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Chapter Text

Haruno Sakura had been hearing whispers since the day she entered into the ninja academy.

It started at the age of six, when she had first started to manipulate her chakra to learn the Academy Three. When she had left the academy that day, she heard it. The ruffling of the leaves, the hollow sounds made by the holes in the trunks of the trees. She followed it, deep into the Hashirama Forest, at every twist and turn, the sensation of going deeper into the forest tugging her and her chakra at it's very core.

Our child, it would whisper. Nature's child, let us be free as it was intended by the first.

She'd spend so much time in the forest, feeling the spirits and the things that were in the trees. She used to spend hours, occasionally days, just in the forests, exploring and trying her best to understand the trees.

Why? The trees would say. Why won't you communicate with us, nature's child? Why won't you converse and let us be free?

Sorry, she'd think aloud. We're really sorry, Inner would say. We don't know how.

Soon, she learned how to communicate with them. However, at the expense, she lost her best friend and the only person that ever looked at her and called her beautiful. Ino, under a gorgeous setting sunset, told Sakura to her face that she was creepy and tried to get the same guy as her, and Sakura remembers the feeling of her heart breaking into a million pieces with the sounds of Inner's wails making the moment even worse.

She was never actively able to control it, to control them, but that night, as she cried and cried and wailed and sobbed over the loss of her best friend, she swore she could feel a vine and a tree root move toward her in comfort as she poured out all of her emotions in one night.

Unfortunately, her daily trips to the forest were cut short the higher she moved up in the academy, and by the time her final year hit, she never really spent time in the forest much at all. Too caught up in her "rivalry" with the girl she used to cherish the most out of everything she loved, too caught up in being in love with Uchiha Sasuke, too caught up in making sure she became the top kunoichi. However, the whispers never ceased. In fact, occasionally, when the days got tough and Ino's insults cut like steel on a kunai and her parents were on another five-month long trip, the whispers turned into full-on voices. They'd tell her that she was as sturdy as their own tree trunks and if Sakura looked deep enough into her memory, she swears she remembers a branch coming down to caress her head in an attempt to console her.

Sakura really, really, really loved the trees.

However, she never really imagined what the sudden surge in power and chakra would feel like, if she finally let them free.

Sakura hated her team.

Well, hate was a strong word. A better way to word it would be that she didn't exactly trust her team.

Naruto never really did anything wrong; the only issue is that he's unpredictable. She can't read his next move ever, and it makes her queasy. Sasuke, who she's lost her feelings for a long-time ago but continued to act like she did for the sake of appearances, is also unpredictable in the sense that he's flighty. She knows all he needs is one good reason, and he's as good as gone from the team. Maybe from the village entirely.

Kakashi-sensei is an enigma that she can't hope to ever understand.

Grief weighs all over his shoulders like a second skin, especially when he looks at them three. He never looks Naruto in the eye, and even when his answer or question is directed at the blonde, his only visible eye will be closed in that infuriating eye-smile of his. He looks at Sasuke like he's looking at some sort of messed up, broken mirror that's been given up on after too many times of attempting to put the broken glass back together, and when it comes to her, he looks at her like it physically hurts to ever hear her speak. When she yells at the boys for getting them in trouble on another D-rank mission, he lurches over like he just saw someone close to him die directly in front of him.

She can't tell if it's because she looks (and is) useless and powerless in front of the boys, or if it's for a different reason entirely. She doesn't exactly trust him much either.

She does get inklings of trust in the beginning, like how he congratulates her on the first one to get tree-walking down pat (on our first try! Take that, Sasuke-baka! Inner would yelp in her head, and it would always make her feel better) and how he pats her head whenever she does a good mission report, kind of like how a doting owner would give their pets headpats.

Deep down, she knows why she loves it so much. She hasn't felt the touch of her parents in over a year. She doesn't even know if they're still in Yukigakure like their initial letter stated, or if they're even still alive. Maybe, just maybe, Kakashi-sensei's gentle touch has driven her to tears that she never spilled in front of him, simply out of fear and embarrassment.

Even when they go get Ichiraku after a day of physical conditioning, and Ino comes to make fun of her and insult Naruto, the headpats never fail to come.

"Oh, it's you, billboard brow. I'm surprised you haven't turned in your hitai-ate yet, with how severely behind you are." Sakura's mouth opens on instinct, just to throw an insult back, but she's so tired after hours of conditioning (because she's behind, she's so behind, she's useless and skinny and frail and weak compared to the boys next to her who were practically made to be shinobi and she's gonna fall behind and she won't be able to do anything about it and Ino's right-) so she snaps her mouth shut with an audible click! and continues to shovel down her spicy ramen like it'll be her last meal. Once she finishes her pork, she fixes her with a mean glare in lieu of greeting her teammates and sensei behind the platinum blonde.

"And I'm surprised they haven't called you back to the slaughterhouse yet, Ino-pig. Mind your damn business and go about your day." She feels the growl come up in her throat, but Inner shuts it down. We agreed to keep our outer image contained, didn't we?

I know, Inner. But day after day, I'm starting to think keeping it consistent looks less and less appealing.

"Don't be mad at me because I'm right. Look at your team, the top kunoichi with no skill and dead last. I bet my darling Sasuke-kun carries the team all the time, don't you?" She gets a dreamy look and a blush on her face as she exclaims that last part, and the anger Sakura tries her best to keep a tight lid on bursts like a water bottle underneath a pressure machine. She slams her fist on the table and grabs Ino by the front of her collar and drags her as close to her face to spit on it.

If you say we aren't going to hide anymore, then I'm with it. Inner says, approvingly. But we're going the full mile. Yell at her about insulting Naruto, and make sure to beat the whole Sasuke crush thing over her head too.

"Top kunoichi with no skill, yet you're so pigheaded and dumb that you can't use your mind to form any kind of strategy. Naruto can run laps around you with no sweat. If you and Naruto were to fight to the death right now, I'd put everything I own on the line in favor of Naruto winning. Also, you don't own Sasuke. Nobody does. You don't own him, I sure as hell don't, and Naruto most definitely doesn't. You're already washed up before your career even started. You could've kept walking but you chose to stop and start an unnecessary argument, for what? To prove a point." She throws Ino off, and glares at the blonde with an intensity that she herself never thought she could possess.

"Leave me and my team the fuck alone, Ino. You don't get to insult whoever you want any more without consequences. I mean it." She spins on her heel and looks to the left where Kakashi is standing, his gaze heavy yet questioning. "Kakashi-sensei, thank you for paying for food, I will see you at training tomorrow."

She speedwalks away, and registers Naruto's yell of farewell, and she puts a hand up in return. As soon as she's far away enough, she runs as fast as she can into the forest, deeper and deeper she goes, until she stops. She stops at the clearing she discovered six years ago, back in her first year of the academy. She falls to her knees, her head hits the ground, she fists the ground, and she weeps.

Secretly, the roots and branches of the trees come up to curl around her as she cried herself to the point she passes out on the forest floor.

It will get better, nature's child, we promise.

^-^

They're given a C-Rank mission.

Tazuna-sama is an old man, and a rude one at that. He insults the team upon meeting them for the first time, and it makes her want to sink her teeth into the older man's throat and never let go. He also insults Naruto, and even if it was a mindless jab at his height, it's still distasteful to her.

Naruto is not nearly as annoying as she originally thought in the academy. It had been over a month since that confrontation with Ino, and a rift that was between her and the boys emotionally had become significantly smaller.

For one, Sasuke doesn't ignore her as much anymore, and when she makes an observation when Kakashi-sensei drills them on out of Hi no Kuni environments, he takes her thoughts into consideration, which makes her heart soar and Inner giggle more than any supposed date ever could. The thought of being taken seriously and not being dead weight is amazing to Sakura and Inner's own musings.

Naruto became a lot more friendly to her, even though he was already friendly towards her in the beginning. After the incident with Ino, she took to bringing breakfast in the morning for him when she noticed his upper body's figure whilst him and Sasuke were sparring once. When he came over to get water, Sakura asked him about it.

"H-Hey, Naruto?" He made a noise of acknowledgement, and Sakura continued. "Uh, I noticed while you and Sasuke were sparring, your ribs were showing. Are you sure you're eating enough?" There was a stark silence after, and Sakura starts internally panicking. She said the wrong thing and she would've ruined the one good thing she had going for her, and he'd hate her forever-

"Oh! Uhh, I've been livin' alone since I was four, and the money Hokage-jiji gives me for rent isn't enough for extra expenses, so I can't really buy food...?" He laughs and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, and Sakura can't stop the growl from escaping the back of her throat.

"Woah, did I say somethin' wrong, Sakura-chan?" He asks. She shakes her head and smiles at him, to which he smiles brightly back, and Inner beats herself up from inside of her for treating him the way he did in the academy.

We really need to properly apologize to him, Inner says, and Sakura agrees in her head vigorously. Gift, grovel, anything. For right now though, Mom and Dad won't be home for a long while, so let's put the extra food in the house to use.

The day after that, she brought several bowls of tamagoyaki for him (she knows he has a bottomless pit of a stomach), and the look he had on his face made Sakura want to hug him and cry of relief at the same time. He shoveled them down with the same enthusiasm as he does with ramen, and when he hugs her after the meal, she almost cries and hugs him back just as tight.

She might've hurt his arm a little bit, she really doesn't know her own strength according to Inner, but the bright smile he has when he pulls away makes it all worth it.

As they leave the walls of the village, she can feel the trees and the forests, and the whispering has started again. However, the trees seem more playful today than anything, so it put Sakura in a good mood. Kakashi-sensei seems to be leisurely strolling as he usually is, and Naruto and Sasuke seem to be arguing, and all is right with the world.

However, there is just one little issue.

She doesn't trust Tazuna as far as she can throw him.

He's been flighty and weird since he got to Konoha and even more so since they've left, and Sakura hasn't trusted anything out of an adult's mouth since her parents last told her when they were coming home in one of their letters. In fact, the farther they get from Konoha, the more nervous and scared the old man seems to be. It seems Naruto has noticed too, with how stiff his shoulders have gone. From where she's standing, she can't tell what Sasuke thinks. She's pretty sure Kakashi-sensei's been suspicious the minute they left village walls.

He's always suspicious, I think he thinks it powers his nonchalant and mysterious vibes, Inner says accusingly. It makes Sakura snort, to which the grey-haired jounin raises an eyebrow at. It only makes her giggle harder, and Kakashi-sensei simply shakes his head and gives her headpats directly after.

Some days, she thinks that he legitimately thinks of her and the boys as puppies sometimes.

They continue to walk for the next twenty minutes, with the excited whispers of the trees and Naruto and Sasuke's bickering as background noise. She keeps one eye on the boys and the other on Tazuna, and sure enough, his frame has gotten tighter and tighter with fright the more they walk.

She hates untrustworthy bastards. They make her teeth ache.

Eventually, she sees something out of the corner of her eye.

It's a puddle of water. Small, something inconspicuous to the naked eye. However, she's spent too many years dissecting everything everyone's ever told her to simply dismiss it. It hasn't rained in weeks, and they're getting ready to transition to the heat of summer in Hi no Kuni. There shouldn't be a single droplet of water anywhere unless it's sweat or tears.

Sometimes, Sakura hates being right.

The minute Tazuna steps near the puddle, two nin immediately leap out of the water. She watches Kakashi-sensei get absolutely shredded into a mess of blood and gore, and at that same moment, she watches Sasuke immediately dive into the fold of the fight. Simultaneously, one of the ninja hit Naruto dead in his chest, and when the area starts bleeding purple, Sakura can't see anything but red.

All she could do was stand there and watch.

She knew she was useless. She knew the skill gap between the boys were getting bigger and bigger no matter how much physical conditioning she did when Kakashi-sensei told them to and no matter how many improvements she makes to her diet. The boys learn destructive and hard-hitting jutsu while she can barely keep up in a spar. What was the point of making top kunoichi when she's nothing but dead weight when it actually matters? All she can do is stand there, frozen and useless and powerless and defenseless as Naruto is actively bleeding out with poison coursing through his system and Sasuke is actively trying to set the ninja on fire and Kakashi-sensei is nowhere to be seen-

Use us.

...W-What?

You, nature's child. Use us.

We already told the trees we can't, we don't know how, Inner curses underneath her breath, and Sakura shares the same sentiment.

Yes, you can. As it was intended by the first, use us.

Intended by the first? Inner and Sakura both think at the same time.

You have the balance, the trees say with conviction, and at the same time, a bright green fire starts to burn at her chakra coils and in her hands. The steadiness of water and the sturdiness of the earth, just like the first. Use us and bridge the gap.

As the whispers turn into speech and the speech turns into yelling, it drowns out into a singular focus. When Sakura looks down at her hands, her frail and trembling hands, they form into the snake hand seal like she's done it a thousand times before, even if she's only mimed the seal once when trying to add ninjutsu into her repertoire after the first time she saw Sasuke use the Gokakyu no Jutsu for the first time ever. It's shaky, even when she tries to do the seal now, but when she does do it, she feels a rush of power through her veins, and when she says what she does out loud, it's the trees that whisper the name in her ear.

Mokuton: Mokujoheki.

When Kakashi ends up passing his team, it's a struggle to even get out of bed in the morning to see them.

The three of them remind him so much of his past it genuinely hurts to be around them. Naruto, with his rambunctiousness and need for pranks and trouble and his tendency to cause trouble reminds him so much of Kushina-nee that it literally hurts his heart. His smile, his face shape, the shape of his eyes, the curl of his brow, all of it is Kushina. Then, he'll look serious, and he'll resemble Minato-sensei so much that Kakashi feels like he could cry and explode the training ground in lightning like he did in Training Ground 16.

Then, there's Sasuke. The small Uchiha reminds him so much of his younger self, the child that came home from a good day with Obito and Rin only to find his father dead on the floor with his weapon stuck in his gut, the blood pooling through Kakashi's feet. The child that had lost everything he loved before he had turned fifteen. The child that carried his grief and wielded it like a well-honed blade, all sharp edges and daring anybody who tried to get too close to wear his heart resided.

Then there's Sakura, oh so smart Sakura with her quick thinking and chakra control that reminds him so much of Rin that it kills him. The way she corrals the boys, her coolness of her chakra, the steadiness of her gait whenever she's giving a mission report, her smile, her attitude, all of it is just like Rin. Sometimes, he thinks he sees a head of brown hair and purple markings until he scratches at his visible eye and sees the irregular head of bright pink like her namesake.

However, he has to admit, he never thought Sakura would've made it this far.

Her academy file indicated that she was smart, with fast analytics and a brain that would serve her well. Her chakra control was also perfect, listen in the ninety-ninth percentile, and sharply labeled as a genjutsu-type and should probably be directed to medical courses at some point. However, the file also indicated a lack of motivation, constant spacing out, and small reserves, as well as her obsessive crush on her raven-haired teammate.

Kakashi would've gave her a month before she turned in her hitai-ate for good and went to work at administration for the Daimyo.

Only some of the things listed on her academy file were true, at least in Kakashi's eyes.

She was smart, and when he drilled his team on survival in countries outside of Hi no Kuni, she made quick and sharp observations that made him pause. Her chakra control was indeed perfect, and she got tree-walking down on her very first try, and if it wasn't for the fact that he needed to give all of his the kids extreme physical conditioning, he's sure she would've been the first one to get water-walking down pat. Out of the four negative things written on her report, only one was actually true.

Sakura had excellent motivation, if not for the self-hate she carries on her shoulder like it's the world's best burden. She pushes herself the hardest in physical conditioning, and even if she loses fast when paired against the boys (although it's more because she doesn't have a set taijutsu style and the academy kata are a good baseline, it isn't good in the long run), she gets good hits in before she goes down. She does have small reserves, the smallest out of the team, but he watches as she does daily meditation and drains her reserves as much as she can to build them up. Even during introductions and after the bell test, her supposed crush on Sasuke was nowhere to be seen, and her aforementioned hate for Naruto had completely evaporated as if it wasn't there at all.

One thing, though. Her habit of constantly spacing out would be and is indeed a liability in the field. That habit will get her, and her comrades killed in the field if she doesn't kick the habit now while it's still fresh. However, from Naruto's rambles, it seems the spacing out has been a thing since they were smaller.

But she's trying. She's trying so hard, and she can see it in the way she walks and talks and holds herself.

When Asuma came over with his genin, he was expecting the fight with the Yamanaka clan heir. Sasuke, in the few words he chooses to say a day, regaled the tale of the rivalry between the Yamanaka and his pink-haired genin, but the pure vitriol in Sakura's voice had surprised even him, with the howling thing that resides in the back of his head.

The way Sakura bared her teeth at the platinum blonde, even going as far as to spit in the heir's face when she insulted Naruto and went as far as to publicly attempt to claim Sasuke reminded Kakashi way too much of his younger self before the tragedy. Back when his mother was still alive and he carried the Hatake Clan crest on everything he wore, proud to declare himself as a Wolf and bared his teeth and raised his White Chakra at anybody who dared to say his clan, his people, his precious people were anything less than the best of them all.

He can see it, she's been getting stronger, that spine of steel he knew was hidden amongst all of that self-hatred is coming out, and he's never been prouder of anyone than his pink haired student.

Until the Wave Mission.

In reality, there was something fishy about the mission from the start. He knows his genin have noticed it too, that particular brand of trauma-induced trust issues seemed to be strong within his three charges. Sakura's been glaring at the man's back with distrust, Naruto's shoulders have been stiffening the further out they get from Konoha, and Sasuke's been eyeing every tree like an enemy nin was going to pop out of them at any given point in time.

It seems the Uchiha got it wrong. Nothing popped out of the tree, it was a puddle.

He replaced himself with a clone with a singular seal, watching the clone get ripped to shreds in the process. He shunshined into a tree in the upper canopy, and watched how his genin handled the situation.

Naruto froze. Not good, especially since the council wants their special little jinchuuriki fully trained so they can flaunt him in the upcoming chunin exams. Jokes on them, they put the boy with him to be his jounin instructor and Kakashi will train his team the way he sees fit. After the years they spent preventing him from taking care of the one person left behind from the people he loved.

Sasuke, predictably, dived into the fold. Naruto followed not long after, but after a while, he was hit with a poisoned glove. That was enough to get him out of the tree and into the fight, until something caught his well-trained eye.

Sakura had run towards the client. Points in his book, it is the objective of the mission, after all. However, she had frozen and zoned out, and Kakashi cursed under his breath. He has got to find a way to train that out of her, this is not the time to be zoning out. As he leaps out of the tree next to Naruto's sweating figure, he looks at Sakura once more before draining the poison out of the young jinchuuriki, and he can't believe what he's seeing.

As if it never happened at all, Sakura's eyes came back into focus, and her hands shakily started to form a seal. He recognizes it before she's even finished. She does only one seal, which he's skeptical of, because a genin of her caliber should need about five to six seals to properly support the chakra in the jutsu, until she mimes words that he can't hear.

