond for them to face.

Barely visible above them, he hangs like a bat from the ceiling and glares down at them with gleaming red-orange eyes that match with the mist horrifically well. Sharp teeth glint, and a pale complexion unlike any she's ever seen stands out like a beacon of moonlight above the aura of doom surrounding them.

[Vampire Gato; Chunin Solo Elite]

At least it didn't say Jounin, they should be able to handle one elite chunin, right?

"Hey guys, that's uh…" Naruto begins.

"Not a brute corpse." She finishes for him. Every run since the first has been easy because Gato's been a mindless brute who attacked them immediately and was easily dispatched with overwhelming force. He wouldn't dodge, he'd walk towards them, then crawl towards them after they chopped off his legs. They'd burn him, crush his skull, eviscerate him, and shred him with techniques they wanted to test. They turned him into ribbons, and never felt even a little bad about it, afterall he was a mindless zombie.

This wouldn't be like that. This'd be like the first time but so much worse, because, well, as the man drops to the floor and his billowing red cloak disappears into the mist, they can't help but notice the lack of something that's been here every other attempt.

Minions.

"He's starting in stage two." Sakura says. "Naruto's not on crowd control this time."

"Then what am I doing?" Naruto asks, as Sasuke's eyes blur into red life and Sakura's mimic him with a trickle of power overtaking her from her hand on her sword.

His eyes do something, hers just hold back the fear bubbling up from her core and telling her that she's not enough, she'll never be enough, and this creature's here to prove it to her. "You're working interception. We're going to use substitution to replace ourselves with your clones until either we mess up and die, or he does."

"I don't like that plan." Naruto says.

"Neither do I." With a flicker of potent energy behind and soon to be in front of her eyes, Sakura runs into the mist, ignoring the cloud of smoke Naruto summons behind her in favor of trying to see a beast before it sees them.

"I can see a little with my sharingan active." Sasuke announces to her, they'd avoided testing it so far to save his stamina and she's now very glad they did because that might be a saving grace they so desperately need.

"I'm still blind." She calls back in jest, the attempt does nothing to loosen the knots growing in her stomach. "I'll follow your lead." She darts towards where she heard his voice, accounting for momentum a little bit and meeting up with him quickly. For the first time in a while she wishes she had something other than Tsunami's clothes. They've cleared this dungeon - except the boss - five times now, where's the good armor drops? She'd take anything better than heavy armor and crude.

When Sasuke swings to the side, she follows up with her own slash, finding her sword goes through nothing. "Illusions." Sasuke growls, making her scowl with him. What good is vision if he can still pull stuff like that.

"I thought the sharingan can see through illusions?" She asks, feeling something behind her and slashing automatically, tearing apart something that explodes into a dark mist that floods the red around them with an even harder to see through mirage.

"I haven't exactly gotten a lot of practice with that." He points out, "these are the first illusions I've seen since it awakened." She feels like an idiot for that, she has clones, why didn't she think to test that at any point?

Naruto's clones aren't really illusions, so they wouldn't work, she just took their clan power for granted and assumed it was omnipotent. By the little of Sasuke's shame she can see, he did too.

"Sakura!" She hears Sasuke shout, and she makes the hand sign she needs just as something flashes from out of sight and goes for her throat. A clone takes her place, and she whimpers internally at the quick scream and poof of smoke.

"Sorry, Naruto," she mutters a quiet apology under her breath for abusing Naruto in that way. He remembers that death, and it hurts her to hurt him. Without him she'd be dead though, and that'd hurt him so much more.

If she knew that it was either that or bringing Haku, she would have brought Haku, but they're here now, and surviving to apologize to him is more important. She has a moment to feel bad about how quickly she'd made that their defacto plan and wonder if there was something better they could have planned out in advance if she'd cared enough to do so, before something shiny flashes out at her, and she doesn't react automatically, telling her that it's too fast for her trait. She blocks with all she has, holding sturdy as it sends her sliding back across the floor. Sparks fly as some kind of long metal pole slides along her sword. She uses all her strength to pivot and send it to the side, and it arches past, slamming into the floor beside her and making it explode into glittering shards.

"Wait." Her eyes catch a glimmer of something amazing in a shard that flies into the air. It takes her all of a second to realize that she can see the wall behind it. Through the split second of glimmery magic, she's more sure of it than anything. The floor shards can be used to see through the madness. It's like there's no mist at all, and it puts a huge grin on her face.

"Sasuke, pass me your goggles! Naruto, cover me!" It's probably not what he wanted to hear in the middle of a fight so intense she can hear kunai clanging and explosions rocking the room from all around, but her skill lets her catch both a shard and his goggles at the same time. "This is gonna suck," Is all she says before she places it into the goggles, and straps them on.

She doesn't get even a full second before fragments begin to cut into her face, scraping off just from putting them on.

That's okay though, even if she loses her eyes, she'll get them back tomorrow. What's important right now, is that she can see. She uses a hand sign to replace with another Naruto just as the thing comes flying back at her. This time she can see it's a spear flying through the air on its own, steel and shiny in its own way and impossibly sharp.

She can see the bastard with silver hair and glowing red eyes. She can see his fierce fangs and the way he dashes around the room slaughtering Naruto clones and batting Sasuke around. She can even see the Naruto she just replaced with perish, and she can see her own morbidly guilty face reflected in the spear as it comes back for her. She's stood still for too long, and the monster launches itself at her like she's a sitting duck.

She puts her sword away, knowing that her role in this fight has changed tremendously quite suddenly, and begins hand signs. His claws take the place of where her face just was, a sidestep narrowly avoiding a beheading that's accompanied by the steel spear flying from the mist and trying to stab right through her stomach.

It has a mind of its own, and that means dodging it at the same time as a super speedy bastard requires her to call upon the lightning jutsu Kakashi taught her and canceling her hand seals.
She's gotten the lightning to the point where she doesn't have misfires nearly as often, and that's good enough for her since it's either that or abuse Naruto more for her own incompetence.

Bending over backwards to dodge a kick in her direction serves for more fragments from the shard to glide into her eyes and only the willpower of a ninja and her own lack of survival instincts stop her from breaking down crying on the spot.

Naruto clones get in the way a second later, allowing her to make some distance, but only enough to make a few hand signs before the spear flies toward her face again.

Her final hand seal is made, and she's ready. "Mud Shot!" She shouts, before spitting out one of her newest creations directly at the spear.

