Chapter Text
Haruno Jūkyo (Haruno Residence)
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni
Summer…
Sakura closed her eyes as an errant breeze kissed her cheeks. The unholy hour of four o'clock on a Tuesday brought a blessed chill, one that promised rain and thunder with the smell of ozone in the air. She was mightily glad for it; Konoha was due for a nice storm after the hellish heatwave that swept through Hi no Kuni.
She sat on the roof of her bedroom, her trusty notebook on her lap, a pencil in one hand, and a cold cigarette in the other. She had indulged in the vice many times in The Before, but she had been careful to have not made it a habit. Here in this world, however, there were a billion and one things that had her craving a bit of sickness in her lungs to settle her nerves.
She had relayed the bad news of her return to the Academy to her parents over dinner last night. Their empathizing looks, earnest declarations of love, and unwavering belief in her abilities nearly had her collapsing into a bawling lump of tears and snot. Luckily, she had braved through it all with a grace that would make a noble lady proud, but all that went straight down the sh*tter when she had holed herself in her room and let the waterworks flow.
Thirteen years. Thirteen years living with Mama and Papa Haruno's bold and brazen displays of affection and they still managed to hit her right where it hurt the most. For the thousandth time since achieving consciousness, she thanked God and her lucky stars that she was blessed with such kind and understanding parents.
She took another drag of her cigarette. She really, really… loved them.
Again, it was a situation entirely of her own making. She had grown close to them, grown too attached, to the point of perceiving them as her parents.
Not 'her' as in Haruno Sakura's, but 'her' as in the 'her' from The Before.
She exhaled a lungful of minty smoke. Parental issues. That seemed to be a requirement to be a resident of Konoha.
To distract herself from another wave of Grim Thoughts, she returned to her notebook where she was in the middle of sketching her hundred-thousandth attempt at capturing the likeness of Altaïr Ibn-la'Ahad. It was one of her many hobbies that brought her a small measure of comfort while learning to live in a world that felt madly, vividly real and unreal.
She wasn't one to toot her own horn, but her skills in art had steadily gone from dreadful to passable to rather decent. Perhaps if her shinobi career wouldn't work out as well as she hoped it would, she could ply her talent for pulp novels or for the Konoha Evening Gazette. She was no Rockwell nor Leyendecker but compared to the current commercial art being churned out, she could probably make a name for herself in the scene.
Who knew that a highly militarized society that looked down on any career choice that didn't directly prove beneficial to the great machine would simply settle for grainy photographs with abysmal composition instead of evocative illustrations in their entertainment media?
Hell, even music hadn't yet evolved from what she would consider 'traditional' and 'folk' music. The Elemental Nations had a working international telecommunications network. They had hyper-advanced biotechnology that could extract DNA from long-dead Hokage and create test tube babies like no big deal. They had a thriving audiovisual culture with televisions and silver screens and video games. But there was not a single guitar in sight! No saxophones or fiddles or even a damned triangle! With all the late nineteenth century and early two-thousands tech littered all over the place, Sakura had hoped that Konoha, arguably the most 'prosperous' Village, was in the middle of a flourishing jazz age or a rock n' roll renaissance or—here, memories of Killer B surfaced—a hip-hop revolution, but nope!
The illuminating realization struck her dumb for a second and then coaxed a Cheshire grin out of her. Yes, the arts were a wonderful niche she could exploit for monetary gain! At least there, she could do her mercantile heritage proud.
She shaded the waterline of Altaïr's eyes, intensifying his stare. She tried to give him a more rugged, dangerous aura, enhancing what she remembered of his face model's existing beauty. She stared and stared at her sketch, hating it more and more by the second. It seemed that the more effort she put into something, the more it never managed to reach her expectations. It was maddening.
For a hobby that she had picked up to calm her down, it was one of her prime causes of stress. Funny how things went. She was just about to do something stupid and melodramatic like scrawl angrily over the picture—ah, adolescence—when an intruder appeared in the form of a silhouette poking from under the roof's ledge.
She quickly changed her grip on her pencil. She was no John Wick but even a beginner ninja could get a few stabs in, provided the intruder wasn't of high chuunin to jōnin rank.
"Psst! Pinkie!"
Naruto's voice calmed her racing heart.
"Damn it, Blondie! I nearly skewered your brain!"
"Sorry," he grinned, wholly unconcerned with the thought of dying, like the plot-armored Main Character that he was. He hoisted himself up with catlike nimbleness, all bright-eyed, fresh-faced, and extra adorable in his signature orange tracksuit and frog-themed backpack. He was about to take a seat next to her but he suddenly paused and sniffed the air.
Ah, sh*t.
Sakura surreptitiously put her cigarette out and flicked it far, far away to god-knew-where. She then resigned herself to a legitimate scolding by her concerned friend.
"Sakura-chan!" he hissed, scandalized, but thankfully had the nous to keep his voice low so as not to wake the neighbors or god forbid, her parents, "Smokin's bad for you, y'know?!"
Quick! Do ye olde Deadbeat Dad! Dodge and deflect!
"So is eating ramen twenty-four-seven. The amount of sodium and bad cholesterol you consume could kill a grown man. Anyway, what on earth are you doing here at butt-f*ck o'clock in the morning? Did you expect to wake me up if you found me asleep? Shouldn't you be getting some shut-eye for your team assessment later? "
"I know, I know, but I—hey! Don't pull the Deadbeat Dad on me!"
Drat.
"You're in—on my house. I'll change whatever subject whenever I please, thank you,"
"Uh-huh. I'm tellin' Ino-chan,"
Double drat.
"You wouldn't,"
"Try me,"
Double drat and damnation.