He hates the fact that he can lip-read. Damn you, ANBU training.

Mokuton: Mokujoheki.

A bunch of tree roots erupt within the radius of them and the shinobi, and Kakashi watches as his pink-haired student uses a kekkei genkai last seen in the God of Shinobi to pin their enemies and trap them in angry, chakra fueled tree roots.

She would've been easy. As the child of civilians, she wouldn't have had to worry about her safety within the village until she got older and clans would've started pushing for her to aid in "producing the next generation of shinobi."

She wasn't supposed to be remarkable. She was supposed to be fodder, someone to round up the numbers.

Instead, Kakashi now has a team of a jinchuuriki with a blood born to some of the most critical and dangerous sealing arts known to shinobi from his parents, a child with the last trace of one of the most powerful dojutsu to ever exist, and a child with one of the most sought-after kekkei genkais from two special bastards he hates to even name out loud.

Yare yare, I'm in over my head with this team...

Chapter Text

Naruto has always been perceptive. You can't not be perceptive and be expected to survive in the slums of Konoha.

So, when Naruto got his team assignments, he immediately knew that there was more than meets the eye concerning who was on his team and who his jounin sensei was.

Hatake Kakashi, the ever illustrious jounin, had most definitely been one of Naruto's ANBU guards when he was a kid. He'd bet his most prized possessions (for how little he actually has) on that information. The man smells exactly how he remembers, like a raging storm, wet dog, and eggplants. He was Wolf, or whatever code name they gave to him in ANBU.

Of course, they need further accredited surveillance on their weapon. The Monster of the Hidden Leaf. The one containing the very same beast that took the lives of so many people just twelve years ago. They couldn't just let him be with someone normal, or a regular jounin sensei.

Then, there was the matter of his team.

There was no way they were going to put him and Sasuke-teme together after the years they've spent locked together in arguments and spars fueled with too many shots too close to the heart to count. It made no sense, and furthermore, it messes up the potential in the team dynamic if there's constantly two heads butting together. Additionally, no offense to their sensei, but he doesn't seem like the most emotionally intelligent guy in the world. To be honest, he looks like he avoids all talks of emotions at all costs.

Then there's Sakura. A total enigma as far as he's concerned.

She was an airhead in the academy. Always zoned out yet answered questions correctly when asked and never got anything below a one hundred on any test or exam. Her and Ino used to be as thick as thieves and constantly attached at the hip, until Ino broke off their friendship on one dusky afternoon in their third year over Sasuke, and Sakura hasn't had a close friend since. Sure, she moved her seat and had calm conversation with Shino and occasionally Chouji, but other than that? Silent for the rest of the year, and even then, after Ino turned their friendship into a rivalry, Sakura never made any clear attempts to get Sasuke's attention afterwards.

Naruto knows that the rivalry between the two girls isn't really about the ravenette at all, but he isn't going to voice that out loud in fear of Yamanaka appearing out of thin air to smack him upside the head.

But then the bell test happens. They fail. And then, Sakura speaks.

"Kakashi-sensei, Naruto-kun was field promoted, we were informed about it before we were officially assigned. Doesn't that mean Naruto can't be sent back to the academy?" She questions; gaze fixated on Kakashi-sensei in a way Naruto didn't think he was capable of. In his chest, a weight lifts off of him, his shoulders less heavy and his head turned into the pinkette's direction. Sakura, the same Sakura that used to yell at him for being stupid and make fun of him back in school is sitting here and defending him? What the hell is going on?

"Well, that's true, but I'm still in charge of who I let on my team." Then he gives them that sleazy eye smile, that same smile that makes Naruto want to knock his teeth in. Then he instructs them to not eat their lunch, and because Naruto's already had enough bad luck and doesn't have any leftover money to buy dinner later because he spent the last of his stipend (the very last stipend Jiji is going to give him, considering he's a genin now and he's on payroll) on his utility bill, and his landlord raised the bill on him again.

Until Sakura pops her lunch open, breaks her chopsticks in half, and holds her mentaiko onigiri to his mouth with a raised eyebrow and deep jade green eyes. He can feel the flush creeping up on the back of his neck, but he forces it down with the same ferocity he used to attack Mizuki just a week ago.

"Sakura-chan? Kakashi-sensei just said-!"

"I know what it's like to be hungry. Eat, Naruto. If I get in trouble for feeding you, I assume full responsibility." She says resolutely, and with conviction like that, how can Naruto refuse? He bites lightly, skeptical of poison in it, because he still can't just trust anybody, but when he finds out it isn't poisonous, he starts to eat with enthusiasm. Soon, he realizes he finished all the onigiri, and before he can apologize, the girl is smiling at him and flicks his forehead and he's drowning in how green her eyes are-

And then Sasuke-teme reaches for his own lunch, and splits in in three. One part for him, the other part for Naruto, and the other part for Sakura. He's shocked, and he knows Sakura is to, because last they checked, Sasuke wouldn't offer any of them food even if they spent ten years in Kiri and suffering from the effects of starvation. However, he simply glares and thrusts it forwards, and they need no more prompting from the Uchiha to take and eat.

Kakashi-sensei comes back. He thinks he just barred his team from being taken on as a genin squad. Then, Kakashi-sensei takes them to the gravesite of shinobi that died in battle, says they passed, and says what is possibly the most important thing Naruto will remember for the rest of his days.

Those who can't complete the mission are trash, but those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash.

He looks at the silver-haired man, at Sasuke, then at Sakura, and decides that he will never be worse than trash for as long as he lives.

🦊

They're getting better. Not physically, and that frustrates him more than anything else, but he keeps that emotion under control because he knows what's going to happen if he lets go.

No, he's talking about emotionally better.

Kakashi has stopped being lazy, and he likes the physical conditioning. He likes the challenge, and how Kakashi raises the weight and the laps for him just so he has to work for it, just so he has to sweat a little more and push himself a little farther, instead of being back on his feet after two minutes of rest. Sakura's hits are getting harder, even though she's behind him and the teme physically, and sparring with Sasuke even takes longer for him to lose, and he's even ending them in draws occasionally.

He doesn't know what exactly kicked their sensei into high gear, but he's glad it happened.

One thing he didn't see coming though, was Sakura and her question after the teme had just finished beating him into the ground like he normally does, and Naruto is inhaling a bottle of water afterwards.

"Uh, I noticed while you and Sasuke were sparring, your ribs were showing. Are you sure you're eating enough?"

What a loaded question.

He doesn't think he's been eating enough since he was six. It was easier to get meals from Hokage-jiji when he was first taken out of that stupid orphanage when he was four, but since he was entered into the academy at the same age, he had never received a free meal from the leader again. He's been scavenging for food in the forest since, skinning rabbits and looking for berries, and making sure the berries he took weren't poisonous was a whole other battle within itself. Additionally, the last time he had tried to buy food from a regular grocery store, the storekeeper gave him rotten food.

The time before that, the food was laced. He was out of commission for a week, and the only one that helped him get over it was one of his ANBU guards. Viper, he thinks.

Regardless, it's a loaded question. But believe it or not, Naruto does understand social situations, and this is not an appropriate time to trauma dump on his probable already traumatized teammate, so he summarizes it into one, easy to swallow excuse.

"Oh! Uhh, I've been livin' alone since I was four, and the money Hokage-jiji gives me for rent isn't enough for extra expenses, so I can't really buy food...?" He laughs and tries to hide his embarrassment, but when he can hear the growl come from his teammate's throat (and damn, he didn't even think Sakura was capable of making a sound like that up until now), he starts to think he misread the situation.

"Woah, did I say somethin' wrong, Sakura-chan?" He asks. She shakes her head and smiles at him, to which he smiles brightly back, but the subsequent worry for the rest of the day stayed behind his eyes because please, don't ruin the one good thing he has going for him-

The day after that, she brought several bowls of what he thought was omurice, but it was actually tamagoyaki, and she places them in front of him. He's confused, so lost, until she tells him it's for him and he nearly broke down into tears in front of the coolest and smartest person he's ever known. He shovels all of it down and goddammit it tastes so damn good, and then he launches at her and hugs her as tightly as he can, so the tears don't fall, then she's hugging him tighter and he thinks there's a bruise on his arm but he's happy, so damn happy-

Then Kakashi pats both of her heads, and he's tempted to give his sensei the finger, but he's still happy all the same.

Then they get their C-Rank assigned, finally, because he was tired of chasing around that demonic ass cat. But of course, the client they're supposed to escort back to his house is the sketchiest, shadiest guy he's ever met in his entire life.

He even smells like a liar, and deep in his conscious, he can hear the Kyuubi growl at the man in contempt. At least that's one thing him and that demon have in common.

If there's one thing he's happy about, it seems his teammates have the same trust issues that he does. Sakura's been glaring at the back of his man's head from where she is at the back of the triangle formation Kakashi told them to get into, Sasuke's been looking at every tree they pass like an enemy is about to jump out, and he's pretty sure Kakashi-sensei is in a permanent state of being suspicious but it does make him feel better that he isn't the only one.

Then they get attacked by enemy ninja, and he freezes, and he hates himself for it, because no wonder Kakashi-sensei never signed them up for a C-Rank when he useless in battle, but then he's moving again, and he got one of them, but then the bastard hits him square in the chest and he can see the purple dripping out of his chest and he already knows the Kyuubi is expelling it, but Kakashi-sensei drops all the same.

Then, he looks over at Sakura, and it's a version of her he's only seen once, when she sharply defended him and Sasuke against Ino and went as far to spit in a clan heir's face to get her point across.

In the days leading up to the C-Rank, Sakura's shoulders have been heavier than normal. He sees himself in her, the part that hates himself, the part that knows it's him against the world. Her eyes have been darker, steps heavier, and even the breakfast she's taken to making a daily routine to bringing him tastes heavy, like her hands were hefty and sad when she made them. She's been wallowing, depressed, defeated, and if Naruto knew just how to make it better, he would've done so before they officially set off.

But then Sakura looks at his body, and her faraway, zoned outlook hardens, and he can't even see what she says, but then there are tree roots erupting from every corner and Sakura's eyes look like they're on fire and she pins their attackers to the fucking tree-

And Naruto already knows their mission is about to go to shit.

Sasuke hates his team.

He got stuck with dead last, the airhead with an obsession with him, and a lazy, sleazy sensei with a permanent condescending look in his only visible eye. How does that even make sense? Putting him with the two people he hates the most (besides Yamanaka, he absolutely despises Yamanaka more than he'll ever hate the airhead or dead last) will never go well.

The bell test happens, and they fail, and how can he possibly kill That Man and avenge his parents and clan when he can't even pass a simple genin exam, the same genin exam that he did when he was eight, four years younger that he currently is now-

He looks out of the corner of his eye. Naruto-dobe gets tied to the tree, and he doesn't even want to think about the implications that Naruto has the ability to be field promoted, but Sasuke still had to take that stupid ass test and waste his valuable time that could've been spent training his fire jutsu to absolute perfection-

Then Sakura, the fucking idiot, decides to open her food container and feed usuratonkachi anyways, knowing good and well that she's going to risk both her and him going back to the academy, and he feels like strangling her, and he almost does until-

"Sakura-chan? Kakashi-sensei just said-!"

"I know what it's like to be hungry. Eat, Naruto. If I get in trouble for feeding you, I assume full responsibility." She says it with conviction, like she knows what it's like to go hungry, and that is enough to make Sasuke stop in his motions of getting up. Naruto seems to hesitate, but eventually, he does eat, and Sakura feeds him her entire bowl after Kakashi took their lunch, and he can't even be reasonably mad.

He doesn't like Naruto, he most definitely doesn't like Sakura, but he'll confront her on ruining their chances to become genin after Naruto finishes her food.

He doesn't know why he did it. He doesn't know why he took his own lunch and split his in thirds so that the three of them can share. He doesn't even know why he's even giving a shit about them in the first place. He hated them before the massacre, he hated them afterwards, and he'll hate them forever. He doesn't get it, he really fucking doesn't-

And then Kakashi tells them why they failed the bell test. How it was a logical ruse, and how they passed because of Sakura's idea. It was Sakura that passed through the logical ruse, she was smart enough to see through it and he wasn't. How, she's literally an airhead, there's nothing going on in her head at all-

And then she gets tree-walking on her first try, and it makes his blood boil.

Sure, she made top kunoichi. Iruka-sensei even said out loud that if it wasn't for her crush on him, she would've made Rookie of the Year instead of him.

But he's from a prestigious clan (notanymorenotanymoreit'sjusthimandthatbastard-) and has years of chakra training ahead of her. He was handed a sharp kunai at the age of three and taught to manipulate his chakra from the day his parents found out he could. He's had months and years of practice, time, and precision. She's just a civilian, a girl with no clan and no notoriety to speak of and yet-

He tries his best to not think about it. She goes as far to the top branch in the canopy of the tree, walks all the way back down, as he watches Kakashi ruffle her hair and tell her to start her meditation to expand her (smaller, smaller and pitiful and weak and yet you still-) chakra stores, as he waits for a reward that isn't coming.

As he waits for a two-finger poke to the forehead that he knows isn't coming.

🍅

He doesn't know what kicked his lazy ass sensei into training them properly, but he's glad it happened, because Kami above, he's hurting in places he didn't know he could hurt in.

Going through the same kata he's known since birth was repetitive and boring, plus, he felt like he was constantly hitting stopgaps. Additionally, the only person who matched him in taijutsu spars in the academy was the Hyuuga Heiress, so he didn't have a metric for how good he actually was.

The academy allowed him to get complacent, and he will not allow it to happen again, because as soon as Kakashi got started on physical conditioning with them? Spars with Usuratonkachi and the Airhead had gotten ten times worse.

First of all, even if the dobe didn't have a set taijutsu style, he was wild and unpredictable, and if Sasuke didn't watch his step he would've broke his jaw a long time ago. He hits hard, and never pulls his punches against him, forcing him to adapt to the situation as fast as possible unless he wants a set of broken ribs. Fights with the idiot often leave him feeling breathless, and on the days when they both weren't quite tired after training had concluded, they'd sneak off to a random training ground and have fights that exhausted them both.

Sometimes, the hits would carry a bit more weight. Like every piece of eye contact meant something, and every hit felt like opening the deepest parts of himself for the diamond-blue eyed boy to see.

He hated it.

He'd never have nightmares on days like those after attempting to sleep.

Then there was the issue of the Airhead. In the beginning, he would always win, but after Kakashi's more intense physical conditioning when it came to her, even if she would lose, she would get good hits in before she finally went down.

Fighting Usuratonkachi was like fighting in the eye of a hurricane. Fighting Airhead was like the ocean, forcing you to adapt to the roughness of its waves. It's thrilling, but in a way that fighting Naruto isn't.

The Airhead herself doesn't even know her own fucking strength. There have been multiple times, sometimes within the same day, when the pinkette would hit just a bit too hard and break something, then Kakashi would have to drag them to the hospital to get looked at by a healer. Every hit felt like the last one, and even if the dobe is the faster of the two, Airhead hits ten times harder than he does and it forces him to improve on his own strength, because every time he hits her it looks like it didn't do shit. Soon enough, their spars begin to end in draws and his chest will feel like it's going to cave in, but he'll know what he needs to improve on, and he can finally get better so he can kill That Man and avenge his clan.

He also hated it. He was supposed to be better, stronger, faster, That Man was already slitting throats with his swords at his age, he can't afford-

Some days, fighting Airhead makes him feel weightless, and on days like those after going back to the compound, he doesn't have nightmares either.

He notices what the dobe told her about the food, and not having enough to pay. He stopped holding a grudge against the girl for the risk she took after Naruto got strapped to the tree trunk after the conclusion of the bell test.

Then Ino comes over, and he's already bracing himself for the screaming match between her and Airhead, then Ino's going to go for the blonde idiot, then it's gonna be a big thing and after a long day of D-Rank missions he just wants to go back to the compound-

"Top kunoichi with no skill, yet you're so pigheaded and dumb that you can't use your mind to form any kind of strategy. Naruto can run laps around you with no sweat. If you and Naruto were to fight to the death right now, I'd put everything I own on the line in favor of Naruto winning. Also, you don't own Sasuke. Nobody does. You don't own him, I sure as hell don't, and Naruto most definitely doesn't. You're already washed up before your career even started. You could've kept walking, but you chose to stop and start an unnecessary argument, for what? To prove a point?"

He's never heard her say anything with such vitriol in his life and he's known of her existence for over six years now. He defended him, but not in a fangirl obsessive crush way, but in a basic human decency kind of way.

He honestly doesn't know how to feel about it.

"Leave me and my team the fuck alone, Ino. You don't get to insult whoever you want any more without consequences. I mean it." He tracks her movements as she tells Kakashi-sensei goodbye, and raises a hand in farewell to Naruto, and he thinks.

Since the team was formed, she hasn't blushed at him once. It's confusing, and threw him off, but he's not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He returns to his tomatoes in his ramen, until the aforementioned blonde idiot whispers right next to him, and he knows Kakashi-sensei can hear his voice.

"You're surprised, right? No verbal spar, no nothing, just a verbal smackdown. You might not wanna hear this, or do, whatever. I don't really care about your personal opinion anyways. But the fights between Sakura and Ino about you were never really about you at all. Well, they were at first, but they've stopped being about your stuck-up ass for a while." Naruto murmurs, and it makes Sasuke stop eating and sit still.

Huh. Well, isn't that a thought?

He does kick him under the table for insulting him, though. The idiot deserves it.

Then they finally get a C-Rank at the dobe's insistence, which he agrees with, because he doesn't know how many times he can run after that stupid cat without killing it, and he can smell the lie a mile away. The client insults the shinobi that are supposed to be protecting him, and he can just tell from the look in his eye that this mission is about to go horribly wrong.

He's glad he isn't the only one. Kakashi-sensei is suspicious of everything, but Airhead's been glaring at the older man since he got there, and dobe's shoulders have been stiff since they've left the village walls. He himself is eyeing every tree, because he knows something is wrong, he can feel it in the air, something is coming, and he doesn't know if he'll be able to stop it-

And then the enemy ninja jump out of the puddle.

Sasuke moves.

However, it's not enough. His blindspot isn't covered even as he dives into the fight, spamming kicks and punches and pushing them away because goddammit he finally has the chance to prove himself, to see if he's ready, if he can leave this stupid village behind and hurry up and catch up to get on that bastard's level so he can put a hole through his chest the same way he did with their mother-

Then the blonde idiot gets poisoned. For a moment, he sees long, black hair pooling on the floor as an eight-year-old Sasuke tries to stem the blood flow of his mother's stab wound in the chest. He blinks, and the dobe's bleeding purple but he's still getting up as Kakashi-sensei forces him back down so he can drain the poison out of his body and out of the corner of his eye he can see the enemy nin flying at him and at the client and there's nothing he can do to stop it-

There's a surge of chakra; he feels it in his bones. His head snaps, and he can feel a dull throbbing at his neck for the force and the quickness of it, but he elects to ignore it.