She wasn't joking when she said she was going to create pokemon moves, and choosing to shoot a heavy muddy load at it instead of dodging is a risk she's willing to take. The blade gets covered instantly, and while it still smacks against her, the fact that she's not dead tells her she did a good job. The spear hits her in the face with kinetic force only, meaning the mud has already hardened over the blade and made it largely inert, but not completely as she finds out when reality catches up with her.

She's sent backwards to the soundtrack of her nose shattering into a million parts, and her vision blacking out. She has just enough control to start a flip instead of smashing down, but that only serves to make things worse as the pain causes her to lose control of the lightning coursing through her and her spasmodic body shrieking in despair ragdolls mid-air. She slams into the floor face first, shattering so much of it that each roll along the ground fills her with so many shards she begins to feel like a pincushion. Her vision is blocked by red mist again, too much fragmentation of her shard has rendered it useless, and she has an answer for that.

She pulls the goggles off, shaking them off to the side to remove most of the broken tool, before reaching down with her free hand and tearing a shard right out of her chest. "That's big enough," she grunts approvingly, before slotting it right into the goggles. Her left eye is dull, and a single blink reveals it's not giving her vision at all. A hand landing over it reveals something is sticking out of it, and that's information enough for her.

She leaves it in for now, she learned last time that removing the sword didn't stop the bleeding, and she can't be out of the fight that soon.

She puts the goggles back on, pushing her hands into the shrapnel of the floor to push herself upright. Shambling for a second to accommodate the new injuries and figure out her footing, she can't help but feel like she's in an out of body experience. Muted, without focus, she takes a moment she doesn't have to center herself, only to fail and find she's still here without most of her senses.

With a deep breath and a sign, her lone eye locks onto the struggling form of the spear on the floor. It's having a hard time lifting itself under the vampire's powers alone, but it's slowly chipping mud off and that means she can't leave it alone. Each step towards it is another conquest to make against her rebelling body. Even when she makes it to the spear and slams her foot into it to keep it down, she finds her hands fighting her on making the needed hand seals. "Guh… Mud shot." She grumbles, spewing a powerful torrent from her lips that'd surely taste terrible if she could still taste anything at all.

Watching it harden out of one hazy eye makes her smile through the pain. It slumps completely, rendered useless and unable to move any longer, and she considers that winning a good portion of the fight. Gato surely has more tricks up his sleeve, but they don't matter, he's not a Jonin, so that had to have been a good portion of his power.

She can see Naruto fighting with a horde that keeps the man back while Sasuke catches his breath. She's in a lot of pain, a lot, a truly ridiculous amount of agony wafts through her in a way that'd make her regret this entire journey if it was happening to anyone else.

To her, all she knows is that she can use substitution like this if she's hurt even a little bit more. She shakes her head a little, feeling as the shard cuts deeper-

-And she's no longer near the spear, taking the place of a Naruto clone with all the grit and strength she can manage. "Grr-" her hand lands on her sword, drawing it and flashing it out to knock Gato's sharp claws aside in the same movement. "f*ck, you!" Before he can react to the change, she's slashed down with everything she has. A potent rage overtakes her hands as the life force her weapon needs to power seeps from them forcefully. Evidence of her success pours out from him, covering her sword in the power it needs for a second swing, and the onslaught begins just as his severed arm hits the floor with a wet thump.

She doesn't feel, she attacks. She bleeds into one movement after another, using crimson life as a source of destruction just like the being in front of her. Of all her battles, she's yet to use someone else's life to fuel the sword in anything but an accident. Something in her didn't let her do that intentionally, for some reason it felt like a line she couldn't cross.

Using a vampire's blood feels too poetic to deny the sword's craving, and she gives in. He tries to jump away and Naruto clones grab his legs, and shoulders, they hold him still while she slashes him again and again and again. With each attack she severs them and splits him, only he regenerates, and new Narutos have to grab hold of him all over again.

If replacing with Naruto clones to take hits for her felt like a betrayal of her promise to never hurt him again, cutting him in half over and over again breaks her heart a hundred times over.

That the boy willingly lets her do it just to hold their opponent still for a few seconds would make her weep if her eyes were not already leaking bloody tears. It stings so much it feels like the despair will never end.

She's not sure when it's over, she's pretty sure no one else does too.

All she knows is that her sword is so bright and so potent, that one final slash at the no longer resisting figure sends a shrieking blast across the floor that carves a tunnel all the way to the wall, and its force sweeps the mist aside like it was never there.

"Got him." She groans, falling to her knees and dropping her sword. "Is the mist gone? I can't see."

"Sakura, you're bleeding." Naruto says.

"Yep," She agrees, "That was a given."

"No, I mean you're covered in blood." Naruto says, a potent fear in his voice that she can barely pay attention to.

"That happens when you turn someone into porridge." She says.

"No I mean, the goggles-" She feels someone's hand land on them, and pull them away, and the sound of a waterfall hits her ears. She still can't see, and before she has a grip on herself, she's fallen to the floor for a rest that'll fix everything. She just has to hold on for six hours, she can do that, right?

"Can't she do anything without crippling herself?" Sasuke grunts, it's his broody voice filled with dread and exasperation in equal parts that let her know she's alive.

"I still can't see." She says as someone's hand lands on her shoulder, shaking her awake.

"It's only been a few hours," Naruto answers her immediately. "You're still blind."

"Ah." She knows she should care, but she doesn't. Instead, she pushes herself up, stretching and not liking how her shoulder feels at this exact moment. They went ahead and removed the shards from her body, she can feel that, she can also feel the wrapping someone did to help hold in her insides so that they, well, remained insides.

"You tore it with how hard you were swinging." Naruto explains, presumably at her grimace, she's not sure though as she can't see.

"Ah." She nods, regretting it immediately from the flash of pain her eyes remind her of. "Did we open the safe yet?" She asks.

"Yes." That's Sasuke.

"What was in it?" She asks.

"Nothing." Sasuke says.

"We assumed it was something your power took immediately, and ever since we opened it monsters have been spawning and trying to break in." Naruto continues from where Sasuke thought it was adequate to stop talking. "I've been holding them off but I'm starting to get tired, they're really strong and keep killing a few clones a piece."

"You said it's been hours?" She asks, "how in the actual- Naruto that goes beyond ridiculous stamina, there's something wrong with you."