"Fine! No more smoking! My lungs will stay as pure as an angel's breath forever. Happy?"
"Hmph!"
Blondie puffed out his cheeks, likely to carry on with his anti-smoking tirade but he seemingly thought better of it. He deflated, sat his ass down right next to Sakura, and sighed in a manner that screamed 'ask me what's wrong right now please for the love of god'. She rolled her eyes and humored him.
"Alright, alright. What's up? Can't sleep?"
"Nah, I slept plenty. It's just… I'm nervous," he said through gritted teeth, as if admitting it physically pained him.
"I'd be worried if you weren't. You and Uchiha-san and Ami in one team…" Sakura whistled, "That's a powder keg the size of Hi no Kuni right there, brother,"
"I know! How the hell am I s'posed to work with a dude with a stick up his ass and a chick who can't shut the f*ck up about 'ooh, Sasuke-kun'! 'You're so handsome, Sasuke-kun'! 'Save me, Sasuke-kun'! 'Kyaaa! Sasuke-kun's so cool'! A whole-ass broken f*ckin' record on a blown-out speaker, y'know?"
"Do the same but louder. Rupture her eardrums if you have to,"
"C'mon, I'm bein' serious here! Listen, Cyclops-sensei told us to not eat breakfast or we'll throw up so I'm guessin' the test's gonna be some kind o' survival simulation or somethin' really physical. I dunno… what if it'll end up like with Mizuki? Like what if this new weirdo's gonna try to kill me again an' it won't just be me gettin' hurt but my team too, y'know?"
She had never thought Naruto would fret about something like that. Him! Uzumaki Naruto! The fearless boy wonder with a bullheaded lack of self-preservation. Still, it was a completely valid thing to worry about, given that the poor kid was probably carrying a fresh basketful of trauma from seeing Iruka get impaled and beaten bloody by a fellow Konoha nin. Tragedy aside, Sakura felt rather pleased seeing her friend being more open with his thoughts and being rightfully concerned about his team's welfare despite his clear dislike for them. Most importantly, in her opinion, he was starting to harbor a healthy suspicion for supposed authority figures.
That's it, kid, she thought with approval, Rage! Rage against your masters!
Sakura hummed and shut her notebook with a decisive snap, barring Naruto from sneaking a peek at her sketch. "You're right. Best not take any chances this time. You need something that'll not just put you at an advantage but will catch an enemy with their pants down. Now what kind of prank—?"
"Ooh! Ooh! Do we booby trap the whole trainin' ground 'fore everyone else arrives? Poison-tipped punji sticks? The ol' 'spiked skullcrusher'? Bamboo whips? Ah! The classic 'help-'er skelter'! I still got those chili bombs from last time! They haven't even gone bad yet!"
Sakura grinned. With her knowledge of guerrilla traps taken from old war documentaries from The Before, Naruto's ingenuity, and with Ino's ruthless cunning, they had been an unbeatable force in Capture the Flag and Area Trapping exercises back in the Academy. Blondie's favorites were when he would Henge into (mostly female) members of the opposing team, cry for 'help', and 'skelter' away while Sakura and Ino would let loose an infernal explosion of homemade red pepper bombs or an unholy rain of Nickelodeon slime—an uncomfortably sticky and sickly-sweet concoction of vanilla pudding, apple sauce, oatmeal, and whatever food coloring suited her fancy—onto well-intentioned teammates.
As to why he insisted on transforming into girls instead of letting her and Ino have a go instead, well, 'havin' fun confusin' the heck outta dummies' had seemed like the most valid reason in the world at the time. It still was, for that matter.
"Breakfast first, brainstorming later," Sakura said decisively, "Can't think right on an empty stomach,"
"But Cyclops-sensei said—"
"Dry heaving is a world of pain. It's much better to throw something up. Trust me."
With that, they slid down the terracotta tiles, snuck into Sakura's room—Naruto playfully swung at the windchimes hanging on her window—and crept down to the kitchen. Neither Mama nor Papa woke from their casually loud rummaging. They didn't even so much as stir from the scent of stir fried egg and tomato that Sakura whipped up in ten minutes. She was in the middle of heating up some of last night's leftover rice—which she made more moreish with canned tuna, lots of garlic, spring onion, more egg, and a side of pickled daikon—when she realized she had accidentally left her notebook on the kitchen table, well within reach of a particularly nosy boy.
"Hey, Sakura-chan? What kinda code is this? Looks pretty neat." said boy remarked while carelessly flipping through pages upon pages of sketches and paragraphs that were a mish-mash of several languages from The Before, all written in the English alphabet.
Damn, sh*t, dick, piss, and c*nt, her mind unhelpfully supplied.
"Hmm?" she called from the stove, hastily thinking up a decent cover story while pretending to be too busy to care, "Oh, yeah. Just uh… something I came up with a few years back. Didn't want Mama or Papa snooping through my stuff. A girl's gotta have her privacy,"
"Uh-huh… like a private crush on this dude?" Naruto grinned cheekily while pointing at a double-page feature dedicated to her Lord and Savior Altaïr Ibn-la'Ahad, "I guess I kinda get it; he's a looker. You're amazin' at this drawin' thing, y'know,"
Sakura huffed out a laugh, "Thanks, but that man doesn't exist. He's just a… character that… I… thought up?"
She hurriedly plated the eggs, cringing violently all the while. She sent a mental disclaimer to whatever cosmic force was listening in, lest they make her life all the more difficult for 'accidintentionally' claiming credit to one of the biggest video game franchises of all time.
Naruto made a curious noise. The rate of pages turned grew slower and Sakura expected him to have grown bored but to her surprise, she was met with the sight of her friend examining each page with intense focus.