There's the Airhead, forming a shaky snake seal. He can't hear what she's saying, not with the roar in his ears refusing to die down, but when she finally finishes speaking for what feels like forever, the enemy nin are pinned to the trees with chakra-filled tree roots and her eyes are on fire and he can't look away-

Until he does. Then he looks at the roots that have covered them from head to toe, and he makes a realization.

In the Uchiha Clan Archives, there are documents that date back to before the founding of Konoha, as they are a founding clan. He's read them from cover to cover and front to back, knows his clan history like he actually lived through it all, and suddenly, he knows what he's looking at.

In the back of the archives, where Uchiha Madara and Uchiha Izuna's documents, notes, observations, and laws helped passed remain, there's mentions of something. It's common knowledge that Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama were rivals back then, and if anyone were able to check the old Senju clan grounds without being fiercely murdered by the seals placed on it, there would most definitely be notes on the Sharingan and other Uchiha-related techniques.

Just like how Senju clan kekkei genkai and techniques have notes that live in the Uchiha clan grounds.

He knows exactly what the fucking idiot just did. He knows exactly what she just used.

He tries his best to ignore it, but he should've known from when they first met Tazuna.

This mission is going to go horribly wrong.

Kakashi hated the idea of having a team at first, because he knew precisely who the council was going to sit him with.

The last Uchiha, his sensei's son, and a random person to round out the numbers.

Sometimes he wonders if clairvoyance is a skill of the Third Hokage's, because here he is, draining the poison out of Naruto's chest even though he knows the Kyuubi would've already expelled it by now, as he just watched his inconspicuous, supposed to be not-interesting student pull off a functionally extinct kekkei genkai that has only naturally manifested in the man that holds the title for being the God of Shinobi.

He might cry, or stab Tazuna, or go rogue and never go back to the village. Maybe all three, if he can manage it.

Now, as he looks at the green chakra running through the roots of the aggressive trees around them, he thinks Rin and Obito and Minato-sensei and Kushina-nee wouldn't blame him if he just abandoned the village right then and there.

He wasn't originally going to train them. Maybe do the bare minimum of teaching, leave the civilian to her own devices. Her chakra control was exceptional; she would've figured it out.

This was his original plan, until he was called for a meeting in front of the Elders, and Danzo, and the fucking Hokage.

"Clearly, Hatake-san isn't doing his due diligence in training the next generation of shinobi. Uchiha should already be well on his way in being well-versed in the sharingan techniques, and the kyuubi container should've passed basic chakra control weeks ago. I say we transfer the tutelage of the two to someone more capable of playing to their strengths."

Not a chance.

Not a fucking chance.

He ignores the howling thing in the back of his head that is demanding Danzo's head on a silver platter.

"The man has a point." Elder Homura says, and if it wasn't for Kakashi being trained to be a good little soldier, his head would've flown across the meeting table. "And that girl on their team. She seems to have amazing chakra control. Maybe we start training her in diplomacy arts to prepare her in Hyuuga Clan customs?"

Kakashi knows what that means.

Kunoichi with good "qualities" often come in two packages. The first? Clan kunoichi. The kind that have backing, the kind that don't get sent into deep cover or espionage or seduction because Noble Clans would never allow their kids to do such a thing. The other package? Clanless kunoichi, or kami forbid, Civilian kunoichi were swiped up as quick as possible if not in active duty, or not as important yet.

To be raised and trained in diplomacy.

To be trained to help create and raise the next generation of shinobi.

Kakashi knows the exact type of chakra control the Hyuuga Clan tend to look for, and Sakura fits the bill perfectly.

(He knows, he knows what it's like. He knows, because Minato-sensei and Kushina-nee almost committed treason before the war happened because Hyuuga Hiashi tried using Minato-sensei's work to become Hokage as an excuse to try to rope Rin into marrying one of their Main House members.)

(If it wasn't for Kushina-nee stepping into that very same Clan Council meeting with all nine of the Kyuubi's tails out, her purple eyes gone crimson red, Adamantine Chains moving behind her and a hurricane fuuton jutsu in her hand, he's sure they would've suceeded in making Rin marry one of them.)

(He knows, how bad they can make refusing to do so, to the point that you'd have no choice to accept such a deal. He resolved to train those kids to the bone after that, because nobody will be taking the last of the people he loved.)

He watches Sakura unfold from the snake seal, just as shaky as it was when she formed it first and looked towards them in slight fear and contentment. From behind him, Naruto taps his arm twice, which is enough of a signal for Kakashi to stop hovering over the kid. He watches out of the corner of his eye as the blonde gets up, the wound on his chest already healing as if nothing happened to begin with, and he gapes at both Sakura's form and the chunin now trapped in Senju-fueled power.

Tazuna also looks particularly scared, and he will be dealing with that particular bag of worms once he's done with his three charges.

"Sakura, can you hear me?" He walks over to her and kneels down on one knee. Showing his back to those chunin goes against years of both Hatake and ANBU training, but he'll forgive himself just this once for how delicate the current situation is.

"Yeah, I can hear you, sensei." Good, no disassociation, meaning he can proceed. As he fixates his look on the enemy nin, Kirigakure sent mercenaries by the looks of it, his little Uchiha beats him to the punch before he can properly articulate his thoughts into words.

"So, since when were you a Senju and can use several decade old functionally extinct kekkei genkai?" Sasuke jabs, eyes fixated on her with an emotion Kakashi isn't able to name. Judging from Naruto's noise of confusion, he gets the gravity of the situation, but he doesn't really know what Sasuke is talking about, though. From Sakura's flinch though, she knows what the Uchiha is talking about and that's enough for Kakashi to force his way through this conversation.

"We currently don't have time to discuss this now, especially not out in the open." He's still not totally sure if Danzo's trigger-happy weirdos haven't followed them out here yet. "Once we get to Tazuna-san's house, we will be discussing this. Trust within a team is important, okay, Sakura-chan?" He sees the pinkette nod, and he can finally address the elephant in the room.

"Tazuna."

The old man flinches, and after he says the man's name, his team collectively turns to glare at him. They're a bit too young to have this much paranoia and suspicion, but between Sasuke and the massacre, the treatment Naruto's been suffering since birth, and whatever backstory makes Sakura carry self-hate like he himself carries grief, it's not entirely unexpected. However, it's still good, because it teaches them to ask themselves the real questions, and to discern possible threats.

He should be reasonable, a reasonable jounin sensei, and give Tazuna the benefit of the doubt.

But he was raised with Hatake White Chakra running through his veins, he was taught to bite first and ask questions later, he was taught to be a wolf and to never let prey or enemies get away if he could help it, especially if their threatening pack. And for all the bullshit in the world, these kids are the last shreds of love he has for Konoha left.

Integrity and future political maneuvering are the only reason why Kakashi doesn't murder Tazuna in broad daylight and take his team and high tail it back to Konoha. He could probably bullshit his way into avoiding a murder charge.

"Tazuna-sama, I'm not sure if you're aware of how we rank missions in the shinobi world, but that attack just now doesn't put you in a good light." He can see the man trembling. Good, let him be scared. If it were up to Kakashi, his body would be hanging off a chidori.

"When we agreed to take this mission, it was assumed to be a standard C-Rank. Protection detail. Regular people, maybe a few bandits here and there. But those two? Trained shinobi, chunin mercenaries sent straight from the Bloody Mist." He keeps his eye trained on the supposed bridge-builder, because Kami knows he could be lying about that too. "We send genin on C-Ranks. Kids, as you can see here."

"Regular hitmen and the occasional bands of bandits? That's one thing. Trained shinobi? That's an entirely different assignment. At least a B-Rank, maybe even A-Rank depending on who exactly you need protection from." He gives his signature eye-smile, but he's scowling underneath the mask. Surprisingly, he hears Naruto speak up.

"We're important, Old Man. Me, and my teammates. Politically important, you adults like to call it." Naruto says lowly, and if Tazuna wasn't scared before, he was terrified and pissing his pants now. "The kind of important that keeps us on surveillance back home. If the ninja that's actually after you is more than what we can handle and me and my teammates were to die, Konoha won't let it go."

Using politics to get the man to confess. He's just like Minato sometimes, it makes Kakashi happy and depressed at the exact same time.

"I-I-I-It wasn't my i-intention to cause this-"

"Well too bad, you did." Sasuke and Sakura say at the same time, and he knows they're trying to look threatening, but they look so cute when they're trying to be scary. "What Naruto said, you wrinkly bag of shit," Well, damn, Sakura. "Is absolutely true. We're important, so if you don't want the Hokage on your ass for almost getting some of the most important kids of the village killed, I suggest you start talking."

And talking he does. With it, Kakashi does get a clearer picture of the situation.

Capitalism bordering on dictatorship, with the expenses of Wave being taken advantage of and scraped bare as a result. He didn't have enough money to pay for a B-Rank or an A-Rank, so a C-Rank it was.

It doesn't mean Kakashi doesn't want to kill him any less. So, to avoid causing a possible international incident, he decides that the kids should choose.

"Alright kids, it's up to you. Do we turn around and report the mission as being mis-ranked, or do we continue on and take Tazuna-san home anyways?" He's almost expecting a resounding decision to continue, because the idea of being morally ambiguous hasn't graced these kids yet but gets the opposite reaction instead.

"We should kill him." Sakura says bitterly, and Kakashi's singular visible eyebrow raises faster than he can control it. What?

"Sakura-chan, I'm pretty sure killing him is gonna get us charged with the murder of someone who's payin' us to protect him." Naruto drawls, and Kakashi didn't know that Naruto could even drawl in the first place.

"Nobody died when we fought those ninja, and it's not like they're going to get out of a legendary kekkei genkai trap any soon, so I say we continue." Sasuke snarls, and Kakashi reasonably knows that's not why. He's eager to prove himself, eager to spill blood so he can delude himself into thinking he'll be able to kill Itachi at this point and then haul his ass out of the village at the earliest convenience. Unfortunately for the young Uchiha, he won't be going anywhere as far as Kakashi is concerned.

"Kakashi-sensei is probably an S-Rank jounin," Got it in one, she might be his favorite. "You're the last person in a bloodline full of powerful doujutsu users," the boogeyman that is Uchiha Itachi settles over everyone's shoulders except for Tazuna's. "Naruto was put into Level Three of the academy for a reason. If we killed Tazuna right now and pleaded our case to the Hokage, we could probably get off scot-free because of how important you guys are."

Dismissal of herself entirely, he'll have to work on that with her, even if he himself isn't the most emotionally competent person in the world. Regardless, he is a little concerned, mainly because she's too much like him from when he was younger for comfort, but he pops her bubble anyways.

"Maa, Sakura-chan, I didn't take you for being bloodthirsty," She blushes, and his one visible eye looks at his team with barely hidden amusement, "But Naruto is correct, we are not allowed to kill a client," No matter how much he currently wants this man dead. "So, do we go back, or do we continue?"

There was a moment of deliberation, mainly from his other two charges, before they both come to a decision.

"We can move on, I think the cap-off of ranked shinobi trying 'ta kill this guy should end at whatever skill level those guys were, and if Sakura-chan can hold them off, then any other ninja shouldn't be a problem." Subtle dismissal of his teammate's skills, even if he looks like he didn't even realize he did it. He catches Sakura's scowl before it drops, and he knows he's got his work cut out for him if he wants them to get along before Danzo tries to get his greedy little fucking hands on them.

"Sakura?"

"We can move on. Like Naruto said, if the danger level stays at those ninja, then we should be fine." Her tone is clipped, and she stomps off towards the front of the formation without so much of another word. Naruto flinches, which is good, because at least he knows he did something wrong, even if he doesn't know what. Sasuke just scoffs, in pure arrogant Uchiha fashion, and takes up the rear with Naruto in tow.

He already wants to go home.

Please, he begs in his head. Don't let this mission get any worse.

Chapter Text

The boat ride to Nami no Kuni was uncomfortable.

Sasuke alternated from staring Sakura down from where he stood behind her, to glaring at Naruto, to staring at the ocean surrounding them, and repeating the pattern. Sakura was sitting on the front deck, knees drawn up to her chest and focusing intently on the ocean, so she won't look at her black-haired teammate. Naruto was restless, playing with his fingers and clicking his long nails against the wood of the boat, but stayed put as he understood the mood and gravity of the current situation.

Kakashi had finally put away his Icha Icha Paradise book, in favor of sorting through what he's going to have to do to keep this team, these kids safe when they get back and further down the line.

Sakura's self-hate thing has to be nipped in the bud while I still can. It's one thing to be aware of your shortcomings and where you stand skill-wise on the team, but completely invalidating yourself is a surefire way to get you and your comrades killed.

Naruto's refusal to completely trust his teammates. I understand where he's coming from (you were supposed to be there, Minato-sensei and Kushina-nee said he'd be in good hands with you-) but trust is the foundation of a team.

Sasuke is going to need the most work. Dismissing both of your teammates is one thing, complete distrust is another but being arrogant to the point where one person excelling in a certain area more than you makes you genuinely upset is a problem within itself.

Sure, I've been training them. Physical conditioning. Laps around the training ground, laps around the village both with and without weights, swimming for Sakura to get her stamina up, and quizzing about survival skills outside of Konoha. Naruto's are decent, though I suspect that's a developed skill from village mistreatment then anything he's learned in the academy. Sakura knows, but he'd expected her to because her theoretical and paper grades were stellar. Sasuke has zero idea, but that's simply because of prestigious clan upbringing.

...He's not sure if they completely trust him either. He's going to have to work on that with them too, if he wants to keep them out of harm's way.

Eventually, they make it off the boat and into Wave. Tazuna begins walking, which prompts the four shinobi to follow him. As they follow him, they pass through the town. Boarded windows, shops permanently closed, kids with no shoes running around. As they walk, the adults watching them simply look and turn around, like questioning who they are isn't worth wasting their breath on.

"It's like everyone here has completely given up..." Naruto mutters. Tazuna fixes the blonde with a look.

"That's because everyone here has given up, kid. No use in wasting breath to question strangers when every breath reminds you of how empty your stomach is." He says matter-of-factly. Naruto just hangs his head low. He knows what that's like, for every breath you take reminds you that there's nothing for you to eat. From Sakura's indescribable look in her eye as she watches the kids on the side street beg for scraps, he's guessing she knows too.

Sasuke looks at the kids in disgust. Naruto growls. He hates privileged assholes. They never know what they have until they lose it. Even if he lost his entire clan in one night, at least his ribs aren't visible through his tank tops.

Tazuna bends the corner and takes them to a house near the coast of the village, where the bridge-building efforts can be seen. Near the coastline, a wooden house can be seen. Through the window, a woman with jet black hair notices them, and she runs outside to greet them with tears lining her eyes.

"Father! You made it back safely; I was so worried." She frets over the older man, and the three kids shift uncomfortably at the sight. Kakashi inwardly sighs. This is what happens when the majority of his team are orphans. Simple displays of affection like this would make them squirm.

Although, Kakashi notes. Sakura looks mightily uncomfortable too. Something to keep note of.

When the woman finally notices them, she collects herself quickly and goes back to her calmness from before she left her home. "Welcome to Nami no Kuni. My name is Tsunami, thank you for bringing my father back home safely, shinobi-sans. Please, come in." At the invitation, Kakashi moves in, but his genin move particularly slower than he does, all three of them looking at the outside of the house in distrust. He sighs inwardly. A lot more work in the distrust department, it seems.

"It should be fine, you three." All three of them look up at him slowly. "They are civilians, the possibility of them having anything that could hurt you is slim to none. Besides that, Sakura had already stated it earlier. I'm an S-Rank jounin, I can handle any danger that will come to us."

At his words, they begin to move into the house slowly, and he lags behind so he can be at their backs. He sees them relax minutely at the action, and it puts his mind at ease. At least they trust me to watch their backs.

"The attic has been cleaned out for you, shinobi-sans, and there's futons set up. If there's anything wrong with it, let me know and I will fix it right away." Tsunami says, sending a placating smile their way. Naruto nods, moving to the stairs. Sakura bows, as polite as ever, and moves to follow her blonde teammate. Sasuke doesn't say anything and moves anyways. Kakashi sighs.

"Thank you, Tsunami-san. We'll let you know."

As Kakashi reaches the attic, he finds his kids have already removed their mission packs and placed them in a corner of the room. The futons have already been laid out, five of them sitting near the windowsill. He sighs once more. Time for a difficult conversation, he thinks.

"Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura. Grab a futon each and place it on the ground, we have things to discuss." Sasuke glares at his pink teammate, Sakura flinches minutely, and Naruto simply sighs. He's going to feel like the biggest asshole after this is over. He's always been dedicated to the asshole trope, purposefully showing up three hours late everywhere, skipping out on tabs at the bar, and being insufferable to any authority figure, but this time he finds that he actually doesn't want to be one.

He looks outside the window in the attic, and even if he doesn't see anything out of the presumed ordinary, he still puts up a privacy seal, completely silencing what's going on in the room. He still isn't entirely convinced Danzo didn't send one of his bastard ROOT agents after them to "track the progress of the jinchuuriki and the Uchiha" like he always claims to do. He should've taken his head off of his body while he had the chance.

"What's that seal, sensei? Is it a silencer?" He looks at his shortest student, blue eyes shining in what is awe? No, it's curiosity.

An interest in sealing, huh? He still has all of Kushina and Minato's sealing stuff. He technically isn't supposed to give it to the blonde until he's of age, but if he brings a couple books at a time to training...

"Yes, Naruto, it's sort of a silencer. It's a privacy seal, because what we're about to talk about is sensitive information."

The heavy atmosphere settles back in. At least they understand the severity of what's going on. He sighs and begins.

"First off, I apologize for the lack of training within the first few weeks of me receiving you as my genin team. It is a fault on my part, and there won't be any more of it in the future, as you three may have seen." No signs of negative reception yet, but there's a barely-there nod from the Uchiha. He expected as such, there's nothing more the Uchiha would want besides training.

"Now, to discuss what occurred in the forest." A flinch. "Sasuke, for response time and general combat, you did relatively well, good job. Naruto, while you did freeze up," A head hangs low. Time to run damage control. "You quickly came back into the fight and did what you could to cover Sasuke before you were poisoned. Good, we'll work on your response time."

"...Thanks, Kakashi-sensei." The silver-haired man nods, and then he moves to his female student.

"Sakura." The girl looks up, and she has a terrified look in her eye. "Running to the client was perfect, as it is the mission objective, however-"

"Having a kekkei genkai that is extinct is not perfect. How the fuck did you acquire mokuton of all things? Are you biologically a Senju?" Sasuke growls, and his voice level increases with every word he says. Kakashi, however, clears his throat, and Sasuke closes his mouth in favor of glaring at his teammate.

"While that's not the way I would've worded it, Sasuke is correct. The manifestation of mokuton was nowhere in your academy file. I understand why you would hide it," Especially for the state of the village right now. Kami forbid he woke up the next morning and Sakura was gone because Danzo found out she had mokuton and took her the same way he did with Tenzo, he might've actually murdered the entire village except the kids or would've died trying.

