Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts by accident.

Hatake Kakashi comes home from a mission early, for a lot of reasons, none of which are good. He decides to go to a civilian grocer, just to remind himself why he does it—to see the civilian couple kissing behind a curtain that isn’t close to thick enough to hide their amorous attentions from the world—to see some teenage boys posturing in the street, projecting their voices just a little more than they need to, so the whole world knows how strong and smart and different they are—to see the children, playing in the mud with little shinobi dolls, yelling out nonsense jutsu names as they smack them into each other. (Fire Cloud Tornado no Jutsu! Sealing Ice Snake Dragon no Jutsu!)

Total chance. In another world, nothing goes wrong on the mission, and he never drops by the civilian quarter to smell the dye, or the cured leather, or the freshly baked bread. In another world, he dies on the mission, and all of his team comes home in his place. Replay it a hundred times, and ninety-nine times out of one hundred Kakashi never comes to this street.

Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, he never sees a little girl, with outrageously pink hair sweat-slicked to her slightly-larger-than-average forehead, doing a snake seal in a brightly colored civilian garden, and then shifting into (blue, pupil-less eyes, long blonde hair, meaning—) Yamanaka Ino before falling to her knees beside a basket of artfully woven flowers, chest heaving with exertion.

And if he hadn’t seen her—

Hadn’t seen her do that transformation jutsu, even though no transformation jutsu on earth ends in a snake seal—

Hadn’t seen her do a transformation jutsu into a near-perfect replica of an actual human being on what had to be her first or second try—

Everything would have been different.

But that’s not this world.

Kakashi stops, grocery bag held loosely in his hand, and he is staggered at the ability of a seven year old child to successfully execute a flawless transformation jutsu with the wrong seals.

He is walking towards her before he can think better of it, lifting his headband to bare Obito’s sharingan eye, and he sees the academy transformation technique before him.

In the swirl of the chakra of the technique, he reads the seals that were used to perform it.

Dog.

Boar.

Ram.

Except, of course, he saw her complete it with a snake seal.

What the fuck.

She looks up at him, then, and screws up her face in suspicion.

“Who are you?” she asks, in Ino’s voice.

“I’m your friendly neighborhood jounin,” he says.

She narrows her eyes further in suspicion.

In proof, Kakashi taps his forehead protector.

“Could be fake,” she immediately responds.

“It’s not fake.”

“Could totally be fake.”

He laughs, and flashes his hands through the actual seals for the transformation technique, and shrinks down to her eye level.

He opens his mouth and is interrupted with a finger to the face.

“Hah! I knew it!”

He blinks.

Double checks that he has, indeed, transformed into Ino as well.

“You got the seals wrong! You’re a faker!”

Kakashi blinks again, and then begins to laugh. It breaks his concentration, sending him shooting up to his full height, slamming his hand against the white picket fence before him, bent over double.

He is brought back to earth by a tiny, seven-year-old hand pulling at his forehead protector.

“You don’t deserve this,” the girl is saying in Ino’s voice, jerking his whole head as she tries to pull it off of his head. “You’re a faker, I’ll tell my teacher about you.”

He bats her hands away from his forehead protector, and stands up to his full height, still chuckling, and looks down at her tiny pupil-less glare.

(She still hasn’t dropped her technique.)

(Her chakra is tight-knit, clean.)

(Her chakra is nothing but a puddle, but she is holding the technique like it’s nothing.)

(Like he would hold it.)

She stomps her feet and screws up her face, and he tries and fails to hold in another bout of laughter.

She jumps up at him, hands flailing wildly, and misses his forehead protector, but succeeds in slapping him in the face.

He tolerates it, and gives her his best eye smirk.

“You can do the transformation jutsu, can’t you, twerp?”

She frowns thunderously at him, eyes blazing, and slowly works her way through the three seals of the transformation jutsu.

Dog.

Boar.

And, of course.

Snake.

This time, he is watching her with Obito’s sharingan, and watches, in disbelief despite himself, as her chakra forms a perfect ram seal as her hands make a messy snake.

He is still standing there, slack-jawed behind his mask, as she poofs into him, sharingan eye spinning (but not actually a sharingan, thank the Sage).

It is a remarkable copy of him, and as she reaches forward to wrestle his forehead protector from his head, he snags her copy of his mask with a finger, and drags it down to reveal a very distressingly accurate copy of the bottom of his face.

She doesn’t notice because he is a jounin.

(And also she has just, really horrible situational awareness.)

“Hah!” she crows in his voice, jumping up and down in excitement, his forehead protector clutched in her hand.

It’s a really a very uncomfortable experience, watching a child do a weird victory dance with your body.

Kakashi does not recommend it.

While she’s distracted, he unties her copy of his forehead protector from her head, swaps it with the one she’s swinging around in a blur of motion, and then ties his own forehead protector back around his head.

It takes him backing away from the fence for her to realize what he’s done.

She looks at the forehead protector in her hand, her mouth hanging open stupidly as she swats at the top of her head with the other hand, and then turns to face him, outraged.

He grins, and continues backing away.

“Hey!” she shouts, running towards the fence and then trying and failing to jump over it, falling straight on her face.

(His face.)

He barks out a laugh, and she makes a strangled, angry noise at the dirt.

He waits for her to get back up on her knees, with a yelled “That’s mine,” (which, hah, no) and a “Give that back!” before giving her a cheerful wave, and body-flickering away.

He is on the roof of a neighboring house and watches as her mother opens the door, and frowns at the ruckus the girl is making, yelling at empty air for him to get his gross, ugly, stinky butt back here.

“Sakura, what—” then her eyes fall on Sakura-Kakashi, and the faint smile on her lips dies a rapid and tragic death. “Who are you?” she says, her voice as low and dangerous as a civilian’s voice is capable of getting, glancing at the knocked over basket of flowers in his garden.

Sakura flinches in his skin.

“It’s me, Mom,” she says, hunching his shoulders like a scolded child, which, he supposes, she is.

“Sakura? Is that you?”

It takes Sakura a second to understand that she is still transformed, and then she nods, guiltily.

“Stop that at once.”

Sakura hesitates.

Like.

Like she didn’t bother to learn how to break the technique.

What the fuuuck.

“Um.”

“Sakura,” her mother repeats.

Sakura hunches down a little more and hesitantly goes through the three seals of the transformation technique.

Kakashi’s sharingan is still revealed, and he can confirm that watching someone make a snake with their fingers while their chakra makes a ram is still a truly bizarre experience. It doesn’t get any less weird the second time.

She shrinks back into her normal form, but she has notably not dropped the transformation technique.

She is simply using it to transform back into her own form.

He can still see the swirling chakra of the transformation technique around her with Obito’s sharingan.

“I was scared someone had taken you, Sakura, you really scared me.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

He laughs under his breath, and shakes his head as Sakura slinks towards her mother.

She is a civilian child.

Loud-mouthed and obnoxious.

Nothing more than a puddle of chakra.

She will never be able to use an A-rank jutsu, maybe one B-rank jutsu a fight.

Even liberal use of C rank jutsus would leave her incapacitated at her enemy’s feet in any fight of real length.

She will have to fight her entire career on D-rank jutsus.

Nothing going in her favor but enough chakra control to mentally form a seal while physically making another.

Bizarre, yes.

But useful?

Well.

Who knows?

But Kakashi would very much like to find out.

As Kakashi arrives at his apartment, and, as he realizes he forgot his groceries in the middle of the street in front of the girl (Sakura, apparently)’s house, he recalls his father.

Hero of the third shinobi war, held in the same esteem as the sannin.

Civilian born, with nothing but a puddle of chakra.

Maybe the techniques won’t take with Sakura, but.

It’s a place to start.

His father had always wanted a proper apprentice.

(He had wanted Kakashi to be that apprentice—)

(But Kakashi was born with a brain for memorizing techniques, an ocean of chakra and no patience for honing the academy three into what his father made of them.)

Really, it’s the least Kakashi can do.

The next day finds Kakashi leaning against the wall of the outer fence of the academy grounds, porn out, but attention on the grounds before him.

Sakura doesn’t notice him, but some of the other children do.

Shinobi children, mostly.

The Nara boy, in particular, keeps glancing at him out of the corner of his eye.

Naruto doesn’t.

Kakashi takes a deep, shuddering breath, tries to put Naruto out of his mind.

Focuses on the little pink kunoichi-to-be.

She is really—

Quite horrible.

Her stance is perfect.

Her hold on the kunai is perfect.

Her aim is just—

Atrocious.

Before the turn got around to her, she had been proudly spouting the exact right way to do it, how you have to hold your kunai like this and have your stance like this, and she had been 100 percent right.

However, as all ninja eventually learn—

Knowing and doing are different things.

Now she’s staring at her feet, color high in her cheeks, being comforted by Ino.

Looking at Ino again, now, Kakashi is struck by how accurate Sakura’s rendition of her was.

He’d think she got it so right because of how close they seem to be, but she had his face correct down to the mole on his chin, so.

Nope.

It’s as she’s wiping at her eyes and leaning her face into Ino that she sees him.

Her eyes widen, and her face gets red all the way up to her pink hairline as she sputters at the sight of him.

She points, chattering at Ino.

“I told you!” Kakashi hears her yell. “Look, it’s the faker I was telling you about!”

Ino’s gaze drifts to him.

She’d been one of the shinobi children that had noticed him.

She’d been one of the shinobi children who had recognized him.

“I’m going to go—”

“Sakura, wait—”

Sakura doesn’t wait, racing over to him to shove her finger in his face.

Her arms are just long enough to almost jam it into his nose.

He quirks his visible eyebrow.

“Are you hiding your weird gross eye so that I won’t recognize you? I’m not stupid, I know it’s you.”

His…

Weird gross eye?

That’s not a way he’s ever had Obito’s sharingan referred to before.

“Sakura, Sakura,” Ino is calling out, running behind her.

(The fact she wasn’t able to outrun Sakura’s clumsy steps isn’t a great sign for her future as a ninja, but the Yamanakas have never really been known for their physical prowess.)

(Also, y’know. She’s seven.)

She grabs Sakura back from Kakashi, bowing to him with a strained smile as she spins Sakura away from him and Sakura squawks “Ino, what—”

“That’s Hatake Kakashi,” Ino says in a hushed whisper he can hear just—

Every word of.

“Uhh,” Sakura says, glancing back at him and sticking her tongue out at him because she is seven years old.

He resists returning the favor, not because he is a twenty one year old man, but because he is wearing a mask, and he does not want to have to smell spit on his mask for the rest of the day.

Ino jerks Sakura back around, presses their cheeks together so Sakura can’t make faces at Kakashi anymore.

“He’s a jounin!”

“Noo,” Sakura says. “He can’t even do the transformation technique right, that’s impossible.”

There is a moment of silence in which Ino frowns, and then separates from Sakura enough to glance back at him.

In her eyes, he can see her wondering.

Did Kakashi actually screw up one of the academy three?

He’s hurt.

Really.

Deeply, truly.

Ino smushes her cheek back against Sakura’s again.

“I’m pretty sure if he did, he was just messing with you. Kakashi’s the worst.”

Kakashi holds back a snort.

Wow.

Seven-year-olds.

Ino pauses.

She glances back at him.

He quirks his eyebrow up pointedly.

“I mean, you’re great. Dad has no bad things to say about you.”

This time, he actually laughs.

He fondly remembers Inoichi’s face when he showed up two hours late for his last debrief.

Good times.

“I have bad things to say about you,” Sakura offers. They have turned back to him. “I think you’re stupid, and gross.”

Ino’s face as Sakura proudly declares her contempt for him is priceless.

He is a bit sad he doesn’t have Obito’s sharingan out to remember this moment forever.

Behind the two children, Iruka jogs up, leaving Mizuki to watch the rest of the children, his face twisted with the fear of a chuunin instructor who has realized his children are being obnoxious at a jounin.

(It’s a very specific and frequently realized fear.)

“Sakura, Ino—” he scolds, color high in his cheeks as he plants a hand on both Sakura’s and Ino’s shoulders and pulls them back from him a bit. Apparently he heard Sakura’s proud declaration of contempt, and Kakashi has to hold back a chuckle. “Kakashi-senpai, I’m so sorry,” he says, a forced smile on his lips. “I was distracted by the other kids but that—”

“Iruka, don’t worry about it.” Iruka doesn’t relax. “It’s okay if you teach your students that I’m stupid and gross. I’m not judging.”

Iruka’s breath rushes out of him in a comically loud whoosh.

“Senpai,” he scolds, as Kakashi loses his battle with his own mirth.

He doubles down, and Sakura takes the opportunity to make an attempt on his forehead protector.

“Sakura!” Ino and Iruka shout, scandalized.

They’re so scandalized, in fact, that Kakashi lets her take it.

“Look, look!” Sakura proudly declares, waving it above her head. “He doesn’t deserve it. He’s a bad ninja.”

Thankfully, this time Kakashi has Obito’s sharingan out, so he can forever immortalize the horror on Ino and Iruka’s faces as Sakura waves his forehead protector over her head.

“Sakura,” Iruka says with gritted teeth. “Give Kakashi-senpai back his forehead protector.”

Ino is desperately pulling at Sakura’s arm, but Sakura is refusing to budge.

“But he can’t even do the transformation technique correctly! I bet he hasn’t even graduated from the academy!”

“Sakura,” Iruka repeats, enunciating each syllable of her name separately.

Sakura stops waving his forehead protector, and slumps a little.

“He did it wrong, though, I swear.”

Iruka sighs.

“How would you know? We haven’t started covering the academy three yet. That’s third year material.”

Kakashi blinks.

It—

It is.

Sakura is a second year student.

He’s getting dull—if he was this unobservant in the field, it would have gotten him killed.

He turns to look down at Sakura, and she’s slumped, his forehead protector hanging loosely in one hand.

“Um,” she says. “I read it in the textbook?”

“It’s not in the textbook,” Iruka says softly, hand on her shoulder.

“The library?” she says, voice smaller.

“Sakura.”

Kakashi raises his gaze from Sakura, and sees Mizuki looking in their direction. Mizuki, the career chuunin, who has never learned to hide fear in his gaze.

Dull, dull, he curses himself.

Sakura had been so sure of her incorrect seals. Like she’d read it somewhere. And he’d just seen her rattle off kunai technique word for word from her textbook.

So.

Question:

Where had she learned those incorrect seals?

“Mizuki gave them to me. Don’t be mad,” she continues. “He said that as a civilian child, I needed some help to keep up with my classmates, and he would help by—by giving me scrolls for the academy three. He said I’d have to practice a lot, even though they’d be hard at first. He told me to keep it a secret, so that the other students wouldn’t get—” she hiccupped “—jealous.”

Iruka frowns. He glances back at Mizuki, where Mizuki’s still standing among the increasingly unruly children, and Mizuki masks his fear with a confused smile.

“Sakura, Mizuki wouldn’t do that. The academy three can be very dangerous to be used unsupervised. Sakura, I realize—”

Iruka’s eyes catch Kakashi’s spinning sharingan, and he falls silent as Kakashi’s genjutsu speaks to him.

She’s telling the truth.

Iruka’s face blanches in surprise.

Apologize.

Iruka looks back down at where Sakura is shaking in silent tears.

“I—I—” she chokes out.

Iruka’s eyes widen, and he gets down on his knees in front of her, and takes her hands in his, pulling them away from her blotchy face.

“I’m sorry. You were right, I believe you.” He glances up at Kakashi—

Ask her where the scrolls are, and bring them to me, Kakashi instructs.

“Where are the scrolls he gave you?”

Kakashi lets his gaze wander to the other seven year old as Sakura tells Iruka where her scrolls are, and he finds her glaring bloody murder at Mizuki, her lips curled away from her teeth in tiny infant rage.

Well.

Ino understands what happened, then. The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree.

She’s gonna need to work on letting it show on her face, though.

He plants his hand on her hair, and ruffles it. She shakes his hand away from her hair, hands rising to her hair to try and push it back into some semblance of order. When their gazes meet, he smiles under his mask, a manic, bloodthirsty smile.

He knows from practical experience you can recognize it from his eyes.

Some of the manic bloodthirst twisted up in Ino’s expression fades.

He pats her head again, which she swats away, and turns his attention back to Iruka.

Don’t open them, Kakashi instructs a moment before Iruka body-flickers away.

Iruka’s eyes widen, and then he vanishes in a puff of leaves.

Beneath him, Ino rushes to Sakura, and gathers her up in a tight hug.

“You believe me, right, Ino? I’m sorry for not telling you, it was just—he said. He said—”

“Yeah, totally,” Ino says, meeting Kakashi’s eyes above Sakura’s head. He nods to her, and gives her his best comforting eye smile.

A moment later, and Iruka has returned in a second puff of leaves, three scrolls in his hands. Standing among the children who have at this point basically entirely given up on their kunai practice to stare towards Kakashi’s group, Mizuki’s face pales. Their eyes meet, and Kakashi gives Mizuki his best eye smile.

Leave and die, a genjutsu copy of him whispers in Mizuki’s ear.

Mizuki jerks, and Kakashi gives him one last eye smile before turning back to Iruka.

He examines the scrolls in Iruka’s hands through Obito’s sharingan, and finds a jutsu wound through the paper of each scroll. It’s an information protection jutsu, designed to modify the contents of the scroll if anyone but a select individual sees it.

It is a common sight on jutsu scrolls.

It has no business on scrolls for the academy three.

Ask her which is which, Kakashi instructs Iruka.

Iruka frowns briefly down at the three identical scrolls before doing as requested.

“Um,” Sakura says, disentangling herself from Ino, and leaning over them. After a moment she nods, and taps the scrolls in order, from top to bottom, “clone, replacement, transformation.” When Iruka stares blankly at her, she looks away. “I could only get transformation to work. I was going to ask Mizuki about the other two, because no matter what I did, I couldn’t get them to work.”

Yes, this was likely because they all had incorrect seals.

(He decides to temporarily set aside the fact Sakura had been able to tell the three scrolls apart, even though he had only been able to distinguish them by the subtle color gradations in the jutsus tied around them.)

Have her open the transformation scroll, then close your eyes before she does.

Iruka frowns, but then obeys.

“Okay?” She takes the scroll from the pile, and glances nervously around her.

She opens the scroll, and Kakashi immediately closes his eyes, and covers Ino’s.

“Hey!” Ino squawks.

“Yeah, see! This has—”

Kakashi opens his eyes, and focuses Obito’s sharingan on the fully unrolled scroll.

In the moment his eyes fall upon the words they begin to change. Some subtly (those describing the shape and texture of the chakra, the dismissive tone of the work), some more boldly (the seal sequence, the lack of instructions on how to break the technique, the introductory paragraph that proclaims it the most trivial of techniques that only the most incompetent students couldn’t master on the order of hours).

Thankfully, Kakashi has Obito’s sharingan and therefore perfect recall.

He was able to see, very clearly, the sequence as it was originally printed:

Dog.

Boar.

Snake.

He removes his hand from Ino’s eyes, and she slaps at his hand as it leaves.

Which, you know.

Fair.

“Wait,” Sakura says. “Wait, it changed, I swear, tell me you saw it.”

Tell her you saw it, Kakashi instructs.

“Of course I saw it,” Iruka responds.

Dog, boar, snake.

Iruka’s eyes widen.

“Dog, boar, snake,” he repeats.

Sakura relaxes. She glanced at Ino.

“You saw it too, right, Ino?”

Ino, without a trace of hesitation, nods.

“Yeah, of course, Sakura! Definitely.”

Sakura settles some more.

Then her brow furrows.

“Is this. Is this the right technique? This. This was the faker’s seals.” She looks down at the forehead protector now pinched under her armpit, and then up at Kakashi.

Kakashi smiles at her.

“I told you,” he taunts, voice lilted in an obnoxious sing-song, and irritation burns through the guilt that had been forming in her eyes.

She whips out his forehead protector, and then throws it at the ground at his feet. Kakashi snorts out a laugh, and flicks it up to his hands with a twitch of his toes.

“Sakura!” Iruka repeats, scandalized.

“I still don’t think he’s a real ninja,” she grumbles under her breath. “How do we know it’s not a henge.”

Still chuckling, Kakashi whips the dirt off his forehead protector by slapping it against his pants a couple times, and then ties it back onto his head.