"You aren't gonna be able to read them even if you squint, man," she sighed, "Now help me set the table before you go cross-eyed."
Very reluctantly, he did as asked. His sporadic glances back to the notebook distracted him terribly, however, and Sakura felt her patience wane while Naruto stared and stared and stared at a pose and value study of Altaïr, Hidden Blade unsheathed, in the middle of an air-assassination. It was one of her later works, and therefore one of her better ones, if she did say so herself. While she appreciated her friend's appreciation for her talent, he wasn't even halfway done with his task and more importantly, he was letting his breakfast go cold.
Letting hot and fresh food go cold was a Cardinal Sin that was met with swift retribution of Biblical proportions in the Haruno household.
Sakura expressed such aloud and Naruto, aware and fearful of the consequences he would face, hurriedly went above and beyond in making the breakfast nook appear picture perfect. Sakura had no earthly idea where he had procured a cream-colored floral-patterned tablecloth with matching placemats and coasters, a tea set, and a candelabra all in the blink of an eye, but who was she to complain?
It was terribly off-season though, and the candelabra was a tad incongruous with the breakfast theme, but she kept that to herself. At least she had a reason to brew tea for two—or four if her parents would wake up soon. Uncle Iroh would've been proud.
Naruto took a tentative sip of the tropical fruit-infused black tea, made a face, sipped at it again, hummed consideringly, and then began appreciating it in earnest.
"Right, so," she began as soon as they had plated the food and tucked into their light meal, "What to do to give you an advantage for later? Rumors say you learned a pretty flashy variant of the Bunshin after committing a B&E in the 'high-security' Hokage Archives. Care to elaborate?"
"Hah! Yeah, that's pretty much how it went. In an' out, boom. Not much of a heist, now that I think 'bout it. Anyway, the jutsu, whew, that was a whole 'nother monster. It was heavy, and I don't just mean the weight. It got all these theories an' calculations, an' diagrams, an' other sh*t I didn't f*ckin' understand, but y'know, I just followed what I could. Took me 'bout an hour to get it down but now I can do this! Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
He joined his hands together in the clone seal and another Naruto appeared on the seat beside him with a poof! They glanced at each other, eerily in sync, and they hi-fived with twin grins shining brightly in the kitchen's early morning gloom. Sakura keenly examined the clone. It was an impeccable copy, in her opinion. Clone-Naruto had every single strand of hair accounted for, right down to the nigh-indiscernible mole just under his left earlobe.
"That's uncanny," she whistled, "In every sense of the word,"
"I know, right? Thanks!"
"And how in the name of all that's holy did you master this kinjutsu in an hour?"
"Dunno. Just kinda happened? Oh! That reminds me, I was thinkin' of experimentin' with this a li'l so bear with me for a bit…" Naruto and Clone-Naruto shared a look. The original reared back a fist and boxed the copy right on his nose. The latter's head snapped backwards from the impact. With a strangled yelp, he fell backwards, toppling over the chair with a mighty crash before crumpling into a mess of skewed limbs.
Naturally, the ruckus violently roused Mama and Papa Haruno. They added to the auditory chaos by thundering down the stairs and swearing at the top of their lungs in rapid-fire Tetsu no Kuni and Kaze no Kuni dialect. Mama appeared at the hall, curlers askew, brandishing a metal hanger and her tsinelas, followed by Papa with his tropical flower patterned bonnet barely hanging on. At least he had the better presence of mind to grab one of Sakura's baston and a kunai. They took one look at their daughter peacefully eating from a small breakfast spread, another at the two Narutos looking cowed and contrite, and a final one at each other.
"Explain," Mama said in a tone that all mothers used to strike fear in every child's heart, "Now."
Sakura spoke on behalf of their cloned houseguest—houseguests?—who hastily righted the furniture and cleaned up as best he—they?—could by sweeping up invisible splinters and scrubbing at unseen scuff marks on the kitchen tiles. Both parents relaxed upon realizing that Naruto Number Two wasn't an enemy ninja in disguise.
"Never a dull day with you two, I swear," Papa chuckled fondly while wrapping Mama up in a calming hug and kissing her cheek, followed by affectionately ruffling each child's hair. He then rubbed his hands together as he made his way to the stove. "Since the gang's all here, why not have an early start? It's been a while since we've had breakfast at sunrise. Who wants more chahan?"
Like magic, Papa easily doubled the amount of food that Sakura made in half the time, and had even sliced a couple of mangoes for dessert. A testament to how natural it was having Naruto show up at the Haruno home at the oddest hours, Mama sauntered over, elegant in her flowy nightgown, and kissed Sakura's, Naruto's, and his clone's heads with a resigned 'good morning, dears' before helping herself to some tea. She immediately started fussing over the clone's mussed hair and suspiciously unbroken, unbloodied nose.
"Why on earth would you punch yourself—ah, your… clone like that?" she lamented.
"Oh! I wanted to see if my clones can remember what happens to 'em. Like, if they get socked in the face, will I feel it later?"
Sakura smiled cheekily and piped up. "Hey, here's a thought—if you punch yourself and it hurts, does that mean you're strong because you hit hard, or weak because you feel pain?"
"Ugh, it's too early for that,"
"Fine, fine. Go on, then. Dispel your number two."
In the next second came the sound and smoke of the clone's disappearance followed by the original's pained grunt. He contorted his face, scrunching his nose and wiggling it like an old cartoon. "Freaky. I felt that punch but like, muted? Muffled? I dunno which word or expression to use…"
"A 'phantom' of a feeling, then?"
"Okay… pretentious. But yeah, that's it,"
"I'm a poetic soul. Anyway, do you remember seeing yourself punch yourself? Or simply seeing things through your clone's eyes?"