"I know," Naruto says, and she can tell from his tone that she hurt him.

"I didn't mean it like that…"

"I know." That doesn't matter, she broke her promise again, she just hit him again.

She'll find out how and why later. What's that, fifty times in one day? A hundred?
A thousand? She'll need to atone for this, and next time she'll make sure they have a better plan. By the time they realized they needed one, it was already too late and the boss had activated. It was do or die, and she'll tell herself that as long as she needs to.

"We need to go." Sasuke is always curt and to the point, she's happy for the moment of normalcy.

Chapter 21: Mission Complete: Saying Goodbyes to Wave

Chapter Text

For Sakura waking up in the field feeling refreshed and on top of the world comes with a lot of mixed feelings she's not sure how to deal with. First, there's fear. What if sleeping doesn't heal crippling injuries? Could she even continue to be a ninja if she was blind? Eye transplants are a thing but as a genin she wouldn't be on any sort of priority list for them.

Second, there's confusion, she isn't sure why Haku is rummaging his fingers through her hair, but it feels nice and she isn't exactly about to complain. She's hesitant to open her eyes for a long moment, a niggling doubt in the back of her head asserting that maybe, just maybe, she won't see anything at all when she does.

The sun flashing in her eyes when she opens them might just be the most beautiful thing she's ever seen, even if she quickly has to divert them lest she go blind for another waking period. "Why are you touching me?" She asks, now that she has the most basic of her bearings back and can grasp basic concepts like 'this is weird.'

"Naruto remembered I was gathering herbs when we met." Haku explains. "He brought you to me, so I could ease your pain."

"I was asleep. It didn't matter." Sakura says.

"You don't get to decide that." Haku's gentle words wash over her just like his fingers. "Naruto thought it mattered, so it mattered."

"Mmm." Sakura doesn't have anything to say to that, just a swirling cataclysm of emotional turmoil. So much happened in so little time, even having her sight back and being without pain doesn't ease her memories. Sasuke had his Sharingan active for all of that, the poor guy. At least in time she'll be able to let it fade away, he'll always remember every moment. "He's very sweet." She decides, after a long moment to herself. "Naruto, I mean. It was pointless, but he cared."

"Caring is never pointless." Haku says.

"Yeah… I guess not."

Alone for the first time in quite some time, she allows herself to look at the rewards from that dungeon. It's been so very long since she's been without the rush of training or the sound of her allies and their subtle breaths. In one way or another, whether it be clones, responsibility, or direct influence from others, she's felt the presence of her team and the burden of what they'd have to do weighing down on her without fail.

Being alone with the crushing burden of an overwhelming objective isn't being alone at all.

At one point in her life all she wanted was to spend her day in her dark room, playing games and only talking to others to sh*t talk or get a quick hug and good night from her parents. Where did that go? Is this even the same Sakura?

She doesn't know, and she finds she doesn't care either. She's happier now, even if she would absolutely adore a chance to settle down under a blanket with a hand held and snuggle up with an adventure that doesn't involve pain or life and death. She's so starting a new animal crossing game when she gets home.

Her reward nestles into her hand very shortly after calling it. It's the first object besides money to disappear into any sort of inventory, so she knew it was important, and holding it only affirmed that knowledge. The paper is old and fragile, an oily feeling rubbing off on her fingers as she grips it.

[Deed To Wave]

[Use?]

What does that even mean? Can you own a country? Could she?
Her power was going well beyond the normal and ethical boundaries she'd already witnessed it playing with. Could it even give her ownership of a place, and if it could, what would that ownership entail?

Using it is the only right thing to do, it's not like she can just throw away the reward they worked so hard for, something that is supposed to save Wave, just because she's anxious. But it's also terrifying, what if she's suddenly responsible for every person here? What if people become pawns, or toys, or the mere activation of it starts some crazy event she has to intervene in that takes her away from her mission or her team?

Can a ninja of Konoha own property, or is that a conflict of interest?

None of that matters, she'll figure it out later, they didn't do this just to let it sit in an inventory, and she's not sure if she could throw it back in there anyway. She could try, but that'd just be procrastinating.

Her finger hits the use prompt, and the piece of paper melts away like it was never there, dusty fragments blowing away into the wind and turning into ash that spreads every which way.

"Guys, help!" She's not quite sure which line of her new reality made her seek out her team, but she does know she's panicked and her team is comfortable and safe.

Sprinting to them is all she can manage with such a recently scrambled mind, and it isn't for who knows how long that she comes back into herself, head resting in Sasuke's lap, Naruto laying beside her, Kakashi sitting off to the side clearly confused, and Haku humming a gentle tune while caressing her hair just like he was so shortly ago.

They have an odd dynamic, she wonders when they got good at this.
Did she melt down a lot like this during her time training? She doesn't remember it.
She barely remembers anything.

What she does remember is that reward. "The reward is a new system." She explains.

"The reward?" Kakashi asks.

"For the dungeon. The thing that'll fix Wave." She idly taps the air, opening it again for herself.

"I've been given the deed to wave, which appears to be a city builder system. I can assign jobs that need to be done, use resources from the coffers as rewards for completion or basic pay, I can see a birds eye view of the city and see general resource costs to fix or improve or even demolish them as well as the earnings and upkeep of the city."

"That sounds like a good thing." Sasuke points out, "why the reaction?"

"Because I don't like city builders!" She groans, rolling over away from Haku and burying her face in Sasuke's stomach. She'll worry about the implications later, right now she has bigger worries. "I'm not good at them, I've spent dozens of hours on them and only ever barely succeeded at surviving the first winter or crazy disaster. Most of the time my people starve, or get eaten, or some other form of resource based destruction because I overlooked something simple and stupid."

"So just, get better?" Naruto shrugs, "I don't see the problem. Games are about practice, you told me that."

"The problem is that getting better requires practice, and practice requires trial and error, and these are real people in a real place that's already on the brink of collapse!" Sakura groans. "It means I need to grind city builders and get good when we get home, instead of relaxing, just so the people of Wave don't die! Even if I do get good and make it flourish, I probably won't see rewards for years!"

"That's rough." Haku says, clearly not grasping any of it but very happy to be here. "Anything we can do to help?"

"... Maybe." Sakura mumbles.

"I didn't catch that." Naruto says.