It’s fine, Kakashi tells Iruka.

Iruka makes a face, but quickly smooths his expression.

Ask her if Mizuki demonstrated the techniques to her.

“Uh, only transformation,” Sakura says. “He said it was the easiest, so I should start with it.”

There is a flash of fury on Iruka’s face before he smooths it away.

The transformation technique is, of course, the hardest of the academy three. Clones are the easiest to get at least something, and replacement is only a little harder. Transformation is hard enough it should be a full rank above them. Or rather, the other two are so easy they should be a full rank below transformation, if a rank existed below E.

Did the seals match?

“Yeah!” Sakura says. “Actually, wait, that doesn’t make sense. If it was wrong, how did he do it? If it was wrong, how did I do it?”

Iruka blinks, and Ino’s mouth falls open.

“You did the transformation technique, Sakura?” Ino says, grabbing Sakura’s arm, and shaking it.

Sakura nods, a little shyly.

“Show me show me!”

Iruka opens his mouth, and Kakashi cuts him off with a quick shake of his head.

There is something purposeful about the jerks of Ino’s hands on Sakura’s arm, jerking her out of, perhaps, realizing that the seals she is about to use are wrong, and shouldn’t work.

Kakashi thinks maybe he’s overthinking it until Ino’s eyes catch his, and her smile slips from her face.

He smiles. The apple really did not fall far from the tree. If only Kakashi had known Inoichi when he was an adorable academy student. That would have been something to see.

Ino takes the scroll from Sakura to free her hands, rerolls it and hands it back to Iruka as Sakura slowly works her way through her three incorrect seals, and once again, Kakashi watches as her chakra forms ram but her body forms snake. She poofs into a perfect copy of Ino, and turns to her with a grin.

Ino, however, is staring at Sakura in open-mouthed shock.

“Did I—Did I get it wrong?”

Sakura’s smile falters.

“No no no,” Ino interrupts, forcing her face into a smile. She grabs Sakura’s hands in her own. “It’s great, you’re great! This is so cool! Just wait until I learn, and then we can switch!”

Sakura smiles like the sun.

When Sakura looks to Iruka for confirmation of her greatness, Ino’s eyes turn to Kakashi, understanding shining in those pupil-less eyes, as well as a little bit of possessiveness.

I found her first, Ino’s eyes say. She’s mine.

That is altogether too strategic (not to mention too old-fashioned) thinking for a seven year old, so he ruffles her hair until she stops and squeals, batting at his hand, trying to escape.

“Hey!” Sakura shouts, when she realizes what’s happening. “Stop that!” She punches his stomach. “Stop! Pervert! Sensei, help, he’s bullying Ino!”

Kakashi stops, lifting his hands into the air to proclaim his own innocence. Sakura glares daggers at him, narrowing her eyes meaningfully.

She grabs Ino, and pulls Ino back away from Kakashi, never letting her eyes leave his.

Tell Sakura to remove her jutsu, and go back to their classmates.

Iruka does, and watches in a sort of muted disbelief as Sakura goes through the transformation technique again, instead of canceling it like a normal human being.

As they leave, their eyes meet again.

“Give me the scrolls,” Kakashi says.

Iruka gives him the scrolls.

“What’s going on?” Iruka asks.

“Mizuki seems to be playing ‘gaslight the civilian children’. Don’t worry, Iruka, I’m sure I can teach him the error of his ways.”

Kakashi smiles at Iruka, and Iruka turns a little green. Whoops. Kakashi must have accidentally smiled his anbu smile.

“But—how could she do it? Mizuki could use the wrong seal, because he’s familiar enough with the technique to drop seals.”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Kakashi says airily, and Iruka frowns, his face making it clear he thinks Kakashi knows something he isn’t saying.

That’s the trick, though.

He really has no idea.

“Tell them that Mizuki got called away on an emergency mission,” Kakashi says, and then body-flickers to Mizuki, and then away with him, leaving an illusion of Mizuki receiving a messenger hawk with a scroll and then leaving without a word.

Mizuki struggles, briefly, before he meets the bare fury in Kakashi’s gaze, and instead pisses himself in fear.

So.

If Kakashi is being honest.

He really had not expected to be standing in front of the Hokage today.

Honestly, even after dragging Mizuki kicking and screaming into T&I, he hadn’t expected the Hokage to care. Maybe Nara Shikaku at worst, but the Hokage?

“I hear a seven-year-old stole your forehead protector today, Kakashi-kun,” the Hokage says with a smirk twisting his lips. “You sure you’re not slipping? I can demote you if you need it, you know.”

The Hokage snorts, and then bursts into full on laughter.

Now—

Kakashi is pretty sure people who are over sixty years old aren’t allowed to have senses of humor anymore.

Look at Mitokado, Utatane and Danzou.

He’s never seen them so much as smile.

This is bullshit.

Kakashi wants a refund.

Kakashi waits as the Hokage calms himself.

There is a part of him, the part of him that had wanted to stick his tongue straight back out at Sakura when she stuck hers out at him, that wants to say something like—

I let her take it.

But he fully understands that this would not help his situation in the least.

He’s been getting knowing smirks from every anbu and jounin he’s passed all day today.

You’d think that T&I would be better at keeping secrets, given it’s their damn job.

But apparently, nope!

Slowly, the mirth drips away from the Hokage’s face, and finally, the Hokage takes a deep breath.

“Tell me what happened, Kakashi-kun.”

Kakashi nods, and does just that. He tells the Hokage about meeting Sakura, from seeing her successfully complete a transformation jutsu with incorrect seals to finding the scrolls Mizuki had given Sakura. He finishes by telling the Hokage what they had learned in T&I: Mizuki’s systematic abuse of students he viewed as lesser—either coming from civilian families, from low-ranking shinobi clans, or simply students he didn’t like, because they spoke back to him or he just hated them on principle. His current victims were Sakura and Naruto, although the shape of his abuse differed between the two.

The Hokage takes his hat from his head, and sighs a long, sad sigh.

“How many students did we lose?”

“T&I estimated it at about fifty-one over the course of the last seven years,” Kakashi says.

The Hokage leans his head into his hand, and sighs again.

“How did I miss this?”

Iruka missed it, and he’d been standing right next to the fucker, so Kakashi is pretty sure the Hokage is pretty close to the back of the line, as far as responsibility for this is concerned. But the question isn’t really directed at him, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“Thank you for catching this, Kakashi-kun.”

The Hokage’s eyes are deep and earnest, so Kakashi nods.

“Of course, sir.”

There is a moment of silence between them before the Hokage puts his hat back onto his head.

“You’re interested in the girl?”

“Haruno Sakura,” Kakashi corrects.

The Hokage acknowledges the correction with a nod of his head.

“Yes,” Kakashi said.

“You?” the Hokage asks. “You want a student?”

Kakashi pauses.

Want is a strong word.

But—

He thinks of Rin, control and healing and barely a puddle of chakra—trying to be Tsunade, even though Tsunade had Senju blood in her veins and the chakra pool to match it.

He thinks of Rin, looking into his eyes as she died.

Maybe, if someone had taught her differently, she could have lived.

“Want is a strong word.”

The Hokage raises an eyebrow.

He thinks of his father, career genin for twenty years before he could find the right way to use his chakra.

How the whispers after he saved his team were cold and disdainful—

This is what happens when you let career genin start thinking they’re somebody.

“If I don’t train her, I worry that no one would. I think I know what she needs to be strong.”

The eyebrow remains raised.

He thinks of Sakura, shaking with tears when she realized how Mizuki had lied to her, as part of her realized he had done it for no other purpose than to hurt her.

He thinks of the excitement in his chest when he had seen her making one seal in her chakra and a different seal with her hands.

Excitement like he hadn’t felt in years.

That feeling of—

If she could do that.

What else could she do?

If he could teach her—

What could she become?

He feels his lips pull up in a smile that is totally unprofessional, too wide and too toothy for a meeting with the Hokage.

“I think she could be the strongest ninja in a generation.”

The Hokage smiles back, a mirror of unprofessional mania.

The feeling that you might be shaping the ninjas that would define a generation.

For a moment, he sees how the Hokage must have smiled when he realized that he had the three greatest ninja of a generation in his three genin.

Apprenticeship is a fairly archaic concept. It is rife with injustice, nepotism, and abuse. Apprenticeship of non-clan children moreso. Genin are already adults, by ninja law, but academy students are children.

Before the Hokage’s reforms, which introduced the academy, the only way to became a genin was through apprenticeship, and the results were as varied as they were horrible. Clan secrets stolen, children tortured, and then just plain old neglect and abuse. Jounin cannot, as a general rule, be trusted with the care of children.

Now, in this modern world, you need direct approval of the Hokage, consent of the child’s guardians, and consent of the child themself.

Kakashi has two of the three.

The easy two, of course.

In order:

Approval of the Hokage.

Approval of the Haruno family.

Now, for the hard one.

Approval of Sakura herself.

“You!” Sakura hisses when she catches sight of him standing in the shadow of the tree outside the academy gates.

(Her situational awareness is getting better!)

(Progress!)

“Yo!” Kakashi greets brightly, and her scowl deepens.

“Let’s go, Ino,” Sakura says, turning away from Kakashi, trying to drag Ino along behind her.

“Um,” Ino says. “Maybe we should listen to him?”

He can feel Sakura’s irritation from here.

She glowers at Ino, who is slowly pulling her towards Kakashi.

He squats down to their level as they approach, and she frowns up at him.

“You’re still gross and I hate you,” she says, ignoring Ino’s elbows to her side.

Kakashi laughs to himself.

“I want to train you,” Kakashi says, because if this was going to happen in any way, it needs to happen honestly. At Sakura’s side, Ino’s mouth falls open, while Sakura just looks totally mystified. “What you did, when you used the transformation jutsu, despite getting your seals wrong, I’ve never seen that before.” He pulls his forehead protector up, revealing Obito’s sharingan. “And believe me, I’ve seen a lot. I want to see what you could do, given the training you deserve. You could be as strong as the sannin—you could be stronger, I’m sure of it. I’ll make sure of it, I promise you.”

Sakura stares at him, open-mouthed. The confusion in her gaze grows and grows because, well—he’s pretty sure no one has ever told Sakura she could be a ninja before.

Not to mention a good ninja.

“Sakura,” Ino says, pulling at her arm.

Sakura turns to Ino, and Ino continues.

“You want to be the strongest kunoichi ever, right?”

Slowly, Sakura nods, while Kakashi swallows his surprise.

“To do that, you need a good teacher.”

“But Inooo,” Sakura says, “he’s the worst. He’s not even a real ninja!”

Kakashi barely holds back a snort.

Ino shakes Sakura a little.

“He is. He’s one of the strongest jounin in Konoha, and he’s never taken another student.”

While all of those things are true, Kakashi really doesn’t like that a seven year old knows about them. He maybe needs to talk to Inoichi about what he has been telling his daughter.

Slowly, Sakura turns back to him, and glowers up at him.

“Prove it,” she says mulishly.

Sakura, Ino whines at her side, but Sakura refuses to be moved.

There are a lot of ways to impress a civilian.

Even more ways to impress a child.

Instead, Kakashi leans down, and picks up a leaf from the ground.

“In five seconds, I want you to punch me,” he says.

A mean little smile quirks at the corner of Sakura’s lips.

“Okay,” she says, cracking her knuckles.

(Seven year olds should not know how to crack their knuckles.)

He flicks the leaf into the air beside him, and performs three sealless jutsus in rapid succession:

Clone.

Transformation.

Replacement.

His dad could do it in the blink of an eye. It takes Kakashi a good two seconds.

It’s thankfully still enough to wow a seven year old.

When Sakura punches him, her punch goes straight through him, dispelling his clone. She spends a moment staring at where he’d been before darting her gaze down to the leaf that had been slowly falling through his clone, and then snapping her gaze over to where he is slowly floating down beside her, transformed into the leaf he had tossed to the side.

He un-transforms, and lands lightly on the ground.

“This is the Hidden in the Leaves Technique. It was one of my father’s two signature techniques. I can teach it to you.”

Sakura leans down, picks up the leaf he switched places with, and rubs her fingers over its surface, as if she can feel the faint traces of his chakra his technique left on it.

Ino, by Sakura’s side, is gaping at him.

“Okay,” Sakura says. “If you teach me how to do that, I’ll be your student.”

He smiles at her ridiculous conditional approval.

And so, for the first time in his life, Kakashi gains a student.

Chapter Text

Kakashi would like to say that he shows up at his first training session with Sakura two hours late—

You know, old ladies to help, porn to read.

Kakashi’s a busy man.

He’s a jounin, you know?

Unfortunately, he isn’t quite that irresponsible.

Instead he arrives early, and then hides, so that he can get all of the benefit of infuriating his new student by arriving late while being able to arrive just before she stomps off in frustration.

She arrives just a little after he does, about ten minutes early. Really, quite punctual. He’ll have to fix that.

The agreed-upon meeting time comes and goes, and she starts getting jittery. He sees a bit of indecision grow on her face—a part of her thinking to herself—is she at the wrong place? did she get the wrong time? And then he sees her face harden as she decides that actually—

Kakashi is just a dick.

Kakashi has to smother his laughter with his Icha-Icha so she doesn’t notice him like five feet away.

You might wonder how Kakashi is so sure that’s what she’s thinking, and not just that she decided to put it out of her mind.

The answer, of course, is because she starts grumbling under her breath.

“Stupid Kakashi. With his stupid hair and his gross face and his stupid...” She pauses, tries to find other parts of him that are stupid. “Hair.”

She stomps a bit. Takes some deep breaths.

“It’s okay. Ino said he’d be late, because he’s the worst.” Kakashi has no idea what he has done to so thoroughly earn the hatred of that particular seven-year-old. Maybe ruffling her hair had been over the line? She did seem to be very particular about it. “She said to not worry if I’m in the wrong place, because he’s a jounin and he could find me. She said he asked to train me.”

She nods, rocking a little.

“It’s fine, it’s fine.”

Kakashi feels a bit guilty.

“Ino said it’s fine, so it’s fine.”

That’s a remarkable amount of trust, Kakashi notes. It’s something Sakura will need, if she becomes a high-level ninja. He’ll need to make sure that friendship doesn’t wither and die, without the constant forced interaction of the academy. He knows what his early graduation did to his relationships—he’ll need to make sure his student doesn’t repeat his mistakes.

He could invite Ino to train with them every once in a while, for basic training? He doesn’t have any interest in training Ino: she’s destined to be a distance fighter and the head of T&I. She’ll get there with or without him, to say nothing of whether Inoichi would let him interact with his daughter in any way.

Sakura’s head snaps up from her muttering about all manner of horrible things she’d like to do to him, and glares at the forest around her. Kakashi is half expecting her eyes to immediately snap to his hiding place, because it would fit with all of the other bullshit he’s seen from her.

“Kakashi?” she asks, glaring at the forest around her.

Kakashi says nothing, grinning behind his mask and his second favorite copy of Icha-Icha. (Variety is the spice of life, after all.)

“I know you’re there,” she declares, not even a trace of waver in her voice at the blatant lie.

Children are amazing: you have to spend years training a ninja to get them to lie at the same level they used to be able to lie as children.

“If you don’t come out, I’ll leave. This was your stupid idea. I could be playing house with Ino right now.”

Don’t laugh don’t laugh.

Don’t laugh.

Kakashi once spent two hours in a closet while two men boasted about their incredible and ridiculous ninja prowess, never letting out a chuckle.

He can do this.

“It was my turn to be Super Mega Beautiful Kunoichi the third!” she shouts. “Ino won’t let me get my turn back because she’s stupid like that!”

What great sacrifices Sakura is making for her training.

“I’ll have to be,” she sighs, like this is the greatest imposition in the world, “the Super Mega Hokage.”

Kakashi has to body-flicker away to laugh.

He body-flickers back a moment later.

“The Hokage is lame,” Sakura says sadly, no longer shouting, having probably forgotten what she was doing, and Kakashi almost gives up his cover right there. He hopes the Third is watching this on his little peeping glass ball. “His hair is stupid.”

Kakashi’s sure that the Third’s three remaining hairs are very offended.

Finally, she winds down, and flops onto her back on the grass, throwing her legs high up into the air above her.

She entertains herself briefly by watching them flail before flipping back to her feet.

“Well,” she says to herself. “If Kakashi is going to be—” she turns to the trees and bellows “—STUPID,” she turns back to the grass, “then I guess I’ll teach myself! I can do his stupid technique, and then I don’t need to be his stupid student.”

Kakashi smiles a real smile under his mask.

She does not pull out the three scrolls he gave her after she accepted his apprenticeship. Three proper scrolls on the academy three. (The ones Mizuki gave her are still locked up in evidence somewhere in T&I.) In fact, she doesn’t even have them with her.

Slowly, meticulously, she makes the seal for dog, boar, and then she hesitates. Finally, she does ram, and poofs into Ino. She looks down at herself, and then around, and then wanders over to the pond. She looks at her reflection, and then giggles as she pokes at Ino’s cheeks.

She almost giggles herself straight into the pond.

She brings her hands together in the simple breaking seal, and the transformation technique dispels in a poof of smoke.

Sakura, however, was apparently not prepared for the shock of breaking the technique, and falls directly into the pond. Kakashi takes the moment in which she is fully submersed in the pond to cough out a chuckle.

Sakura comes out sputtering and furious, glaring at the whole world around her like it’s their fault for her inability to handle a mild chakra shock. She crawls onto the grass, and flops onto her back. She blows ineffectually at where her pink hair is plastered to her face. She unties her sopping wet ribbon, flings it behind her in a fit of pique, and slicks her hair back from her face.

“Why does anyone ever dispel the transformation jutsu,” she grouses. “This sucks.” She frowns. “And it’s Kakashi’s fault,” she adds as a hissed afterthought.

Yeah, Kakashi is 100% willing to take responsibility for this. It might be his greatest accomplishment.

Kakashi watches and waits as Sakura lies there on the ground, eyes vaguely following the pages before him as he slowly pages through his book. This Icha-Icha is a bit homoerotic. The boys are making lots of eye contact in this threesome. There’s a bit of naked roughhousing. It’s very steamy. Kakashi dreams one day there will be a 100% gay Icha-Icha. He’s pretty sure Jiraiya will get there eventually.

Sakura, after about five minutes, heaves herself to her feet, and does the transformation technique again, with a little less hesitation on the last seal this time.

Ino again.

More excited giggling.

“I’m so pretty,” Sakura exclaims, dancing on the shore of the pond and flapping her hands. She runs her hands through her short hair. “My hair is so soft!” She squeals, and almost falls into the pond again before scrambling back.

Kakashi silently curses.

So close.

Sakura, being a seven-year-old and therefore having the attention span of a gnat, quickly tires of being Ino. Another transformation technique, seals just a hair messier than the last, and she poofs into–

Him.

Well.

She looks into the pond, pulls down her mask, and makes a face.

“Gross,” she decides. She flaps his hands in a decidedly little-girl manner. “Gross gross gross.” She dances away from the lake, and breaks the jutsu with a seal.

It still shocks her onto the ground. This concerns Kakashi enough that he pulls his forehead protector up to reveal Obito’s Sharingan.

She cycles through what seems to be everyone she knows, which includes, but is not limited to: the grandson of the Inuzuka matriarch, the Hyuuga heir, and the Nara heir. He should… maybe tell her about the customs around transforming into other people.

For example: don’t turn into clan heirs of clans that can kill you.

On the other hand. He could not? He’d like to see Hiashi’s face when he sees his heir giggling to herself and poking at her eyes saying “This is weird, why are Hinata’s eyes so creepy, grosssssss.”

He briefly distracts himself by imagining what Shikaku would do if he saw his son dancing around giggling, and then doing a couple of cartwheels just for kicks and giggles.

He has to body-flicker away to cover his laugh again.

When he’s back, Sakura is Naruto, and it punches him straight in the gut. She’s Naruto, and she appears to have forgotten about it, staring at a leaf.

“Kakashi was able to turn into a leaf,” she is muttering to herself.

Kakashi hesitates. Inanimate object transformations are hard, and he’s heard horror stories of academy students trapped as inanimate objects because they can’t perform a sealless release.

Really, what are the chances she gets it on her first try?