"But we cannot have distrust on the team. Not knowing the full scope of the skills on your team could mean life or death. This also means that you won't discredit yourself out of the team. You are just as important as Naruto and Sasuke." Her eyes widen in surprise, and he almost pats her head, but refrains from doing so. Kami, why didn't he talk about this sooner?

"I'm giving you the time to explain now. Here's what I'm going to ask, and I want you to answer honestly, it's kind of the whole point. When did mokuton manifest, how long have you had it for, and why choose to reveal you have it now?"

Fucking shit, Inner curses in her head. I was banking on the fact that he'd be paying attention to Naruto and Sasuke the most, so he'd forget about it.

So was I, Sakura thought bitterly. Do you think we can avoid telling the complete truth? I don't wanna sound like a headcase, the last place I want to be at is T&I.

I'm confident in our mental abilities, but there's no way we're outsmarting an S-Rank jounin. Let's just tell the truth so we can get over it. If push comes to shove, we can threaten to burn his stupid porn if he tries to send us to T&I.

Okay, l-let's do this.

"So, ever since the academy, I've been labeled as an 'airhead.' Don't look at me like that, Kakashi-sensei. This is relevant to the whole kekkei genkai thing. Anyways, there's a reason I was always spaced out and I was never really all the way present." A quirk of the eyebrow from her sensei was enough prompt for her to continue.

"It's because the trees were talking to me."

Silence.

"I know how crazy that sounds. I know that makes me sound insane," As insane as she can be, considering there's a whole other version of her inside of her head that probably has an official diagnosis name in some book created by the Yamanaka. "But I'm telling the truth. The trees would whisper to me, say how I'm 'nature's child' and it was intended by the first for them to be free. Every single one had chakra, and they'd speak to me all the time. I didn't know how to talk back, but I figured it out sometime in my second year. I never was actively able to control them though-"

"-Until today." Kakashi-sensei finishes softly. Sakura nods.

"I was never able to 'set them free' or at least that's the way the trees worded it. I didn't know it was going to end up as a whole fucking kekkei genkai, I thought it was just a chakra thing. But today, today was different. Today, when those ninja attacked us, the trees told me to use them..."

"And you did?" Kakashi finishes. Sakura nods once more.

"I did. I told them I didn't know how, they told me the whole 'it was intended by the first' thing again and said that I had the balance like the first, and they said to use them to bridge the gap. I've only done that hand seal once in my life, and I never knew I had mokuton beforehand either." She mutters at the last part, giving a sidelong glance to the Uchiha that sits on the futon across from her. The aforementioned Uchiha looks away, refusing to meet her gaze. In that second, Sakura gets on her knees and bows her head to the floor. Kakashi's singular eye widens minutely.

"Please, don't tell anyone. I've been keeping it a secret since I was six, and I don't want to be sent to be interrogated because they think I'm schizo or something, I'll do literally anything. Anything you ask, I don't care how bad it is, just please don't tell anyo-"

"Sakura." Kakashi cuts in, actually choosing to put emotion into his voice instead of his usual dry tone. "I'm not going to tell anyone. I understand why you would hide this. It also explains you constantly zoning out during training. Raise your head, you're not in trouble." He says, and the pinkette does.

Damn right we're not in trouble. If he had said anything crazy, I would've found a way for us to kill him, S-Rank jounin or not.

We can't kill an S-Rank jounin, Inner.

We can't or we won't?

Both. I trust that he won't tell anyone, but we literally do not have the skill. Even if we did, I think we have enough bodies on our hands. We don't need to kill anyone else.

"There's something else that I'd like to speak to you about, but it can wait until later." Well, that's not good, Sakura thinks wryly. "That goes for you too, Sasuke. For now, we'll move on. Naruto, I'm discussing this out in the open because I don't want this to happen again." She can see the orange-clad boy stiffen from where he sits on her right, and even she is mildly curious about what Kakashi-sensei has to say.

"While I don't think you did it on purpose," Which he hopes he didn't, because if he did do it on purpose, it'll be a long day in hell before he'll treat a teammate like that in his presence again. "It's important to know that dismissing the skills of your teammate is asking for complications down the line. I'll make it known now, dismissing Sakura's skill and ability to hold off enemies cannot and will not be tolerated." Seeing the blonde almost cry is almost enough for him to let up on his tone, but he doesn't. This is critical, if he can't get them to at least acknowledge each other, there's no hope in getting them to work together. Teamwork is the only way this is going to work, the only way he'll be able to keep them safe, to keep the Elders' hands far away from them.

Tears well up in the eyes of the blonde, but he doesn't let them spill. Instead, he turns his body towards his teammate and claps his hands together in a praying gesture. "I am so sorry, Sakura-chan. I didn't mean it like that! I won't do it again, I promise, 'ttebayo!"

She feels Inner soften inside of her, and it's enough to reflect it on the outside as well. Taking a page from Kakashi's book, she reaches up and pats the blonde's head, giving him a surefire nod and a soft smile to accompany it. The boy gives a wobbly smile back, and the silver-haired jounin can see the seedlings of trust being planted. Good.

Now to see if he can get through to Sasuke.

"Well!" He claps his hands once, and all three kids turn to face him. "That's enough for now. Rest up, Tsunami-san will be coming up with dinner soon, then we'll sleep. Make sure to try and get as much in as possible. Just because we're not in Konoha, doesn't mean training is over." His visible eye curls up, which is enough of an indication of a smile, but by now they know that smile promises nothing but pain and suffering. Still, they make their way to organize themselves into where they want to be in the room until dinner.

🐺

He doesn't wake up slowly. Shinobi lose the privilege of getting to be slow-to-wake very early, not when the time it takes to wake up could mean life or death for you and your comrades in active combat.

Which is why he immediately knows that something is wrong the minute he wakes up.

He rises to his feet, making sure to shift his weight so his steps become silent as he walks. He makes it to the window and climbs out, being careful of the traps that Naruto put on it. He's seen the traps that Naruto's left on his own windows, and while they tend to be less dangerous in Konoha because he can't lethally hurt civilians even if they're trying to break into his apartment, who knows what type of hellish trap he put on it since he's in a location he doesn't know.

He lands on the grass once he's out, the crisp night air hitting what's visible of his face. He walks around the perimeter of the house seven times, before coming back to where he was standing just a few moments ago.

He's been a ninja longer than he's been a regular human being. Genin at five, chunin at six, and jounin at twelve. He didn't make to twenty-six in this profession without trusting his instincts.

There's someone here, he thinks, annoyance colored in his thoughts. Someone that really shouldn't be here.

In a swift movement, he drops his mask, his canine tooth biting into the hardened pad of his thumb. He squeezes it slightly, letting the blood drip onto the grass. In that moment, he makes seven different hand signs, and his summons pop out of the smoke that follows.

"Boss? You took another suicide mission? I thought we already talked 'bout this." Pakkun drawls, eyes boring into Kakashi's grey. Kakashi chuckles dryly, Pakkun's always so straightforward. He's glad for it, it's kept him on track and present for all these years.

"Nope, not a suicide mission. More like a mis-ranked mission gone wrong. This is Nami no Kuni, I'm here with my genin team."

"They gave the boss puppies?" Bull speaks this time, a rumble in the dog's throat as he does. "Only Kami will save those pups at this rate."

A noise of agreement comes from Guruko. "May Kami save us all, the boss is gonna ruin three perfectly good pups."

He drags a hand across his face in exasperation. "Yare yare, we can talk about how much of a bad idea it is to give me kids later. For now, I summoned you guys here for a reason." That makes all seven dogs perk up in attention, and for a moment, they go back to the war mindset they had before Kakashi lost the two final people he loved.

"Pakkun, Bull, Guruko, Akino, Uhei, Shiba, Urushi. There's somebody watching our team, someone that has no place following us. I don't have a scent for you to track, just call it a hunch." The implications of that rest in the chests of his tracker ninken. They know what that means. Nine times out of ten, Kakashi's hunches are correct. Nine times out of ten, Kakashi's hunches lead to dead bodies and the smell of charred flesh from a chidori.

"All of you, into the forest. I don't know if it's one of Danzo's ROOT bastards, if it's a paid mercenary that recognizes me from the bingo book, and I honestly don't care. However, once you find them, treat them with extreme prejudice and alert me if you find them."

"Yes, boss. Alright, you all heard the man, move out." Pakkun growls, and all of his summons leap into the trees. Kakashi moves into a leisurely pace, keeping the chakra signatures of his three charges in his mental periphery as he strolls into the forest.

He walks for about ten minutes, chakra thrumming under his skin as he waits for a report from one of his ninken. Suddenly, he feels three tugs in one of the chakra pathways in his mind. A result of the Hatake clan's... less than human roots results in this particular connection.

In his mind, there are eight specific chakra pathways for his ninken to tug on if they find something and he can't reverse summon himself to their location. The strongest one is Pakkun's, of course, and the weakest one is Bisuke's, but that's because he hasn't had much time to dedicate to him yet.

There's a simple code. One tug means suspicion, and that the area is compromised. Two tugs mean they found something they think is important enough for him to look at.

Three tugs?

We found someone. Give chase.

He's learned to trust them. He's put more trust in his ninken pack then his actual human comrades and has come back alive too many times to count with all of his fingers and toes. If they tell him to give chase, he'll chase for as long as he needs to.

There's a pull on his chakra core, and then he's moving, the shunshin coiling in the soles of his feet. When he comes up in a new location, he lands next to Akino, his ninken running in bird formation. He sets himself in the middle, sprinting through the forest after their intended catch.

He's a wolf, born and bred, and not letting prey get away is baked into his bones.

At the front, Pakkun clicks his tongue at Bull, and when Bull jumps from the thickness of the tree branches and slams his paws into the ground. From there, the ground breaks apart, effectively encapsulating their target completely. Kakashi recognizes the jutsu for what it is.

Doton Kekkai: Doro Domu.

As the chase comes to a close, Kakashi jumps from his position and down in front of the dome. He gives Bull a few scratches behind his ear, and he snaps twice, which was enough of a signal for Bull to reverse the jutsu. When Kakashi comes down to kneel, he grabs his target by the front of their jacket and forcefully brings their head forward.

He should've known, he scowls. As a shinobi, you're never truly alone. Why? Because there will always be a ROOT agent somewhere in your business.

From where he stands, his ninken pack de-summon themselves, content that he has it under control. As soon as they do, he makes a singular handsign, and hostile raiton-natured chakra erupts in the palm of his hand. Before the agent even had a chance, Kakashi shoved his hand through his chest and felt the agent's heart stop as he did so.

Danzo had better keep his grimey fucking hands away from those kids if he knows what's good for him.

The morning after that disaster, Team 7 is up bright and early by the pier. Sasuke and Naruto are doing stretches on Kakashi's order, while Kakashi pulls his female student over for a discussion.

"You're the most mentally right person on the team, as mentally right as shinobi can be. You're aware of your shortcomings, and instead of simply getting upset, you work towards closing the gap and finding ways to cover your blind spots. It's good, amazing even, but there's a line in between knowing what to improve on and downright hating yourself." The widening of her eyes lets him know he hit the mark, and it only makes him want to use his chidori on himself. Jesus, just how bad of a teacher was he?

"Don't be scared, Sakura. I'm not one to pry about why you do it, but what we're going to do is we're going to nip it in the bud. You're just as important as the boys and immediately dismissing yourself- don't give me that look, when Naruto mentioned the team being politically important you mentioned everyone on the team except you. You have valuable insight, you're also the smartest, and you have the best chakra control. Really, I'm proud of you, but I want to make sure that you're proud of yourself too."

Tears well in her eyes, and she can only nod minutely under Kakashi's stare. The man proceeds to squat and ruffle her hair, which makes her squeak and reach up to attempt to bat his hand away, which only makes the headpats turn to noogies. "Don't cry, I'm not mad at you. You'll be fine, and it'll be fine. I can promise you that." She gives the man a smile, and he reciprocated with an eye-smile of his own, before sending her back with the boys to begin her own stretches.

They stretch for ten more minutes, just to allow Sakura to loosen herself up, and once he deems it satisfactory, he leans against the tree trunk to give them their official orders for the day.

Unfortunately for him, Sakura isn't listening.

So, maybe we can trust Lazy-sensei after all.

Yeah, maybe. We already knew he was strong but if he's going out of the way to make sure we aren't still drowning in self-hatred then maybe we'll start trusting him.

Tuh, good luck to him on that one. I've been sitting in this self-hatred shit since we were eight, it's not going to go away with a few headpats and encouraging words, as much as the headpats were really nice.

Y'know, in the days leading up to this mission, Naruto noticed we were upset.

There's no way he'd know. It's not like our family made a big deal out of it.

Well, they did, just not in a 'shinobi politics' way, it's not like they'd know or care.

Honestly, I'm surprised we woke up sad that day. I expected us to be happy.

You think we'd be happy on the anniversary of our uncle's death?

Yeah, considering we're the reason why he's dead.

That's true, but it doesn't mean we don't get to be sad. It's not like we were happy to do it.

Speak for yourself, I was more than happy to.

I've been a part of your head since you turned six, we were not happy to do it and you know we weren't.

It was necessary for our survival. Plus, it's not like Kaa-san and Tou-san were gonna do anything about it.

D'ya think that's why we haven't gotten a letter from them in months?

It's been four years since then, you'd think they'd finally get over it.

Yeah, but they're civilian. You already know we were practically born to be a fighter no matter the context.

If they were dead, we would've already known. One of the traders in Yukigakure would've sent a letter to the house.

Not home, but the house. Kami above, we're fucked in the head.

Because of uncle's death, because of the self-hate, because of you, because of the lack of a home, or something else?

All of the above, Outer. All of the above.

And there's isn't a way to fix it.

Maybe there is. I felt the burn in your chest when Lazy-sensei said he was proud of you. We really are that starved.

Do you think we can make a home out of this team, Inner...?

We can certainly try. And telling from how hard Lazy-sensei is trying to have us get along, maybe it's more likely than we think.

You sure we won't fuck this up too?

As long as we don't plan to kill any of our team from this point forward.

If Sasuke sneers at me one more time for being inherently better than him at tree-walking due to chakra control, I don't think I can keep that promise. Naruto is safe though; I like his hugs. They're warm.

He's like a star, but one that never explodes. Constantly bright.

So, the Sun? 'Cause that's what I think he reminds me of.

The sun will explode eventually.

We won't be alive to see it, and if we play our cards right, nobody will dim Naruto's light if we can help it.

If Naruto's the sun, then I'm guessing Sasuke's the moon?

Bakasuke is a pretty stupid moon if you ask me. But yeah, he's the moon.

So then what does that make Lazy-sensei?

The Earth, I think. He grounds us.

And where does that leave us?

She looks at the boys and at Kakashi-sensei, and she feels wonder and determination crawl up her throat, feelings she hasn't felt since she first unleashed her newly manifested kekkei genkai against those Mist-nin in the forest.

I don't know. But if we want this to be our new family, I'm kind of excited to find out.

Chapter Text

"Knowing what you want to specialize in for your shinobi career is important."

They sit outside the bridge builder's house, in front of their sensei with rapt attention. Apparently, he was going to start training them in chakra control? It sounded important, at least when he first said it.

"You three are still pretty young, and green-eared, so it's not as urgent as it would be for someone who's a fresh chunin. However, it provides a good base to start with."

He hopes channeling his inner Minato is helping. By the way they seem to be hanging off his every word, it seems to be. It's actually kind of cute how they look at him like he'd hung all the stars in the sky.

"Now, let it be known that while I did read your academy portfolio submitted by your teachers, it is now quite clear to me that those reports had giant holes and miscalculations about your abilities." He moves from Naruto's eyes to Sakura's. Naruto nervously chuckles, remembering the trap seal he put on the door, and Sakura winces at the reminder of being a bloodline user.

A team of two bloodline users, one potential bloodline user, and a sensei with a bloodline ability that isn't even his. How the tables have turned...

"So, before we move on, do any of you have any ideas on what you'd like to specialize in?"

Silence overcomes the clearing. It's Naruto who perks up first.

"Uh, well, you already know about the seal I put on the window, so, I think that's what I wanna specialize in? I mean, I'm good at traps and I've always been pretty good at sneaking around..." He trails off, gaze falling from his sensei's face to staring intently at the grass beneath him.

Like parents, like son, huh? Maybe if he gets in contact with Jiraiya sooner..?

"Fuinjutsu, huh? Well, it's good, there aren't really any sealmasters left in Konoha, so it's an important skill to have." Naruto perks up once more, positivity gracing the corners of his eyes. Kakashi then looks at Sakura and begins to speak.

"As I've said before, you have near perfect chakra control, Sakura. This means that you can really specialize in anything you want. However, I will say that if it's ninjutsu you'd like to specialize in, I'd suggest you start doing exercises to expand your chakra reserves as much as possible." A contemplative look graces her face, as the mental battle within her head begins.

What doI wanna specialize in?

As much as I hate to say it, Lazy-sensei has a point. We've got the chakra control for ninjutsu but not the reserves. Is there anything else we can do?

I'm not sure, and I don't want the fact that I'm now apparently a kekkei genkai user to be the only thing cementing my place in the team. I need to earn it, I need to earn the right to be here, Inner. I've done nothing but sit to the side and be useless since we got the assignments, and now I can barely hear anything from the trees behind us. What if it was a fluke?

We've been hearing those trees yap and holler since we were six. I heavily doubt it's a fluke, but we do need a specialization. I'd feel better within our training regimen if we had something to work towards goal-wise.

Wait, I have an idea.

"Hey, Naruto, you said you wanted to be Hokage, right?" The addressment of his dream makes Naruto snap his gaze to the girl on his left, and the question brings his guard up.

"I mean, yeah, but why ask now?" He says skeptically. Sakura nods once and retreats back into her shared headspace.

I've done nothing but be weak my entire life. I was never able to protect myself, but maybe I won't have to, if I'm protecting someone else.

...You want to be on Naruto's ANBU guard when he's Hokage. You want to be an assasin?

I never really considered myself all that important anyways. But with this, I can be something resembling that. I can be a protector, someone who's main job is to cover and make sure the mission is complete but has the power to kill and stand on their own. I want to be worthy. No, I need to be worthy.

And we will be. Assassin is good, ANBU is good. I know what we can specialize in.

"Sensei, I think I'd like to specialize in genjutsu. It's useful, you said I have the chakra control for it, and if I want to be a good teammate, I need to be able to protect Naruto and Sasuke while they fight. Genjutsu is a good way to do so." She nods once, resolutely. Sasuke scoffs, which she half-expected because she originally expected him to not pay attention to her at all. Naruto, though, is surprised, eyebrows practically touching his hairline at Sakura's statement.