"I said, maybe." Sakura repeats, a little sigh to her breath as she finally picks herself up and removes herself from Sasuke's lap. She brushes hair out of her eyes, taking solace in the moment of peace to get herself back on track. "Naruto has clones, he could at least help with the manpower before we go. It should help advance it a little out of a death spiral from moment one."

"I don't know anything about carpentry." Naruto says, "or any of the things you'll need…"

"No, but we do know where to find a mine, and how to transport it, and we can get Tazuna and the other workers to start building things from the stone and other resources." Sakura realizes.

"Can we even go back into the dungeon?" Sasuke asks.

"Only one way to find out." Sakura stands, smiling brightly when Naruto jumps up too, eager to help and ready to work.

Yes, the answer to whether dungeons are accessible after they've been completed but haven't expired is, yes. There's nothing blocking the entrance, and they can walk right in. The mist is gone, the monsters are gone, the original fork between the two minion rooms and the path forward is just the two minion rooms, the boss room and everything up to it is simply missing.

While the dungeon expires very soon, so they probably can't do anything major, a few clones craft a pickaxe from some twigs and a nice sharp slab, which they can then all use through the power of clone duplication nonsense. The pickaxes keep breaking but that doesn't matter, because that clone just pops itself and Naruto replaces it with a new make-shift piece of crap.

Before they know it they've got the whole dungeon as one big empty quarry and they're working on make-shift sh*tty wagons to try and bring it all into town where they'll just kind of leave it until someone who knows what they're doing can work with it.

It's not enough to fix the situation, and looking at the status screen of Wave she can't help but notice how many resources are in the red - morale is one of them - and groan to herself, but it's the best she can do with this short of a time and her current knowledge. Some houses will have to be rebuilt and maybe this'll work, or maybe it'll get used for tools or maybe it can secretly be ground up for some kind of crazy spice that they can export for resources they do need. Whatever the case, they are providing a resource that can be used in some way to make up for a lack of another. It's a very good use of their time, or more specifically, Naruto's time. Because when she asked Kakashi for the shadow clone so she could help, he looked her right in the eye and told her she'd die screaming if she tried.

Which was, ominious, to say the least. Naruto doesn't just have more chakra than her. If she can't make one clone, he has thousands more chakra than her. She'll have to rethink her saving resources argument for him, and, also hit the books to try to figure out what's so strange about him. Her power predicts him to be stronger than anything she's encountered before, including the third Hokage, and she has no doubt in her mind that the Uzumaki bloodline is not that good. If it was, well, the Hyuuga and Uchiha would never have been such big names. The sheer weight of a hundred people like him would trivialize every ninja system ever.

Never before has she regretted leaving management sims and city builders to the wayside in favor of shooters, Real Time Strategies, Role Playing Games and the like. Now, she'll have to learn quickly. The first realization upon calming down is that game system or not, it follows real-world logic. She doesn't have to get good at city builders, she has to get good at city planning, like real city planning. This is good because it means she can read a book instead of wasting hundreds of hours getting mad at beavers or whatever. She's sure they're very good beavers, she's bad at directing them, and that's not going to change anytime soon. She will still use some of her money to buy a few city builders and sims and play them casually for practice but, the planning and research should help her much more.

She's always been a very good study, and Wave isn't starting from the ground up. She already has the road structure, where the buildings need to go, a trade route established and many other foundational needs like a bridge to export and import and ships.

So getting great big slabs of stone from the aether right now is amazing, and learning how to use that stone later is also amazing. She doesn't need to fix Wave right now, she needs to get it started while she's here, and figure it out when she's home.

It sucks to have a second job, but she can pull it off if it means these people can return to their lives.

She's not sure how all this is going to work, but she is sure of one thing, Gato will never happen again. First, because she killed him, like five times.

Second, because she's in charge and she'll notice if something like it starts again. Wave is only a week away, less if they sprint, there's no time to undermine the entire country without her being able to check in and see why things are getting f*cky.

Her power was right, this'll save Wave.
It's just also going to suck, all the time, possibly for years.
At least she can retire here someday if she lives long enough.

sh*t, this is three jobs, she's Haku's manager now!

"Guess there's no denying my system now, is there?" Sakura asks her sensei, as a flurry of Naruto clones walk by covered in stone dust and happy to be done with it. The dungeon expired a minute ago, and what's gathered has been gathered. The entire area is missing now, leaving grassland and trees in its place. Now they have to haul all the stone, and she's not looking forward to that part.

"Nope…" Kakashi drawls. "How in the hell do I explain this in my report?"

"We could not." Sakura titters.

"No, treason isn't on the menu today." Kakashi shakes his head.

"Yeah…" That's true, lying would be an act of undermining the village, which is not a good look for any ninja's career. Not undermining their own village, anyway. She's pretty sure Kakashi would get patted on the back and paid a bonus if he managed to successfully undermine another village.

"How much of my own money do you think this'll cost me?" Sakura asks. "I don't think Wave'll do well as it is, it needs capital."

"A lot." Kakashi says. "Luckily, you'll be getting a rather large payment from the A rank mission we just completed."

"Guh, yeah." Sakura rubs her forehead, "wait, A rank? I thought this was a C rank."

"... Sakura…" Kakashi stares at her like she's an idiot. She feels like one, he's good at that, stupidly good. "Tazuna lied, this would probably be a B rank mission since fighting Zabuza wasn't necessary, but lying about a mission comes with an instant rank up to the price should it be found out. This is effectively an A rank, and the Hokage might deem it an A rank in truth because Zabuza was fought."

"Wait, but if it goes up a rank automatically, and it might be an A rank, wouldn't that make it an S rank?" Sakura asks. "I don't think Wave can pay for an S rank, that might bankrupt my new system on its own… aww crap, I'm gonna get paid from my own resources!"

She smacks herself in the face, hissing at the ground for the fate she has been dealt.

"Well, I doubt you have access to all the wealth of the place." Kakashi points out, "Tazuna still has money."

"That just makes it worse, because Tazuna doesn't have the money for an S rank." The thing about missions is that each step up is ten times the price. Tazuna had to lie about the mission because he could only afford a C rank, which means an A rank is a hundred times what he can pay, and an S rank… "It's so coming out of my coffers."

"Sucks to suck." Kakashi shrugs.

"Wha-"

The masked bastard somehow manages to smile from his eye instead of his lips, ensuring she doesn't need the mood chart or to see his face to get he's mocking her.