"Whaddya mean, 'see'—huh. Hang on. Yeah. Yeah, I do—did. Dang. Double freaky,"
"Well, well," Sakura grinned, all teeth, "That's a handy-dandy reconnaissance jutsu you got there, brother."
Her friend's eyes lit up like twin stars and his excited, open-mouthed smile was a miniature sunrise illuminating the kitchen. Papa ruffled his golden bed-head, chuckling all the while and rattling off a hundred useful ways of putting the Kage Bunshin through its paces in a hundred miles a minute. Mama hummed and chimed in with her own ideas, adding more fuel to the fire that was their pseudo-adopted nephew-son and dubious potential son-in-law's insatiable hunger for mischief.
Really, with parents like Mebuki and Kizashi, it was no wonder how Sakura, Naruto, and, on occasion, Ino all acted the way they did.
She calmly ate her breakfast while the other people in the room were engaged in a lively discussion about jutsu execution and chakra molding. Sakura silently sent a grateful prayer upon realizing that Naruto had actually taken her 'pay attention in class' lectures to heart, for he was adequately conversant on the fundamentals. At least in this timeline or dimension or other, he wouldn't embarrass himself by confusing chakra with 'catra', bless his heart.
"Must you say the name of your jutsu out loud?" Mama asked, bewildered, "Isn't that a terribly foolish thing to do? Why, in a fight, you'd be giving your enemy a huge advantage. They'd know exactly what to expect,"
"Yeah, good point. I'll try to keep it down a li'l bit next time. But I dunno, I just feel like I can… uh… execute jutsu better when I yell it out. Iruka-sensei said somethin' 'bout shoutin' as a way to 'focus your energy' or whatever. Kinda like a kiai, y'know? Like haaah!" Naruto cried out while punching the air.
Suddenly, he paused. He tilted his head while his eyes slowly widened, as if he was struck by some epiphany. He grabbed Sakura's notebook, ignoring her startled 'hey!' and quickly leafed through it until he stopped at a silly little doodle of Iruka-sensei doing his iconic Mel Blanc no Jutsu. On another page were notes on the rudiments of jutsu creation that Sakura had copied from Academy texts and scrolls from Ino's personal library. She had scribbled everything down in the local language, since some words couldn't be perfectly translated in English or any Filipino language she knew—her mother tongue, her mother's mother tongue, and her national language.
No wonder it had caught Blondie's eye. He pointed it out excitedly while mouthing 'Ami'. Sakura understood. After the mention of a kiai and her earlier suggestion of rupturing eardrums, it all couldn't be more perfect.
And with Naruto's wind affinity…
A slow smile crept on her lips. Oh, how she loved when things fell into place by some benevolent cosmic force.
"Looks like we have our plan, Fishcake." she said, grinning maniacally. He mirrored it exactly. Meanwhile, her parents laughed fondly and made a little game of guessing what she and Naruto were conspiring about. It ended far too soon in her opinion, but alas, time waited for no one and they had only about an hour left before six A.M., which was when Team Seven were supposed to meet.
Blondie's excitement was, as usual, infectious. They burst out of the Haruno home and zoomed to Daisan Enshūjō with the force of a whirlwind, but not without Papa reminding them to stuff Sakura's spare baston, three chili bombs, two jars of sickly piss-yellow Nickelodeon slime, and a first aid kit into Naruto's adorable frog-themed backpack. On the way, Sakura idly wondered how badly the timeline would be f*cked if Naruto learned a jutsu that wasn't some variation of the Academy Three, the Kage Bunshin, or the Rasengan.
Oh well, only time would tell. Besides, how hard could creating a jutsu be?
Daisan Enshūjō (Training Ground Three)
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni
Summer…
Sakura inhaled the crisp morning air. It smelled of green and growing things—one of the most pleasant scents in the world in her opinion, along with fresh baked bread and pastries, coffee, floral tea, toasted spices, vanilla, and fried garlic and onion. She normally enjoyed summer's early morning freshness hours before the sweltering heat would ruin the rest of the day, but with Naruto's antics, she would have rather faced the afternoon humidity and all its discomfort.
Hell, she would rather suffer creating jutsu for the rest of her life than deal with her friend's fixation on a video game from another world—a fixation that he had absolutely no business having, lest the consequences not just bite both of their asses, but tear out bloody chunks of flesh.
She shuddered to think about what would happen if someone other than her friend would put the pieces together and reveal the existence of a multiverse to people in power. What if such information would then be leaked to the public? Would mass panic ensue? Would she be abducted and have freaky mind experiments forced upon her? Would she be brainwashed and made to spill everything she knew about her world to powerful figures—e.g. the Daimyō or worse, Danzō—who would then use her knowledge to bring about an age of conquest and capital, with large-scale privatized industries, corporate monopolies, trickle-down economics, perpetual martial law, and legalized slave labor?
God above, devil below, and every lost soul in between…
She shook her head to clear the Grim Thoughts. Nothing caused her more undue stress; so, for the sake of clear skin and no hair loss, she had to focus on the now. Right now, her friend needed help.
"For the last time, Blondie," she repeated, weary and frustrated beyond belief, although she tried not to show it. While difficult children needed someone with saintlike patience, her friend—being the host to a literal demon—needed godlike levels of the damnable virtue. "I'm supposed to help you create a voice amplifying jutsu, not distract you with fictional lore!"