"Sakura-chan? B-But what would I need protection from? And how does that tie into me wanting to be the Hokage?" He questions, and not for the first time, she thinks Naruto is looking through her, not at her. All she does is smile, albeit a little cheeky, because she gets to have her chaotic fun every once in a while, too.

"Well, every Kage needs guards, right? If I get good enough at genjutsu, I can go for assassination and be one of your guards. Also, I think it'll be funny to terrorize you in your office while cursing other villages for sending you bullshit diplomacy treaties." Naruto groans at that, low and loud, and Sakura simply giggles at the blonde's ministrations. Kakashi inwardly curses, because he might have to retire before Sakura even gets to take the exam for that, but he puts that thought in the back of his head for now.

"It was actually recommended on your academy file that you do get into genjutsu because of your control, and luckily for you, I know a few. We'll get you started on that soon." The hope in her eyes is enough to warm his heart, the one he thought he abandoned long ago when he stopped living in the Hatake compound after his father's suicide.

"And you, Sasuke? What would you like to specialize in?" The silence frustrates Kakashi, if only because it indicates that while Kakashi already knew he had a lot of work to do pertaining to Sasuke and his... everything, this only means that it's going to get even harder. Refusal to answer his superior officer at the expense of what? His own pride? Not being able to properly tell your own sensei what you want to do?

He knows how Sasuke's been. He knows he's attempted to sneak into the jounin archives, looking for assassination techniques to eventually use in the future against Itachi. He knows, because he was present when ANBU caught him and brought him back to the Uchiha Clan Lands. Be it as it may, Sasuke doesn't possess the same level of infiltration that Naruto does.

The ravenette will never acknowledge it, and that's what Kakashi is mad about. He won't acknowledge Naruto's skill, or Sakura's, and he seems to still believe he's above them in every way.

Looks like he'll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Judging from Naruto's side-eye and Sakura's eyeroll, it seems like he's going to have to knock the boy off of his high horse sooner rather than later.

The way someone should've knocked him off of his high horse before both of his parents passed away. First, he has to get the chakra affinities out of the way.

"I'll be coming back to you, I still do have to talk to you after all." The boy glares at the floor, and Kakashi bulldozes on, so he can get his other two students started on exercises, so they won't have to wait for their stubborn teammate. After a bit, Kakashi fishes three papers out of his pocket with the individual kanji for Katon, Suiton, Doton, Fuuton, and Raiton jutsu on each one.

"Are any of you familiar with what these are?" A hand to Kakashi's right is raised, and he makes the signal for Sakura to speak.

"Those are chakra affinity papers, sensei. If you channel chakra into them, the paper will tell you what elements you're the strongest and the weakest in." His student says. He eye-smiles, a genuine one this time, and ruffles her hair before going back into his squat position in front of his three charges. His student really is just a miniature dictionary.

"Correct as always, Sakura." In his left jounin pocket, he fishes out a fourth paper and channels a bit of chakra into it, and all three of his students watch with rapt attention as the paper shrivels up into a more miniscule version of what the paper was before. "I am raiton-natured, so as you can see, my paper shrivels up. It's your three's turn. Raiton makes the paper shrivel, Katon burns the paper, Suiton makes the paper damp, Doton makes the paper crumble into dirt, and Fuuton slices the paper into pieces."

The real reason why he even bothered to introduce affinities now instead of waiting until they get back to Konoha is because channeling chakra into paper is a chakra exercise on its own. He's sure Sakura won't have problems with it, but the boys are a different matter. Naruto has too much chakra by virtue of the fact that he's an Uzumaki and a jinchuuriki, and Sasuke hasn't had much practice because the graduation exam is basically a joke.

Sure enough, Sakura gets it after only two minutes. She gasps softly, as the paper turned into mud. Inwardly, Kakashi pales. The last time a person's paper turned into mud, the last time someone had equal Doton and Suiton affinities, that person became the best healer to walk the planet.

Maybe it's a good thing that Sakura's choosing to go the assassin route...

Sasuke gets it next, only because he's been manipulating his chakra since he was a toddler, and his paper shrivels up before turning into ash in the wind. Kakashi sighs, just his luck. One of his students has the same nature as him and is absolutely bloodthirsty for any technique that will help him kill his brother. He's glad none of his students woke up when he returned last night, because with the amount of chakra he put into that chidori, he's sure Naruto would've smelt it off him, with his uncanny and quite dangerous habit of looking for who his ANBU agents were as a child.

"Sakura, you have equal proficiency in Doton and Suiton. Sasuke, you're strongest in Raiton jutsu, but you have a strong secondary in Katon as well. Naruto, are you having trouble?" The blonde's head hangs low and Kakashi can see the slight tremble in his hands, and he can't have that, but before he can offer pointers, Sakura scoots closer to the blonde and peers over his shoulder.

"Try using your entire hand to channel it instead of just using two fingers like I did. We all know you have a lot of chakra, so it's probably easier to do it with your whole hand then trying to force all of it in two fingers." The blonde tries the advice, albeit a bit hesitantly, then his paper cuts into one, then two, then ten, then thirty, until it reaches up to one-thousand shredded pieces. Kakashi blinks, but does chuckle under his breath at Naruto's yelp of celebration and Sakura's bright-eyed smile as well.

"Naruto has a strong Fuuton affinity."

There's silence after Kakashi's statement, until the jounin gives all three students a firm nod.

"I can work with this."

After setting Naruto up tree-walking and giving Sakura reserve expansion exercises, he motions for Sasuke to follow him to the other side of the trees, so that their conversation isn't visible.

He's familiar about what Sasuke's life was like before the massacre and is acquainted with the mess of the massacre and the aftermath, considering he was the one that confirmed Sasuke's father's body in the wake of the tragedy. He knows that even before the massacre, everyone used to sugarcoat what was actually happening around the boy, from the clan's exile as a result of mistrust and village politics, especially after the events of the Kyuubi Attack, where there were still beliefs that the Uchiha were the cause of it, as the rumored "sharingan eye" in the beast was running rampant.

Letting Sasuke down slowly wouldn't be an option. He has to be clear and concise, and leave no room for the boy to try and twist the argument in his favor.

Kakashi has never been good at sugarcoating things anyways.

"The maltreatment of your teammates will be stopping here and now, Sasuke." The responding bristle made Kakashi sigh, but he continues to bulldoze on to make sure he can get his point across. "Sasuke, you legitimately get upset when your teammates are succeeding in anything. You looked at Sakura in contempt when she used mokuton in the forest. This isn't a matter of simple jealousy, this is actual hatred. You don't have to like your teammates, no one is forcing you to. But you refusing to work with them is actively making you a burden to the team." He stops speaking, and he watched the kid turn the words over in his head, before his black eyes re-darken.

"All they do is hold me back! I'm from an elite clan; I was practically bred to fight and all they're doing is keeping me from where I should be! I was the top scorer in the academy, I was at the top in taijutsu, I was better than our entire graduating class! Why should I have to work with those lukewarm idiots-"

"Okay, you can stop there. One, both Nara Shikamaru and Sakura scored higher than you on the written exam." The boy glares at him. "Don't look at me like that, despite what it looks like, I read your files, I told you that already. Secondly, is being from an elite clan what this is really about? If so, then so is Naruto. If Sakura can use mokuton, doesn't that make her a Senju?" A deeper glare, but all that shows Kakashi is that the kid isn't tuning his words out, which encourages the sensei to move on.

"Naruto is from the Uzumaki clan, and even if their village was destroyed in the Second Shinobi World War, legends are still spoken about them. They're known for having large chakra reserves, the largest out of every nin from any village you can think of. You scoff at Naruto so much for not being able to tree-walk or do the academy three, meanwhile the real reason is that he has too much chakra and doing chakra exercises like the academy three are only going to stunt his progress in the long run. Sakura's always been better at chakra control, and a little birdie is telling me that if it wasn't for Sakura's caution and her old crush on you, she would've been Rookie of the Year, not you."

Sasuke just scoffs even harder. "I don't need a team, and I sure as hell don't need Naruto or Sakura to complete my ambition. This is all just a big waste of time, especially with what the Airhead said. I don't need protection, and I especially don't need it from her-"

"Do you know why Itachi was such an effective shinobi before he went rogue?"

Silence. Kakashi almost feels bad for bringing up his mass murderer of a brother.

Almost.

"Itachi was such an effective shinobi because he was actually able to work with people. I trained him, he was on my ANBU squad even though you technically aren't supposed to know about that, and he was the biggest team player of all. Missions were done smoothly and effectively when he was there, and there was never a moment where he was a burden to the team because he was always holding up his end of the stick."

"I'm going to say it like it is. You will never be able to beat Itachi, let alone kill Itachi if you don't know how to work with others. This one-track-mind of yours is only going to lead you into a ditch. No shinobi can do everything, that's why Konoha is renowned for its teamwork. That's why teams and the three-man cells exist. That's why we even have specializations." He lets the words marinate, before going for the throat to really make sure the lesson sticks.

"If you insist on not working with your teammates and being a burden to the team, as soon as we get back to Konoha, I will be taking my liberty as the highest commanding officer and turning in your hitai-ate. You can cry to the council all you want, but none of them will make me budge on the decision. I will take Naruto and Sakura on as students, and you will be blacklisted from all missions and the Genin Corps for the foreseeable future. Do you understand what I'm telling you, Sasuke?"

The look of fear and the aggressive nodding makes Kakashi feel like the biggest asshole in the world, but he stands his ground. "You have the makings of a great shinobi, Sasuke. However, you need to improve on this aspect before you can move on. Do you understand me?" The boy nods once more, and Kakashi sends him to go to the tree a few paces away from where Naruto's was to perfect tree-walking.

Let's hope I didn't seriously mess this team up already. If only Minato-sensei was able to give me spiritual pointers from the Pure Lands...

He walks to where his pink-haired genin is in lotus position, fingertips touching lightly as she expands her chakra outwards from her skin. He claps twice, which catches all of his genin's attention. In his peripheral, he can see Tazuna walking across the bridge, beginning to return to work on it. He rounds up all of the kids to set up post by the bridge to watch Tazuna and the other builders, and they scurry over with orders for watch. Off to the side and out of view, he summons Akino and Shiba and gives two of his summons orders to patrol the forest to make sure there aren't any more Danzo agents wandering about.

After circulating his chakra to heal the slight cut left by his teeth, he shunshins back to where the pier is, and watches from the tree he sits in as his genin watch the bridge builder. Sasuke and Naruto seem to be engaged in an argument, and Sakura has zoned out, but now that Kakashi knows the reason that she does, he isn't too concerned.

Until the air shifts, thins out, and he can practically taste the killing intent before it finally registers to his three charges. He shunshins again, this time as fast as possible, and he's sure he burned a chakra coil while doing so but he doesn't really care, and barks an order as he stops the giant weapon from cutting down his blonde genin.

"GET DOWN!" The air shifts once more, tainted with killing intent and the metallic smell of blood. Kakashi intercepts the arc with a kunai laced with chakra for reinforcement, and the weapon goes flying into the tree where Naruto was practicing just minutes prior. There, crouching on the hilt of the giant sword, is a ninja with bandages covering his face, his headband tied to the side, and exuding a kind of killing intent that made the genin freeze.

Kakashi eye-smiles, though there's nothing but malice in his tone. "Ah, Momochi Zabuza, Demon of the Hidden Mist. Care to explain why you're here attacking kids?"

Zabuza grins, the smile visible through his mask, though there's nothing but promised violence lacing it. "Copy-Ninja Kakashi. The only man besides the Uchiha to wield a Sharingan. I ain't here for your kids, Kakashi, no matter how unfit I personally think a weapon like you should be with children. I'm here for the bridge builder. Hand him over, and maybe your kids won't die."

Kakashi's head only tilts, just a bit, before raising his headband, and letting his sharingan eye spin lazily. "Fight me."

Zabuza wastes no time, making a singular hand sign and covering the entire area in thick mist, so thick that the genin can barely see. Sasuke is still frozen in place, the weight of Kakashi's reveal pressing down on his chest like the world's worst burden. Naruto's chakra core is spiking in panic, trying to find a way through the mist to find the rest of his teammates but the mist is overriding his nose in a way so he can't point them out.

Sakura is still. For once in her life, she's actually downright terrified.

The trees are silent, not like in Konoha where they simply don't have anything to say after they've talked and whispered to their hearts content, it was complete dead calm. Not a rustle, not a branch, nothing. She can't see her sensei, she can't see Naruto or Sasuke, let alone the madman known as the Demon of the Hidden Mist, and she wants the trees back, she wants her team back-

OUTER, DUCK! NARUTO IS-

Before she can properly react, there's an orange body flying towards her and knocks her clean over into the muddy grass below them. She scrambles to get up as quickly as possible, holding her blonde teammate under his arms in order to haul him up with her. She feels the shaking he's doing but chooses not to comment on it.

"Kakashi-sensei is fighting the gigantic sword guy on the bridge, I've got no idea where Sasuke-teme is, but it doesn't matter." He mutters, eyes carrying concern hidden under the familiar nickname on his tongue. "Mist is so damn thick that I can't smell you guys at all."

She pauses at that, standing back-to-back with Naruto, trying her best to cover him so they both aren't vulnerable. "Smell, you say?"

The blonde hums. "I've always had a good nose; I trust it more than I trust my eyes. It's how I keep track of people 'round me. When the gigantic sword guy first popped out and he made the mist all thick, it basically filled my nose so much I couldn't find you guys. I had to go wandering around until I found one of 'ya, and only Kami knows how stupid that is to do in open battle." He scowls, hating himself for his own shortcomings, and Sakura knows that feeling all too well. Still, she grits her teeth, and bares it, because she promised herself, she'd be strong enough.

"Well, we should still try our best to find Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke, leaving them in the mist is-"

There's a large swoop! that she feels deep in her stomach, she can also hear Naruto's surprised shriek, before they're pulled into the thick of the fight. When Sakura is finally able to open her eyes, she sees Zabuza looming over Naruto's body, with that giant sword ready to cleave him in two, and her feet move before her mind can catch up.

She throws herself in between the sword and her teammate, pushing and dive-rolling themselves across before quickly getting up once more. From what they could see, from that point forward, Kakashi-sensei had engaged Zabuza in battle, trading hit for hit with precision Sakura knows can only come from years of doing this job. Although the silver-haired man was trying to hide it, he was staggering, slight points of hesitation that made dread grip her heart like the tightest of vines on the forest floor.

We're liabilities. Me, Naruto, and Sasuke are liabilities. We're preventing him from going all-out to beat him because he has to be careful of us first.

With that knowledge, she springs into action. She tightens her grip on Naruto's hand, dragging him through the battle, and while she can register Kakashi barking orders at her, she can't hear him over the roar in her ears. She snatches Sasuke by the wrist first, but he fights it, which makes her hand fly from his wrist to his hair to drag him off the bridge. Once they're a relatively safe distance away, she throws both of the boys into a bush near the fight zone.

"We need a plan-"

"And was taking us both out of the battle a good idea, Oh Wise One?" Sasuke spits, vitriol covering his tone. "I don't need you or Naruto to save me. I was doing completely fine-"

"-And Kakashi-sensei is an S-Rank Jounin known for doing the fucking impossible and coming back alive. If that guy is actively going toe to toe with Kakashi-sensei, do you really think you can beat an S-Rank mercenary?" Sakura spits right back, hands balling up into fists. "Was I supposed to just sit there with Naruto and watch that guy cleave you in two? If so, let me know and I'll throw you right back out there my damn self."

"Guys, Sakura-chan's right. We do need a plan. Kakashi-sensei already told us that those who abandon their teammates are worse than trash. Sakura did the right thing by pulling us out no matter how much you don't want to admit it because of your bullshit ego, Sasuke-teme." Sasuke glares, gearing up for a retort, but Naruto bulldozes on. "Kakashi-sensei's trapped in that guy's water prison, we need to find a way to get him out without blocking Kakashi-sensei from killing that guy."

There's silence. This time, it's Sakura who speaks.

"He's standing close to Kakashi-sensei, closer than needed for any offensive jutsu. The strength of the cage probably hinges on how close the chakra source is towards it. If we force him to move farther away, the prison might weaken, so Kakashi-sensei can break out."

Silence. It was understanding. For one, willingly. For the other, defiant and reluctant. However, it was understanding all the same.

"I.. I know I haven't exactly been the best teammate." Sakura starts, looking at the bush they chose to hide behind instead of their eyes. "I know I'm largely behind both of you, both in battle prowess and skill, pretty much everything-" She takes a deep breath, so she doesn't cry, knowing good and well that crying now would only put them in jeopardy. "But I have my brain. I have my analysis, and I have strategy. It may not be enough, but I ask that you both trust me to protect the both of you, as I promised to."

Naruto knocks his forehead against hers. That's enough of a response. She looks towards Sasuke, and his face is largely impassive. However, after what felt like forever, a single, slow, barely perceptible nod was made, and Sakura allowed herself this small victory.

"Okay, so here's what we're going to do. Naruto, you're going to make a bunch of clones. Like, three times more than what you usually create. It'll disrupt visibility, making it harder for Zabuza to clearly see Kakashi-sensei in the prison. They're S-Rank ninja, so I don't expect the clones to hold on forever, but we don't need forever, just a sliver of an opening. Sasuke, you'll be in between the clones, that way, you'll be covered. I'm going to henge into a fuuma shuriken, that way, Sasuke can carry me in with him. Once we get close enough, Naruto, I know you have your own explosive tags that probably transcend the normal amount of distance that regular explosive tags do. Sasuke is going to throw me as a shuriken towards Zabuza. Once I de-transform, you'll throw me the explosive tag to stun him, then you and Sasuke can go in to stab him."

"And what happens if the stun isn't enough and he hits us first before we can get him?" Sasuke asks sharply, and Sakura chooses to ignore the sting of distrust, because this is a team of four people with trauma baked into their bones.

"I have a backup plan in case it comes to that. For now, we move." Sakura says resolutely, and with that, they move from their hiding spot. All three genin run in, and the minute they hit the bridge, Naruto does as instructed.

"Kage Bushin no Jutsu!" At his command, ten, then twenty, then thirty, then forty, then fifty, then a solid seventy Naruto clones flood the bridge, all jumping and shouting different things to further confuse Zabuza. At the rear end, the clones at the back give Sasuke room to sneak in through the middle. There, Sasuke's grip on the fuuma shuriken that was once Sakura beforehand tightens as he moves in as quietly as possible with the sea of orange-blue-diamond blue-yellow cacophony around him.

She can hear Kakashi-sensei calling for them to leave the bridge, but she doesn't listen. From the continued cacophony of Naruto's clones and Sasuke's rapidly tightening grip on her, she knows her teammates aren't quite listening to his orders either.

As Sakura predicted, it doesn't last forever. She can see it from where she's stationed in Sasuke's right hand, the clones are thinning. Although, as fast as they are thinning, the real Naruto is replacing them as they poof out of existence.

It's fine, she tells herself. It doesn't need to last forever. Just long enough for Sasuke to make it to the front, just long enough for me to throw the explosive tag.