Stupid question. Her physical seals are as messy and clumsy as her chakra seals are flawless, and she vanishes in a puff of smoke, replaced with a slowly falling leaf.

Transforming into inanimate objects is hard, but it is simply a matter of perfect technique and an impeccable mental image. Both of which he already knew she had.

He is already on his feet on the branch he is hiding on, hesitating, watching the leaf that is Sakura slowly spin through the air. With Obito's Sharingan, he can see that her replica is a perfect match for the leaf she had been studying. All leaves are different, Obito's Sharingan is happy to tell him, but those two are the same.

If she hits the ground without dispelling the technique, he tells himself, he’ll break it for her.

Slowly, she falls, and Kakashi can’t even distract himself with Icha-Icha, with Ryouji and Kenta sitting in the hot springs together, arguing over Mako-san, occasionally getting into naked wrestling matches over her affections.

Sakura breaks out of the technique the moment before the leaf hits the ground, her chest heaving as she kneels on the ground. She isn’t hyperventilating, but only just.

“I did it. That wasn’t scary. I did it I did it I did it I did it i—” she sucks in a deep breath, and flops onto her back, and then grins at the sky. “I did it!” She wiggles, whacking the grass around her as she flails.

She struggles to her feet, fumbles her way through the transformation technique, and fuck, is she doing it again? She’s going to fucking kill him. Is this what it was like for Minato?

May you be cursed with a brilliant student, Minato had told him.

For the first time since Minato’s death, Kakashi manages a good mental fuck you to his old teacher. It feels good. He used to do that a lot, before his death went and ripped a hole in Kakashi’s chest.

Thankfully, Sakura just poofs into Ino. Then, a moment later, the jutsu breaks, and she stumbles.

Now, with Obito's Sharingan open, he can see what is staggering her—

It is the chakra that the jutsu had been built out of, the chakra he could see running over her skin, holding her form, getting sucked back into her as the jutsu breaks.

Which is uhhh.

New.

That’s new.

Kakashi hasn’t seen that before.

That isn’t how it’s supposed to work.

He can feel a grin start to curl at his lips beneath his mask, and has to fight to get it under control.

Sakura giggles and jumps in celebration of her seal-less break, and then proceeds to do it over and over again.

It’s not all of the chakra, he can see, as she kindly demonstrates it to him over and over again. He’s spent quite a bit of time studying jutsu—it helps with the copying, especially on the field, when he’s copying his opponent’s jutsus as an intimidation tactic—so he knows that the transformation technique has two parts: one is the initiation, a burst of chakra to change the shape, and the second is the holding, a burst of chakra which covers the user and holds them in the shape they’ve turned into. The better the user’s chakra control, the less chakra they “leak”. To his eyes, it doesn’t look like Sakura is leaking any, which if true, would be extraordinary, but he would need a Hyuuga to confirm, because the Sharingan isn’t sensitive enough to tell. Now, if he can trust Obito’s Sharingan (and he’s never doubted it), then it looks like Sakura is only reclaiming that second burst of chakra—the one that’s holding the form in place, rather than the first, which initiates the transformation. He can see the chakra on her skin shatter off of her when her jutsu breaks, and then rush back into her a moment later, which causes her to stagger.

Meanwhile, below him, Sakura is spending only moments transformed before breaking her jutsu. He can see her start to flag a little, her tiny puddle of chakra slowly being drained from that first burst of the transformation technique.

He is not prepared for her to vanish into a leaf again. Thank the Sage he’d had Obito’s Sharingan out, because he might have lost her in the leaves around her.

There was no need to worry, because a moment later, she bursts back into herself. After she’s done it five, ten times, he is relaxed enough to turn his attention back to Ryouji and Kenta’s competing stories of how incredibly well they fucked Mako.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sakura flop onto her back, chest heaving. He checks the sky, and it’s been maybe thirty minutes. Her exhaustion looks like low-level chakra exhaustion, which means he overestimated her reserves by maybe a factor of two, maybe one point five. That’s not a great sign. They’ll grow slowly but steadily over the next couple years, particularly if she trains like this, and then dramatically in puberty, but even with that, frequent D-rank use in long fights will probably exhaust her, even in adulthood.

Thankfully, he’s confident he can get her to jounin with E-ranks, but it does hamper his dream of an apprentice for all of his stolen jutsus.

His target is to be about two hours late, so he lets her rest, his Icha-Icha finishing in a glorious threesome. He seals it away, pulls out the sequel. He sees Sakura’s eyes snap to his hiding place when he activates the seal, and he smiles.

A native sensor, huh? He can do things with that.

She pulls herself to her feet, and wanders over to the tree he is no longer in because he is not an idiot, and glares up at the empty branch. Her suspicious eyes roam the trees, and she says “I know you’re out there,” she says, her lie not shaking her voice even a little.

Kakashi remains smugly silent, and she walks back to the middle of the clearing.

He’s watching out of the corner of his eye as she starts a new jutsu Ram, Snake—

Kakashi straightens, raises Obito's Sharingan to focus on her.

Tiger.

Smoke poofs next to Sakura, a fairly limp copy of herself, droopy and grey as Obito's Sharingan watches Sakura just piss chakra away into the air.

Kakashi grimaces, and Sakura staggers. She breaks the jutsu seal-lessly, and most of the chakra she’d pissed away slams back into her, dropping her back onto her ass.

She frowns.

“At least I made one this time,” she grumbles.

Kakashi frowns. Watches closer as she works through the three seals of the clone technique, pissing chakra away the whole time, and unlike the transformation technique, where her hand seals had been clumsy while the seals in her chakra were flawless, they’re both messy now.

Another droopy, grey Sakura, and this is what he was expecting from an academy student, but. What changed? Why had she been able to manage a perfect henge with incorrect seals, but could barely manage a clone with the correct seals?

She breaks it again, repeats. Again, and again. She doesn’t improve. She tries to pay more attention to her seals but she simply doesn’t have the physical dexterity for the precise hand movements. (It’s why they don’t teach jutsu until the third year, and why they teach the girls flower weaving.)

She tires of failing the clone technique, and moves onto the replacement technique, using a leaf, which.

Kakashi wants to take a moment.

The replacement technique is a supremely bullshit technique. It is perhaps the most bullshit technique. Granted, all the academy three are supremely bullshit techniques. For example, the clone technique is not a genjutsu. It is just an image. In the air. You can see through it with the byakugan because people are terrible at faking their tenketsu systems, and therefore the fake is obvious, but not because they can see through it. Clones are real in every way except the teeny tiny little fact that they don’t really exist. You can only detect a perfect clone by shoving your hand in it. ...making it a light-distortion technique, and the only one below A rank. The transformation technique? Also not a genjutsu. The user's form literally changes, but oh, it doesn’t stop there. If you get smaller, you get lighter! If you get bigger, you don’t get heavier. Where does the extra mass go? No one knows. What does that make it? Space-time ninjutsu. It is one of the only three that aren’t forbidden. The second is the Summoning Technique. The third?

The replacement technique.

Here’s a primer, because there’s a zero percent change you know how it works if you’re anything below jounin: you tag an object of similar-ish size to you (exact numbers are bullshit and therefore omitted) with your chakra. Then you do the technique, and the chakra tag will inexplicably perform it with you. Then a chakra string (A rank technique, by the way) forms between you and your target and then you instantaneously swap places, traveling none of the space in-between. (Space-time ninjutsu.) Interrupt the string with foreign chakra, like, say, a hand? Jutsu fails. Interrupt the string with an an inanimate object, like, say, a severed hand? Jutsu succeeds.

Look, point is. There’s a size requirement. Nobody knows why. Nobody’s ever broken it. About 5x volume? About 10x mass? There are exact numbers but Kakashi is too offended by how bullshit they are to remember them. Closer you are, faster everything is. (Don’t ask why, you can never ask why.)

Sakura and the leaf would definitely break the size requirements. You want to swap with a leaf? First transform into one, and then swap. (People never figured out Sakumo’s Hidden in the Leaves technique for a reason: sealless smokeless transformation - sealless smokeless replacement - smokeless break is a totally unreasonable sequence only his father would ever think of.)

Part of Kakashi is on the edge of his seat, waiting to see Sakura do something new that’s totally stupid and unreasonable, but this time, he’s disappointed.

Sakura fails twenty-four times in a row. He’s a bit impressed she kept trying that long, if he’s honest. Finally, she stomps off into the forest, like the basic rules of the ninjutsu she’s trying to learn have fundamentally offended her, and gets a branch of appropriate size.

Take two, and now she succeeds about one in ten times. He’s a bit impressed she continued trying after failing nine times, but the success rate is still abysmal. She only succeeds in tagging the leaf with chakra before executing the technique one in three times, which is something he would have expected her ridiculous control to help her with.

The only place she seems to improve is in handling the blowback of sucking her chakra back up out of the air when she pisses it out. He’s happy she seems to be working out that out on her own, because he has never seen it before and therefore has no idea how to teach her to handle it.

By the time she reaches the hour mark, half an hour of the failing and failing and failing, she looks like she’s about to cry, so he decides to drop from the tree and reveal himself.

“Yo!” he greets, and all of her frustration at herself is immediately redirected at him.

She bares her teeth at him in a feral scowl and bellows “You’re late!”

“I had to help an old lady cross the street,” he responds. “Even Jounin need to take the occasional emergency D-rank every once in a while.”

Her scowl does not abate, and she bends down to scrabble at the ground.

He frowns, and then sidesteps the rock she chucks at him.

There are two more rocks in her hands, and she’s still glaring like she’d really like for them to be in his face.

“Now, now,” he says, hands up.

This was apparently the wrong thing to say, because that makes her pitch the rocks at him. He catches them, tosses one over his shoulder, and tosses the other in a slow, high arc towards her.

She looks up at it just in time for him to swap with it, and fall to a stop directly before her.

She looks rather begrudgingly impressed, and only makes a couple of attempts at his forehead protector.

“So, did you read those scrolls I gave you?”

She frowns mulishly and then grinds out “Yes.”

“But you didn’t practice them without my supervision?” he asks.

Sakura stares up at him with the face of an angel.

“Of course not,” she says, and wow. Children really are just incredible liars. Not a pause, not a twitch.

Just amazing.

He’s so proud.

“Show me.”

Sakura makes a face.

“Show me, first! How do I know you can actually do it?” He raises an eyebrow. “With the seals!”

Ohh.

Although giving in to her ridiculous demands doesn’t set a great standard, he’s kind of already set a precedent when he had to bribe her with a secret clan technique to let him teach her.

He makes the ram seal, then the snake seal, and then the tiger seal, carefully forming his chakra with each seal, and Sakura’s green eyes bore into him, drinking in his every motion.

He completes the jutsu, and a clone poofs into existence to his right. He high-fives it, careful to make sure their hands don’t actually touch (and therefore destroy his clone).

He breaks the jutsu mentally because she’s clearly already got a handle on that, and watches with Obito's Sharingan as the chakra in his clone vanishes into nothingness. He has no idea how he would even begin to suck that chakra back into himself.

He turns back to Sakura, and gives her an eye-smile. “Your turn,” he says.

She gives him the stink eye, and then makes a sloppy ram seal. With Obito's Sharingan, he can see an equally sloppy chakra seal, and swallows back his urge to frown.

But then Sakura frowns and shakes her head.

“No,” she mutters, and her chakra ripples as she wipes the seal away.

Again, and again.

Kakashi resists his urge to taunt her, because she would definitely rise to the bait.

He watches as her ram seal becomes cleaner, less sloppy, while her hand seals fail to get any less clumsy.

That same bizarre dissonance of her hands doing one thing and her chakra doing another ripples through Kakashi.

“You know,” Kakashi offers. “You don’t actually need the seals.”

Sakura stops.

She glares balefully up at him.

He holds his hands in front of her, fingers wiggling just to be obnoxious, and slowly forms his chakra into the forms for Ram, Snake, and Tiger.

Fun fact: Seal-less techniques aren’t actually mentally forming seals. Seals are a way to transform chakra into the required shapes, but their shapes are rigid. You only have 12 “letters”, while chakra can take any form. The chakra flow of a true seal-less jutsu is a single uninterrupted flow, rather than being broken into a distinct sequence of letters. It’s why it can be faster, and more efficient.

Kakashi isn’t doing that. He does his best to form his chakra into the shape of the seals, one by one.

It’s hard, but Kakashi’s kind of incredible at this whole ninjutsu thing. Also he has Obito’s Sharingan, which lets him literally see the chakra as he shapes it. The Sharingan, as he liked to say before he had Obito’s, is totally cheating. (Now, of course, it’s totally legitimate.)

He’ll see if Sakura can copy a proper seal-less jutsu with the replacement technique.

A clone appears next to him in a puff of smoke, and Kakashi faux-high fives it again.

Sakura rushes forward, and wraps her hands around his.

Kakashi raises his eyebrow at her.

“You could be using a genjutsu,” she hisses. “I don’t trust you.”

He’ll need to work on that. Hopefully it will come with time. It did with him and Minato.

He does it again, and he can feel Sakura’s eyes boring into his chest, where he is forming his seals. He wonders what her eyes see, if they’re seeing anything.

Another clone, another faux-high five.

“Satisfied?” Kakashi asks.

Her green gaze is full of hate as she releases his hands.

“I guess,” she says.

Then, without bothering with her horrible hand seals, Kakashi watches with Obito’s Sharingan as Sakura slowly works her way through the clone technique.

Ram, stop.

Ram, stop.

Ram, snake, stop.

Ram, snake, stop.

It takes her fifty-three tries.

When she completes it, the chakra flow is flawless, and the resulting clone is similarly perfect.

Kakashi smothers a smile behind his mask as Sakura leaps with joy, and jumps to give her clone a double high-five—

And then promptly falls through it, landing on her face on the ground when her clone disperses into nothing (and, of course, all of its remaining chakra vanishing into Sakura).

This might be the greatest day of his life.

Sakura pulls her face out of the grass and glares at him with murder in her eyes.

Kakashi laughs out loud, and steps back when she lunges for his legs.

“You’re a terrible teacher!” she yells at him. “Why are you so mean!”

He dances back, continuing to laugh, and then replaces himself with a clone when Sakura dives at him, causing her to fall to the ground and eat dirt once again.

Kakashi is having just the greatest day.

Sakura picks up some dirt and throws it at him because she’s, you know. Seven.

She’s about to lunge at him when he says, in his best imitation of Minato’s teacher voice—

“Again.”

She stops, glares mulishly at him, and then obeys.

Five tries this time, before a copy of Sakura appears beside her and then rushes to attack him.

He blinks as the clone crashes into him and disperses. He watches the chakra of the clone waver in the air for a bit, and then race across the ten feet between them to get sucked back into Sakura. Sage’s horns.

What on earth is this child?

Sakura is smirking at him.

He quirks his eyebrow. “Is that all you’ve got?”

Four tries, then three, then three again and she is a little pale with exhaustion before she gets all the way through the jutsu on her first try.

All of the clones, of course, immediately attack him.

Her chest is heaving, but she is grinning viciously at him. She looks very proud of herself. Which, in all honesty, she should be. But Kakashi is too emotionally stunted to acknowledge this aloud.

Instead, he closes the distance between them as she glares at him suspiciously. He places his hand on her back above a conveniently large tenketsu, and gives her a minor chakra infusion. Ideally, you’d use the one on the stomach right above the recipient’s chakra reserves, but uhh. No. It’s a useful technique in the field for giving comrades just enough chakra to run home. For Sakura, it is a full chakra infusion, and she straightens in surprise.

The technique is horribly inefficient: Tsunade can do 10:1, but she invented the technique and is also one of the best ninja to have ever lived. Kakashi manages about 100:1, which he thinks puts him in about third place (Tsunade is a freak of fucking nature). So he can still feel the hit to his chakra stores like a punch to the gut, even with Sakura’s literal teaspoon of chakra.

She glances up at him, her eyes considering.

“Maybe you’re not… the worst,” she says, voice grudging, but eyes, for the first time today, not filled with hate.

Good day, good day.

He has Sakura repeat the clone technique a couple more times for good measure, before he has her stop.

For all of her grousing about what a horrible, gross, nasty, stupid human being he is, she doesn’t grouse about the repetition. When he had seen her in that garden, how many times had she used the transformation jutsu? With only Mizuki’s half-assed demonstration, how many times had she had to try before she got it right?

Alone, with nothing but a horrible, abusive scroll to go by.

He remembers from back when his father had trained him:

You’re rushing, Kakashi—

Nothing good ever happens quickly.

Just look at the Uchiha.

“Okay,” Kakashi says, clapping his hands together.

Sakura, halfway through her jutsu, narrows her eyes, and completes it anyways.

Kakashi ignores the rabid attack from the clone, and body-flickers away to gather a log for practicing the replacement jutsu.

Sakura’s eyes light up briefly before she remembers that she hates him, and narrows them again. He sets the log on the ground about twenty feet to his left, then holds his hands in front of him.

“Watch closely,” he says, and she scoffs with all the contempt of a seven-year-old.

This time, he does not work through the seals with his chakra. He tags the log with his chakra, holds it in his view, and then he slowly pushes his chakra through the seal-less replacement jutsu, his chakra flowing through the smooth contours of a proper seal-less jutsu.

The world shears in that really unpleasant way it does when you vanish in one place and reappear in another, and Kakashi finds Sakura glaring at him.

“What’s that?” she asks

“It’s the replacement jutsu.”

She narrows her eyes.

“It’s not. It felt different.”

Kakashi swaps back with the log, and she snaps her head back to his new location.

“What?” he asks, squatting down to her level so she can see the smirk in his eyes. “Don’t think you can do it?”

Sakura’s eyes blaze, and her teeth pull back from her lips in an adorably furious snarl.

“Do it again,” she orders.

He does. Tag, look, swap.

“Again.”

“Again.”

“Again.”

She has him do it twelve times, before she nods to herself in a very self-satisfied harrumph. She steps away from him, frowns.

She looks back at him.

“Again.”

Six times later, and then she nods again.

It takes her five times to get the tag right.

And then second by second, he watches as she works her way through the jutsu. The smile on his lips is truly un-shinobi-like.

“Again,” she says, when she’s about halfway through, like she has to confirm.

And then, finally, Sakura vanishes, and a log appears in her place.

Kakashi positively cackles.

Sakura looks at him with a scrunchy scowl, and he cackles louder.

His seven-year-old apprentice just performed a seal-less replacement technique on her first try!

The first time she finished the jutsu, it worked.

As he cackles, Sakura looks at him like he’s gone insane, and eventually grabs the log from in front of him and drags it away, so she can practice more in peace.

On her tenth attempt, she succeeds again.

Un-fucking-believable.

His apprentice is going to turn the whole damn shinobi world on its ass.

And Kakashi’s going to be the one who makes it happen.

The first day, Kakashi works with her until the sun is going down, and she can get the replacement jutsu consistently in three tries.

He is down almost all of his chakra stores from the five chakra transfusions and is forced to walk home like a civilian, but he doesn’t care.

Over the next month, he teaches Sakura the seal-less transformation technique, the seal-less clone technique, and he drills her until she can perform them consistently, nine times out of ten.

In the mornings on which he arrives late, he watches as she tries to perform Hidden in the Leaves.

Some days, she manages to swap with a leaf before it hits the ground.

Some days, she manages to be still enough that she does not appear doubled with her clone.

Never both at once, though.

The seal-less techniques are a good start, but she’ll need speed before she can do anything with them.

And never once does she complain, wanting more techniques, flashier jutsus.

(Not like he did, when his father trained him.)

She just wants these, faster.

Kakashi smiles behind his mask.

As variety, he sprinkles in some other techniques:

He has her walk up trees, which she gets on her third try, which is just. Outrageous.

Then he has her water walk, which takes her at least a day, which is only slightly less outrageous. He drones to her from the academy textbooks while she practices, because she’ll need to be a genin eventually, has her learn at least the rudimentary basics of kunai and shuriken (she’s still horrible, but not so horrible she’ll fail—she’ll improve, eventually). Once she’s got water walking down, he entertains himself by cannonballing into the pond until it stops dumping her into the water. Sand-walking without leaving a trail, grass walking without bending a blade of grass. All of which she gets in under a day each, which remains totally outrageous.