"But Pinkie!" Naruto whined, "He looks so cool! I really like this one!" he held up a page where she had drawn a rather dramatic scene of Altaïr, young and arrogant in his iconic Levantine Assassin garb, being overshadowed by the great warrior and mentor he was destined to be. Sakura vividly remembered stressing herself out trying to color in his legendary armor that Ezio would eventually find in the Villa Auditore Sanctuary. It was a damn shame that Konoha didn't have colored pencils of decent quality.
Naruto rambled on. "I don't usually got an eye for these things, but seriously, this is amazin'! Is this his father? No, is this him but older? Is he like, a super-powerful warrior-monk-slash-knight or somethin'? This fantasy armor is sick!"
Christ help me, Sakura lamented, If this is karma for me living a child-free life in The Before, please consider it paid in full. Please.
"Thank you, no, yes, yes-and-no, and thank you again," she rattled off, answering his rapid-fire questions at the same speed, "Now can we please finish this jutsu before your sensei and your team get here and wipe the floor with your ass?"
Those were apparently the magic words, for he quickly shut her notebook, straightened his back, and moved his hands through a series of seals at breakneck speed, much to Sakura's horror. There was absolutely no way he had gotten a single one of them right.
"Stop! Stop!" she nearly shrieked, now frazzled, "You'll rip your vocal chords to shreds or blast your tongue clean out of your mouth! Hell's deathly bells, have some common sense! Do babies run before they crawl?! Do people write books before learning the alphabet?! Is your brain a vestigial organ?! Huh?! Now, do it again! Slower and more deliberate this time!"
She massaged her temples while her friend, distracted as ever, whined and grumbled. They had hit a bit of a wall after thirty-or-so minutes of figuring out which hand seals were optimal for their Haruno-Uzumaki Improved Mel Blanc no Jutsu.
Jutsu creation was perhaps one of the most challenging yet most fun things to do in this world. If Sakura had to liken it to an activity she knew how to do, she could say it was very much like composing a musical piece or a song. A composition can be a simple unaccompanied melody or a grand orchestral symphony, but what made it something worth listening to was the knowledge and application of the fundamentals. When playing a guitar, for example, one needed to know which string to pluck and which fret to press; and the quality and type of its tone depended on one's control—whether to fully press one's fingers on the strings to create full sounds, whether to lay them lightly on the strings to produce harmonics, and a whole lot more. In her opinion, it was so wonderfully similar to chakra molding, which required just as much—if not, finer—control over its volume, density, rate of flow, and pattern of flow.
She then supposed that hand seals were 'notes'. A seal sequence could then be likened to a scale. If certain hand seals would be integrated into a sequence to create a jutsu, then a particular combination of non-dissonant notes, say a root, a major or minor third, and a perfect fifth, would create—for the sake of this metaphor—a broken chord. Sakura liked to think that chords had their own 'personalities' or 'identities'—like how I, IV, and V chord progressions in a diatonic major scale would sound majestic, cheery, or even whimsical, while their minor counterparts ii, iii, and vi would sound tense, bluesy, or melancholic. Similarly, hand seals were affiliated with one of the major chakric nature transformations—fire, water, earth, wind, lightning, yin, and yang—which had their own 'identities' that shaped the kind of flow or pattern of chakra required to activate them.
She had yet to complete and perfect a jutsu of her own but the satisfaction of having simply worked on the process was its own privilege and reward. It was something no one had ever done in The Before, after all.
Naturally, she had vowed to milk the experience for all it was worth. She wanted to present the perfect jutsu for her hyperactive, loud-mouthed best friend. She would definitely do a few for Ino too in the future—perhaps as a gift for her next birthday when she'd turn fourteen, then her Quinceañera, then her Sweet Sixteen, then her Dancing Queen Turning Seventeen, then her Grand Debut at eighteen.
If she'd discover a knack for it, she could find a way to monetize it. She hummed, wondering if there was a market for jutsu. If, upon further research, she'd only come across shadow economies for kinjutsu distribution, then she'd steer hell f*cking clear.
If there existed above-ground dealings, well…
Ah, she shouldn't get distracted.
"Sorry," she said after collecting herself, "Try not to injure yourself too bad; healthcare isn't free for us, not until we make genin. And you're not even insured yet,"
"Oh, right. Yeah. Heh," he grinned sheepishly, "You're more mother than your own mother, y'know?"
"Say that sh*t again, I won't feel sorry if this jutsu does kill you. I'll enjoy managing your memorial life plans to the fullest—"
"Tora, Saru, Mi, Hitsuji, Tori!" Naruto loudly called out the seals, pointedly enunciating every syllable and taking exaggerated care to shape his fingers accordingly. He breathed in deeply and spoke. "Testing, testing; one, two, three."
Both children made wordless cries of frustration. His voice came out completely, disappointingly mediocre. There was no dramatic change in volume; simply a barely discernible increase with a hint of an echo, much like how one sounded when speaking through a rolled up paper tube. Sakura could tell that her friend was very nearly at his wit's end, which she sympathized with. He wasn't known for his patience.
"Again," she ordered.
"Yeah, yeah, 'til I get it right,"
"No, until you never get it wrong. Again,"
"Ugh, fine. Tora, Saru, Mi, Hitsuji, Tori… Testing, testing; one, two, three,"
"Again,"
"Tora, Saru, Mi, Hitsuji, Tori… Testing, testing; one, two, three,"
"Again,"
"Tora, Saru, Mi, Hitsuji, Tori… Testing, testing; one, two, three,"
"Agai—wait, stop,"
"Tora, Saru—eh?"
"I think we're missing something. Another seal? Is the sequence even in order?" Sakura muttered, "I don't f*cking get it! We did everything as written! First, Tora as the 'root' that determines the jutsu's 'strength'—"
"Then Saru for…" Naruto checked the notes, "'unpredictability' but also 'flexibility'?"