After an agonizingly long period of time, because surprise to Naruto and Sakura, Sasuke actually doesn't lack patience in battle, they make it to the front, where the clones are decreasing in number the most. Without wasting any time, Sasuke leaps upwards, the real Naruto giving him a boost by the foot, and when Sasuke finally throws her in the air with as clean precision as possible, Sakura un-henges herself, catches the explosive tag that seemed to have been conveniently places right in her hand as the clone that did so disappears, and Sakura doesn't waste another second.

She flicks her thumb over the activation kanji, and when she hurls it towards Zabuza and watches it detonate with a cruel, vicious smile on her face. She was right! Naruto-grade explosive tags are entirely more effective than regular explosive tags! When the seal detonates, the explosion blasts directly in Zabuza's upper body area and face, and she can feel the rush of two separate chakra signatures rapidly approaching her, and they go in to stab their enemy, until Zabuza jumps back, forcing Naruto and Sasuke on the defensive.

She curses, loud and unladylike, and right then and there is where she falls back onto Plan B.

She forms the seal, just like how she did in the forest, but the trees do not rush to her aid. She panics inwardly, and she can feel the sharp breaths she's taken in as she realizes that her plan isn't working.

It worked perfectly fine in the forest when we got here! What's happening?! Am I not using the right seal? No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no not now not now not now not now! This is the only thing I've got going for me, please don't take it from me now-

She forces her chakra to bend to her command, and there's a burn in her throat and in the pit of her stomach as she forced some blue-fueled thing out of her mouth and at the mercenary, then the mercenary screams in pain then Kakashi-sensei breaks out of the prison which means her plan worked and Zabuza got hit with whatever she just spat at him, but there's a foul smell in the air as Zabuza's body disappears after Kakashi-sensei hit him with some kind of jutsu and she can barely see because her vision's blurry, then Kakashi-sensei collapses and then she drops on her knees and she's still weak and she still doesn't deserve to be here-

You've always been weak-willed, Sakura. Sitting here, on your knees, about to slump over and pass out when you barely did anything. You almost had your teammates killed by a missing-nin way above your caliber. What a pathetic excuse of protection.

Weak.

Weak.

Weak.

Weak..

Weak.

It's the last thing she hears before she finally passes out.

Chapter Text

When Sakura finally opens her eyes, she is immediately met with the color of the sky. Worried bright blue eyes stare down at her, and the silence is palpable for a few seconds, before her teammates voice erupts in relief.

"SAKURA-CHAN! YOU'RE OKAY!" Naruto exclaims, hands hovering over Sakura's body in worry. Sakura slowly gets up and leans back on the heels of her hands. She stays silent for a few seconds, letting each sense come to her gradually before finally responding.

"Y-Yeah, I'm okay. Where's sensei?" She asks, Naruto's eyes move away from her, and she follows his gaze to where their sensei's body lay next to hers. She blanches, looking towards Naruto for an explanation, which he willingly gives.

"He passed out before you did. Somethin' about chakra exhaustion, at least according to the teme." Sakura nods, looking around the room. They're back in the attic, the space seemingly the same as it was when they first arrived in Nami no Kuni. The three other futons laid for them when they're ready to rest, their mission packs safely squared next to each futon respectively. She can't see Sasuke anywhere, so he must've already left.

"Teme's already outside, he wants to finally get tree-walking down, I said I'd stay until you woke up. Kakashi-sensei woke up a bit before 'ya, just enough to give us instructions about what happened on the bridge." He quiets down at the last part, which prompts the rosette to quirk up an eyebrow at the blonde, which is enough of a signal for him to continue.

"He told us that choosin' to ignore him when he told us to get off the bridge was a sign of insubordination. Since he's the highest commanding officer or whatever, he's got the final say about whatever's happenin' on the field. Mind you, he was the same one who told his abandoning your team makes you worse than trash, but I guess that rule doesn't apply when fighting S-Ranked missing-nin." Naruto mutters dryly. That gets a laugh out of Sakura, which makes the blonde flash her his trademark sunshine smile.

"'Sides that, he said the plan to get Zabuza away from him was a good one. The teme tried to take credit for the plan but I stopped him, 'ttebayo! He thinks he's this oh-so great dude, whole time he's just an asshole." Naruto yells with indignation, and Sakura can only smile at Naruto's antics. It's almost enough to forget how bad she treated him when he was literally just going through the motions.

"Oh yeah, bad news though, Kakashi-sensei said that Zabuza ain't dead. Somethin' about how the nin- oh wait! You already passed out before this! Yeah so, Kakashi-sensei did get the guy but before he could finish him off, there was this other shinobi that hit Zabuza in the neck with somethin', I don't really know what it was. The other ninja said somethin' about how Zabuza was important, took his body, then left. According to Kakashi-sensei, that ninja was a hunter-nin, they're supposed to burn the body on sight 'cuz of shinobi secrets but since they didn't, there's a good chance that Zabuza isn't dead. You got him good though, his stomach and face burned with whatever you spat at him, so good job, 'ttebayo!"

Sakura pales once more, the knowledge that an S-Rank missing-nin with enough battle prowess to fight Kakashi is still out there, is still after the bridge builder. Knowing that the mission still isn't done and the sheer killing intent that was brandished over them like a constricting blanket can and will come back is enough to shake the false sense of security she first woke up to.

She snaps out of her inital panic, when she sees paper on the floor. It's pinned to the floor via thumbtacks on all four corners and has a rectangular shape to it. On the left side of the paper, there's a brush inside an ink pot. The paper is still blank, and seemingly unimportant, but she's known Naruto long enough and has been on this team long enough to know that the paper and ink and brush all belong to her blonde teammate. Slowly, she gets up and walks towards the paper, and Naruto follows her. She squats, tilting her head to the side with a small smile on her face.

"You really like fuuinjutsu, huh?" Naruto sputters, and it only serves to make her giggle more, but she decides to have mercy and to let Naruto explain himself.

Eventually, the blonde calms down. "Yeah! It's kinda always been my thing, 'ttebayo. It's how I was able to pull off all of those pranks in the academy."

"Really?"

"Duh! I can't just go hauling paint around and expect no-one to be suspicious of me after I painted blasphemy on the Hokage Monument!" He says with amusement. Sakura can only poke him in the side, to which he laughs and playfully bats her hand away.

"So, how exactly does it work? I mean, I've seen explosive tags before but that was back when we were still learning how to disarm traps in our second year, but I never really understood how it makes the explosion. Also, you modify your tags for more blast radius and more explosion in general." She says, remembering how she swept her finger over the kanji for release over the seal and how the resulting explosion was most definitely bigger than she remembers regular tags to be.

"Well, uhm.." He trails off, not sure how to proceed. "Fuuinjutsu is complicated, and like Kakashi-sensei said when he gave us those exercises before, there are no more sealmasters in Konoha. I, uhm, I started doing fuuinjutsu and making my own seals because I never got things right in the academy no matter how many times I did them, and it was the only thing I was really able to get right on my own.. This isn't to not call you smart, Sakura-chan! You're the smartest person I know, 'ttebayo! I just.. don't know how to properly explain how to do it."

She turns over his words in her head. Truthfully, she's been a bookworm long enough to know that fuuinjutsu is insanely complicated and is very hard to do. If Naruto can do it, then that's just a testament to his personal skill. However, this makes her think.

In the academy, Naruto would always get things wrong, that's true. However, after being on a team with Naruto, she can clearly see that Sakura from the academy was an idiot. Naruto isn't really stupid, she's pretty sure that he just learns differently, and because the method he used in order to learn wasn't the way the academy curriculum taught them, he was always labeled wrong and therefore earned his title as Dead Last.

"Hey, Naruto? In the academy when we practiced chakra control, you stuck multiple leaves to your body instead of just one, right?"

"Yeah, 'ttebayo! Then stupid Mizuki-sensei told me I was wasting chakra by doing it. Kakashi-sensei says it, you've said it, everyone's said it! My reserves are like- bigger than the Hokage Monument! How the hell am I supposed to practice if the lessons aren't made for people like me! Being outside of what's considered 'normal' is one thing, but being an outlier by a mile sucked." He exclaims, and Sakura's eyes fill with understanding. "I only ever really learned about history because I needed to know it to understand sealing correctly. I actually kinda like it, I just hate remembering dates. Personally, I think it's kinda useless, but what would the dead last know, 'ttebayo?"

He was never stupid, not really. He just thought different, his brain just didn't work the same way as the curriculum. He paid for it with ridicule.

Sakura curses internally. She really has to find a present for him if they live through this.

"So, fuuinjutsu is something that's more acclimated to the way you think?"

"I mean, yeah! Okay so, lemme show you what this was supposed to be for-" He shuffles closer and grabs his brush and ink pot, and Sakura shuffles with him to the front, where he brandishes his brush and begins to write.

"So, I'm trying to make a barrier seal. Barrier seals are like protection seals, and they're primarily used for village boundaries and clan compounds. The more power a clan has, the more powerful the barrier or protection seal is likely to be." On the right side of the paper, Naruto writes 保護【ほご】. Instead of how they'd normally do it, writing it from right-to-left, Sakura notes that Naruto writes the words from the top to the bottom.

Interesting, Inner Sakura notes.

"For example, like, the Senju clan is notably, like, freakin' ancient. They've been on Konoha land long before the village was founded. With every bit of the first Hokage being stretched over the village, with the forest and stuff, their barrier seal is actually one of the most vicious ones yet. Yes, the Senju clan lands have been permanently sealed off for now, but rumors say that the last time anyone tried to get into the Senju clan lands, they were shredded to pieces before they could even properly step inside!"

Sakura pales. Inner Sakura pales even more. On the contrary, Naruto has sparkles in his eyes. She thinks it's actually kind of cute, the way he's so excited to talk about seals.

We have so much to apologize to him for, the list just keeps growing the longer we get to know him.

I know. D'ya think we can fish for information to find a gift he'd like?

We can certainly try.

"Every barrier seal is different depending on the clan. The Nara clan seals, which you probably guessed already because you're so wicked smart, are shadow seals. I'm pretty sure they literally swallow any unwanted visitors in darkness until there's nothing left of them. But that's the trick to it! The trick to it is unwanted visitors! How do the seals check if the person at the clan gate ain't supposed to be there, or if the person tryna get it is just a friend of one of the clan members? That's where this comes in!"

Sakura watches Naruto write 感情 next to where he wrote the first line, but in the same way, he writes it up and down instead of right-to-left. Quietly, Sakura's eyes shine as the ink on the paper seems to shine and glimmer with every stroke Naruto does.

"This is what tells the seal 'Hey, check this guy's intentions. Is he a good guy or is he bad news?' It's mainly the indicator. It's like when you build a house, sorta. You have the base of the house," He taps where he wrote the first line. "Then you have to add the structure for it, kind of what makes it different from a regular barrier to a ward seal." He taps the second line.

"Then there's the specifics. If all clans had the exact same warding, people woulda broken into shit a long ass time ago, so each seal is different. Like I said, the Nara clan seals are shadows, so they have a specific set of words that trigger it to be shadows that swallow people whole instead of just putting the whole compound on lock and putting up a physical barrier, making a specific set is just easier and gets the job done quicker."

"I mean, if I were a clan kid, I guess I'd like a barrier that kinda reflects me." Sakura says with a nod. Naruto seems to shine brighter, and she can just smile back as the boy continues on.

"Exactly! See, I knew you'd get it, Sakura-chan! You're so smart!" He nods rapidly and continues. "This is a specific seal because I'm using it for the attic so that no-one comes in here while we sleep an' stuff. In this case, instead of making it specific like a clan's ward, I have to tell the seal who exactly is allowed in and everybody else is bad news."

Sakura watches again as Naruto writes 特定, and from there, writes the number four way bigger than every other piece of writing on the seal. From there, Naruto copies the last three lines he's written onto the other side of the paper in the same top-to-bottom motion, writes a giant number four once more, but then there's a glaring middle space. Judging from Naruto's look, he wants Sakura to ask, and Sakura can do nothing but oblige with a smile on her face.

"Okay, so there's a giant space in between, what's it do?"

"We've gotta connect all the stuff together, of course! If I left it the way it is right now, the seal won't even survive the activation process before collapsing and like, exploding into a gazillion pieces." Naruto then draws four arrows in the middle, and this is where the boy officially lost her, but she continues to give him her full attention and tries to make sense of it anyways.

"The connectors basically takes everythin' I've already wrote and ties it all together, it's kind of like giving the seal a purpose. Each arrow moves the words in an unending cycle, so that the seal won't have a stopgap point. We tie in the nature affinities because we can't discriminate, an unwanted visitor is an unwanted visitor regardless of what nature they got, then I add in these extra lines near the arrows to tie in..."

From here, Naruto had completely lost her. However, watching him work on seals in his own little world, and being so passionate about a ninja art that's pretty much lost to history only solidifies her personal goal.

Naruto, though, can tell she's completely zoned out. He can only chuckle, because it's just like Sakura to zone out in thought once fed new information. She's kinda like a sponge, Naruto thinks, with how quick she is to soak up new information whenever it's presented to her.

Speaking of new information, I should probably ask her now.

"Ne, Sakura-chan?"

The girl snaps out of her trance faster than he's ever personally see her get out of her habitual floating. She looks at Naruto, and he almost feels like a deer trapped in headlights when her bright green eyes meet his bright blue, and he swallows the urge just to stare and admire for a little bit longer to ask his question.

"I know Kakashi-sensei had already asked us about specializations and stuff. I said sealing, but when he wakes up, I'll probably tell him about how I wanna do infiltration too. Kakashi-sensei also said you're perfect for genjutsu, which that's true, but even with what you said, I don't really get it. Is protecting me as the Hokage really the reason you wanna go into genjutsu and be an assassin?"

Silence fills the room, and even Kakashi's soft sound of breathing is tuned out by the tense moment. She sighs, and Naruto can feel the years of whatever's been plaguing her mind all come out with that one exhale.

"To be honest, I.. I didn't want the fact that I can use a legendary kekkei genkai to be the only reason I was valuable to the team." Sakura starts, and Naruto wants to retort so bad, tell her that she will always be valuable to the team, both with and without being able to use some legendary jutsu bullshit, but he refrains from saying just that and lets her speak.

"I haven't been the best teammate, and I haven't really been the best person. Both to you, and to Sasuke. I've never been on you guys' level, like, ever. And with the way things are going now, even with all of the chakra reserve expansion exercises that Kakashi-sensei has me doing, I don't think I'll ever be able to. You two are the better frontline fighters, you have literally everything, and I have nothing."

Silence fills the room once more. Naruto barely refrains from leaping at her and bringing her to the floor to shut up whoever's in her head telling her all of that, but once again, he stops.

"I've pretty much done nothing but be weak since I got here." She only chuckles bitterly at that but pushes on. "I've done nothing but be weak my entire life, Naruto, and it's a fact. I can barely even protect myself as is. You saw what happened on the bridge. The reason I froze was because I tried to use mokuton and it didn't work. I have access to a legendary kekkei genkai and I can't even use it. Do you know how much of a joke that is?"

The tension in the room is so thick it could be sliced with the sharpest kunai they've got in their arsenal.

"The truth of it is, I won't have to protect myself if I can protect everyone else."

Naruto's breath hitches at the sincerity of it all.

"I never considered myself all that important anyways. I mean, compared to everyone else on the team. Kakashi-sensei is an infamous jounin in the bingo book that makes people re-think their battle strategy when his name is brought up. Sasuke is the last known loyal user of the most powerful dojutsu to ever exist, and while I'm not privy to your situation, you've had ANBU agents following you your whole life for a reason." She shakes her head, multiple times, as if she's trying to will the emotions away. "All I have is my brain, my analysis, my intellect, and good chakra control." Her hands clench the side of her qipao dress. They tremble, only slightly, but she forces them to stop.

"With genjutsu, I can be something resembling it. I can be a proper protector, a proper teammate, a proper ninja. I can have the power to kill on my own, but I can be your shadow. Your weapon in the dark whenever you need me. I can be worthy of being here, and then you'll never have to watch your own back again because someone's already there to do it."

She nods once, and only resolutely.

"When we introduced ourselves on the roof of the academy, I said my dream was to marry Sasuke and become Uchiha Sakura. That dream is long dead. My new dream, or ambition, I should say, is to master genjutsu. My new ambition is to be the one behind the scenes, pulling the strings and setting the tempo of the fight. My new ambition is to stand with my teammates and do whatever it takes to help then realize their ambitions. Sure, genjutsu is my personal goal, but I will be an assassin, the best to ever live, and I will help you become the Hokage. And when you finally make it there, I will be your top ANBU agent and on your personal protection squad. That's my reason."

She can only sit there, watching as Naruto digests her words. Only after he digests them all, does he finally speak.

"Sakura-chan."

Her head snaps up from where it's been hanging low the entire time.

"You need to protect yourself if you want to protect everyone else. I just can't let anyone watch my back, can I?" Naruto muses, the ending part of his sentence being colored with both indignation and amusement simultaneously.

Sakura's breath hitches.

"I don't know who's gotten it into your head that you're not important or you don't deserve to be here and yadda yadda, but you are important! You're important to me, 'ttebayo! You're important with and without the legendary jutsu! And anyone else who says so will get punched in the face by Konoha's upcoming Hokage!" He exclaims; the side of his fist pressed into his puffed-out chest. The sight only makes Sakura laugh wetly, still trying to will the tears away.

"Plus, we can't do everything. If you were able to do that legendary jutsu shit right off the bat, you would've overtook the teme in training when we first started the academy! Not everyone has to be the same level of everything as each other, that's what teams are for! You're smarter than me and the teme, teme's better at taijutsu than we are, but I've got the biggest chakra reserves out of the whole team! You have the best chakra control, I have the worst! That doesn't make me invaluable, it just means I have shit to work on before I can move on!"

He crawls towards Sakura, quick and swift, and plops down next to her, leaning inwards to rest his head on her shoulder.

"It's okay to not know everything, Kami knows I most definitely don't. Even if I think of things differently than the academy does, I'm still pretty shit at school and books an' stuff. You're important Sakura-chan, and you're important to me especially, and your line of thinking might get you killed one day." Sakura's breath hitches, and while Naruto himself doesn't like discussing death, he's had civilians break into his apartment to try and kill him since his sixth birthday. He almost got Iruka-sensei killed a week before genin team assignments because of the chakra beast that's been sealed inside of him since he was an infant.

He doesn't want to be the reason that somebody dies no matter what, especially not Sakura.

The same Sakura who goes out of her way to wake up extra early in the morning to make him extra breakfast because she knows he doesn't have any at home. The same Sakura who he can see is always trying her hardest to bridge the gap between her, himself, and Sasuke. The same Sakura who seems to always have the answers, always has a solution, always has a plan and a back-up plan and enough plans to outlast the alphabet.