Her chakra reserves slowly increase, and to his surprise, so do his, just a little. Turns out having to give a child five full infusions a day is more chakra than he’s used to expending.

He spies on her occasionally when she leaves, and is comforted to see she often stops by Ino’s on her way home. They sometimes collect flowers for Ino’s family flower shop, and so he tries to let her out early and not too tired on those days.

He trains her on detecting Genjutsu, sitting her down and subtly altering the world around her. She is horrible at finding subtle changes in her environment, but once he teaches her that all genjutsu is internal, about twisting the chakra in the victim, she becomes very unsettlingly good at it. He has to resort to using Obito's Sharingan, because he’s otherwise actually pretty shit at genjutsu. He teaches her Genjutsu Cancellation, how to break genjutsu without resorting to a kai—untangle the jutsu inside of you, and cause the whole damn thing to unravel. Something no one uses because kais are easier and faster, but it’s good practice for learning your own chakra flow.

He has her run, and practice taijutsu, both of which she hates with every fiber of her being, and complains about constantly. It is his first exposure to “come on, teach me something cooler”. It had to happen sometime.

He ignores her complaints, and she does it anyways.

After the first month, he has her spar. She likes trying to get his forehead protector. (That hasn’t stopped.)

So that’s what he has her do.

The academy three, the taijutsu she is very begrudgingly learning, the kunai and shuriken she gets better at every day.

He uses no jutsu, moves at the speed of a chuunin, and tells her that if she wants it so bad, she should just try and take it.

Three months in, and she is very clearly genin-level. This is not a surprise: any eight-year-old can become a genin with six months of training. The Academy runs to twelve because Konoha likes to avoid child soldiers. The ninja that become genin at her age are obviously brilliant, strong and powerful and almost chuunin. (Itachi, him, Shinzou, Fuu, Jirou.)

Sakura is not that.

She’s genin-level.

She has chuunin-level ability at breaking genjutsu (higher than that, really) and at seal-less techniques, but is slow and weak as any academy student and has the chakra of a hummingbird. She could beat an average rookie genin, but nothing much more than that.

He consults the Hokage and, a day later, finds himself in the Hokage’s office.

When Kakashi quit Anbu, he had been hoping that would mean he’d spend less time in this damn office.

Apparently not.

He wonders how often Minato got called into the Third’s office because of him.

The third is staring at him, hands folded under his chin, meeting Kakashi’s gaze.

“You want to promote her to genin?” the Hokage asks.

“I do,” Kakashi confirms.

“She’s eight,” the Hokage says, and his gaze is severe.

What about Itachi, he doesn’t say.

The Uchiha have special rules: standards of ordinary decency don’t apply to them.

“She has demonstrated the competency required of a genin,” he says instead, recognizing the weasel words for what they are.

The Hokage’s quirked brow tells Kakashi what he thinks of that excuse.

“Tell me what she’s capable of.”

Kakashi is about 90% sure the Hokage already knows, but tells him anyways.

“I hear she’s stolen your forehead protector twice.”

Kakashi resists the urge to scowl.

He’d been hoping that nobody saw that.

She had transformed into an adult civilian, and, while she passed him, she had had a clone of herself signal some children in an alley just in front of him to scream bloody murder.

When he body-flickered towards the alley, she had hooked a finger under the back of his forehead protector, and used his own momentum to tear it from his head.

It had taken him an hour to find her and get her to give it back to him.

The second time she had exchanged herself with his Icha-Icha and then gotten to it before he could, and the only way he could think of to stop her from opening it had been by bribing her with his forehead protector.

Even Kakashi has standards. He’s had to move to pirate manga, instead of porn, so that she can’t do that again.

Arguably, he should never have been reading porn in front of a seven-year-old, but still.

The third Hokage has a good, hearty laugh at Kakashi’s expense, before the humor drips off his face, and his gaze bores into Kakashi.

“Explain yourself, Kakashi-kun.”

“She wants to be a kunoichi, and even now, I don’t think she really believes she can become one, especially with what she’s learned about what Mizuki did. This is growing on her over time, and she doesn’t believe me when I tell her she can become a shinobi. I’m concerned about her slipping away. I don’t think she would be willing to stay as my student without a rank until she’s twelve, and if we can’t wait until then, then promoting her according to her skill seems appropriate.”

“You brought this upon yourself, Kakashi-kun,” the Third intones.

Kakashi is perfectly aware of this, but he stands by his decision. Everything the academy teaches is trivial for her. She would have wasted five years doing nothing.

“Yes, sir.”

The third hums.

“Konoha does not like child soldiers, but we do make exceptions for the exceptional. Tell me, Kakashi. Is Sakura exceptional?”

“Yes,” Kakashi says, without hesitation. Even with the full-force of a Sharingan behind them, she can break out of genjutsu in under a minute. Not fast enough in the field, but still extraordinary.

“Prove it.”

Kakashi’s eyebrows rise.

“You’re playing that game with her. Keep away the forehead protector.” The Third’s lips quirk up in the faintest hint of a smirk. “Has she won yet?”

Kakashi shakes his head. Not in the context of a spar, at least.

“Tell her that that is her final test. Tell her that if she takes your forehead protector, she can keep it.” The Third is still smirking, so Kakashi very carefully does not ask where he would get a replacement. “I’ll have an off-duty jounin observe you. I’m sure they’d love to see the great Kakashi fall to a child.”

Kakashi suppresses a groan, and the Third’s smirk widens.

“Chuunin speed, no jutsus. Don’t cheat. We’ll be watching. If your apprentice can do that, then I’ll let you promote her.” The smirk falls from his face, and he speaks very seriously. “You’re dismissed, Kakashi-kun.”

Kakashi bows his head, and body-flickers away.

The following day, Kakashi is standing in the third training ground when Sakura arrives, and the look she gives him is priceless. It makes him wish he had Obito’s Sharingan out, so he could preserve it forever.

Off to his right, Kurenai stands, leaned against a tree. She is probably wrapped in a genjutsu, although he appreciates that she’s been kind enough to leave him out of it. With Obito’s Sharingan covered, he might have been able to see through it, but, then again, this is Kurenai, so maybe he wouldn’t have.

Kakashi smiles.

“Yo!”

Sakura narrows her eyes at him suspiciously, and he recognizes her searching-for-genjutsu face. Which is wow, super hurtful.

She blinks, and then jabs her finger at him.

“Hah!” she says.

When he is still there, she blinks, and then turns to look at Kurenai, who looks faintly flummoxed, her genjutsu having been cancelled by an eight-year-old. Sakura’s eyes widen, and he watches as she curls into herself.

“Who—” she whispers to him, “Who is that?”

“She’s a spy,” he says in a low voice. “Sent to spy on us from the Hokage.”

Sakura uncurls a bit at that and frowns at him.

“The Hokage didn’t send someone to spy on us.”

“Um, he’s kind of right,” Kurenai offers, from her position next to the tree.

Sakura’s eyes widen, and she moves a little closer to Kakashi.

“I’ve talked to the Hokage,” Kakashi says, crouching in front of her. “And he says that if you can take my forehead protector, you can keep it.”

Sakura’s eyes snap to his, and there is fire in them.

“You’re not lying?”

“No,” he says, doing his best to look serious, even though it hurts him on the inside.

“You better not be lying. I won’t forgive you if you’re lying to me.”

Her eyes are dead serious.

“He’s not,” Kurenai offers. “I’m here to make sure he doesn’t go easy on you.”

Sakura looks to Kurenai, and then back to him.

“And you’ve got to get it first,” he says, and watches as her face screws up in tiny, increasingly less-impotent rage.

She keeps on glaring at him for just a hair too long and he dives forward when a tiny hand tries to grab at his forehead protector from behind.

Sakura lands on the grass, not a single blade of grass bending.

She huffs in frustration.

“You have to put in more effort than that,” Kakashi taunts, as if she hadn’t almost gotten him. Turns out, it’s really hard to track someone by chakra when they barely have any. “I’m a jounin.”

“I still don’t believe that,” Sakura hisses, running through the seals for the clone jutsu and then disappearing.

Fuck, that’s annoying. It’s remarkably hard to unlearn how to react to a sealed pattern because normal ninja can’t seal one technique and use another. He dashes forward at a nice leisurely chuunin pace and hears growled mutters from behind him as Sakura crashes into the ground. He comes to a stop in the center of the clearing, nice and far from things she can swap herself with.

When he last timed her replacement jutsu, she was averaging at two seconds. She’s pretty clearly at a little over a second now, which means that this exercise is already having some of the positive effects he was hoping for.

Just to rub it in, he dips into his pocket, and pulls out the latest volume of the Luffy Pirates. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her eyes glitter with glee, and drops the book a moment before she swaps with it, hands reaching up at his forehead protector.

He slams his hand into her chest, and throws her back. He winces, but she doesn’t, just baring her teeth in frustration, vanishing before she hits the tree behind her. He scans the area, and finds her chewing on her thumb in the branches of one of the trees.

He throws a shuriken at her, and it goes straight on through her, Sakura’s clone vanishing with a pop.

Kakashi grins under his mask.

He’d been planning on losing in as convincing a manner as possible, but—

Sakura has never fought like this before. She doesn’t normally hide. She throws rocks, and tries to swap with her rocks. She runs at him and scrabbles at his arms, trying to get at his forehead protector. Now he wants to see what she’ll do if she really, really wants it.

He ducks his head back and forth, making sure he paints all 360 degrees around him with every pass. He searches his memory for what this clearing looked like before he had entered it, and there is one rock, not too far to his right, that wasn’t here when he got here. But without Obito's Sharingan, he can’t recognize the subtle differences in the rocks, so she could have swapped with another rock.

He grins widely under his mask, and says, “I know you’re a rock, Sakura, do you really think you can fool me with that?”

Silence.

He feels the spark of chakra that is Sakura tagging his forehead protector with her chakra, and smothers it with his own.

He’s pretty sure he isn’t imagining her outrage. He definitely hadn’t told her that you could do that.

One of the rocks replaces itself with a leaf, and he laughs. “You can’t fool me with that,” he says.

One by one, all the rocks in the clearing are replaced with leaves.

He moves towards the center of the clearing, the furthest place from all of the leaves around him.

He looks right, he looks left, and—

He dives forward when he hears the telltale whoosh of something small transforming into something human-sized.

Sakura growls in Kurenai’s voice behind him, hand closed on thin air. She holds Kakashi’s gaze as he backs away from her, and he darts to the side when, right on time, she lashes out at him from behind, her clone still standing staring blankly at where he’d been.

As he moves irregularly through the clearing, mentally running through one of the many random number sequences he memorized back in Anbu for exactly this purpose, he glances at the feet of the Kurenai clone Sakura has yet to dispel. He doesn’t see anything obvious, and glances at the clearing as a whole as Sakura screams bloody murder in Kurenai’s voice at being unable to predict his movements.

This time, he sees her untransform, and is left mildly speechless when she surges up from a broken blade of grass. The ground is, of course, littered with broken blades of grass.

Sage’s Horns on a stick.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Kurenai gape, open-mouthed at Sakura’s antics. To say that Sakura is a powerful ninja would be incorrect. A simple wind or fire jutsu would blow all of her detritus away. Basic taijutsu and a will to injure would let you counter-attack and remove her permanently from the fight.

Still.

This was an expression of skill no academy student—no genin had any right to possess.

Finally, Sakura stopped, glaring balefully at him from Kurenai’s red eyes.

“You’re the worst,” she says.

“I haven’t even used a jutsu!” Kakashi says brightly, continuing to dash randomly around. “I haven’t even left the clearing.”

Sakura makes an angry sound in the back of Kurenai’s throat, and Kurenai shifts uncomfortably, as many do when they see their own body possessed by an eight-year-old child.

Sakura looks pensive, but he does not confuse this with Sakura actually being pensive. Sure enough, she tries and fails to snare him while her clone continues to look pensively at nothing. Sakura is starting to look fairly winded, and she cancels both her transformation and all her clones, and sucks the chakra back into herself, her color visibly improving as she does so.

Kakashi does not stop moving, but keeps his eye on Sakura’s tiny form as she watches him move.

She eventually shakes her head, and stomps off into the forest. He hears the distinct sound of leaves being ripped from trees, and laughs.

“Don’t laugh at me!” she bellows from the trees. “I’m gonna get you!”

He laughs harder. He gets a wordless yell of fury in response.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Asuma body-flicker to a tree beside Kurenai, nodding at her and giving him a cocky wave. Other trees around the clearing also get their corresponding jounin, including—

Oh Sage’s hairy balls.

“I believe in you, glorious rival! I believe you can defeat an eight-year-old academy student!”

Guy gives him a thumbs up. Snickers ripple through the assembled jounin.

The thing is. Guy doesn’t have a sarcastic bone in his body. He is definitely trying to be supportive.

Which is definitely worse than just coming to make fun of him.

Kakashi swallows an aggravated sigh.

“Don’t you have anything better to be doing?” Kakashi asks.

“I really, really don’t,” Shikaku says, covering a yawn with a hand. “The clouds are boring today.”

At least the Hokage isn’t here, Kakashi can’t help but think, despite the fact that he’s sure that the fucker’s watching him.

Sakura stomps back into the clearing, hands full of leaves, and then stops dead at the sight of the twelve assembled jounin. Color rises in her cheeks.

“Woo, go Sakura,” Asuma offers in a monotone, giving a weak fist pump.

The slow hunching of Sakura’s shoulders stops, and she starts to smile shyly.

“You’re here to root for me?”

“We’re here to see you win,” Inoichi says, from where he stands resting against tree beside Shikaku.

Sakura’s smile broadens and turns just a little feral.

“Just watch,” she says, shifting her mass of leaves to one hand, scooping a rock up, and pitching it into the air.

She doesn’t even look at it before she vanishes, the rock dropping in her place. High above him, she shouts “Take this!” and disappears into the mass of leaves she throws below her.

She does not reappear on the surface or above the leaves, which means she probably transformed into a leaf and is falling down upon him now.

Kakashi watches this with a quirked eyebrow. He’s honestly not sure how she could catch him. He probably should have let one of her earlier attempts succeed: but now he’s already demonstrated he can react fast enough to dodge her after she’s broken her transformation.

As he considers this, he continues to dash randomly through the clearing. As the leaves settle around him, Sakura predictably swaps herself with the ones closest to him and tries and fails to grab his forehead protector, her cries of frustration now additionally punctuated by their audience.

“You almost had him!”

“Just a little closer!”

“You’ve been robbed!”

After her second failure, clones flood the clearing, one for each of the watching jounin, and Kakashi tenses. They’re fake, but try telling Kakashi’s reflexes that the highly trained jounin his eyes are telling him are there are less of a threat than the eight-year-old trying to steal his forehead protector.

He bursts them as he passes them, and in his distraction, Sakura gets a finger on the plate of his forehead protector before he bats her hand away.

More oohs and awws from the audience, more outraged than before.

The clones he bursts are replaced by more clones, and although he knows she has nothing more than a puddle of chakra, her ability to suck chakra out of broken clones is definitely making it seem like she’s got an awful lot more than that.

A leaf gets stuck to his forehead protector, and he bats it away, only to find it stuck there. He reaches up to pry it off, and—his forehead protector vanishes from his head, to be replaced by nothing he can feel or sense. The clones all around him charge, and that makes him hesitate for just long enough that when he spins in place, catching sight of the rock that had been hiding directly over his left ear, he is just barely too slow to close his hand around it to block her replacement jutsu before it vanishes in a puff of smoke.

His mind spins, calculating trajectories, game forgotten in the adrenaline of the battle, but Inoichi’s clone makes the seal of his body switch technique, and that sends him hurtling away from it at full speed on reflex—directly away from Sakura’s most likely location.

By the time he has touched the ground again, the clones are gone, and beyond them Sakura proudly holds his forehead protector above her head, a broad grin on her face as the clearing dissolves in whoops of celebration.

She bounces excitedly, unties it and then ties it around her own head, the tails comically long behind her, hanging longer than her ridiculous pink hair.

“I’m a ninja!” she says. “I’m a ninja I’m a ninja I’m a ninja!”

Guy scoops her up in a twirl and she squeals. She is mobbed by other jounin to the point that Kakashi can’t see her through the crowd.

Asuma comes up beside Kakashi as Kakashi looks at the leaf still falling before his eyes with Obito's Sharingan. It is totally bereft of chakra, unlike every other leaf slowly falling from the sky, which all but shine under Obito's Sharingan.

“She infused all the leaves with chakra, used that chakra to stick it to your forehead protector, and while you were distracted by everything, infused your forehead protector with her chakra so she could swap with it?” Asuma says. “Rookie mistake.”

Kakashi turns to Asuma’s deadly serious face, and raises an eyebrow as Asuma’s serious expression slowly breaks, and he breaks out laughing.

“You lost to a eight year old!” He doubles over, cackling. “Not even a genin. Lost your forehead protector to an academy student.” He slaps his knee, and Kakashi tries and fails to resist the urge to kick him in the face.

Asuma dodges with a ridiculous little hop, and then straightens, still laughing.

Sakura makes her way out of the throng of her now-adoring fans, and grins up at him.

“I did it! I’m a genin! Say it!”

Kakashi smiles and opens his mouth to say just that, only for Asuma to interrupt him.

“Oh, you don’t want him. He’s just a lowly jounin. I’m the son of the Third, you know. That clearly means I’ll be the fifth Hokage.” He crouches down before her. “So let me welcome you to the ranks of the—”

“I know where you fucking sleep, Asuma,” Kakashi says, his voice dead serious.

Asuma raises his hands, doing his best to look very threatened and really just so confused as to why Kakashi would be angry.

Kakshi crouches down in front of Sakura, and holds out his hand.

“Congratulations, Sakura. Welcome to ranks of the ninja of Konoha.”

Sakura grins at him like the sun, and takes his hand to shake it as vigorously as she is able.

Kakashi lets her, and drinks in the sight of her blinding happiness with Obito’s Sharingan eye, ensuring he can never forget it.

Chapter Text

On the night after Sakura’s promotion to genin, and about two hours after finally getting the damn Hokage to give him another forehead protector, Kakashi is stepping out of a nice long shower, hand up to his mouth in a yawn.

The last twenty-four hours have been filled with snickering from the shadows, and Sakura rubbing it in his face that she is a ninja and he is not, wearing a forehead protector that’s way too damn big for her, tails still hanging longer than her hair.

She has refused to let anyone change out the material for something more appropriate to the size of her tiny head.

It’s so rare he lets himself have a nice bath like this. His Hokage-ordered counselor likes to tell him he needs to let go more. This is Konoha, he’s safe here.

Tonight, Kakashi decided to take his advice. A nice, long soak, in a celebration of Sakura’s promotion, after the yakiniku party she somehow convinced Ino to convince her father to pay for. She invited all of the jounin who watched her final exam, plus him, Ino, and her parents.

It was delightfully domestic.

He remembers his own promotion to genin, not too long after his mother died, a dinner with his father, when his father smiled for the first time in what felt like forever.

I’m so proud of you, son, he’d said.

Kakashi smiles at the memory.

She might be making him soft, but then again, he’d quit Anbu so he could be soft, again. It might not be such a bad thing.

He stretches, examines his maskless face in the mirror with a smirk, and ties his towel around his midsection. He strolls to the window, spreads his hands along the sill, and takes in a deep breath of wood fire and trees and home and—

Blood.

Enough blood the air is fucking thick with it.

He surges out of the window in a moment, uncaring of his half-naked state. (He once was forced to kill a noble while totally naked, in front of the noble’s whole damn court. They didn’t mind, having been the ones who had ordered the hit.)

He bites his thumb, summoning his ninja dogs and sending them—

Then, through the air of the village, he hears Sakura’s voice. Ratcheted up two octaves and screaming like—

Like—

Kakashi is off across the tops of the roofs before his ninja dogs have finished summoning, towards the source of the voice. He slams his foot down on the house he’s currently standing on, caving in the roof (he’ll need to apologize later) and flinging himself high into the sky above Konoha—

Where is she where is she–

There.

Bright pink hair like a fucking beacon, crumpled onto the ground with her hair all around her head and ten feet away from her—

Uchiha Itachi.