"Specifically for margin of error. That's why Mi balances it out, since its qualities are 'flexibility' and 'precision',"
"Right, right. Then Hitsuji for 'power' and Tori for 'freedom' and… 'spirituality'?
"Not in this sense; Tori's to implement wind release. And yeah, 'spirituality' to balance out the more physical aspects of the previous seals. But Mi also fulfils that role since it's an aspect of 'wisdom'. Also, Mi and Saru are commonly associated with speech, which ties in pretty well with the kind of jutsu we're making. Cool, yeah?"
Naruto gnashed his teeth and tore at his hair. "Wh—who the flyin' f*ck came up with all this… this… what the hell kinda word am I lookin' for? This pseu-pseudo-pseudoscientific argle-bargle?! Gods, this is worse than the f*ckery that's horoscopes, y'know?!"
"Hey, these symbolisms are older than the whole shinobi system of governance. I think it's load of claptrap too but I'm not going to crap on myths, legends, and folk history. You never know which spirit you're going to anger. Besides, if it works, it works. We're just playing by the rules here… for now, at least. You have to know the rules before breaking them,"
Naruto sighed. "Fine, fine! f*ckin' hell, there's gotta be a less interpretative way of doin' this sh*t,"
"It's simply a different language. Language itself is interpretative—"
"'—dynamic, an' arbitrary'. I know, I know. Let's just get this done, please an' thanks."
She and Naruto went through her notes once again, volleying suggestion between each other in a seemingly endless rally until Naruto, beyond exasperated, threw his arms up and collapsed backwards onto the grass.
"Y'know what? Maybe we're goin' through this the wrong way," he said then quickly corrected himself, "A'ight, maybe not wrong-wrong, but like, 'wrong' as in 'right but… sideways'? Y'know?"
"…Expound on that,"
"I mean, we did everythin' by the book, yeah? Like, every seal 'cept for Tori's got two elements—fire an' earth for Tora, earth an' wind for Saru, lightning an' earth for Mi, an' water an' lightning for Hitsuji. What if… we shuffle 'em around accordin' to which element counterbalances which?" he said while gesturing wildly, channeling his inner Renata Bliss, freestyle dance teacher.
"Sounds simple… too simple… so simple, I feel like an idiot for not realizing it sooner," Sakura deadpanned.
"Hah! I know, I know; I'm awesome,"
"But if we'd do that, we'd be pushing our chakra control beyond our current limits. Well, for you, not me. I'm awesome at that."
Naruto crossed his arms, and huffed and puffed as he pouted at the idea of putting effort into chakra control, his Achilles' Heel. She didn't blame him. Chakra molding was a finicky thing, especially when a hand seal affiliated with a particular element required precise molding according to the element's 'identity' or 'quality'.
Fire needed one to rhythmically flare their chakra like fat dripping onto a charcoal flame; wind and lightning—rather capricious elements—respectively needed constant circulation in ever-changing directions and irregular flashes directed onto an exact fixed point which was usually the area from where a jutsu would originate; earth needed one's chakra to be perfectly unwaveringly stable; and water, just like fire, needed a rhythmic flow of push-and-pull like ocean waves.
And that was just the tip of the Mount Everest-sized iceberg that was the building block of shinobi life. The more information Sakura absorbed, the more she understood why civilians outnumbered shinobi roughly fifty to one, and why shinobi prodigies like Hashirama, Madara, Minato, Kakashi, and Itachi were hailed as demi-gods. If one can master the levels of precision, meticulousness, and speed it took for an average shinobi to execute all forty-four hand signs of Zabuza's Suiton: Suiryuudan no Jutsu while molding one's chakra accordingly, one can only imagine what S-ranked kinjutsu and-slash-or senjutsu the aforementioned prodigies were capable of.
Chakra wasn't a miracle-maker for nothing. Knowing how to manipulate it needed hard unforgiving work but for some mad reason, Sakura possessed the ability to do so intuitively.
Her fate as an iryo-nin was practically written in the stars it seemed, especially when she could have been the perfect meatball medic for the destructive, self-sacrificing monsters that made up Team Seven.
Consequences and karma.
"Damn it," she cursed. Whether she aimed it at her previous meddling or at her and Naruto's abysmal attempts at creating a jutsu was moot. "Okay. Okay, okay. Say you're right. How the hell are we going to rearrange the whole seal sequence?"
Naruto hoisted himself up and put on his 'thinking face' which made him look more constipated than contemplative. "So we're startin' with Tora—fire an' earth. What if we work our way from down-up an' then up-down? I mean, from uh… descending to ascending an' blah, blah, blah. So the order'll be somethin' like Tora—fire an' earth—then a seal with water an' lightning, 'cause fire's weaker than water and earth's stronger than lightning…"
"So Hitsuji,"
"Yep! Then Saru—earth an' wind—'cause water's weaker than earth, an' wind's stronger than lightning!"
"Then Mi—lightning and earth—would be next,"
"'Cause earth's weak to lightning but strong against wind!"
"Lastly, Tori, to balance both out and augment it with wind release…" Sakura trailed off, wanting to yell, whoop, dance the funky chicken, and hug the life out of her friend but she caught herself. She remembered reading a passage from one of her favorite children's novels A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket—'celebrate when you're half done; the end won't be half as fun', or something along those lines; she couldn't remember with crystal clarity.
"Right," she finally said while rolling up her sweater sleeves, "Let's get this done."
They bumped fists. Blondie went through the hand seals with renewed vigor while she jotted down his theory.
"Tora, Hitsuji, Saru, Mi, Tori!"
Sakura held her breath as Naruto took a deep one of his own.