The same Sakura who's sitting beside him, hands trembling, pledging to be the best damn assassin and genjutsu user the world has ever seen, just to be able to protect and cover her teammates when it counts. Just to be able to be his top shadow, his top ANBU agent, so that when he becomes Hokage (when, when, not if) he'll never have to look twice because there's already someone there who did.

"I don't want you to die, Sakura-chan. You're very important to me, and if there's anyone in the world, I'd trust the most to watch my back, it's you."

The silence is loud and tense. Finally, Sakura hesitantly leans her head on Naruto's, and they sit like that for a long time.

"You don't need to prove your worth, not to me. You've always been worthwhile, 'ttebayo."

Her breath hitches, and Naruto can feel the tears slightly dampening his orange jacket, but he doesn't comment.

"How can you say that after the way I've treated you since we were kids? How can you be so nice, after everything I've said about you?

Silence envelops the room one last time.

"It's pretty clear you've been going through your own stuff, so I never really held it against you. Plus, you bring me non-poisoned breakfast in the morning that actually satisfies my stomach, that's honestly enough for me to forgive you.

A quiet giggle escapes her mouth before she can fully prevent it, and she squeezes Naruto's wrist. "You're so stupid, Naruto."

Naruto can only giggle and squeeze her wrist right back. "Maybe, but I can be a little stupid every once in a while."

-^-

Truth be told, Kakashi had woken up in the middle of Naruto and Sakura's conversation. He hadn't wanted to interrupt, the importance of team bonding and whatnot, so he chose to act like he was asleep and let them have at it. They seem more inclined to get along and to work together, from what Naruto told him when Sakura was still passed out on a futon a few feet away from the one he was sleeping in.

Though, Naruto's explanation of the way he made his seal was confusing, even for Kakashi.

When Minato had attempted to teach him sealing (and believe you him, he tried, but Rin was always better at it than he was), the way he explained it was entirely different than the way Naruto was explaining it to Sakura, and even then, he could tell that the version Naurto was telling Sakura was a watered down version of what he actually wanted to say. The tidbit about Naruto's brain working in a different way was good for him to know though, because now it explains why Naruto isn't really grasping what Kakashi himself is trying to teach him, but the fuinjutsu thing is still bothering him.

It's not exactly bad, but it's different. Not that there's anything wrong with different, but it alters Kakashi's plans. The original plan was to write a letter to Jiraiya in order to come back to help Naruto properly work on his fuinjutsu, but he's seen Jiraiya's work before, and what the blonde described isn't it. Considering Jiraiya was the one who taught Minato fuinjutsu with some extra tidbits from Kushina-nee, he knows it's nothing like Minato's work either.

In fact, the work might be more similar to Kushina-nee's seals, to which Minato would always complain about being unnecessarily complicated, and the blonde and red-head used to bicker like cats and dogs over the correct way to do so, and Kakashi isn't sure how he's going to end up crossing that bridge if the only thing Naruto has in common with his father is the same eye and hair color.

Kami save us all, he thinks. If Naruto decides he wants to be the second coming of his mother and start pulling "pranks" mid-battle. The village would never survive it.

The infiltration specialization is good news in Kakashi's book, though. He might have to throw his blonde genin at Genma, see what kind of chaos it brews from there.

Though, Sakura's perceived lack of self-care is something new entirely.

He knew the Sandaime gave him a team with trauma and trust issues baked into their bones, he sees it in the way they walk, talk, and act. Naruto's smiles are only real smiles about forty percent of the time, Sasuke just hates everyone, and there's no one in Konoha drowning in more self-hate than his pink genin.

He wasn't lying when he said Sakura would be perfect for Genjutsu. She has a chakra proficiency score of ninety-eight, one point above Tsunade-hime herself, and with the mind she has, she'd be a perfect tactical fighter. In reality, she's as much of a clean slate that anyone could get, she could really be molded into anything she really wanted. He doesn't agree with most of what she was saying, about how she'll never reach where Naruto or Sasuke are at, or how she has nothing cementing her place on the team except the fact that she now has access to a legendary kekkei genkai.

However, he can understand where such a thought process would come from. She wasn't exactly wrong in her speculations when they were back at the forest they used to get to Nami no Kuni, and Naruto wasn't wrong when he said the team is politically important for a multitude of reasons. Everyone on the team is binded together because of things that they can do that nobody else can. In comparison, anyone can be smart, and anyone can have good chakra control, and even those like Naruto who have huge chakra reserves will eventually have to develop decent control in order to move up in rank.

He really, really doesn't like the fact that one of his students is already ready to throw away her life and devote it to two people, because she's twelve, and they should be thinking about what regular twelve-year-olds should be thinking about, not how they'll be able to pull their own weight and stand in the shadows of their teammates so they don't get killed, and while his heart does clench a tiny bit when they had that last heart-to-heart bit at the end, because those two kids are the most sincere about each other than he's seen them act with anyone else, he does need to monitor them just a bit.

He'd rather them walk the tightrope between grey morality and insanity then fall fully into one or the other. Besides, every shinobi is a little insane anyways. It's what keeps them relatively mentally healthy, and kami knows what's mentally healthy for shinobi is downright psychiatric ward worthy for civilians.

Regardless, he swore to himself he'd train these kids, and now is as good of a time as any to start Sakura on her genjutsu journey.

Slowly, he rises from the futon, the effects of chakra exhaustion still clinging to his body and the area around his sharingan eye, but he'll make do. He's had worse back when he was on the active mission roster in ANBU. He can hear his genin snap towards his figure, which means they're getting better at their spatial awareness, that's good, before sitting upright. He can hear their feet stomping on the attic floor coming directly for him, and he properly situates himself in his usual lazy slouch as they approach him.

"...Nevermind, he's slouching, he's fine." Sakura mutters wryly. Naruto laughs, shoulders shaking with his laughter, but concedes, nevertheless.

"Yeahhhh~! If he's slouching, we worried for nothing. Hey sensei, do you think we can start learning stuff now?" Naruto questions, leaning in after mentioning learning. Sakura nods vigorously, and Kakashi can only chuckle, before rising to his feet (and ignoring the slight dizziness afterwards), and gesturing for his genin to follow him outside.

They clean up before following him, Naruto placing up the wards as they head down the stairs and out the front door of the bridge builder's house. There, they find Sasuke, halfway up the tree he chose to use for tree-walking practice, making diligent progress, but Kakashi has to keep up his asshole streak no matter how much he likes these kids, so he startles Sasuke with a yell and chuckles out loud as the black-haired boy falls to the ground and glares up at him in annoyance. He ignores it, because making his students exasperated with him is one of his favorite pastimes, and squats on the grassy groud. The genin follow and sit.

"I did promise that I was going to help you with your specializations, and that's what we're gonna get to today. Now, I'm sure all of you know of the high possibility that Zabuza is indeed alive." He lets his words marinate for a bit. "I want to prep you as much as possible, especially since our mission objective states that we have to stay until the bridge that Tazuna-san is trying to build is complete. Let me preface this by stating the obvious. None of you will be fighting Zabuza. Regardless of your plan from a few hours ago or Sakura's intuition about the water prison hinging on how close the user is to the prison in itself, none of you are equipped to fight him. He's an S-Rank missing-nin that slaughtered his entire graduating class in the academy single-handedly, and he will not hesitate to kill any of you. Have I made that clear?"

Resounding nods from his two brighter-toned students, and a hum of acknowledgement from Sasuke. He'll have to make sure the Uchiha is actually listening to his instructions.

"Now, I was awake earlier, so I did overhear parts of your conversation, Naruto and Sakura." He judges their reactions, but nothing glaringly obvious happens, so he assumes they aren't too mad with his eavesdropping. "While I am personally a ninjutsu specialist, I know enough about the basics of infiltration to help you get started. When we get back to Konoha, I'll see if I can find someone who specializes in it to properly teach you."

Genma still owes him, after all. Everyone knew Izumo would be too scared to say he was in love with Kotetsu. The senbon-chewer didn't need to know that Kakashi had basically threatened Kotetsu to confess first via chasing him with his ninken pack.

Besides, it was good practice. Bisuke got to stretch his legs and train more, it was a win-win situation.

"Sasuke, do you know what you want to specialize in yet?"

He waits, knowing his lesson is still probably brewing in his head from before. I need to give him time, he thinks exhaustedly. Rushing things with this one won't end up good no matter what the angle is.

"I don't know. I never thought about it." Is what the boy finally lands on. Kakashi can accept that answer, it's hard to pick one when there's a whole lot.

"Okay then. With that being discussed, here's what we're going to do. Sasuke, you've pretty much gotten tree-walking down pat, so we'll put that on the back burner for now. No, Naruto, I haven't forgotten about you and tree-walking. Hop to it, you will get tree-walking down before we leave Wave." The blonde pouts at that, because to him, training his chakra control is practically useless, none of the regular methods work for him, but he relents at his sensei's stern tone and trudges over to the tree that's still half cleaved in two from where Zabuza threw his sword earlier. "Sakura, I'll get you started on genjutsu now."

Sakura's eyes sparkle, and she bounds over to her sensei, who sits with her on the grass.

"Okay, we start with what you already know. What do you know about genjutsu?"

"Genjutsu are illusionary techniques that are created with chakra to manipulate the target's five senses and mind. They can be used to follow user commands, initiate mental trauma, and disorientation. It's used with Yin chakra, the chakra that governs the spirit and imagination. It's basically psychological warfare in a few hand signs." Sakura recites diligently, and Kakashi can only look at his student amusedly.

"Always has the textbook answer, hm? Anyways, you're correct. I'm assuming today will be your first time casting a genjutsu or attempting to cast one?" She nods. "Okay. Genjutsu isn't a field that sees much specialization. Even in Konoha, the only known genjutsu specialist is Kurenai. She's Team Eight's sensei. It's a precise art."

"If you use too much chakra, the illusion goes haywire. Too little chakra, and the illusion won't stick." She says. Kakashi nods.

"Good, you grasp it already. Today, I'll teach you Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu. Better known as Demonic Illusion: Hell-Viewing Technique. This genjutsu is supposed to show your target's greatest fears. It's labeled as a D-Rank, but it can be moved up to an A-Rank depending on the ability of the caster. Normally, it's casted via eye-contact, but the better you get at it, it'll get to the point where you can cast the genjutsu without it."

"Does it matter if the target is aware that they're afraid of whatever I'm casting on them?"

"Always eager to learn something new, aren't you, Sakura-chan?" Sakura can only flush, and Kakashi chuckles but answers her. "No, no it doesn't. The 'fear' can also just be something they'd want to see the least. Now, here's how you're gonna do it."

"Instead of channeling the elemental nature chakra from your chest like you normally do with Doton Release, you'll channel chakra from your brain and nervous system. It doesn't concentrate in one place and then gets released like elemental affinities, you have to spread it throughout your entire body, sort of like when your chakra enhances specific parts of your body for more power behind strikes." She does what she's told and gets a grasp of her chakra from where the chakra point in her brain is and pushes it down and outwards, spreading it through her body and hooking it to the points in her nervous system.

I just want to let you know, Outer, that you grabbing onto the chakra point in your head feels hella weird from my point of view.

Dude, your point of view is my point of view.

YOU aren't an amalgamation of Yin chakra in someone's head that exists as the result of trauma!

Dude I literally put you there, how the hell do I not feel what you feel?

I'm a result of you bottling up every bad emotion and throwing it into the void that is your brain?! I'm a sentient chakra... thing!

Whatever... deal with how weird it feels, I'm perfecting the Narakumi no Jutsu today even if it means I collapse.

"Once you have it channeled, you're going to look the target in the eye, since this is your first time doing it. Since you're practicing, I'll volunteer to be the target. Look at your target, analyze them. What do you think they'd be the most afraid of? What do you think would scare them the most? Let me know if you have an idea."

She looks at Kakashi-sensei, with all the chakra running through her nervous system, and pauses.

Kakashi has to be afraid of something. He's a damn good and effective shinobi, and most definitely fought in the war, the way he acts says so, and she knows the majority of the top jounin of Konoha were child-soldiers in the Third Great Ninja World War, Kakashi included.

Maybe if she...?

"I-I have an idea, sensei.."

"Good. Now you're going to do the sign for Snake-" She does so. He nods. "Then the sign for Rat." She does so. He nods. "Then, you're going to lock eyes with your target again, and push your chakra outwards-"

Kakashi cuts off his lesson, suddenly going mute. His eyes narrow, like he doesn't really believe what he's seeing, and Sakura frowns. However, Kakashi's eyes widen more and more in each passing second, and Sakura feels hopeful that maybe she did it right the first time.

It's silent in the clearing for at least five minutes, between Sakura's casting and Kakashi's radio silence. After a long seven minutes, Kakashi breaks the illusion with a soft 'Kai.'

Sakura grumbles. "If you could've dispelled the genjutsu that easily, what was the point of staying under it that long?"

"Just to assess your work, nothing crazy, Sakura-chan." He pats her head, and when she moves to bat his hand away, he only doubles down to ruffle her hair instead. "You have a very.. vivid imagination, and that's good."

She blooms under the praise, and in the very back of her head, farther than Inner could reach, she thinks she just might be able to make this work.

He's not sure how to feel.

He felt the killing intent (late, late, way too late-) before he saw the assailant. He felt the killing intent before he saw Zabuza, and he thought finally, this would've been the perfect time, he can test his skill, he can prove that he doesn't need to be here, that he can be self-sufficient, that he doesn't need anyone and he'll put his own two hands through That Man's heart and end him for what he did, end him for taking his family from him, end him for taking his purpose, the whole point he had for living-

He fights. The mist clogs over them like thick smoke, but he chooses to ignore it.

He thrashes against Airhead's hold on his wrist, and then she has the audacity to grab him by his hair and drag him with Dead Last to a bush, and she's talking about the water prison but Sasuke can't see anything because all he can think about his how she's holding him back from his true potential, holding him back from being who he needs to be on the field-

But he remembers what Kakashi told him.

He remembers that he said that if he doesn't learn to work with the team and the teammates he was situated with, he'd be stripped of his rank. Kakashi would use his power as the highest-ranking commanding officer and take his hitai-ate, and he'd be permanently blacklisted. No possibility for promotion, no way to get his revenge, to make That Man feel what Sasuke felt when he pressed his hands against their mother's chest to try and stem the bleeding but all he can do is sit there on his knees, desperate as his hands are stained with red red red red red red red red red rED RED-

He needs this. He can't afford to be blacklisted, so he plays nice.

He hates to admit that Airhead's plan worked, but it was thanks to her strategy that freed Kakashi from Zabuza's water prison.

Airhead passes out. The dobe makes several more clones than the ones he had originally made on the initial bridge battle to carry Kakashi back to the bridge bulder's house. The Airhead's throat is slightly red and irritated from where she's situated on the dobe's back piggy-back style, but the closer they get to the bridge builder's house, the irritation on her throat seems to alleviate on its own.

When Kakashi wakes up the first time, he tries to explain what happened. The dobe cuts him off, cursing at him saying Just because you're mad that Sakura-chan pulled you from the fight to prevent you from being sliced to pieces by a sword that's legitimately called the "Decapitating Carving Knife", doesn't mean you get to take credit for her plan, 'ttebayo!

He scowls, because he wasn't going to take credit for it, he was honestly just going to give Kakashi the proper mission report their sensei requires.

He very carefully doesn't think about what that personally says about him, that the dobe would think that he would try to take credit for Sakura's strategy.

He leaves promptly afterwards, needing to take his mind off of the possibility that the S-Rank missing-nin that made Kakashi exhaust his chakra to the point of having to be carried back to temporary home base by a legion of Naruto clones is alive, and tries to get tree-walking down pat, because if he can't get it before the Airhead, he has to be able to get it before the dobe does.

He himself doesn't understand it. Sure, for the first few years of his life, he was always the spare. Itachi was the prodigal child. He made genin at seven and chunin at ten, mastered his sharingan at the age of eight, joined ANBU at eleven and made ANBU captain at thirteen. He thought he'd gotten used to being inadequate, being lesser simply because his brother was better. It's the reason he was always attached to him at the hip, always at his heels no matter what.

He needed to be like him. No, be better than him. Because nothing was worse than the whispers from the elders, when they saw him in the street and said they felt sorry for the clan because the second son couldn't be as great as the first.

That Man leaves. He makes do. He still goes to the academy. He still gets good grades, even if he did coast by a little by virtue of being the favorite student, but he's smart, and he's capable, and he knows he's smart and capable, he's never needed that stupid fuckass fan club or any of those creepy adults in the village who try to follow him home to know that.

He got the highest grades in theoreticals (he ignores Nara and the Airhead's existence) and nobody outdid him in practical. He was the best, the very best, the best of his damn generation.

So why, just why, was Kakashi so insistent on teamwork? The treatment of his teammates? If that dumbass shit was a problem before, nobody said anything.

Plus, Kakashi wasn't even training them for the first month and a half. Then, all of a sudden, he runs to them like the devil himself is on his heels and orders them to run fifteen laps around the village and if they ever stopped, he'd hang them by their toes on the edge of the Hokage Monument. All of a sudden, it's quizzes on terrain and hunting (how did the Airhead and Dead Last know more than him, how how how how how how how how HOW) and global and inter-village politics.

All of a sudden, he actually cares.

When he's taking a break from tree-walking and coming inside, he tries his best not to overhear the Airhead and Naruto's stupid conversation. He's just taking a break, drinking water while he sits on the stairs that lead up to the attic, he tells himself. He doesn't care, he doesn't like his stupid team, and when the Chunin Exams come he can finally ditch this good for nothing arrangement and move up in rank so he can have high-enough clearance in order to kill him-

Then she starts talking about how she's always been weak. How she knows she hasn't been a good teammate or a good person to both the dobe and to him, and how she's working to fix it-

She wants to be an assassin. She wants to master genjutsu. She wants to be the weapon in the dark that sets the tempo and makes people replan their battle strategy when they find out she's on the field.

Realistically, when Kakashi asked what he wanted to specialize in, the reason why he didn't answer the first time is because genjutsu is a general Uchiha thing. That Man is a master of his craft when it came down to it. His deceased father became Wicked Eye Fugaku for a reason, his father was nothing less than perfect at genjutsu as well.

Sakura had already claimed it. He wanted to fight it, to fight her, to tell her that it was his thing, it's for him-

But he saw the determination. The want, the crave to get better, the crave to be stronger, the craving to never lag behind again. He saw it in the dobe too, the determination, the way he talks about seals, and it's an art that's lost to history that nearly nobody understands but the dobe does, he understands it perfectly and no-one gets to take that away from him no matter what-

This mission is a shit-show, and he wants the old man to hurry up and finish this bridge so they can go home.

If they do get the chance to go home, and he doesn't completely despise his team by the time they do get the chance to go back home...

There are notes about genjutsu in the Uchiha Clan Archives that aren't explicitly sharingan-only based. Maybe the Airhead can look at them, as long as she gives them back.

Chapter Text

"I FINALLY DID IT, 'TTEBAYO!"