He’s dashing towards her and Kakashi isn’t even falling yet, he can’t make it not again fucking Sage above not again please—

“Itachi!” he bellows, channeling a not insubstantial portion of his chakra into his vocal cords, and ripping them despite it.

Itachi looks up, and across the distance of half the damn village his features are still crystal fucking clear to Obito’s Sharingan. In his eyes a sharingan Kakashi has never seen before spins as blood drips down his face like tears.

Kakashi snares Itachi in the strongest genjutsu Obito’s eye can conjure (the blood, that’s the Uchiha compound, so, best guess, he makes the genjutsu his family bloody and attacking him) and he knows his eye could never be enough against the genius of the Uchiha clan but as long as it delays him for even a moment—

He tags Sakura with his chakra, conjures a shadow clone to belt him towards the roofs below him so hard it pops itself, signs through the replacement technique in one hand while he charges the chidori with the other, and as soon as his feet touch the roof—Sakura is on a roof behind him, and he drives his hand into Itachi’s chest, the blade Itachi had been aiming for Sakura’s neck slashing harmlessly by Kakashi’s side.

Kakashi misses, Obito’s Sharingan not enough to give him the accuracy he needs against another sharingan, but he carves a hole in Itachi’s side all the same, fries his nervous system just a little bit, forces him back.

Itachi was Kakashi’s equal when they were in Anbu together, Kakashi was his commander by seniority but not strength and that was before he got his new sharingan, which means nothing good.

Kakashi pushes his advantage, pulling a kunai from a seal on his forearm and charging forward. He charges it with another chidori and lets it fly. Itachi doesn’t quite have enough time to dodge and chooses to block with his sword, which is a mistake, the resulting electric shock channeling into his body through his sword, knocking his legs out from under him.

Kakashi dashes forward—he can see dead Uchiha clan members lying on the ground inside the compound before him, spurring him forwards, into killing this man he once thought a comrade, a friend—and dives to the ground a moment before Itachi belches out a flawless sealless fireball.

Kakashi dashes back just before the wall between them meets the same fate, and fucking hell, Itachi is back on his feet, smiling serenely, hand green on his side.

Kakshi can’t let him finish that, but before he can move, Itachi’s new sharingan is suddenly all he can see, Obito’s sharingan is trying to fight against it, trying to pull him out of it, but—

There is a sound, not a kunai, moving all wrong, too slow, too ungainly, and Itachi staggers as a fucking rock hits him from the side, breaking his concentration and freeing Kakashi from whatever the fuck that was. Two roofs away is… Guy? Three fucking rocks in his hands, his brown irises ragged, chest heaving, teeth bared and—

Sakura.

She transformed into the strongest person she knew and started throwing fucking rocks fuck fuck fuck.

Stupid fucking child.

His hands blur through the seals for the clone, as he closes the distance between them, twenty Kakashis covering the rooftops, all indistinguishable from the real thing, because Kakashi has Obito’s sharingan, and knows what they’re supposed to look like, in the hope Itachi will pay attention to any of them, but—

Itachi’s gaze catches Sakura’s before Kakashi can get a clone between them, and her eyes roll up in her head, leaving nothing for Kakashi to do but catch her as she falls.

Kakashi screams out the same anguished cry he made when Rin fell into his arms, or when Obito fell, or Minato or—or—or—

Sakura opens Guy’s eyes, brown irises even more ragged than before.

That.

That can’t mean anything good.

“It hurts,” she says, because she’s a fucking seven-year-old, what the fuck did he think he was doing.

“I’m sorry, Sakura—” he picks her up and Sage, she’s so light, and dashes away from the roof a moment before Itachi crashes down upon it, his face still so fucking serene, like he’s doing his Sage-given duty.

Kakashi hasn’t wanted to kill anyone more in ten fucking years.

Itachi looks up at Kakashi, and Kakashi carefully keeps his gaze on the top seam of Itachi’s fucking butcher’s apron.

“What have you done, Itachi.”

“I tested the limits of my abilities, Senpai. I found the rest of my clan…” he drifts off, almost dreamily. “Lacking.”

Kakashi sets Sakura, still whining and squirming, down on the roof below him, and he can’t even glance at her, he knows Itachi would be able to kill him for it, and steps forward.

“I remembered you as so strong, Senpai, but is this really all you are? You can’t even look me in the eyes.”

Kakashi doesn’t rise to the bait. He spins his hands through the seals for the Hidden in the Mist technique, and mist spreads out from him. He whistles to his ninja dogs to find any jounin they can and wake them, something he should have done before he started this mess, if he’d been thinking straight.

Itachi laughs lightly under his breath.

A breath later and Kakashi is before him, and once again he only barely avoids taking Kakashi’s chidori to the chest. This time, though, he can’t dodge as cleanly, and Kakashi takes his left shoulder and arm with it.

It leaves Kakashi weak-kneed with chakra exhaustion, but he isn’t empty yet. He drives his open palm into Itachi’s chest, and Itachi dodges again, back this time. Kakashi follows him, catching his stomach, and crushes some part of Itachi’s digestive tract with his gentle fist strike.

Itachi’s chest heaves, but Kakashi’s been the copy ninja for longer than Itachi’s been fucking alive, and he matches Itachi’s fireball with his own, refusing to give an inch.

His student is behind him. If he falls back, she dies.

Itachi continues to fall back, and in the corner of Kakashi’s eyes, he is gratified to see his serene fucking smile is gone, replaced with a mask of pure fury and hate. “I will kill you, you insignificant—”

He is interrupted by the blaring of the Konoha alarm system, and his snarl of displeasure is audible.

Kakashi forms a rasengan in his free hand, counters Itachi’s sword strike with it, leaving nothing left of the sword but twisted metal. He pushes in, in, in. He ignores his dangerously low chakra reserves, countering another fireball, blowing away a summoned crow with another rasengan.

Just a little longer just a little longer just a little longer.

Finally, Itachi falls, and some stupid part of Kakashi relaxes.

Their eyes meet—”Tsukuyomi”—and the world is black and red and pain.

In which his sharingan and every technique he has ever learned is useless.

It is.

It is an eternity Kakashi has no desire to detail.

It passes.

Kakashi opens his eyes to see Itachi bearing down on him, a grin splitting his face, breaking the lines of blood running down it, and Kakashi does not even try to dodge it.

He’s not sure he could—his arms leaden with chakra exhaustion, Obito’s eye blind without chakra to power it.

But regardless of whether he could, he doesn’t even try, because he has spent forty eight hours unable to stop the horrors inflicted upon him.

A fist wrapped in a red haze crashes into Itachi’s face before he closes the distance, and Kakashi stares in wonder at Might Guy before him, his face twisted in fury and determination.

No smile.

No nice guy pose.

But their eyes meet for the barest hints of an instant, and he can feel the warmth in that gaze.

“Seventh Gate,” Guy intones, and he erupts in blue light.

Itachi’s face hardens, and the sharingan in his right eye spins.

Fuck—“Guy—”

It’s too late, but—

“No,” Guy says, and Itachi just barely dodges out of the way of his fist.

Itachi is fast, but Guy is faster. Glancing blows become full blows, and Itachi’s steps become staggered.

Itachi staggers back into a wall of his compound and there is fear in his eyes.

Guy doesn’t even hesitate, closing the distance, and driving his fist—

Straight through the air where Itachi was a moment before.

Kakashi fails to place where Itachi went, but Guy does not, and is immediately upon a now-empty telephone pole.

Now, further away, on the wall around the village, Kakashi can see a figure wrapped in black, a bloody figure over its shoulder.

Guy crashes into the wall with all the force of a Kage, but the figure is already gone.

“Sorry,” a disembodied voice says. “But I have plans for this one.”

Guy spends a moment in the massive hole he just punched in the wall of Konoha, eyes darting back and forth before his shoulders slump and he re-appears beside Kakashi.

“Guy—”

“Eternal Rival,” Guy says, taking Kakashi in his arms, grin pained but intact. The world blinks, and Kakashi is being set down on a roof, as Guy closes his gates and crumples onto the ground beside him. “You did it,” Guy continues, voice pained. “One day, I will best you, eternal rival.”

Kakashi blinks, and then looks down at the figure before him, wrapped in bright green, but quivering and whimpering in a way Guy never has.

Sakura.

Through his leaden limbs, Kakashi crawls over to Sakura, and turns her to face him.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You’re safe now.”

Her currently-brown eyes are concerningly blank (and concerningly ragged) before they snap to him, and she surges into him, buries her face in his chest, and her body is wracked with deafening sobs.

Kakashi closes his eyes against the pain, and pats her back the best he can.

He meets Guy’s gaze over Sakura’s back.

“You saved her,” Guy says. “You saved all of them.”

Kakashi frowns for a moment before he registers the screaming he had been tuning out. The screaming that echoed from the Uchiha compound.

A tired, pained smile plays at Kakashi unfortunately un-masked lips.

As his eyes close against his will, he remembers what Minato had told him, so long ago.

Don’t pray for silence, Kakashi.

Screams mean there’s still someone to save.

Kakashi wakes to Inoichi’s frowning face.

“We have some questions,” he says.

Of course they do.

“I’m in the hospital,” Kakashi counters.

“Someone tried to kill the Uchiha clan, and they already wanted to start a civil war. Be happy I didn’t force the medics to wake you up earlier.”

So.

He did force the medics to wake him up, then.

Kakshi takes a deep breath, and nods. “Where’s Sakura?”

“She’s already been discharged. She’s—” Inoichi pauses and a pause like that has never meant a good thing in Kakashi’s entire fucking life.

Despite his chakra exhaustion, Kakashi surges up to a sitting position and is about to push himself to his feet before Inoichi’s hand catches him by the chest, and pushes him to the bed.

He is too weak to resist, but that doesn’t mean he’s happy about it.

“Itachi’s technique tortured me for—” Anbu training, drilled into him so deep he could count even in torture “—forty-eight hours. He used it on her. How is she.”

Inoichi’s mouth falls slack. “Oh Sage,” he says.

Kakashi gets right back up, only to be once again hindered by his staggering lack of chakra, and also Inoichi’s hand.

“She broke the jutsu,” he says, when Kakashi doesn’t stop trying to get up.

Kakashi blinks, and sags back into the bed.

“She… she did?”

Inoichi nods, and Kakashi sags a little further.

“I interviewed her myself, and she couldn’t recall any of the visions Itachi’s jutsu conjured, only that breaking it hurt.” Stupid fucking brilliant child.

“I couldn’t break that with the Sharingan,” Kakashi says.

They’re both silent for a bit.

“Who the fuck did you choose as your apprentice, Kakashi?”

Kakashi shrugged. “I was just impressed with her ability to use the henge with the wrong seals,” he says.

He twitches his lips, feeling something—missing.

Inoichi hands him a mask and his forehead protector, and Kakashi accepts them both gratefully. He hands Inoichi back the eye patch he had had over his sharingan, and Inoichi frowns down at it, before tossing it carelessly onto the side table.

“As for her prognosis,” Inoichi says, “it seems that breaking that technique did some damage to her chakra coils, but the doctors are recommending bedrest, so she’s been sent home.”

Kakashi sighs with relief. He’s a bit concerned about the damage her chakra coils might have sustained. She really didn’t have a lot of leeway to work with, but she was alive.

She was okay.

“Now,” Inoichi says. “I have some questions.”

“I’m an open book, as always,” Kakashi responds, as brightly as he can.

Inoichi rolls his eyes.

“I’m the head of T&I,” he grumbles, “but noo, Inoichi-kun,” he continues in an imitation of the Third’s voice, “it’s too important, you have to do the interviews yourself.” Kakashi chuckles, and Inoichi scowls at him. “When did you realize something was wrong?”

Kakashi reaches back in his memory. He had had Obito’s sharingan open at the time, and had seen the moon, so… he does the math in his head. “2:24,” he says.

“Hmm,” Inoichi says contemplatively, with his confirmed-his-suspicions expression. “How did you notice?”

“I smelled blood on the wind.”

Inoichi nods, his expression unchanging. “Okay, tell me what happened, in order.”

Kakashi does so, to the best of his ability. To summoning his ninja dogs to—

“I’m sorry, she hit him with a rock? Uchiha Itachi, a man who had to be fought down with two of the top jounin in the village, and still put them both in the hospital. She hit him with a rock?”

“He was distracted?” Or, more specifically: rocks fly unpredictably, too slow with all the wrong sounds, so all of his ninja instincts had worked against him. Also, like, he was distracted.

Inoichi gives his head a shake like, Why the fuck is this my job?

(Answer: he is really good at it.)

(Moral of the story: never be good at a bad job.)

“Why don’t we just arm everyone with rocks?” he mutters. “Someone comes in for a protection job, we just give them some good old Konoha rocks.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“Are you okay, Inoichi?”

“We have twenty-two Konoha citizens brutally murdered by a trusted jounin, a new missing nin, a mysterious figure who rescued that missing nin, and a civil war brewing. It’s been a long couple days.”

Kakashi gives Inoichi his best sympathetic face.

Unfortunately, Inoichi sees straight through it to the underlying—Thank the Sage it’s you and not me face, and scowls.

“Continue.”

Kakashi gets to the man in black before Inoichi interrupts him again.

“Is that all you can tell us about him?”

“Itachi’s eye jutsu had already drained the rest of my chakra. I was totally blind in Obito’s eye at that point. I barely caught a glance at him before he fled.”

Inoichi sighs, and nods for Kakashi to continue.

There isn’t much left, and Kakashi finishes it up in only a couple of sentences.

Inoichi nods.

He pockets his pen, and glances down at his notes. As he does so, they rustle just wrong, and Kakashi realizes belatedly that they’re in a sound suppression field.

Obviously.

Wow, Kakashi is incredibly out of it.

Inoichi finishes tidying up his notes, and tucks them back under his arm.

“Here’s the current situation: Uchiha Fugaku and Uchiha Mikoto are dead. Sasuke, miraculously, is not. We’re not sure why, but the interim clan head is not surprised but tight lipped about it. It looks like Itachi started with his own house and then worked outwards, neighbor to neighbor. We lost nineteen Uchiha and the three Anbu that were supposed to patrol the night of the attack.”

Kakashi nods.

“The killings stop at 2:23, if we can trust the coroner.” They both chuckle. Rule number one of intra-village politics: never doubt the coroner. “Which is also when you and the Inuzukas started smelling blood. Our best guess is that Haruno Sakura interrupted him at that point, and then screamed bloody murder, but that would mean that a like five-hour-old genin broke a genjutsu that was holding across the entire village.” Inoichi’s face shows what he thinks of that idea. “Then you and Guy drove him out of the village. Since then, Uchiha Sousuke has become interim head.”

Well, shit.

Kakashi knows Sousuke.

If the village has Danzou—

Then the Uchiha have Sousuke.

“Yeah,” Inoichi agrees. “He is claiming the village brainwashed Itachi into attacking his own people, trying to wipe them out.”

That’s a concerningly specific accusation.

Kakashi meets Inoichi’s gaze. There are some things that can’t be said, even under a sound suppression field.

Inoichi shakes his head.

That’s comforting. Kakashi’s done a lot of horrible things as Anbu, but—

There are lines that just shouldn’t be crossed.

“He is claiming that the Senju are trying to wipe them out,” Inoichi continues, as if that exchange had never happened.

“Of course,” Kakashi says. “The one Senju. Lady Tsunade has always hated the Uchiha.”

“Hah,” Inoichi says without humor. “Don’t say that outside this room.”

“Understood.”

“We’ve had some evidence Sousuke has been trying to gather support for a rebellion, and it looks like he has decided to treat this as fuel to the fire.”

Great.

“Anything else I should know?”

“Congratulations. You and Guy are heroes of the Uchiha clan. Half of the survivors saw you two fight Itachi to protect their compound, and not even Sousuke has been able to sway them. We’re going to need that.”

“Who do you want us to support?”

“Shouko.”

Kakashi frowns. Shouko?

Kakashi isn’t sure he knows a Shouko.

“Yes, that’s kind of the point. She’s been campaigning futilely inside the Uchiha clan for the last decade to invite non-Uchiha into the military police, and integrate more Uchiha academy graduates into standard ninja forces.”

Well, shit. Kakashi thought he’d never see the day.

“She even wants to tear down the wall.”

Well, double shit.

“When do you need me to go parading about?”

“Yesterday. Guy has already been discharged, and is helping with the cleaning effort.”

Kakashi blinks.

“I’m suffering from chakra exhaustion. I can’t walk.”

“That’s what crutches are for.”

Inoichi sets a pair of crutches by Kakashi’s bed.

Kakashi looks at them, and then up at Inoichi.

“Hokage’s orders.”

Kakashi sighs, and heaves himself off the bed.

“Oh, and those daffodils—Sakura brought them.”

Kakashi stops, and glances at the vase of messily picked daffodils on his side table.

He smiles.

“Say, Inoichi,” Kakashi says as he pulls on his jounin uniform. “When I met Ino a couple months ago she said I was ‘the worst’.” He heaves himself up onto the crutches, and pulls up next to Inoichi. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you? You know, I don’t think I ever said two words to her before that.”

Inoichi glares.

“I knew you were the worst before you said a word to me, so it probably just runs in the family.”

With that, Inoichi body-flickers away.

Now, Kakashi doesn’t feel like that’s entirely fair. The first time they met, it was after Kakashi had made Inoichi wait two hours for a debrief.

He was only like, an hour late at most to the yakiniku party he’d first met Ino at.

That can’t be it.

With a chuckle and one last glance at the mostly-petalless daffodils Sakura picked for him, Kakashi hobbles out the door.

The sun is setting by the time Kakashi makes his way to the Haruno household.

In the garden, Sakura and Ino are hunched together.

He should have come here first, before going to the Uchiha compound. He should have visited the doctors, to find out the extent of the damage to her coils, and what exactly they were planning to do about it.

He shouldn’t have started training a fucking seven-year-old.

Sage, what had he been thinking.

In his mind’s eye, he imagines her rejecting him, blaming him for her almost death, and she’d be right. In his mind’s eye, he imagines her parents throwing him out, trying to attack him with their pitiful civilian strength, and he doesn’t stop them.

How could you do this to our daughter, they would yell. It’s all—

In his mind’s eye he imagines what would have happened if he had been even a moment later, Sakura’s blood staining the stone, her life dripping away—

“Kakashi-san.”

Kakashi blinks back to the real world, and finds Ino looking up at him, her pupil-less eyes so like and unlike her father’s. It feels like there’s some understanding there, like she’d seen into his mind, seen what he’d been thinking.

It’s unsettling, coming from a seven-year-old. What hell do the Yamanaka feed their children.

A moment later, Sakura looks up, and—Sage’s horns on a stick.

Her gaze is so blank, so empty. Her irises are just as ragged as they had been when they’d been hidden in Guy’s face.

What did that mean?

“Sakura,” he says.

She blinks, slowly.

Inoichi was wrong, this was—

Why didn’t he come here first.

If only he could fucking body-flicker, but he can’t, so he hobbles as fast as he can, up to the garden fence and over it.

“Sakura,” he repeats, when he’s before her, and she stares up at him, blinking slowly, before shaking her head.

She smiles, and then realizes it’s him, and scowls.

“Kakashi,” she grouses.

Ino at her side looks aghast, but Kakashi feels relief, deep in his bones.

She isn’t gone.

She’s still her.

She’s still human.

“Sakura!” Ino hisses. “He saved your life.”

Someone really needs to teach Ino how to whisper. She’s really bad at it.

Sakura looks at Ino with those ragged irises, and there is a moment in which she’s not there anymore, eyes staring blankly over Ino’s shoulder.

Long enough for Ino and Kakashi to trade glances. He sees that Ino has her hand tightly curled around Sakura’s, and she tugs at it now, pulling Sakura out of whatever trance she’d been in.

She blinks, looks at Ino, looks at Kakashi.

“Could be a genjutsu,” she says. “Could be a transformation.”

Ino sighs, sounding very put-upon and not at all like a moment before she had been staring at Kakashi with terror in her eyes and her heart in her throat. She’s either seven years old or a great liar.

Kakashi would put even money on either.

“He was really strong,” Sakura continues, moving her gaze back to him, and narrowing her eyes. “He could do—”

Her eyes unfocus, and Kakashi winces.

Ino tugs at her arm, and Sakura returns to them.