When did Kakashi learn that phrase? She doesn't want her sensei knowing that phrase.

"It's fine, Sakura-chan, I'll just open that cleaning business and help out." Naruto beams as he walks up to her, the real Naruto, the only one not covered in dust and rock. What she'd do for her own private 'go get me a sandwich' force. Perhaps it's best it's in Naruto's hands, she'd use it to be lazy.

"Thanks, but this really feels like something I should do on my-" She begins, only to get cut off.

By Sasuke. "No." Sasuke denies. "I'll help too, my clan funds aren't doing anything, and we're a team."

"I'm already helping, what's the difference between helping with clones here and helping with clones back home?" Naruto asks. "Don't be a dummy, Sakura."

"Y-yeah…" Looking down at her lap, she can't argue with them. Besides, the people of Wave really do need the help, turning them down wouldn't just be screwing herself over it'd be hurting these people they've come to know and, well not love but, point affection towards. There is the small issue of the people about to get paid from Wave coffers offering to put money in Wave coffers, which really means they all just did a free A rank mission. Which is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. Except Kakashi, who-

"I don't need the money," -shrugs. "It's a nice idea to have something the entire team can contribute to, something with visible progress to boost morale, and put context to our efforts."

She doesn't like it, but Kakashi's right. Or maybe she does like it, she doesn't know anymore. She just wants to get home, hug her parents, read a book, and log Haku into a computer.

"What the…" Sakura and Naruto trail at the same time.

"Master-er, I mean, Zabuza!" Haku calls out, rushing towards the man.

He's not alone, err, well he is, at least when it comes to the living. He is, however, standing on a mountain of corpses. Bandits, so many of them it's absurd. Hundreds if not thousands of brigands are pooling their lives into a massive gluttony of destruction, just a few dozen feet from Tazuna's house.

"You're an idiot." The man grunts, as a hand lands on Haku's shoulder, the missing nin as rugged as and brutal looking as the pile he's made. It's technically Sakura's first chance to look at the man who took her out, and she's happy to say he's imposing. It'd be embarrassing if he was some chump with a good throwing arm. He's covered in bandages, and has a sword on his back that's so large and ridiculous she can't help but be in awe that it has no blood on it whatsoever. Of all this killing, it wasn't even splattered. The man is incredible, or his sword drinks blood. She's pretty sure it's the second, after a moment of thought, given it drank the blood from her sword when she blocked it.

"Zabuza-sama…" Haku looks down at the man's feet.

"Only a soft hearted brat like you would think that taking out one man would solve the problem." He scolds, "where are the bandits going to go without an employer?"

"Into your sword, it looks like." Sakura says, just before Naruto can say something snappy. This is her battle, or, well it's Haku's but Haku is hers now so… "Thank you for your help."

Kakashi's suspiciously quiet, but that makes sense. He's too busy making sure they're not about to die, and being prepared for it, to partake in the witty banter. He's a good sensei, when he wants to be.

"I just didn't want to waste Haku's sacrifice." Zabuza says, his voice deep and almost echoing atmospherically. He looks down and glares at the boy with a sense of clear purpose. "You grasp the choice you made, don't you? If I ever see you on the battlefield again, it'll be the last time I see you, ever."

"Ah, thank you, Zabuza-sama." Haku's demeaner takes a bright turn at that, bright enough to stun Sakura. Some hidden message was passed between them there, and she imagines with double her charm she'd have missed it so she doesn't even try. She's just, stunned…-

-For a second. "Hey, don't you go threatening him!" She lunges forward, pushing Haku back and standing on her tiptoes to glare at the man right up close. She can smell his dirty almost rotting breath, and glare right into his eyes. "Stay away from my femboy streamer you knock off good for nothing Cloud wannabe!"

"..." The silence around her makes her wonder if she did something dangerous, for a long second. She did, now that she thinks about it, she needs to start thinking more, way more.

She worries she's about to be in a sword fight, until the man's head falls back a little and a thunderous laugh fills their ears. He takes a step back, shaking his head and miming wiping a tear from his eye. "You win," He says, "but don't think I won't be checking in on the two of you. I better hear good things."

She holds firm as he walks away, leaving them to their own devices, and their own impending journey. "What do we do about the corpses?" Sasuke asks.

"Naruto, get the shovels!" Sakura shouts, she has to go say goodbye to Inari and friends, she'll leave that nonsense to him.

Thankfully, this time next week, she'll be in Konoha, sipping tea, reading a book on cities, and yelling at Haku to stop doxxing himself every thirty seconds on stream.

"Wow, they really like the toys we got. Best loot ever." Watching out the window with Tsunami by her side, Sakura can't help but feel nice about everything she's done here.

The boy she's taken an attachment to is playing 'swords' with other kids from around, golden blades and red blades, and that guy's got a bouncy hammer. It's adorable, and she can't help a little tinge of joyful heat overtaking her while watching them. There's some girl with a toy crossbow, which they didn't bring back. It has to have been handmade, and it looks a lot like the one attached to her own shoulder. "That's so cute," she sighs happily, "I have an admirer."

"Maybe." Tsunami agrees. Well, 'agrees'. Tsunami hasn't looked kindly on her the entire time they've been here, and while it bothers her that the woman seems to have a problem with her, it's not her business. Sometimes people don't like you, and if Sakura knew how to fix that, well, she'd be one of the smartest people ever. People not liking you for their own reasons outside your agency is just a fact of life, like microtransactions and joycon drift. Sometimes you can do everything right to the best of your ability and people hate you, and she'll be the first to admit it, she has not done everything right with Tsunami. She's stolen her clothes - and destroyed them -, she's gotten weirdly close with her son without talking to her first about it, and she's been a witness to several incidents she's not particularly proud of.

Of all that, the only thing she can make better is the outfits, so maybe she'll make that up in the future. She could come visit with a bunch of Konoha's latest fashions in her size?

"I should go." Sakura sighs, pushing off the railing of the overlooking balcony.

"You don't want to say goodbye?" Tsunami asks.

"They're having fun." Sakura points at the kids. "I never got to do that, why would I want to ruin it for them?"

"I think he'll be a lot more hurt by you disappearing without a word than he would be cutting short one game of, whatever that is." Tsunami rolls her eyes at her. "I get there's something wrong with your head, but don't hurt Inari because you're too dumb to get children."

"..." Nevermind, she's never paying the woman back anything, she saved her country, a few outfits is barely a cost. "Fine."