Naruto yells in triumph as he finally walks up the tree without leaving massive indents of his feet in the tree. He moonwalks on one of the branches, just to prove a point. Sure, the teme rolls his eyes and Sakura-chan giggles at him, but that was the desired effect, so he hops down in a proud fashion regardless.

Kakashi walks over him and gives him those long-awaited head-pats he's been waiting for (and how the mighty of fallen, how he went from promising to murder the jounin in his sleep for not training them to dying for head-pats), and he can only beam as he hops from side to side.

"Ne, Kakashi-sensei? Can I learn some infiltration stuff now, pleaseeeee?" Kakashi chuckles, but if there's one thing he knows, once he promises to teach these kids something, they'll never let it go until he does teach them what he promised.

"Sure, Naruto, but be aware that I'm not exactly a specialist."

"You know enough for the basics, right? That's cool for now, ne? I wanna learn now!"

"Okay, okay, jeez." Kakashi relents, and Naruto can only laugh and yell in triumph again, and he goes to sit on one of the tree stumps behind him, only for him to land on the grassy floor instead of wooden bark. He sends a not-amused glare at his pink haired teammate, who gives him a wide toothed smile and waves. Naruto huffs and gives her the middle finger. Sakura, because she's petty, gives him the middle finger right back.

"Good work with the area genjutsu, Sakura! Keep at it!" Kakashi yells, and he watches Sakura give him a thumbs up before returning to her own devices. The jounin looks down though, and quirks up his only visible eyebrow at the grumbling blonde.

"I'm on a team full of bastards, absolute petty bastards..." He mutters dryly, and Kakashi wonders just when the kids started being assholes for their own amusement. Maa, maybe they're becoming too much like him..

"But Sakura-chan's my friend, and my teammate, so I guess she's my petty bastard. The teme too, I guess, but he'll be demoted to bastard only if he keeps that stinky attitude of his."

Kakashi is going to cry laughing. Gai insisted he should bring back stories from the kids' first C-Rank. He disagreed, saying there probably won't be much to tell. Maybe he miscalculated, he'll be spending his last bit of S-Rank pay at The Bingo Book bar anyhow.

"Okay, back to the topic at hand. Infiltration and Traps tend to work hand in hand because traps can either be use in direct battlefield application or to distract people from the true objective. The number one rule infiltrator specialists go by is 'Brighter The Cloth, Better the Job'. Do you know what that means, Naruto?" The kid shakes his head back and forth, signifying a no, but Kakashi isn't surprised.

In truth, Kakashi only memorized the Infiltrator Code of Conduct, because Genma made him do it. It was a classic case of battlefield paranoia, the result of not knowing when Genma would come back from an assassination mission. The result of not knowing whether the last mission Genma was sent on to kill higher order officials in Kumogakure and Iwagakure would be the last time they ever saw the snarky infiltration and assassination specialist.

It was a result of caution, in the case that Genma doesn't come back, someone has to be able to stand in his place, both in the Jounin Corps and on Team Ro. Someone has to be able to do the job in his absence.

All negative connotations aside, it's good that he did commit the general rules to memory. It's serving him well, training this pup.

"The brighter the clothing or make-up that an infiltration specialist wears when not on a mission, the more likely it is that the infiltrator is insanely good at their job. Meaning, no more neon orange or blue for you until you've perfected your craft."

Naruto hangs his head low, and Kakashi is tempted to scent the kid, but he relents. He almost forgets that he's supposed to be posing as more human than he actually is, but the kids he's been situated with via orders from the Hokage are actually a lot more feral than they let on and if he's not careful he may nip them with his canines through the mask as a response to misbehavior.

Sigh, the troubles of being human-adjacent. Never mind that, he has to get back to the pup.

"When we get back to the village, you can pick colors that easily blend in. If you want to maintain your personal favorite colors, I suggest navy blue, it blends in better." Naruto seems to sink even more into the ground at that, but nods somberly. At least Kakashi can have trust that Naruto's taking this seriously.

"Next things next, your footsteps. Infiltration specialists are almost always silent when approaching. If they don't want to be found, they won't be found. While I teach you the other things I know, you'll be sneaking around and getting the jump on your teammates as they are training. There are many ways to quiet your footsteps, ways that you might already know considering your penchant for pranks," Naruto grimaces. "But we'll start from the basics. You'll use the fox walk technique, get up, and you will do what I say as I say it."

He's now aware of the way Naruto properly learns, courtesy of his pink genin. He's more of a kinesthetic learner, and even while he teaches Naruto this, he's employing jumping his teammates mid-practice as movement breaks once he sees Naruto's got the minimum amount down pat.

"Place the outer edge of your foot down first, like you're leaning but only on the side of your foot, not leaning with your entire body." Naruto does so, but it makes for an awkward angle, and when Sasuke snorts at him from the ocean, he sticks his tongue out but refocuses. "Gently roll your foot from the outer edge to the heel, gradually shifting your weight onto that foot. As you're doing so, you're going to shift it to the ball of your foot and then you'll lay your toes on the ground."

Naruto does so.

Kakashi nods. "Now do it again to make sure it isn't a fluke."

After a few tries, Kakashi sees that the blonde is getting the hang of it, but he can tell his focus is beginning to wane, so Kakashi puts him up to another challenge. If he words it like it's supposed to be a super important top-secret mission to get the boy to go along with it faster, that's nobody's business but Kakashi's. "Naruto, I've got an objective for you."

He leans it to further sell the bit that it's a secret. Naruto's eyes grow stars and the boy leans in deeply. Kakashi chuckles. "To practice this skill, your job is to get the jump on your teammates. If you have anything on you, you can use that to your disposal as well. However, I will be teaching Sasuke and Sakura as you do this, so I'll be trying to ruin your plans. For every time you successfully sneak up on Sasuke or Sakura without me catching you, I'll give you one point. If I catch you, you get a point deducted. If you get the jump on me, you get two points. If you get the jump on the both of us or all three at the same time, you get three points. Understood?"

Naruto nods excitedly. "You'll start at zero. If I catch you when your points are at zero, it'll go into the negatives." The boy pales slightly at that, but his determination doesn't seem to be deterred, so Kakashi sends him off with a wave of his hand.

Now for the more difficult child.

Sasuke sits at the ocean's edge, waiting for Kakashi to finish. Out of his periphery, he sees his sensei but doesn't say anything until the man chooses to say something himself.

"Have you thought about what you want to do, Sasuke?"

The silence is filled with the raspy sound of the waves crashing into each other in front of them. Sasuke stares out and refuses to look at the grey-haired man if only because he might cry if he does.

"Kakashi, you knew my parents, right? Before they had even thought about having kids and were still on active duty?"

It's a loaded question, and he knows it is. It's a rhetorical question as well. He also knows his parents were notorious.

The Uchiha Clan wasn't a clan that was strictly matriarchal or patriarchal. Whoever took the Clan Head seat was whoever was born first. His mother, Uchiha Mikoto, had been the first-born child to his grandparents. It was a common misconception, and those who hadn't been within the same generation or academy year would confuse his father, Uchiha Fugaku, for being the blood-borne Uchiha.

Additionally, he's aware that his parents had reputations. His father was known as Wicked Eye Fugaku, but only because there were rumors of what his father's eyes looked like before he finally killed whoever the target was or whoever he was in battle with. His father was known as a genjutsu master, and as much as he loathes to admit it, Sasuke himself isn't really all that good at genjutsu, even though it's considered an Uchiha specialty that should be feared. It simply was never his thing, as much as he tried when he was younger once he realized how much everyone idolized That Man for his skills.

His mother was known as Futsunushi no Mikoto, named after the God of Swords and Warfare for how ruthless she was in battle. If his father was methodical with the way he killed, then his mother truly embodied what it meant to be an Uchiha on the battlefield. His mother was said to be ruthless, an expert in nearly every form of blade work, and the red of the blood of her enemies decorated her face just as well as the red of her sharingan did. Never benched, never let off the mission roster, and a legend in Iwa and Kumo for how she handled every battle she came across.

With two legendary parents and the shoes of over three hundred dead shinobi killed in one night to fill, picking a specialization was hard.

Should he be like That Man, and strive to be good at genjutsu even if it's difficult for him to grasp? Breaking genjutsu is easy enough, it's disrupting the chakra flow, but molding his chakra in order to properly conjure it is a different ballpark entirely. Should he be like his cousin, Shunshin no Shisui, being so revolutionary in his usage of shunshin that it defined a generation and became one of the most well-known assassins of all time? Should he be like his father, Wicked Eye Fugaku, known for scaring his targets so well it was said he could take souls, even if his genjutsu skills have a lot to be desired?

When going through the people he used to idolize, the people he used to swear on his life and on the Will of Fire that he would be like, the answer is obvious, isn't it?

"My mother was an expert on anything and everything that had to do with blades." He starts, and he wills himself to not cry, he wills himself to not think of the rough hands that were worn from years of gripping sword hilts yet were so warm and gentle when they cupped his cheek and carried him to bed. "She was named after a God, for how good, no, how legendary she was. Her sharingan wasn't used to cast genjutsu, and no matter how much everyone called her sharingan defective, it was still revered and feared. Enemies trembled when she activated, it was stated she was faster than light itself when she did have her sharingan activated."

Silence filled the space again, like a decision quietly made.

"If I'm going to make That Man pay for what he did, that's how strong I need to be. I need to be faster than light itself. I need people to tremble when they see me show up on the battlefield and activate my sharingan. I need to be like her. I choose to specialize in kenjutsu."

It's quiet once more. Kakashi nods once, not a nod of sympathy, but a nod of finality. "Good choice. I used to use swords before I did my ninjutsu focus. I don't have anything on me right now to practice, but for now I can start you on general history and sword formations."

He nods once, glad he finally has something to focus on and hone his abilities around.

He totally doesn't shriek like a little boy when Naruto drops in behind him as he's getting up from where he sat. He totally does not make an indiscernible animalistic noise, when Kakashi rewards the dobe with a point and sends him off to go start scheming once more with notes of pleased undertones as he applauds the usage of last-minute fright factor.

Sasuke hates it here.

There's a deep part of him that acknowledges that he's completely lying.

Kakashi left her with only one specific instruction: to be creative. He also left her with a singular scroll of genjutsu and their descriptions.

The instructions were so vague that she almost tore the man's hair out of his head out of sheer frustration.

Inside, she understands the principle. Genjutsu is psychological warfare, an assault of the mind. You need to be imaginative and creative in order to create genjutsu, especially devastating genjutsu. No matter how much you will it to be, genjutsu is mental. It's perception, it's what the mind thinks, and the five senses perceive.

It was pretty hilarious to watch Naruto sit on what he thought was a tree-stump and fall on his ass on the ground, and it was even more fun getting to stick the finger up at him too.

The best way to make a genjutsu hit the most and be the most effective is to make it long lasting, having the genjutsu shake the intended target's mind so much that it's impossible to ignore it. Make it leave a mark, or an imprint on them for the rest of the fight.

To do this, she needs knowledge in psychology, to be able to do quick and fast psychoanalysis of her opponent, in order to find a way to properly scar them enough to have it disable them for the rest of the fight.

The problem with this, is that she's not entirely sure that herself, the girl with the chakra amalgamation in her head from continuously masking her emotions and throwing all of them into a locked place in her head so often that it created a new version of herself in her head should be messing around with pyschology.

Why are you scared now? The whole point of this was that we finally had something for us!

Now what happens if we go back to Konoha, I start studying psychology, and then we realize that you're not supposed to exist!?

We already know I'm not supposed to exist! I don't know about you, Outer, but not everyone has a separate version of themselves that's real in their head!

But what if you're straight up wrong for me to have? What if I find out I'm supposed to get rid of you?

Then we'll get rid of me! Even if I'm technically separate, I am you! I'll always want the best for us!

I can't just lose you like that! You were the only one that was there for me in the academy. When Ino left, when I was bullied, when our parents started withholding food from us, everything! YOU'RE IMPORTANT, YOU GOT ME THROUGH LIFE! I-

I DIDN'T GET YOU THROUGH ANYTHING! DON'T YOU GET IT, OUTER? I. AM. YOU. INNER SAKURA IS JUST OUTER SAKURA. OUTER SAKURA IS INNER SAKURA, JUST LESS STRAIGHTFORWARD. THE ONLY PERSON THAT'S EVER TRULY BEEN THERE WAS YOU. WAS YOURSELF.

I DON'T CARE!

YOU SHOULD! YOU REALLY FUCKING SHOULD.

...

...Focus on the damn genjutsu. We can come back to the other thing later.

...Fine.

Sakura steels herself and refocuses on what she knows.

Genjutsu is manipulation of the mind. It targets the five senses. Kakashi taught her the Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu, but that in itself is a D-Rank genjutsu. Maybe Kakashi-sensei wanted her to build off of what was already there? He did say genjutsu rank hinges on the abilities of the user, so even if it's listed as a D-Rank, it's really not a specialization that can be ranked.

If the jutsu itself hinges on both psychology and what someone's greatest fear might be, then what can she create with that information?

What does she know about psychology in general?

Psychopathological theory says that nightmares can be associated with certain mental health conditions, like PTSD, various anxiety disorders, and depression. But what counts as an anxiety disorder versus average shinobi paranoia and suspicion? It can also vary with age. In developmental theory, children and adolescents are more likely to have nightmares because of still developing cognitive and emotional regulation abilities. Most shinobi are adolescents, for all hidden villages are technically military dictatorships, so that gives her an edge. In Neurobiological theory, it focuses more on the physiological aspect of it, but she needs more knowledge on brain structure in order to utilize it in her arsenal. Evolutionary theory works against her, but Cognitive theory works with her.

Psychopathological and Cognitive Theory work the best. How would she reflect that in a genjutsu, though?

She thinks hard, until Inner interrupts her train of thought.

Use me.

..You sound like the trees when you say that. Speaking of which, we haven't heard a whisper in a while.

We're not too far from Konoha, but we aren't close, which I'm guessing is why. Since the trees started talking to us in Konoha, I assume it doesn't work past Konohan borders.

Good point, but back to training. How would I use you to reflect psychopathological and cognitive theory in a genjutsu?

Not literally use me but use me as a baseline. Not everyone has a chakra being in their head that's a result of negative emotions.

She's right!, Sakura thinks. A real life Inner! Or, well, not real life, but a genjutsu Inner! Except, the genjutsu is an inner version of her opponent, rather than her version of inner.

Shinobi are difficult, she thinks with a determined mouth line. They fear things that are normal but aren't afraid of things that are considered abnormal. If you asked the average civilian, they wouldn't say they were scared of themselves, no matter how much the statement seemed to be false, they're able to delude themselves until they properly believe. Shinobi are different. Shinobi fear things they can't see, hear, or technically perceive with their chakra. Any shinobi not from the Bloody Mist has to be generally careful about doing too much in a fight, both because of the damage they could cause to themselves and others.

A ton of shinobi are scared of themselves, and what they're capable of. There are some that aren't.

She, however, can change that.

"That's one idea down. What else can I do..?"

She looks at the scroll that her sensei left her, eyes passing over the paper in deep thought. The Magen: Nise no Kanjo Kankaku no Jutsu, or the Fake Feeling Sensation Technique, literally just says that the jutsu invokes a fake sensation in the target. How can it be so unspecific? What was the fake feeling it wanted her to invoke? How would she know if she casted the jutsu correctly?

It only lists that a fake sensation should be invoked in the target. Meaning, the sensation could be anything. Pain, burning, freezing, anything. It's a sensory perception altering jutsu. What would be the most effective way to invoke a sensation that feels realer than it actually is?

If a shinobi felt pain, they might just ignore it, it comes with the job. If it's a blinding pain, all it takes is a general system check to evaluate on whether or not the pain they feel is real or fake. So, she has to go for balance. Enough pain to disorient and distract, but not a blinding amount, so it doesn't get immediately dismissed. What's the balance in between both extremes?

Phantom pain. Normally, people only get it from badly healed injuries, or if they're an amputee, but phantom pain is enough to disorient, to go lighter on certain body parts and lose footing because you feel an old injury creeping back up that isn't real.

Is two genjutsu enough to work on and enough to develop?

Let's go for three. Keep looking at the scroll and find another one to build off of.

The last genjutsu, or rather the last genjutsu that caught her eye, was Magen: Yami o Motarasu Mono no Jutsu. It affects the sense of sight, but sudden darkness mid battle would most definitely ring alarm bells in any shinobi's head, from fresh genin to a seasoned ANBU. She'd have to hide it or disguise the sudden black out. It's a good idea, but only in quick intervals for a stun factor, not long term. She'll have to break it down.

The Yami o Motarasu Mono no Jutsu at its core, is a manipulation of ocular perception. What you see, or the lack of what you see, is changed. She could base what the target will see off of memory or experiences, but she'd rather have a diversified skillset in genjutsu and not have all of her attacks based off of typical shinobi trauma. To choose what to alter in vision is hard, because it could be anything. She could make them see double, she could make them see clones, she could realistically do anything she really wanted, and that's what makes this hard.

Or maybe, she thinks. I could make it a double entendre. You see something and feel something at the same time.

Fear would be redundant. Shinobi have the fear trained out of them, and even if it isn't, almost all shinobi bury that feeling deep down to complete the mission. Additionally, not a lot of people would take her bright pink hair and automatically feel dread, so that's off the table.

Calm.

What..?

Calm. Make them feel calm.

Oh! Wait, that's actually not a bad idea...

Along with her pink hair. Along with her name. All of it could culminate together to create one genjutsu.

A flower field with a waterfall in the middle, graceful and not at all fear-inducing. They'll feel calm, steady, nearly empty, but not enough for it to be noticeable. Enough to make them stop, pause, enough to make them hesitate. Then, it would darken, just as fast as the vision of flowers and a waterfall came, and when they finally came to their senses, their throats would already be slit.

It's perfect, she thinks. Like a knife hidden in silk.

Woah woah woah, hold your horses, Outer.

Is there something wrong with the way I want to construct it?

Nope, all of that is fine. You need a name though.

A... name?

A name for all of your genjutsu, duh! You can't just keep calling them Magen, can you? They're not all demonic illusions!

Sakura huffs internally but relents. For all of Inner's dramatics, the chakra being has a point. It has to be named after her. She won't be yelling attacks, that defeats the whole point of the silent killer vibe she's going for, but she'd rather own her techniques and skills then just recite them. She thinks for a bit, turning over names in her head before settling on one.

"Uchi no Sakura Jutsu.. Our Sakura Technique..."

It's a little on the nose, but I like it.

So, who should we try it on?

Kakashi-sensei, obviously!!

She waves him over with his hand, eager to show him what she had come up with.

She totally did not sock Naruto in the jaw for scaring the fuck out of her. She also totally didn't bite Kakashi-sensei's finger when he chuckled and granted Naruto with a point after scaring her half to death.

"We'll work on your spatial awareness, Sakura-chan!" Kakashi says cheerily. Sakura proceeds to bite his hand.

All in a day's work.