"TEST—"
Sakura clapped her hands over her ears so fast, she wouldn't be surprised if they turned plum purple. Blondie did the same, except his flew straight to his mouth. His voice echoed through training ground's open field and bounced into the copses nearby. It had sounded as if Sakura had stood too close to a Bose speaker set at max volume and someone had turned it on without warning while another person aimed a leaf blower at her face at full blast. For a few tense, nerve-wracking seconds of silence, they stared at each other with wide, disbelieving eyes, hoping that their experiment hadn't alerted nearby patrols.
"Did… did we just…?" Naruto whispered as soon as they were sure that no annoyed nin would appear and haul them off to baby jail by the scruffs of their shirts.
"Holy sh*t. Holy motherf*cking sh*t…"
"We did it? We did it?! We did it!"
"Lo hicimos, we did it—!"
A mass of orange suddenly collided into her with the force of a rampaging rhino. She flew backwards, hitting the ground with a high-pitched noise that sounded like a deflating balloon. Naruto, high off their victory, didn't seem to notice her soul escaping her body through her mouth as he squeezed her with all his might while laughing like a madman and babbling too fast for the naked ear to hear.
Normally, Sakura would humor him with an affectionate hair-ruffle and gently peel him off herself but it wasn't every day when one made this kind of breakthrough. She shrugged, mumbled 'ah, f*ck it', and hugged him back just as fiercely. It was the least he deserved and honestly, after nearly losing her patience a few times earlier, she needed a hug herself.
"That wasn't something I expected us to achieve in under an hour," she said after their high died down. They laid on the grass side-by-side, idly watching the dawn warm the trees. "How in the holiest hell did you know rearranging it that way would work?"
"I dunno… I just remembered that janken game that Iruka-sensei made, y'know the one where instead of rock-paper-scissors, it was fire beats wind beats lightning beats earth beats water beats fire?"
"Oh, yeah. Forgot about that,"
"You'd forget the color of your own hair if I didn't call you Pinkie all the time, y'know?"
Sakura hid a bitter smile. If only he knew what she didn't forget.
"And then," Naruto continued, "I remembered you teachin' me the nine times table,"
"The nine times—what does that have to do with seals?"
"The numbers!" Naruto exclaimed while waving his hands, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "Nine, eighteen, twenty-seven, thirty-six, forty-five, fifty-four, sixty-three, seventy-two, eighty-one, ninety! The ones row of numbers go from nine, eight, seven, an' so on to zero, an' the tens go from zero to nine. So it's all descending-ascending an' vice-versa, just like the weaknesses an' strengths of the elements in the seal sequence,"
"The… place values. You used the place value patterns… of the nine times table… as inspiration…" Sakura was spluttering at this point. She couldn't and was completely unable to comprehend just how in the name of all that was sacred, Naruto had thought up such a seven-league leap of 'logic' that worked.
Just when Sakura felt she hadn't any grey matter left in her skull after it had all melted and spilled out of her nose, Naruto dropped another bomb.
"I wouldn't really call it 'inspiration'" he said while casually picking his ear with his pinky finger, "More like… what's the term… pattern recognition? I guess? I mean, check out the hand seals for the Henge no Jutsu—Inu, I, Hitsuji. For Inu, you got water; for I, you got fire an' earth; for Hitsuji, water an' lightning. I an' Hitsuji got the elements balanced, but Inu's the 'root' and the one with the single element, so it's gotta balance out both the elements in I. See? Nine times table pattern!
"But it ain't like I just thought up the pattern outta nowhere, y'know?" he shrugged, "I kinda noticed that in a sequence, either the number of seals or the number of elements appear in threes… uh… multiples of three? That the right term? Anyway, this new voice amplifyin' jutsu we're workin' on's got five seals but nine elements, an' the Henge no Jutsu's got five elements but three seals. The plain ol' Bunshin no Jutsu's got three seals an' six elements, so double-whammy there. An' get this, the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu's got a perfect thirty-six seals with sixty-three elements—all div-divisiv-divisible by three an' nine. But only amateurs need to go through all that hassle, unless they master the single Cross seal… which I did, by the way!"
Sakura grinned at his boast. It wasn't one he made lightly; hell, he earned the right to shout it from the rooftops.
It was mad. It was genius. It was completely, unapologetically Naruto.
He was no textbook prodigy, however. He was, quite regrettably. slow, which was not a bad thing at all, contrary to what lesser minds thought. Everyone learned at their own pace. He just needed things spelled out for him in justified, double-spaced, size twelve Arial font in bold, and with a one-inch margin for him to understand the barest of bare-bones basics. However, once he picked something up, his learning curve would shoot to a near right-angle. His mind would take it apart, turn it outside-in, down-upside, back-asswards, and into a Möbius strip, and then he would find some extraordinary, brilliantly creative method of improving it… or making it worse… or both.
She understood now. Teach Naruto how to fish; in a week, he'll show you how he invented trawling or how he befriended local fisherfolk and helped them form an aquaculture industry that would sustain them for generations.
"Anywho," he rambled on, as if he hadn't just stuffed the whole Village's erroneous perception of himself into a salad spinner and let it rip, "I dunno if it'll be the same for every other jutsu but eh, ain't got time for that now. Let's go practice some more!"
Sakura's mind barely registered his words. She gently grasped his face, squishing his already squishy cheeks and forcing him to look her in her eyes.
"You're a genius, you know that?" she firmly declared, "You should know that. It's important to me that you know that,"
"U-uh… I am? I do?" he fumbled. His face flamed a distinctive Uzumaki red and she practically felt the heat seeping into her palms. She wanted to coo. Compliments to his intellect were rarer than a comet that swung by Earth every hundred years; the poor kid was probably overwhelmed.