“He could do all sorts of cool jutsu,” Sakura continues. “Kakashi can’t do any cool jutsu, I’ve only ever seen him do the hidden in the leaves technique, and I can do that.”

Kakashi laughs, just a little, and it hurts as it comes out.

He sits down, as Ino makes noises at Sakura about how dense she’s being. Kakashi sets his crutches against the garden wall and sees motion in the curtains by the window before him and sees Sakura’s father standing there, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably, looking at his daughter, and her…

Her once again blank stare.

When Sakura’s father’s gaze turns to him it is not full of vitriol and hate, but it is beseeching. Help our daughter, it says.

Please.

Kakashi sets his back against the garden fence because as much as it pains him to admit it, even to himself, he can only barely sit up.

“Sakura,” he says, and her gaze focuses and rests on him. Kakashi flicks a glance at Ino, up at Sakura’s farher, and then over at the Anbu resting on a neighboring roof.

He signs for the need to privacy, and the Anbu appears briefly, slaps down some seals, and then vanishes again.

“See, that’s a real ninja,” Sakura says.

Another glance at Ino, and—

Trying to teach a seven-year-old the importance of informational security, especially as it concerns to their best friend, is a futile effort (it worked on him because he didn’t have any friends—convenient, that).

Sakura is staring blankly again, and Kakashi waits until Sakura comes back to herself.

“What you did that night,” Kakashi says, and Sakura flinches at the memory, which is—well, it’s better than the blankness. “It saved a lot of lives.”

Sakura smiles, but shudders a little.

“There was so much blood,” she says.

She’d been not too far from the house of the clan head. Where the massacre had started. He’d seen it too.

“I know, but the rest of the Uchiha clan is alive, because of—” Sakura’s eyes go distant, and Kakashi waits until she’s looking at him again. “Because of you.” She smiles faintly. “An S-class mission,” Kakashi continues. Waits until the haze in Sakura’s eyes clears. “That might be a record, you know—a successful S-class mission on your second day of being a genin.”

Sakura giggles, fingering her forehead protector, like she still can’t believe it’s there. She gets lost for a moment there, which Ino brings her out of by tugging at one of the tails of her forehead protector.

Sakura snaps back to the present and holds her forehead protector protectively against her. “Hey, no, Ino, this is mine! Get your own!” she says. “There’s one right there!”

She’s pointing at him.

“Hey,” he says, but it is too late. Ino surges forward and Kakashi is literally so weakened he loses a fight with an academy student. She holds his forehead protector proudly above her head for a moment before realizing what she’s done and blanching.

Then belatedly, Sakura cheers. “You did it, Ino! You’re a ninja now!”

“No,” Kakashi corrects. “That was only for you.”

Sakura ignores him. “You have to put it on. Put it on.”

Slowly, Ino does so, glancing worriedly at Kakashi as she does. It doesn’t look any less ridiculous on her than it did on Sakura. Out of the corner of his eye, Kakashi can see the Anbu shaking.

Cat mask—Tenzou. Fucker’s supposed to be protecting him, he’s pretty sure.

There’s a moment of silence, in which Sakura is staring at Ino’s collarbone and Ino’s face crumples a little.

She’s not quite in reach, so Kakashi has to heave himself off the fence to give her shoulder a comforting squeeze.

She looks at him sidelong, and then smiles a fake smile when Sakura returns to the world, and cheers again.

“You look great, Ino!” Sakura says, and Ino laughs a little brokenly.

Sakura frowns, but Kakashi interrupts her.

“Sakura, can you tell me what happened?”

Sakura looks at him, and her gaze shutters, shoulders slumping.

“I already told Ino’s-dad—” she says it like one word: Inosdad “—do I have to say it again?”

Kakashi’s lips twist.

“Maybe I can help?” he says, because he doesn’t trust Inichi to give it to him straight—the fucker implied pretty hard Sakura was totally fine and look at this shit.

“I’m fine!” Sakura says. “I’m—” When Sakura comes back to the world, she looks like she’s about to cry, and Ino throws her arms around her. “I’m not fine, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The doctor’s told me to go home, because they didn’t know—” Another pause. “—they didn’t know what was wrong with me.”

“I’m pretty smart, you know,” he says, mentally going through all the recent sightings of Lady Tsunade. Last seen in the land of Hot Water, three months ago. Could still be there, could be—

“Pfft,” Sakura laughs, just a little too late. “No you’re not. You’re Kakashi.”

Kakashi laughs a little despite himself. He signals Cat to get him Sakura’s medical records. If the doctors really just released a child with these symptoms because they were stumped, he’s going to have some very painful words with them.

He sees Cat raise his hand to his ear and shift like he always did when he was whispering.

“I—” Sakura says, and then hesitates. “I got woken up by something which felt—really weird.” She looks at him under her ridiculous pink eyelashes, and he nods. “I could feel a twist in my chakra, like you always told me to look for—” She stares at him blankly, and Ino rocks her until she comes back to them. “But it was hard, like—like I don’t know. I followed it, and then I was at the Uchiha compound, but I didn’t recognize it, I just thought it was a wall and and—” Blankness. “And then I climbed it and I couldn’t see anything but I could kind of feel it and there was something just horrible, my stomach felt so sick, and the knot hurt and I just—I just pushed and pushed at that knot and it hurt so much but I knew something was wrong, so I pushed until it broke and—” Sakura stops, but this time only looks down at her hands. “And I felt like someone had burned me, on the inside.”

Chakra scarring. This is why people use kais—you free yourself without breaking the jutsu, reducing the risk that the backlash of the broken jutsu will fry your insides. Why did he teach her Genjutsu Cancellation, why didn’t he teach her about the dangers of the technique—

The answer, of course, is because it had been so much more impressive to see her easily unweave his genjutsu like they were nothing. He is the worst teacher on the fucking—

“Then I saw him, and I tried to run, but when I looked back at him, the whole world went wrong, and the horrible wrongness was knotted up in my everywhere, in my eyes and my skin and my blood and—” Sakura is crying now, and Ino is also crying and Kakashi had been under the impression she’d heard this before, but a look at her face tells him that in fact, she had not. He is making a lot of bad decisions today. “I knew it was something bad, I could feel the chakra, that it wanted to make me hurt, so I broke it. Every little knot, I broke it, and each time I did it hurt like I was also getting burned on the inside, but I broke them all, and he couldn’t hurt me, and then.” She looks up at him, and her eyes become dazed. She broke Itachi’s jutsu. (Tsukuyomi, did he call it?) One he couldn’t break with a kai and the sharingan. Maybe… maybe training her to detect and break genjutsu the old-fashioned way wasn’t so horrible after all. “I’m sorry, I know that was the wrong way to do it, and now I can’t be a ninja anymore because my chakra is all broken but—”

“No, Sakura,” Kakashi interrupts. “You did it right.” Sakura blinks, and looks up at him. “He caught me in that jutsu,” Kakashi says, and Sakura’s eyes widen.

“But I thought—I thought I stopped that.”

“You did, once. But he caught me with it again, and it was—” Kakashi takes a deep breath. “I’m very glad you were able to break it.” Sakura sniffles, and nods.

Sakura blinks, eyes wet, and then continues.

“Then,” she says after a moment of blankness. “Then you were there, but you were all stiff, so I turned into the big green jounin because he looked strong but it was hard, there was something wrong with my chakra? I had to use my hands, but I did it, and I hit him with a rock and then—” she looks away. “And then he used that jutsu again, and I broke it, just like the first time. But it was. It was worse, I couldn’t stand anymore, and it hurt so much worse. I couldn’t even stop being that big jounin. I couldn’t move my hands, I couldn’t do the seal-less break. I could just lay there and feel my chakra leaking away.”

Ino rocks her, and Sakura leans into her. She stares blankly into the direction that includes Cat for a long moment.

“That’s it,” she says.

“Thank you for telling me,” Kakashi says, and she nods.

Cat flashes to Kakashi’s side, and Kakashi takes the report from him.

“Is that mine?”

Kakashi nods. “It’ll tell me how to help you. I’m still your teacher, you know.”

Sakura gives a wet scoff, which Kakashi appreciates. She then pushes Ino away a little.

“You’re gross,” Sakura says after a hair too long.

Ino stares at her open-mouthed.

In fairness. She is gross. They both are.

“You’re grosser!”

Ino tackles her, and Sakura giggles, as they roll through the dirt.

Huh. Here Kakashi was thinking little girls were less gross than boys. His mistake.

He scans through the report, and then holds it up for Cat to take it back. He can feel Cat’s irritation at being reduced to a delivery-boy, but Kakashi helps him get over it by giving him his Anbu commander glare.

Cat appears, takes the report, and rests a comforting hand on Kakashi’s shoulder for a split-second before vanishing.

Kakashi mulls over the contents of the report as he watches Sakura and Ino tackle each other through the garden, getting very, very gross. Dirt and snot and tears and.

Kakashi would like to establish that he was not this gross as a child.

The doctors were not as incompetent as Sakura and Inoichi made them seem. The diagnosis is extensive chakra scarring, particularly around all of her tenketsu. It says something about how the Tsukuyomi worked, and also explains her symptoms. Scarring inhibited chakra control, so she’d been forced to use seals for her transformation after the first Tsukuyomi, and then further scarring caused by the second Tsukuyomi removed almost all of her chakra control, leaving her unable to break her technique. She was unable to move because of simple chakra exhaustion, which was not helped by the slow drain of the transformation technique on her reserves. Chakra scarring is known to cause absence seizures, when the body is unable to pass enough chakra through certain chakra pathways in the brain, causing a momentary lapse of awareness until chakra could pass again. Scary, but generally benign.

The prognosis is bleak for her future as a ninja, but doesn’t appear life-threatening. Chakra scarring is traditionally viewed as untreatable. In children, chakra scarring can self-heal to a certain extent, so bedrest really was a reasonable prescription. She also has an appointment with Toumi Hyuuga, head Hyuuga healer, which is. Damn. He’s had comrades who had died because Toumi refused to treat non-Hyuuga. Apparently saving a noble clan is enough to get you in her door. She could determine the true extent of the scarring, and might be able to use her gentle palm to relieve some of it. But the healing is unlikely to be complete, because he knows of several Hyuuga jounin who never fully recovered from chakra scarring.

The pile of dirt and bodily fluids that are Sakura and Ino crash into and over his legs. Ino has the decency to look sheepish. Sakura just looks proud, because she’s on top.

“Sensei,” she says, and Kakashi swallows his surprise, “I won.”

Ino makes an affronted noise, but Sakura, despite her horrible taijutsu skill, is still a genin, to Ino’s academy student, and now that she’s decided this is a game she wants to win, it’s a game she would win.

“Congratulations.” He waits for her absence seizure to pass. “It’s very hard for a genin to defeat an academy student. It’s something to be proud of.”

Sakura gapes at him in outrage, and he chuckles, knocking the both of them off of his knees and taking the opportunity to steal his forehead protector back from Ino.

“Ino’s super strong!” Sakura asserts, shoving a finger in his face. Behind her, Ino colors faintly. “You take that back.”

“Sakura—“

“No! Kakashi isn’t even a real ninja!” Damn. Back to Kakashi. “He doesn’t get to talk about you like that.”

Behind her Ino smiles an embarrassed but genuine smile.

Kakashi raises his hands before him in surrender.

Sakura snorts, and turns away. She sits there, frozen for a moment, reminding them all that in fact, not everything here is fun and games. “Don’t listen to him, Ino,” she says after it passes.

Ino’s face when she sees—actually, fully recognizes—how dirty Sakura is is priceless. He counts out one second before understanding dawns in Ino’s eyes that she is, in fact, just as bad.

“Girls,” Haruno-san calls from the doorway. “I think you two could use a bath, don’t you?”

Ino nods, and, after a long, uncomfortable moment, Sakura nods as well.

“Okay Dad,” she says, popping up to her feet.

“Sakura,” Kakashi says, from where he is slowly pushing himself to his feet. Sakura stops, and then looks up at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “Do you still want to be a ninja?”

Sakura’s face breaks in surprise. Then her eyes harden in determination. “Yes.” After a moment of blankness, she continues. “I want to be strong enough I can stop people like that horrible Uchiha from ever hurting anyone ever again. I’ll be strong enough I can protect you, and Guy, and strong enough no one ever needs to get hurt.”

Kakashi feels a complicated mixture of surprise and pride.

He smiles.

“In that case, I promise I’ll find a way to fix your chakra. You’ll be a ninja again, I promise.”

Sakura hesitates, and then she smiles, bright and wide and without a shred of doubt.

Her belief in him knocks the air out of him like a chakra punch straight to the gut.

She then turns and trots after Ino towards her father, who is looking at Kakashi, his gaze conflicted.

“Say goodbye to your teacher, Sakura,” he says, as Sakura passes him.

Sakura stops at his feet, and then looks back at Kakashi over her shoulder with a glare.

“Bye,” she says, with all the contempt she can manage.

“Sakura!” her dad scolds, but Sakura has already dashed past him into the house.

Kakashi bows his head to Haruno-san, and then hobbles his way over to the Haruno family fence, ignoring the perfectly functioning gate, because ninja don’t take gates, regardless of whether they can stand unaided.

Chakra scarring is traditionally viewed as untreatable, but thankfully, there have been plenty of ninja that have scoffed at that tradition. First among them—the Toad sannin, Jiraiya, who managed to find a way to fully recover after Orochimaru torched his entire chakra system with some Sage-forsaken jutsu. If memory serves, he wrote out the procedure he used, and although no one has ever replicated his success, there’s a first time for everything. If not him, then, well. Konoha also has the most powerful healer of their age, if only anyone can find her.

There is a bit of a spring in his hobble as Kakashi hobbles home, Cat dogging his steps.

And also.

If Sakura wants to be powerful enough to stop an Itachi alone, then, well, he has some work to do.

In his mind’s eye, he sees Itachi closing on his student—

Kakashi being too slow, twice over.

He shakes his head clear of the images.

If it’s how to be faster, well.

Kakashi has a couple of ideas.

Chapter Text

The next day, Kakashi meets Sakura at her house, and they walk through the streets of Konoha together, Kakashi hobbling and Sakura occasionally freezing up, eyes staring at nothing. It is a long walk.

“Can she really help me?” Sakura asks, voice small.

Kakashi recalls Norashi, who got his chakra system punctured by taking a hit destined for Hiashi Hyuuga, carried home as he pissed chakra out like a leaking bucket—they had to break every regulation on chakra pills, just to keep him from bottoming out and dying. He walked out of the Hyuuga compound and worked as a chuunin for another three years, before he married a civilian girl and retired.

“Yes,” Kakashi says. He doubts she’ll be able to heal Sakura completely, but—

He catches Sakura with his right hand, keeps her from stumbling into a gutter, her eyes blank.

But she should be able to help at least a little.

Sakura nods.

“I can’t—I can’t go anywhere. I sometimes get lost, and I don’t know where I am, even in my own house.”

Kakashi keeps his hand on her shoulder, and she doesn’t brush it off.

“Ino’s eyes are all red. She thinks she’s hiding it, but she’s—”

Silence, and Kakashi stands beside Sakura in the middle of the busy street. People part, some people look like they’re going to curse them, but they meet Kakashi’s furious eye, and shrink away.

“She’s not,” Sakura continues, and then hesitates, noticing the world has changed. “I’m a ninja, you know. I notice these things.”

Kakashi pats her shoulder as they keep walking.

“Let her pretend. It helps her, if you let her pretend.”

Sakura nods.

They walk the rest of the way in silence. They’re late. Not fashionably late. Stupidly late, because Kakashi forgot to account for his own hobble and Sakura’s moments of blankness.

The branch member at the gate bows to them.

“This way,” she intones, in that flat way the Hyuuga have. Heads dip to them as they pass, and Kakashi’s been in the Hyuuga compound as a guest before, but—

He never got this kind of reception.

Sakura stops, in the middle of the cobblestone path, and the whole fucking compound stops with her.

She blinks back to the world, and they all start moving again. Sakura doesn’t even notice the missing time, not like she did in the street.

Kakashi swallows, a bit choked up.

They arrive before a white silk curtain, and the woman who led them this far bows and gestures into it.

Sakura leads the way, no sense of decorum, and before Kakashi follows her, he leans down and whispers.

“Thank you.”

“The Hyuuga have not forgotten who our kin are,” she responds, “for all they like to pretend otherwise.”

Kakashi glances at her in surprise, but her head is still bowed.

“Thank you, regardless,” he says, stepping further into the room and letting the silk screen fall closed behind him.

Before them is a hunched woman, ninety-three years old, hands more claws than hands, eyes milky and blank.

“Welcome,” she says, her voice quiet and raspy in the way of the very old.

“Hi,” Sakura says, after just a little bit too long.

“Come, child,” the woman says. On her forehead are the faint lines of a Hyuuga curse seal, faded, like a twenty-year old scroll—

Faded in a way curse seals do not fade.

Kakashi doesn’t move. He’s lucky he’s allowed to be here at all.

“Do I have to—” Sakura stutters, lifting a hand up to the zipper in her dress, hunches a little.

“No, child,” Toumi responds, gesturing for Sakura to come closer. It takes a Sakura a second to respond, and he doesn’t have to see her eyes to know they are unfocused. “Cloth is nothing to chakra.”

“Oh,” Sakura says, shuffling closer. “Thank goodness.”

Toumi laughs a low, rough chuckle, and places her withered hands upon Sakura’s shoulders.

The veins of the Byakugan stand up all across her body, and she stiffens.

“Oh, child,” she whispers, voice soft. “What did he do to you.”

Sakura whimpers.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, rubbing briefly at Sakura’s shoulders, veins vanishing back into her skin. “Just more proof of the depth of his depravity. Don’t worry, it is nothing that cannot be undone. Lay down, child.” She gestures to the table beside her.

Sakura stands there for a moment, and then lays face first on the table, looking awkwardly over at Toumi. “Like this?”

“Just like that,” Toumi says. She runs her hands lightly over the air just above Sakura’s dress. “Relax,” she says, voice soft. “This won’t hurt, I promise.”

Toumi has a voice that makes you want to trust her, put your life into her hands, even when you probably shouldn’t. Sakura relaxes.

There is a moment of fury in Toumi’s gaze when her hands touch Sakura. A moment of bared teeth beneath old, wizened lips, before Toumi takes a deep breath, and settles herself.

Then, she sets to work. With Obito’s sharingan covered, he can’t see it, but his chakra has recovered enough that he can feel it.

Kakashi has seen Tsunade heal, once. A man who had been barely above a corpse. It was like watching the rules of the world rewrite themselves.

Watching Toumi now, feeling the gentle push and pull of her chakra, he gets the same impression.

And Sakura—

Sakura falls asleep, snuffling and occasionally snoring. Kakashi fails to hold in a chuckle, and Toumi matches it, a faint sound that curls around her lips.

She starts at Sakura’s head, then moves down Sakura’s body, her torso, her arms, her legs. When she reaches Sakura’s feet, she turns to Kakashi for the first time, blind eyes unnervingly accurate.

“If you would,” she says in a voice that isn’t even a whisper.

Kakashi nods, and hobbles over to her, the thick tatami muffling the thump of his crutches. Balanced on his crutches, he slips his hands under Sakura and turns her to face up.

Her face is clear of worry and pain, and her mouth is hanging open, drool trickling out of the corner of her mouth.

Kakashi stifles a snort, and lays her back down on the table before him. Across from him, a smirk is twisting the corner of Toumi’s lips, and she looks a good two decades younger.

Toumi does not dismiss him as she sets to work again, so he does not move.

The feeling of vague unreality at the gentle push and pull of Toumi’s chakra—the sense that fundamental rules of the universe are being twisted—does not abate. He wishes he had the chakra to power Obito’s sharingan so he could watch, although he doubts he would be permitted to do so.

Once again, she starts at Sakura’s head, another momentary instant of fury twisting her face. “Damn Itachi to a thousand hells,” she says, her voice low, barely even a whisper.

Kakashi can’t help but agree.

Slowly, she works her way down Sakura’s body, until she reaches her toes once again, and then she raises her blind eyes to him. There is a long moment of silence in which he meets her gaze, before she raises a claw to him and beckons.

“Come here, Fang,” she says to him. Nobody has called him that since his father died.