"Inari," Sakura cuts in from the side, leaning against the wall of the house down with the kids, and waving him over. Sneaking up was easy, and allowed her to be a lot cooler than just talking over the balcony, it was a no brainer. The kids all run to her within a moment's notice, focused and with wide eyes. That girl definitely has admiration written on her features, that toy crossbow is so made after hers. Well, it's admiration or confusion, she's not great with those two but she's pretty sure the chart is showing admiration so she's choosing it.

"You're leaving." The boy grasps instantly, as he gets close. Maybe it's something on her face she doesn't know she's showing, maybe it's just that he's smarter than she gives him credit for, but he can tell what she's about to say before she says it.

"The mission's over." Sakura says, reaching out with a hand to shake his. He answers by launching himself against her, and wrapping his arms around her unprompted. "Erm…" She pats his head awkwardly, unsure of how to deal with this but equally unwilling to speak that thought. "Your grandfather is safe now, and I know you will be too. I have to go home."

"Couldn't you stay here?" He asks, "I'm sure you could get a job here really easily, what with everyone thinking of you as our savior and all."

"Err-hehe, how do I explain this, um, that's called a missing-nin." Sakura says. "The village sends people out to kill those. I'd die like, next week, if not ten seconds after I announced my plans from my sensei's hand through my chest."

"He'd touch your chest?" The little girl speaks up. "Mommy says men aren't supposed to do that to little girls like us."

"...Snrk." She can't help but snicker, palming her face and shaking her head. "I have to go, but, I do want you to keep the gameboy as collateral."

"Collat-errr-el?" Inari asks, squinting up at her.

"It means 'reason to come back.'" Sakura says. "I promise I'll come get it someday, so keep it safe for me okay?"

"Okay…"

With that, every obligation here has been met. She will have to ship some batteries to him though, so she'll put it on her list.

It's time for her to leave, before another social encounter appears out of nowhere to make her day any worse and this any harder.

Chapter 22: Kakashi Interlude: Wave

Chapter Text

Spotting the puddle in the middle of the road as abnormal was as easy as breathing for Kakashi, it was mid-day on a relatively hot day, it hadn't rained in a few days, and even ignoring that the dirt around the puddle was still dirt, meaning the water hadn't had time to seep in and start turning its surroundings to mud. He half expected Sakura to see it too, he knew Naruto wasn't going to, and whether Sasuke is paying enough attention to his surroundings at any given time is a coin flip at best. The boy's too stuck in his world, too muted, and just as he expected the only person who gave the puddle any more thought than instinctively stepping around it was Sakura. Mostly, because instead of stepping around it, she paid even less attention and drove herself foot first into it.

He was ready to react instantly, it took everything he had not to already have a jutsu completed before the splash. What was about to happen relied entirely on whoever made that puddle. If they were especially skilled and not after them, nothing would happen, she'd have stepped on someone's face and they'd grumble about it over a drink later.

If they were especially skilled and after them, they'd come out swinging in a moment pissed off and with a shoe mark on their face.

If they were bad at this, Sakura just killed two people, and their bloodied remains would explode into the world in a fest of gore so vivid and traumatizing he'd have to knock out all three genin before they memorized it like the idiot children they are.

Nothing happened. He sighed in relief, he kept walking and kept an eye on them.
That's when it happened, when they revealed that yes, they were pissed off and after them.

Specifically, they were after Sakura and their face on her shoe only made it worse.

Watching Sakura quickly and efficiently put down the demon twins was more astounding than anything. He knew she was getting stronger fast, and he even knew she'd made vast improvements since the start, and it's not a secret that missing nin get stale pretty quickly for a vast number of reasons including unstable food procurement, desperation, and a lack of professionalism.

He had all the parts to get the correct answer, but seeing it come together and watching his students not just defeat but butcher two other living beings in live combat… He wasn't prepared for that.

At their age he'd already killed people, it wasn't special for him, and in a way he'd never left the war so the child in him wasn't phased at all. But before he could take this team they'd made him take several lessons on the modern day genin, what was expected, what they'd be capable of, what to try and drag out of them and what was too far.

Sasuke's not an average Genin because he's traumatized beyond all reason and there's no sparing him the pain of reality. He had feared Sasuke might pull ahead of his teammates in a very real way, taking things much more seriously and leaving them in the dust in a way he couldn't help with. He'd be watching the past repeat itself, and he'd be doomed.

Naruto's not an average Genin because Naruto's, well, let's just say lineage is a huge part of your capabilities as a ninja and having almost infinite chakra only made him more capable. He didn't expect Naruto to take it super seriously, and he definitely didn't expect greatness from the boy, but with a kunoichi's below average chakra pool by nature, her lack of a clan, and her general failure to take life seriously, he expected Naruto to outpace Sakura by leagues. Even if he didn't have a murderous bone in his body, he'd surely strive ahead of her because he had infinite potential and tons of time training, and Kakashi had to get good at her favorite games just to harass her into sleeping.

He figured Sakura would be a Rin situation, but somehow so much worse. That he'd be watching history repeat itself in the bloodiest way it could without a war hanging over their heads and the need to grow up so fast the growing pains started when the maturing stopped.

Watching Sakura stand over the corpses of two Chunin, one burning and the other severed into bite sized chunks he's genuinely worried she might take a bite of just to prove a point, it occurs to him that he's had them all wrong.

Sakura's him. That was before he watched her steal a wallet from the remains, count the coins before the body cooled, and do a happy wiggle-giggle at the loot. "Wallet obtained!"

"I do believe this belongs to you." Standing in front of him was a boy with a white mask over his face, and lustrous black hair that trailed down his back. It's a common tactic among ninja that need to hide their identity, finding different ways to confuse those in front of them to basic details like their age or gender. Standing with a bit of a slouch distracts from their height, and made it hard to get a good idea of how much they might weigh.

He'd be forgiven for not thinking much of the boy, because what he held was Sakura, bandaged, covered in blood, her face was cut down the middle and her chest was partially caved in. She looked dead, very dead, only the slightest raise of her chest at her breath took his attention away from her pale blue lips and the limpness of her limbs. He took her, holding her in his arms and nodded to the hunter nin. "I trust you'll take care of the missing ninja?"