"This thing right here," she said while poking at his forehead, "This brain of yours is a beautiful, wondrous, endlessly imaginative instrument and if anyone ever, ever, insults your intelligence, their cognitive prowess isn't any more remarkable than a protozoan's. Do you understand me?"
"I—I'll… I'll look up 'protozoan',"
"Good."
She let his face go, still reeling from his hidden exceptionality. She was about to take him up on his offer for more practice but he suddenly straightened like a meerkat, swiveled his head towards the training ground border where people usually entered and exited, and frowned.
"Company," he said simply, disappointment coating his tone. He flopped back onto the ground.
"That's my cue," she mumbled but made no move to leave. The morning was cool, her sweater warm, and the grass soft. Her lack of sleep had finally caught up to her, for she was hit by a sudden bout of drowsiness.
"You should go, Pinkie," he sighed, "That might be Ami,"
"Hey, play nice. You'll be a team,"
"Yeah, yeah, but only if she does the same. Hah! Ami? Nice? That'll be the day. I'd sooner be called a nerd or somethin',"
"Dude, you are a nerd. You just mathed your way into creating a jutsu,"
Blondie spluttered incomprehensibly. "Wha—I—bu—d-did not!"
"Did too… nerd,"
"Am not!"
"Are too,"
"Am not!"
"Are too—!"
Sakura cackled mercilessly while her friend grabbed her collar and shook her like a bobblehead figurine.
"Lies! Lies and libel! Slander and calumny! Den-deniga-denigration and defamation!" he yelled, but there wasn't a flicker of heat in his words. He couldn't even hold his laughter to keep up the pretense of being offended. "I'm Konoha's Number One Super-Awesome Hyperactive Knuckleheaded Ninja! I got a reputation to uphold, damn it!"
"Them's big words for a 'knucklehead',"
"ARGH!"
"Usuratonkachi."
They both froze and stared up at none other than Uchiha Sasuke, whose dispassionate eyes perfectly complimented the rest of his clean-cut, but darkly drab and sterile appearance. The Uchiha Prince didn't even deign to lower the haughty tilt of his chin to look at Naruto, who was still on the ground, nor did he muster the courtesy to address the other person in the vicinity.
Clan brats, said person thought, amused, while visibly rolling her eyes.
Naruto glared at him while showing off his unnaturally sharp canine with a derisive curl of his lip. Sakura so wanted to laugh at his attempt at trying to act so rough-and-tough. She supposed it would intimidate an outsider of lesser constitution, seeing as his hands were still fisted into her favorite sweater while she looked the part of a victim. She swiftly extricated herself from his hold, sighing over the extra work she'd have to put into straightening out her collar's wrinkles.
"The f*ck you want, sh*tbag?" he snarled. His face then crumpled as Sakura twisted his ear. She did not suffer rudeness, especially not from someone she associated with. "Ow! What the—Sakura-chan!"
"What did I just say?" she tutted.
"Ow! Ow! Okay! I get it! I'll be nice!"
She released his ear and gently patted it as an apology.
"I'd rather take a hit from Ino-chan. Knuckledusters an' everythin'. Damn,"
"'Manners maketh man', my friend. And speaking of," she turned to Sasuke, who was looking between them with about as much feeling as a faceless mannequin. Poor kid. "Good morning, Uchiha-san,"
He responded with a curt grunt.
"See?" she addressed Naruto while grinning teasingly at his rival, "You're ten times the man this one is, with his primitive caveman form of communication. Now, I'd best be off. Ta-ta, darlings."
She snickered at Sasuke's irrepressible show of emotion—a rapidly reddening face and a violently twitching eye—and Naruto's obnoxious wheezes. She bumped fists with the latter and sent a cheeky little wave to the former, laughing even harder at his adorable attempt at burning her alive with his Uchiha Patented Glare.
Was it insensitive of her to take the piss out of him like so? Perhaps. However, she was of the opinion that children, regardless of whatever tragedy that would befall them, should still be treated like children, which meant a lot of humor injected into harsh situations and some good-natured ribbing. She was no therapist, no child psychologist, nor was she well-versed in helping a heavily traumatized victim of genocide and psychological torture socialize with his age group; she was sure that someday, someone more qualified would tell her off for her clearly ignorant methods, but it was the best she could do at the moment, being an adult stuck in the body of an adolescent. She had her part to play and she would play it well, so if being a little sh*t like Naruto was what it took to remind Sasuke that he too, can be just as much of a little sh*t, then so be it.
She grinned maniacally to herself as she skipped away from the training ground with Naruto's howling taunts still ringing in her ears. Sasuke, Ami, and Kakashi were in for a treat today after their accomplishment. While she regretted not having enough time for them to go over possible strategies that would maximize both the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu's and their Haruno-Uzumaki Improved Mel Blanc no Jutsu's effectiveness, she was a hundred-and-ten percent confident in Blondie's ability to pull some crazy move on the fly.
The infamous Bell Test would go miles off-course this time around and she couldn't wait to hear all about it.
Still, after seeing how f*cked the timeline had gone from her earlier meddling, she could only pray that this Canon Event would veer into a road less traveled and not off a rocky cliff and into a canyon, followed by a comically spontaneous explosion that would tickle Michael Bay's pickle.
"Hay, Susmaryusep." she sighed. She'd have to take out the old rosary for this, it seemed.
It was only later—splayed inelegantly on her soft, fluffy bed with vanilla-scented fabric softener perfuming her sheets—when she realized that she had left her notebook—her precious, incriminating notebook—with the loudest, most conspicuous character in the entire Elemental Nations and his disaster of a team.
"Putangina."