When he hobbles over in front of her, he sees the veins of the byakugan stand up across her wizened skin, and he feels a pulse of chakra wash through him. It fades, and Toumi sighs.

She raises her hands, unable to get much higher than his chest, and beckons for him to come closer. With some difficulty, he pulls his crutches out from under him and kneels before her.

She clasps his face in both of her hands, her skin remarkably soft despite its appearance. He feels her chakra in his system, and does his best to push down the spike of fear that triggers in him.

Her lips twitch. “It’s okay to be frightened, Fang. You should see how our jounin react.” As she speaks, he feels something in his chakra system, something that had been hardened and wrong since the Tsukuyomi, come loose under her gentle pressure. “Proud jounin of Hyuuga, shaking like a leaf because of an old lady.”

She laughs to herself, and he laughs with her, even though he’s pretty sure she could kill him with a thought.

She then raises her hand to his forehead protector and pulls it away from his eye, and he freezes.

“Ssh,” she whispers, placing her hand over his eye. “That Rin girl did a good job, but—”

He feels her chakra in his eye, in Obito’s eye, and it’s a good thing he doesn’t have access to his chakra, because he might have killed her on instinct.

“She’s no Hyuuga.”

The pressure he has felt in the back of Obito’s eye since Rin transplanted it in him suddenly comes loose, and Obito’s eye snaps open.

The world, as he sees it from this eye, is not painted in the bloody red and black of the sharingan, which means—

He stares down at the old woman before him in shock.

“It’s easy to miss, and easy to shred the eye if you do it wrong, so she was probably right not to try.”

He tests his eye with a tiny tendril of chakra, reforming that pressure he’s known for the last two decades, and the world spins into red and black before he pulls the chakra away. And, for that instant—it does not consume the torrent of chakra he is used to.

Nothing but a whisper.

What did Toumi do to him?

“We Hyuuga do not forsake our kin, no matter how estranged to us they have become. Consider this a thank you, from the whole of the Hyuuga house.”

Kakashi gapes at her, open-mouthed. Toumi’s hands lower from his eye to his stomach, and suddenly that chakra heaviness that comes after chakra exhaustion burned away in an instant.

At his expression, Toumi just smirks her tiny old lady smirk and turns away.

“It’s time to wake up, child,” Toumi says to his left, urging Sakura into a sitting position, as Kakashi continues to stare dumbly at the space where she just was.

“Oh!” Sakura says, her voice light. “Oh wow!”

He can feel the pressure of chakra in the air, but Toumi cuts Sakura off before he can.

“Child,” she says sharply, and the chakra disperses.

“Um, sorry?”

“I’ve done what I can, but I was not able to heal you fully. The rest you must do on your own.” Sakura’s face falls as Toumi helps her back to her feet.

When Sakura droops, Toumi takes Sakura’s hands in hers, and meets Sakura’s eyes with her own.

“I know it’s hard, and scary,” she says. “But I know you can do it. Believe in yourself, child.”

After a moment of hesitation that is not a moment of blankness, Sakura nods.

“Okay,” she says, and Toumi smiles, releasing her hands.

Kakashi pushes himself to his feet, and Sakura points at him in shock.

“Your eye!” she says. “It’s not gross anymore!” Kakashi smothers a chuckle, and Sakura turns to Toumi, grasping Toumi’s hands roughly in her own. “Did you do that?”

Toumi smiles and nods.

“Wow,” she says. To Kakashi, she adds, “Congratulations on finally getting your gross eye problem fixed.”

At Sakura’s side, Toumi presses her lips together in an effort to swallow her snort.

“Yes,” she agrees. “I’ve never much cared for it, either.”

Sakura, completely missing the subtext, is simply happy someone is agreeing with her. She bounces over to Kakashi, her eyes never once unfocusing into blankness.

“Can we go now?”

He raises an eyebrow, and she turns to Toumi, sending a sloppy bow in her direction.

“Thanks for healing me,” she says.

“It was my pleasure,” Toumi responds. Kakashi feels a faint wave of chakra, and the silk screen behind them is pushed open by the woman who led them into the compound. “Kimiko-chan will see you out.”

Sakura bounces out towards Kimiko, and Toumi meets his eyes somberly.

“It will not be easy,” she says, in a whisper he needs to channel chakra into his ears to hear. “But it is possible.” A moment’s pause. “She will require your guidance, Fang.”

Kakashi nods, before following Sakura out.

Kimiko stops him at the screen.

“Your crutches, Kakashi-san?”

Oh, right. Those.

He returns, ignoring Toumi’s smirk. Crutches are supremely awkward objects to carry when you aren't using them, too long and narrow to carry comfortably, no matter their orientation. After like twenty feet of awkwardness, he just tucks them under an arm and decides to trust his jounin reflexes to keep him from whacking anyone with them.

Sakura notices he is no longer using his crutches only once she sees him holding them.

“Are you better now?” she asks.

“Something like that,” Kakashi says, feeling a brief bout of mild disorientation from his newly binocular vision.

“In that case,” Sakura says, hands outstretched, “gimme.”

Happy to be rid of the cursed objects, Kakashi passes them off to Sakura, who proceeds to try and fail to use them.

As they walk back out of the Hyuuga compound, Hiashi inclines his head to them. Just a hair, but it is more than he has seen Hiashi lower his head in his entire life.

As Kakashi walks Sakura home, she doesn’t freeze to stare into the distance even once.

Although she does manage to fall on her face trying to balance on his crutches at least three times.

That night, Kakashi is in the Hokage’s office, really hoping this will be the last time he has to come here for a good long while.

The Hokage has him report on the status of his mission—show up and fawn over Uchiha Shouko.

It’s fine.

Great.

Kakashi is the greatest sycophant that’s ever lived.

He maybe have paraphrased that a bit before saying it to the hokage, but the look on the Hokage’s face makes it clear he caught Kakashi’s very hidden meaning.

You know, underneath the underneath, and all that.

“It’s necessary,” the Hokage says.

“I understand that,” Kakashi responds, feeling a bit chastened.

“We’re staring down a civil war.”

“I’m sorry.”

A faint smile tickles the corners of the Hokage’s mouth, because he’s a huge dick.

“I hear you’ve found a new academy student to lose your forehead protector to. You know we have anti-theft ninjutsu for people who can’t seem to hold on to their belongings.”

Kakashi keeps his gaze flat. Responding would be encouraging him.

The Hokage laughs at his own joke, and then pulls out a single sheet of paper, covered what looks like chicken scratch from the massive pile of paperwork by his side.

“The document you requested,” he says, handing it to Kakashi.

Kakashi looks down at the “document”. He looks back up at the Third Hokage.

He makes sure his gaze says: It was your job to teach this man how to write mission reports, right?

The Hokage ignores him, which is his right as the hokage.

That doesn’t make it any less bullshit, though.

He looks through the page of chicken scratch, and then looks through it again.

He looks back up at the Hokage.

Back down at the paper.

“I’m sorry,” Kakashi says. “He did what?”

He’d always known the Sannin were freaks of nature. He just… didn’t really grasp the full magnitude of their freakishness.

The Hokage doesn’t answer, because it isn’t really a question.

Here’s what Jiraiya did.

The chakra system is made out of chakra. It’s weird, but that’s just the way it is. Chakra all the way down.

Jiraiya had been cripplingly scarred: The Third gave the Hyuuga substantial concessions to get him seen by Toumi, and she had been unable to do anything with the charred mess that his chakra system had become. It wasn’t just Toumi, either—this was before Tsunade’s pseudo-defection, so she was present as well. The two greatest healers Konoha had ever seen, and neither of them could do a damn thing.

So Jiraiya, in his infinite, well… his infinite something, decided that if his chakra system was made out of chakra, and his current one was bad, then he should just—

Well he should just build a new one.

Just replace the broken, charred, scarred bits, inch by inch.

It took him eight months.

Sage’s hairy ballsack. The fucking Sannin, what the fuck.

Always nice to be reminded just how puny and insignificant you are, on a cosmic scale.

“I’ve been in contact with Jiraiya. He’s on his way back, and is willing to assist.” The Third slides a scroll across the table, and Kakashi dutifully accepts it. “He wants you to get her started on meditation. First, she needs to know the flow of her chakra, before she can remake her chakra pathways.”

Kakashi raises his eyes to the Hokage, who looks at him, cool as a cucumber, as if everything he said was totally reasonable.

“What’s wrong, Kakashi, don’t you think she can do it?” The Third is goading him, but—

Kakashi might be learning that the world is a much stranger place than he thought it was. Jiraiya remade his own chakra system. Old Hyuuga ladies can rewire eyes transplanted a decade ago.

But…

Sakura is a genin who can execute the academy three flawlessly without seals. He hadn’t known what perfect chakra control looked like, before he saw her execute her techniques.

He takes the scroll, and smiles at the Hokage.

“Of course she can. This is just her first step on her path to surpassing the sannin.”

The Hokage and Kakashi grin at each other, two masters of extraordinary students, momentarily bonded by how truly outrageous their students are.

“The Uchiha are settling,” the Hokage says. “We’ll need you for evenings, but your days are free.” He straightens the mound of paper before him, gesturing for Kakashi to get the hell out of his office. “Go heal your student, Kakashi. She deserves it.”

Kakashi gives a jaunty wave before realizing that for all of Toumi’s help, his chakra is still too screwed up to perform the body-flicker, and he has to walk out of the room like a fucking civilian.

The Third’s cackle follows him halfway out the damn building.

Kakashi actually shows up at the third training ground the next day on time. Two training sessions in a row, he’s setting a bad precedent.

But he really can’t risk Sakura practicing jutsu right now, so here he is.

When she arrives, five minutes late, and he greets her with a jaunty “You’re late!” the look she gives him is murderous.

To think.

Kakashi spent his entire life, never knowing the joy of sparking killing intent in eight-year-olds. He’d truly been living only half a life.

After a moment, her eyes narrow into a suspicious frown. He recognizes her detecting-a-genjutsu face, and waits for her to find nothing. Instead of finding nothing, she twitches her shoulders a bit, and something blasts through him in a sharp, intensely uncomfortable wave, leaving his skin feeling vaguely burned.

It feels a bit like a kai, except…

Kais don’t give psychosomatic sunburns.

“Huh,” she says, while Kakashi is still mentally gaping. “You are real.”

Is that…

What the hell was that?

“What was that?” he asks, and his voice is maybe a bit flatter than it should be, because she shrinks away from him a little.

“Well I couldn’t feel a genjutsu, but there’s no way it’s really you and Ino told me how to do a kai, so I did that.”

When he doesn’t say anything, she says, “like this,” and twitches her shoulders again.

Again, a wave of something tears through him, scrambling his coils, and making his currently inert Sharingan twitch.

Someone needs to tell Inoichi to tell his daughter not to go around teaching techniques she can’t do.

Before Kakashi sets this newest mind-fuckery into the mind-fuckery box, he sends a tendril of chakra into his sharingan, and the world spins into black and red. If two times don’t hurt, then the third should be fine.

“Ewww,” Sakura says. “I thought you got that fixed!”

“Again,” Kakashi says.

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to do it,” she says, face like an angel.

He raises one eyebrow.

“Fine.”

This time he sees it, the moment when the entirety of Sakura’s ordinarily striking orderly chakra flow stop. Not just a part, but every last bit of it. The resulting shockwave of all of Sakura’s chakra stopping and then restarting again slams into him, and damn near shuts his sharingan off.

Yeah, okay.

He supposes there is a world in which you could perform a kai by stopping your chakra flow for an instant.

It’s a batshit insane world, but hey.

Jiraiya regrew his entire chakra system.

That’s apparently the world he’s living in!

“What, exactly, did Ino say a kai was?” he asks, his voice as sweet as can be as he deactivates his sharingan.

Sakura looks a little worried. Apparently his sweet smile is not as convincing as it used to be.

“Um. Is Ino going to get in trouble?”

Ino was already in deep shit. “Of course not.”

Sakura looks rather justifiably unconvinced. He waits.

“She said that you have to disrupt your chakra flow to break a genjutsu, but that’s not what we were doing. We were just like, popping it.” Kaksahi resists the urge to make a face at the image of “popping” a genjutsu. “She was just telling me about her lesson, it’s not her fault, she didn’t tell me to do it, she can’t get in trouble!”

“And?”

“And well, I wasn’t sure what ‘disrupting your chakra flow’ meant, so I just uhh, stopped it? You know, a little?”

Oh, just a little, huh. Yeah, sure. Anyone can do that.

No problem.

Kakashi sighs, and then takes a seat on the grass, gesturing for Sakura to sit across from him.

He waits for her to sit before speaking.

“You need to talk to me before you do a new technique like that, Sakura,” he says. “It could really hurt you.”

Sakura looks away, her face a little guilty.

“It was just—just a kai, Ino said it was easy.”

It is, but with Sakura nothing is easy.

“Sakura, especially right now, you need to be careful. That doesn’t look like it hurt you, but it could have.”

Slowly, Sakura nods.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, her voice small.

There is a moment of awkward silence between them as Sakura stares at her feet, and Kakashi mentally sighs, because Sage does it suck to admit what a shit teacher you are.

“Sakura,” he says after a moment.

“Yeah?”

“The technique I taught you for breaking a genjutsu, it’s dangerous. It’s Genjutsu Cancellation, and it’s sometimes useful because by untangling the little bit of the genjutsu inside of you, you can bring the whole thing down, unlike a kai, which just frees you—but it’s dangerous, because when it unravels, it can snap back and burn you. When we were training, I was careful to keep my jutsu under control, but in the real world, kais are much safer.”

Sakura frowns.

“If I should just use a kai, then… why did you get mad at me for using one?”

Kakashi snorts. “Your kais are weird, Sakura.”

“You’re weird!” she shouts immediately back.

He laughs. “I’ve seen it, it’s safe, but you still shouldn’t be practicing new techniques outside of my supervision, okay?”

Sakura, clearly remembering doing the academy three in secret whenever he was late, slowly nods her head.

“But, Sensei,” she says. Hey, Sensei! Woo! “I couldn’t have broken that horrible jutsu with a kai, right?”

Kakashi’s couldn’t, but his kai didn’t induce psychosomatic sunburns. He nods, regardless.

“Then I want to know how to do the Genjutsu Cancellation thing safely,” she says. “And if I know how to do it, then I could have stopped it from hurting you, too, right?”

Considering the time dilation involved, no, but Kakashi smiles behind his mask, regardless. His adorable, brilliant student.

“We’ll work on it. But if you feel like you’re under a genjutsu and we’re not training, use a kai. Don’t try genjutsu cancellation unless that doesn’t work, okay?”

Slowly, she nods.

“Okay,” Kakashi says, taking the meditation scroll from his belt and rolling it between his hands.

“What’s that?” Sakura says, somber mood gone, hands grasping.

He lets her take it, although he probably shouldn’t be encouraging this kind of behavior.

She opens it, and then squeals in surprise when it unrolls way further than it should, pooling in her lap.

She glares at him, like it’s his fault, and then squints at the scroll.

So. He had been planning on teaching her the contents of the scroll, but if she wants to read it so damn bad, he guesses he can wait.

“Don’t try it until I tell you, okay?”

Sakura nods distractedly, waving at him dismissively and rolling the scroll through her finger as she reads. At least his student knows how to read, he supposes, slipping Adventures of a Pirate Ninja out of his side pocket and flipping open to his favorite scene.

Sakura finishes about ten minutes later, and looks confused.

“How is this going to help with my, uhh—” she waves vaguely at herself.

How that’s supposed to mean incredibly scarred tenketsu, he has no idea.

“Unfortunately, the only person we know who has recovered from chakra scarring like you had to heal it from within himself. So the first step is for you to understand your chakra system. You need to know it better than you know your own hands.”

“I already know my chakra system!” Sakura protests.

Kakashi raises an eyebrow.

“So you can show me where all your tenketsu are?”

Sakura’s eyes slide away from his.

“That’s what I thought.” He tucks the scroll into a pocket, folds himself into the lotus position, gesturing for her to the same.

Instead, Sakura makes noises about her skirt. Her skirt, which goes all the way to her ankles. The one she’s wearing ninja shorts under. That skirt.

Sakura has literally dropped herself down upon him from above, skirt flailing up to her head, in an attempt to steal his headband.

But no, sitting cross-legged is too much.

Civilians are weird.

Kakashi takes off his flak jacket, and hands it to her. She makes a face at it (grossss) and spreads it across her lap. She smooths her hands over it like five times before being satisfied and then looks up at him, expectantly, like he’s the one responsible for holding them up.

He folds his hands loosely and presses them knuckle to knuckle in his lap, and she mirrors his movements.

“Close your eyes,” Kakashi instructs, and she does so. He activates Obito’s sharingan. It’s no byakugan, but it will at least give him a basic picture of her chakra flow. “Inside of you, you should feel your chakra flowing out from your belly button. Picture a spiral starting at your belly button and flowing outwards. Can you feel it?”

Sakura screws up her face, and frowns. After another minute or two, she nods.

“How does it feel?”

“Warm?” she offers. The answer doesn’t actually matter: chakra feels different to everyone. The important part is feeling it. Kakashi’s is a cold river that sends static jolts up your skin when you touch it. “And bubbly? Like a soda or—eww—” she makes a face, “a hot spring?”

As she speaks, the flow of her chakra ebbs and flows to match the cadence of her voice, which is uhh, not normal.

Mind-fuckery in the mind-fuckery box, he tells himself.

Mind-fuckery in the mind-fuckery box.

“I want you to trace the path some little piece of chakra takes, as it goes through your body.”

Sakura frowns, screwing up her face.

Some of her chakra lights up under Obito’s sharingan, and he follows it an inch or so before it’s replaced by another little bit, which also gets an inch before it winks out, and so on and so forth.

“Am I—” Sakura hesitates, and as she speaks none of her chakra lights up. “Am I doing it right?”

“Yes,” Kakashi says. Then, after a moment. “Do you want to see me do it?”

Her eyes snap open. “Yes.”

Minato had him do this exercise to help him improve his chakra control, when he was training for jounin. That’s probably Jiraiya’s fault, come to think of it.

Kakashi closes his eyes, deactivates Obito’s sharingan, and takes a deep breath. He feels the cold static of his chakra, and he traces it down to his chakra reserves, just behind and above his belly button, and then starting there, traces a single chakra pathway back out, spiraling out from his belly button, up through his chest, up into his armpit, and then all the way down to his ring finger.

As he opens his eyes, Kakashi feels a little silly—Sakura has no doujutsu, she—

Sakura is staring at his ring finger.

He should really start training Sakura to be a sensor nin.

“Again?” she asks.

He closes his eyes, brings his attention down to his chakra reserves, and then back out, this time ending in his ear. He opens his eyes just to check that Sakura is, indeed, looking at his ear.

She has him do it three more times before closing her eyes again.

Kakashi activates Obito’s sharingan, and—

No improvement.

“There’s so much of it,” she says to herself, more an observation than a complaint as her attention tries and mostly fails to track her chakra out from her reserves, sometimes accidentally skipping from one pathway to the next.

When that happens, he has her restart.

It is intensely uninteresting training. When he was a chuunin, he hated it. It took him a week to first track his chakra from his reserves all the way out to his fingers. It was the kind of training his father had always tried to get him to do—except that training was just to execute the same jutsu one hundred times until he could get it exactly right—and Minato did not succeed in making it any less miserably boring than his father did.

It’s possible both of Kakashi’s father figures had a couple things in common.

Minato had a technique that could spark his chakra into a visibly yellow flash. One thing he liked to show off was creating a yellow flash over each of his tenketsu.

If you practice, you can do this! he had said.

In retrospect, that was extraordinarily impressive, but child-Kakashi had no interest in making little yellow flashes appear from all of his tenketsu, so he ducked out of his meditation exercises every chance he got.

He still doesn’t know the location of his tenketsu. In order for this to work, she’s going to have to be better than him.

He watches as she tirelessly tracks her chakra again and again. Sometimes she gets halfway to the ends of her coils, sometimes she barely makes it an inch.

He closes his Sharingan eye to preserve chakra before he remembers he can just deactivate it, and does so.

It is an hour before Sakura cries out with jubilation, flinging her arms into the air. He blinks his sharingan back on but he is altogether too late.