"Of course." That's all he needed to hear. He barely took notice of the sword and pack handed over as well, split and damaged at its core. He recognized the cuts on the pack, and on her body, her own sword went and betrayed her. A part of him wondered if it was his fault somehow, for giving her that sword instead of leaving her with the piece of crap she'd originally shown him. That sword would have likely bounced off her when she got sent flying.

The fact that she'd have been torn in half by Zabuza's sword instead when it went through her old one made him feel better when he thought of it. The relief was just enough for him to forget about his jello legs for a second.

"Is she…" Sasuke asked, his steps took him to them a lot quicker than Kakashi expected. It seemed that after an intense battle, with tensions in the air and a moment to get his bearings, Sasuke can in fact express himself about them in something more than a complaint.

"She's breathing." Kakashi said, "Naruto, I need clones to carry us, I'm gonna pass out."

"Pass out, Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked, just before his limbs gave in, and he fell over. Kakashi only had the energy left to cradle her before he landed, so she didn't hit her head. "Ah."

"Oh, so you care about when they die, but me, I'm just complaining?" Sakura's words hit him differently. Even if there wasn't fire in her eyes, even if Hunger's influence wasn't still ruminating in her body enough for her anger to take a physical form - luckily cosmetic only at the moment - she'd still have just punched him in the face. Sometimes someone says something that makes you redefine how you see them, how you treat them, a few words can change an entire person in the blink of an eye.

For Sakura, she probably didn't think of those words as meaningful, for him, he realized an unintentional bias that's slightly altered every interaction with her so far. He had to resist reaching out to pat her head, or ruffle her hair, or squeeze her cheeks to remind himself she's alive and not one of the fallen on the stone. He could see more than one of his dead friends in her, the trouble is, one of those was the long dead him.

He's always hated that guy.

"When you die, you're annoying." He managed to articulate through an airway that fought him, and sludge in his stomach. Did she actually die? Does it matter? Who cares what actually happened, she's here in front of him and his words matter to her.

"When they die, we'll wish they could be." He offered out the stick he held upon her request all the more firmly, you're ours Sakura, we can't lose you, the path you're on is dumb and I'd like to help you, all words he'd like to have said instead.

It doesn't matter, the girl who's first choice is self sacrifice, and who's second choice is to lash out about it, took the stick and seemed to understand the unspoken words just this once. "I'm not human anymore."

He watched the girl sniffle, watched her whole world crumble as she said words that are too hard to say. He wished he could do the same. She grabbed the stick, at her own words, and at least that was one step forward in a puzzle he's never been prepared for.

"I know." He answered back, he'd known for a while. It's not the sword, Hunger never did to a person what seemed to be happening to her. What was different about her was foreign, and seems more demonic than any weapon he could ever hand her. Insidious was its middle name, and if he could reach into her and rip out whatever's causing her to actively seek death at so young an age that she'd literally jump through her teammate's fireball for an advantage, he wouldn't hesitate.

"My life's a game now." She looked into his lone eye, and he wished he could have his sharingan out just to remember the vulnerability in her face. This was Sakura, not a dead friend, not someone who he'd watched suffer atrocity, this scared little girl was Sakura and he needed to remember that above all else. "I have stats, and skills, and traits, and my money is held in an invisible prompt box so it doesn't weigh me down, and, and, and I heal when I sleep."

That's not what he expected to hear, but those that snapped so young tended to have delusions connected to their interests. That's not what's happened here though, he knows that, because she was still alive and in front of him at that moment so shortly after taking injuries that'd take a jonin out of the fight for weeks. "I got that last part." He said from the bottom of his stomach, refusing to explain to her that something evil is masquerading as a power to her.

Something wanted her to view her life as a token in an arcade's money slot, something replaceable and without value. She was vulnerable, she was scared, she was still alive. He doesn't say anything about that, at best he'd scare her, at worst he'd sever her trust in him permanently. "I've started carrying sedatives around in case I need to knock you out in an emergency." He admitted, forcing the most playful smile he could manage. He doesn't reveal he's palming one of those sedatives right that moment.

"That's smart." So many dead, so many by his hands, and he still has to use every skill in his body to talk to a little girl.

He'd been looking forward to this. That dungeon was just the excuse he needed to torture his students like they would have back in the good ol days. Normally village rules would say he couldn't even risk pushing them on the path towards Itachi, or Orochimaru, or any of the other crazy village traitors, but they asked for it which meant this was totally okay! Watching Sakura run around a track while carrying Sasuke's unconscious form had him so giddy he couldn't even begin. He'd skip and clap and play if he had the energy, and wasn't a grown man with much better things to do, like nap.

Six hours between sessions, about an hour before she passed out, she'd been getting a little more - statistically - than three hours of brutal all out training per day. It was harsh, and the fact that it was all she'd done for four days is harsher. Gai would be mad at him, this wasn't how you train someone to be stronger, it's how you get someone used to working on their last legs for as long as possible. Gai would say someone should burn out like a star, bright and then gone, they shouldn't work on suffering through the hardest times, they should seek the best times at all costs and always ensure every moment is spent working towards being one step ahead of the enemy.

Kakashi knew better. Naruto was getting brightness training, in between Sasuke and Sakura he's been spending a lot of his time learning soft skills. Clones can be used to teach him proper reading, writing, he's even started him on the first step to seals - he had to do right by his parents - but he won't tell him that. He needs to get his hand writing down before he tells him he's training him to blow stuff up with paper he made. Monster inside or not, he's not Sakura, he's not possessed by some evil spirit that tells him it'll all be alright no matter what stupid self sacrifice he makes. He could be trained on tomorrow, Sakura needed to be trained on today.

And Sasuke? Sasuke appeared to be getting sensitivity training.

"Is this reasonable?" Sasuke asked, carrying Sakura over to the grass next to him so she could plop down like the sleepy girl she was. "This has been going on far too long, Kakashi."

"She's getting better." He said.

"What if she snaps?" The boy looked more angry than concerned, but that was natural for a guy. It's hard to express worry when the entire world has told you that's weakness, and you're better off glaring at the problems until they're too afraid to approach.

"She already has." Kakashi pointed out, unraveling a scroll and pulling out a long wooden stick from it. He kept it, of course he did, Sakura found it important for some reason. He then poked her cheek with it, and watched as she tilted her head and began to chew on the damn stick. "See? She's even chewing on a stick."

"Kakashi, don't stick things in girl's mouths while they sleep, it's creepy." The deadpan on the boy's face made a shiver run up Kakashi's spine.

"Is it?" Kakashi asked, "what about boys?"

"Yes."

"... Huh. That explains more than I'd like." Kakashi nodded to himself. "Okay, but you get the metaphor."

"She's still chewing on it." Sasuke's dead tone only got worse.

"Well I'm not gonna take it from her." Kakashi pointed out, dropping the stick, "she's already crazy, at this point she either snaps or becomes great, the impact we have on her is all that matters."

"So pushing her towards madness is…" Sasuke's stare never ends, it's his one defining character trait, one that Kakashi would like to avoid, but it seemed if it's not Sakura, it's Sasuke, the boy had called him out about Sakura relentlessly over their last few days together.

The boy might have had a crush, which was funny because Naruto definitely had a crush. Naruto's crush was only made worse when she moved her blond teammate into her house like that was a perfectly normal thing to do. "Sometimes the cure is worse than the poison. At least right now, she's diving into it for your sakes, it's the best time to push her forward."

Sasuke doesn't like it, but he lets it go, for now.

Kakashi got the feeling he'd be hearing from Sasuke about Sakura a lot more in the near future.

Too bad, little Uchiha, Sakura's not just some cute girl with an ounce of talent. She'd never fall to Hunger, because something much worse had a hold of her, and he can't do anything about that but give her the tools she'll need to keep going when all is lost. Everyone else on the team already has that skill, and they'll need it, she will too.

"Besides, maybe after this dungeon is over you can ask her for a congratulatory kiss." Kakashi teased the boy, watching him fight back a genuine flush and flip him off instead.

He left Sakura with her stick.

"Where'd you get the goggles, Sasuke?" Kakashi asked, as heavy footsteps approached the house. They sounded wet, and he didn't like that, best to move the conversation to where Sakura could sneak past without notice and get clean. Besides, he'd rather know why he's staring at another Uchiha with goggles. The painful memories would overtake him, if that wasn't every moment with this team.

"The dungeon." Sasuke said curtly, allowing his Sharingan to spin to life. "I unlocked my birthright while I was at it. For a silly little diversion, I am happy we did it." Kakashi had known about the Sharingan the first time he'd laid eyes on him after the dungeon, there was a new confidence to him, like reality had manifested itself the way it should. Either he'd gotten that kiss, or he'd unlocked his Sharingan, and he had his money on the Sharingan because the boy being sociable enough to ask for the former was practically impossible.

"That's nice. Just remember not to look at anything you wouldn't want to memorize, with those eyes of yours." Kakashi said.

"Speaking from experience, Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto asked.

"Oh yes." Kakashi nodded, rubbing his hands together to draw their attention just as Sakura got to the door, the least he needed is for everyone at this table to -

Bang!

Suddenly look at Sakura the moment she came through the door because she kicked the door open like a pissed off and drunk protagonist. Seeing a girl covered in blood wasn't surprising for him, let alone Sakura like that. The pieces of person in her hair and sinew coating her were a new aesthetic, but he couldn't say he was surprised. He thought perhaps they'd fight monsters in that dungeon, but humans aren't an absurd concept when it was about taking down the shipping magnate himself.

Unfortunately what he'd rather avoid happened, Sasuke looked at her with his eyes full and powered on. That he didn't seem surprised enough for it to matter hurt him deeply, but they were ninja, he couldn't hide the world ahead of them forever even if he wanted to.

One day this would be normal, and Sakura was likely skewing when 'one day' was by years.

"He's dead." Sakura said, as her eyes locked onto their charge, Tazuna. She reached into her pouch, and before Kakashi could realize she was about to pull out a finger or something, Sasuke beat him to it. He was getting very good at predicting their teammate.

"Please don't do that." Sasuke spoke up, warning his teammate about the horrifying trauma she was about to inflict on everyone at the table. That she didn't care or get it, but still followed his words filled Kakashi's soul with a bit of soothing balm.

She was measured madness, they can control her. One step at a time, maybe they'd turn her into a person with enough time. His job was to make sure she lived long enough to become a happier him… Did that even exist? The thought threw him through a loop, who was he? He's not prepared for all this, this is not what he signed up for.

"Who's dead?" Their caretaker, Tsunami asked.

"Gato." Sakura said, her eyes still gently glowing, the evil enchantment of a powerful sword trampled underfoot like it never mattered in the first place. "We killed him."

"Uh… is that, um, him?" Tsunami asked, pointing at the girl tracking gore onto her floor.

Sakura took a sole moment to look down at herself, look a little guilty, then shrug it off, "yes, this is probably gato, I imagine this came from when I climbed on him and started stabbing."

"Why does Sakura need to be told things like 'don't approach the child while covered in person?'" Naruto asked Kakashi, as he ate his second bowl of food lovingly crafted by Tsunami "isn't that like, obvious? She's really smart…"

"Sometimes being smart makes you dumb." Kakashi said. "Our brains can only track so many things at once, no matter how advanced they are. They prioritize what they understand and discard what they don't. For Sakura, violence is unimportant, Inari and telling him the good news is."

"I'm happy she loves my son, but isn't that a bit much? She's known him for a bit over two weeks." Tsunami pointed out, "I found her passed out and snuggling him the other day. Should I be worried?"

"No." Kakashi shook his head. "Yes… Maybe… Not about anything you're worried about." The Jonin decided after a long moment to think. "She's latching onto someone innocent because her world shook recently. It'll pass, or it won't, but even if it doesn't she's not going to hurt him."

"She just tried." Tsunami pointed out with a bit of annoyance in her tone, not a lot but, it was there. A scorned mother is not a weapon he wanted aimed at Sakura right now, if he could help it.

"Think of it more as an idiot trying to help your son." Kakashi said.

"That's worse!" Tsunami groaned loudly and pained.

"Maybe, but the alternative is that he didn't learn about Gato's death and kept being anxious," Kakashi pointed out, "and Sakura found that unacceptable." It only took a moment, but he watched the woman scramble out of the room to go share the good news now that it had clicked with her that Inari still didn't know.

"She's so dumb." Naruto groaned. "And so smart. I'm confused."

"What else is new?" Sasuke said, the closest thing the Uchiha had to laughing, a little mirth in his tone. "The dungeon was… bad."

"Did you get beat up by an old man?" Kakashi asks with a laugh.

"Yes."

"So much." Naruto agrees with a groan.