“Did you see it?”

“Of course,” Kakashi lies, but Sakura narrows her eyes.

“Where did it end?”

“Ring finger,” Kakashi answers immediately, because either he’s going to get it wrong or get it right—waiting isn’t going to change anything.

Sakura sticks a finger in his face.

He got it wrong then.

What a tragedy.

He may never recover.

“This time, watch.”

It’s been pretty well established that she doesn’t understand what a sharingan does, so. How, exactly, does she think he’s able to watch?

He watches.

Nothing happens.

“Just a second,” she says, squirming.

“Did you forget where your chakra reserves are?” he asks.

“No,” she says, having totally one hundred percent forgotten where her chakra reserves are.

A moment later, her chakra wibbles and wobbles with excitement as she finds her chakra reserves again. He watches as a chakra pathway starts to light up, and then she immediately loses it.

It takes her ten minutes, and fifty-three more tries to do it.

He knows the exact amount of time and the exact number of tries because the Sharingan is fucking ridiculous.

“Don’t open your eyes,” Kakashi interrupts her before she can explode into celebration. “Do it again.”

“You weren’t even looking.”

“Left ear,” he says, this time not lying. “Do it again.”

She makes an affronted noise, and grouses, “Lucky guess.”

She continues to accuse him of lucky guesses for the next six times she fully traces a chakra pathway, and therefore the next thirty minutes.

He turns Obito’s sharingan back off, and rests back on his hands, looking up into the sky.

It’s of course then that Sakura says “I feel… weird?”

He glances down at her, not really taking her seriously, and sees her face inhumanly twisted, her skin faintly pink, fins extending from her—

He has his sharingan activated, his hand slammed into her chest in a moment—

“Kai,” he shouts, and he can see her chakra system ripple with the force of it, blowing away the faintly pinkly colored energy that had started to work its way into her chakra system.

Sakura’s eyes snap open, and she looks up at him with fear in her eyes.

“What just happened?” she asks in a small voice as he pulls his hand from her chest.

Kakashi flops back into a seated position across from her, taking deep breaths as he tries to get his heartbeat down to a reasonable level.

“Sensei?” she asks, voice smaller than before.

“It’s—”

What the fuck.

How had Sakura ended up taking in natural energy?

He did this technique for three years, and he never took in a shred of it.

He tells her, and Sakura’s eyes widen.

“That was in the scroll,” she says. “It said—” her voice cuts off, and she pales.

The scroll said that in very rare cases, a practitioner might begin to take in exponentially increasing amounts of natural energy. If too much built up, they would be turned to stone, so a supervisor should remain on hand to immediately perform a kai to disperse the natural energy before so much of it built up that more drastic measures needed to be taken.

“Sakura, did you feel anything before you started feeling… weird?”

“I felt… I felt warm. Whole? I thought.. I thought that’s what we were trying to do, so…” She looks away guiltily.

He hadn’t even considered this would be a problem. Minato had never even mentioned it to him, although he had forbidden Kakashi from practicing out of his sight.

Fucking.

Fuck.

Sage, why is Kakashi such a horrible teacher.

“It’s okay, Sakura. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Natural energy does things to people. People who touched it, they broke. You would find statues, knelt by an oasis tainted with too much natural energy, compelled to drink it until their skin hardened into stone.

He looks over at his student. The fear is fading from her eyes, replaced by…

May you be cursed with a brilliant student.

“You want to continue, don’t you?”

“I want to do jutsu again!” she shouts. “This will help me and—” she looks away, turning faintly pink “—you’ll make sure nothing happens to me, right?”

Fucking.

Dammit.

Kakashi shakes his head with a laugh.

Kakashi measures his chakra reserves. He can keep his sharingan up for maybe another hour before risking exhaustion.

“You can practice for another hour,” Kakashi says, and her eyes light up like she’s been given a present, and not like she’s been given the opportunity to practice the single most boring exercise Kakashi has ever had the misfortune of being forced through.

She immediately settles herself, smiling to herself at her “accomplishment”, and Kakashi relocates himself to behind her. She doesn’t even flinch when he has to disperse a buildup of natural energy with a kai, just drills him on which chakra pathway she has just finished mapping.

He sees the pink start to build up enough that it’s visible to his sharingan, and prepares himself for the fifth kai when he hears Sakura mutter—

“No. Go away.”

And, in the blink of an eye, the natural energy in Sakura’s system is gone, like it’s never been.

He laughs (to Sakura’s great irritation), and pushes himself ten minutes past where he should before finally making her stop.

He looks up to the sky as he stretches, and he can’t help but think—

Did I pull this bullshit with you?

He’s pretty sure he did.

Four days and zero natural energy scares later finds Kakashi sitting on his floor, a three-pronged kunai in one hand and an unbroken scroll in the other.

It has been three days since he was declared fit for duty.

Two days since Uchiha Shouko was voted clan head, with a tally of nine votes to six.

Two days since they were two votes from civil war.

Kakashi isn’t thinking of any of that, his teacher’s kunai in one hand, his scroll in the other.

He is thinking about how he has failed his fathers twice over.

His actual father, who raised him from birth, and who he betrayed by dismissing him, when he needed Kakashi the most.

And Namikaze Minato, fourth Hokage of Konoha, who took him in, and who told him—

Who told him he wanted Kakashi to be his heir.

That his children would be Uzumaki, and he wanted someone who would keep his techniques alive after he was gone. (Namikaze is a civilian family, and all his techniques were his and his alone.)

And who he rejected at every turn.

In life, Kakashi was too damaged to trust him—to listen to him. Finally, when he was ready to be Minato’s heir, Minato went and fucking died.

Sacrificed himself for the sage-damned village.

And fuck if that didn’t prove all of Kakashi’s little damaged paranoias true.

Kakashi has never even opened the scroll he holds in his left hand. The scroll for the Hiraishin.

Kakashi throws Minato’s kunai at the ground before him, and even now, seven years later, there is a part of him that still expects Minato to appear by its side. Just like he did whenever someone spilled one of his damn kunai on the ground. Just like he did when Kakashi needed someone, but couldn’t admit it, so he just—

He just claimed it had fallen.

Minato had never challenged him on that.

He looks at the scroll. He had seen the power of it, but he’d never seen the purpose of it.

Just a little stronger. Just a little faster. Just a little more deadly.

Did he need that?

Now.

Now he understands.

The Hiraishin is an S-class technique, yes. It made Minato The Yellow Flash, flee-on-sight in Cloud and Rock—for all the good that did against The Yellow Flash.

But that wasn’t what was special about the Hiraishin. Not its ability to kill. Any technique can kill.

It was its ability to save.

The number of ninja in the fourth war who were behind enemy lines, surrounded on all sides—saved because they had a moment to toss Minato’s kunai to the ground, and he could be there, in an instant. The Third Shinobi War had a front hundreds of miles long, and Minato was at every single battle.

With the Hiraishin—Minato was never late. (Never—except. Except.)

Now, Kakashi needs that.

He needs to never be late, ever again.

Kakashi breaks the seal, and the scroll unrolls before him. In both directions, somehow, with that mind-warping quality all space-time jutsus have. Two feet wide, five feet long.

You can do it, Minato had told him. I know you can.

Because I have the Sharingan? Kakashi had said, because he had been a little shit.

No. Because you’re Hatake Kakashi, and you’re the smartest ninja I know.

The sharingan was all but useless on the Hiraishin. He had seen it hundreds of times, and it never made a damn bit of sense. A single moment of chakra, folded in on itself in some horrible eldritch mess, illegible even to the sharingan, moving fast enough to blur, and then the last of the chakra eaten up by the warp in the world, rendering it completely illegible.

There’s a reason the Uchiha never stole it. That not even Madara had been able to steal it, back when it was Tobirama’s technique, and not Minato’s.

How Minato had managed to reverse-engineer it out of hearsay and what he had been able to get Fugaku to pass on to him from the Uchiha records, Kakashi would never fucking understand.

You’re the smartest ninja I know?

Hah. If Minato wasn’t the most brilliant ninja Konoha has ever seen, Kakashi’ll eat his forehead protector.

Before him in painstaking and exacting detail is every detail of the technique, laid out for him to see. The one hundred and twenty three seals needed to perform the technique sealed, and a comically detailed description of how to merge and twist the chakra of those seals into each other in order to perform it seal-less. A drawing of the shape of the chakra in its perfect form, a combination of colors which was incomprehensible to anyone not named Namikaze Minato.

And there, at the bottom of the scroll, the one detail Minato hadn’t even shared with his guards. The reason they hadn’t been able to perform their joint Hiraishin since his death—when every instance of Minato’s Hiraishin seal (every instance of that illegible scrawl that originally said The Sword of Undying Devotion) went dead and dark.

How to create the Hiraishin Seal.

How to make his own. The horrendously complex seal array that would be needed to make it, that would burn into the fabric of spacetime Kakashi’s chakra, and then turn around and brand that back onto himself, like he was the single anchor point of the whole damn world.

There are S-rank jutsu, and then there are fucking S-rank jutsu.

Kakashi takes a shuddering breath. He holds his hand out, and forms a rasengan in it, a technique he has refused to use since Minato had died, until seven days ago, when he didn’t have the chakra for another chidori.

It’s a beautiful, elegant jutsu. He’s heard it described as the perfect jutsu. The pinnacle of shape transformation, to match his chidori, the pinnacle of element transformation, but there really has never been a contest.

Fucking Minato.

Kakashi closes his hand, and the rasengan whispers away into nothing. He turns back to the scroll, and thinks maybe, there is a jutsu more beautiful than the rasengan. Fifteen square feet of explanation, a seal array that will be twenty feet across, all to make a perfect teleportation jutsu that can be activated with a whisper of chakra.

Sakura could use it over a hundred times before running dry.

He feels a hint of a smile on his lips. One day—but not today. He is not going to teach a eight-year-old a jutsu that scatters you across the earth if you get it wrong. A jutsu that requires activating a seal array that will burn out your every nerve ending in an hour of agony, in which a single mistaken mark leaves you nothing but a charred husk.

Kakashi leans over the scroll, and settles himself down to read. Every footnote, every note scrawled in the margins, every ridiculously complex sentence, because Minato really never understood that other people just didn’t operate on his level.

Thankfully, he’s Hatake Kakashi, and at his best, he is just barely able to get to his teacher’s level.

Chapter Text

It takes Jiraiya two weeks to arrive. Two weeks in which Sousuke tries and fails to organize a rebellion, and is killed by the Uchiha’s own police force. Two weeks in which Sakura learns every inch of her chakra system well enough to draw it, tenketsu and all—double-checked against Hyuuga Riko, a branch member who owed Kakashi a favor. Now they’ve moved on to the incredibly thrilling “meditate on your tenketsu” aka “wait for Jiraiya” stage of the training. Sakura doesn’t seem to mind, but Kakashi hasn’t been this bored since he was a genin.

Kakashi and Sakura are there to greet Jiraiya as he approaches.

Kakashi doesn’t want to be here, kind of on principle. He’s a bit worried all of this being-on-time-so-Sakura-doesn’t-turn-herself-into-a-stone thing is cutting into his reputation for being uh—the worst.

It’s a concern. What if people start thinking he’s responsible?

Kakashi mentally shudders.

Never be good at a bad job.

However, being here at the gate means he gets to see Jiraiya’s face when Sakura takes one look at him and says, “No.”

“No?” Kakashi goads, because, oh yes. He might have lived his entire life for this moment.

“He’s even less of a ninja than you are! He’s not even wearing a forehead protector!”

Kakashi nods sagely, and he can see the conflict in Sakura’s eyes of being placed in a situation where she’s agreeing with him but she works it out by deciding she’d rather agree with him than Jiraiya.

“Twerp,” Jiraiya says, coming to a stop before them, “I traveled from The Land of Hot Water to help you. AKA the Land of Hot Springs. The land where everyone spends all day naked in hot springs. This is the thanks I get?”

Sakura harrumphs. “You’re not even a ninja! I don’t need your help!” She waves him away. “Go back to your land of Hot Water!” Then, in a smaller voice. “Hot Springs suck, anyways.”

Jiraiya stands in front of them like he’s taken a chidori to the chest, but hasn’t had the good sense to die yet. “Hot Springs… Hot Springs suck?” he says, still kind of dazed.

“You also suck,” Sakura says. “You’re gross.”

Jiraiya blinks down at Sakura, and then looks back at Kakashi with a sigh. “This is your student, Kakashi?”

“I’ve never been prouder of her than this moment,” Kakashi says.

“I can kill you in five seconds.”

Sakura kicks him in the shin, and then bounces around clutching at her toes. “Ow ow ow ow.” She hops back over to Jiraiya and gives his gut a punch. “Stupid. Big. Bully.”

Jiraiya looks down at her, and then heaves a sigh. “Have you been to the Land of Hot Water, Kakashi?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t had the opportunity.”

“The women spend all their time naked in the Land of Hot Water, Kakashi. That’s what I’ve abandoned to come help your student.”

Kakashi glances meaningfully down at the seven-year-old between them.

“Oh, she has no idea what I’m talking about.”

That’s when she goes for his head band.

Jiraiya subdues her mostly by grabbing her around the waist and heaving her up onto his shoulder.

She, unsurprisingly, does not like this and starts screaming.

“So,” Jiraiya says, twitching as Sakura turns her head to scream into his ear. “Tell me what you’ve done so far.”

Sakura twists and grabs his forehead protector, which he keeps on his head with his other hand.

Kakashi tells him about her progress in her meditation, and the curious matter of the natural energy she no longer seems to be gathering.

“Kakashi,” Sakura hisses, interrupting him. “If you’re my teacher, help me.”

Kakashi shrugs. “He’s my teacher’s teacher, I’m powerless against him.”

She narrows her eyes. “No wonder you’re such a bad ninja.”

Jiraiya sighs, trying and failing to stop her from pulling on his forehead protector.

“That’s solid progress. About in line with what I’d expect from someone with chakra control like I’ve heard hers is—or was?”

Sakura releases Jiraiya’s forehead protector, and he sighs with relief.

Kakashi is smart enough to know she’s simply lulling him into a false sense of security.

Sure enough, Sakura starts doing seals against Jiraiya’s back.

The doctor has cleared her for standard jutsu usage, so he lets her be.

She finishes the seals and grabs Jiraiya’s forehead protector, and Jiraiya promptly finds himself holding a random civilian boy, his forehead protector gone.

Behind him, Sakura is holding up his forehead protector in victory, jumping up and down, while an angry civilian woman storms out of the store behind them and shouts after Jiraiya—

“What, exactly, are you doing to my son?”

Jiraiya freezes.

“Ma’am, you misunderstand me, you see—”

Jiraiya stops when he realizes that saying I was carrying around another struggling child and she swapped with your son would only dig him deeper into the hole he’s already in.

“I’m sorry.” He sets the boy on his feet and then body-flickers away. Behind the woman, Jiraiya’s forehead protector vanishes from Sakura’s hand, and she droops.

The woman turns her still quite-angry gaze on him, and Kakashi gives her a jaunty wave before body-flickering away.

Behind him he hears Sakura squawk “Wait!” but he does not.

It takes Sakura ten minutes to make her way to training ground three, where Kakashi and Jiraiya are sitting on the grass by the pond and enjoying tea, while speaking of the women from The Land of Hot Water.

“You’re late!” Kakashi greets her cheerfully, and easily dodges the rock she pitches at him in fury.

“You should really work on that,” Jiraiya comments from where he is lying beside him, taking a rather impossible sip of tea without lifting his head and smirking back at Sakura. “You can’t be a good ninja if you have no sense of punctuality, right Kakashi-kun?”

“Right, Jiraiya-sama.”

Sakura makes a noise of wordless rage and stomps up behind Jiraiya. He quickly jerks up to a sitting position before she reaches them.

“You’re supposed to heal me,” she says, hands on her hips.

“Technically, I can’t heal you.”

Sakura shows what she thinks of his pedantic bullshit, and kicks him in the back. He returns the favor by headbutting her in the stomach, sending her stumbling back, because he’s actually five-years-old.

She stomps back up to him, but doesn’t kick him. She plants her hands on her hips, and Jiraiya ignores her, taking a nice long sip of his tea.

“So teach me!”

“You’ve been really mean to me,” Jiraiya opines to the pond in front of him. “I’m not really feeling it, right now.”

Sakura’s eyes light with an unholy rage.

Kakashi sips tea, glad that no matter what happens here, he wins.

She muddles her way through the three symbols of the transformation technique, and it—sobers him up. Reminds of why Jiraiya’s here in the first place.

Watching Sakura use seals—it just feels wrong.

Sakura poofs into a faintly grey, distorted version of Jiraiya and then starts stomping off into the village.

She can barely do a transformation jutsu. Odds were against her replacement trick in the village actually working. He drowns his sigh in a long sip of tea.

Jiraiya’s buffoon mask slips, and his expression is pained.

“I’m a big poopface!” she bellows, in a warped copy of Jiraiya’s voice. “I’m not even a ninja! I’m just stupid and gross and spend all my time—”

“Hey kid, wait a sec,” Jiraiya says, crossing the distance between them in the blink of an eye.

“I’m a boy so I like pooping! And smelling my poop! And peeing on Ino’s flowers!”

Kakashi coughs a laugh into his hand, and Jiraiya interrupts her—

“Okay, okay. Fine, kid, I’ll help you, Sage, you are the most obnoxious child I’ve ever met.”

“Great!” Sakura says brightly, still in that warped copy of Jiraiya’s voice.

“You want to uh, change back?”

“No,” Sakura says. “It’s easier this way when your advice is useless and bad. Hand seals suck and I hate them.”

Jiraiya makes a wordless groan.

“Alright, alright,” Jiraiya says, a bit of the sannin coming out from behind the buffoon. “Sit down.”

He points at the middle of the training ground, and she wobbles a bit as she makes her way over to it. “These shoes are really hard to walk in,” she comments.

“You could change back.”

“Nope!”

She sits down clumsily, clearly unused to the length of her limbs.

Kakashi wishes he had Obito’s sharingan out, so he could remember forever the sight of Jiraiya of the Sannin, Toad Sage, falling on his ass when he tries to sit down.

Jiraiya sits down before her in an elegant clacking of his massive wooden sandals.

“Let’s see what we’re working with,” he says, motioning for Sakura to give him her hand. She looks at him suspiciously before holding it out.

He looks down at it, frowning at what he finds there, and then sighs.

“Actually, I do need you to break the jutsu.”

Sakura gives him another very dubious look and then does as she’s told. Tea cup still in his hand, Kakashi wanders closer to them, activating Obito’s Sharingan before leaning against a tree that gives him a decent angle on the both of them. Jiraiya twitches his hand in acknowledgement, and Sakura, of course, doesn’t notice at all.

Jiraiya takes her hand in his and—

“That tickles,” Sakura says, squirming.

Jiraiya frowns, and then looks at Kakashi askance. Kakashi can feel judgement in that gaze.

It’s comforting, in a way. It is Kakashi’s fault, after all. No one else seems to be blaming him. It’s nice to have company.

Jiraiya bites into a finger, draws a line in blood under each eye, and then clasps his hands together.

“This is going to take a couple of minutes. Kid, do your meditation exercises.”

“My name’s Sakura,” Sakura grouses, folding her legs into the lotus pose and bringing her hands together.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Old man,” Sakura adds.

“That’s uncalled for,” Jiraiya says.

Sakura remains silent.

“Sakura,” Jiraiya adds, and she smiles.

“Jiraiya,” she says, -sama notably missing.

Chakra begins to spike around her belly button as she fires a tiny bit of chakra out of each of her tenketsu in turn. Or at least what Kakashi has to guess are her tenketsu—they are officially past the time when Obito’s Sharingan can tell him a damn thing.

“How many Tenketsu you mapped so far, k—Sakura?”

“All of them!” she declares proudly, not opening her eyes.

Jiraiya turns to Kakashi, and mouths to him—

How many undamaged tenketsu does she have?

Zero, Kakashi mouths back.

There’s that judgemental look again.

One of her tenketsu misfires, and Sakura starts again, at her belly button.

Jiraiya’s eyes follow the flashes, despite the fact he doesn’t have a doujutsu that should let him see them.

“How many have you done in a row like that?” he asks as his hands start to glow.

“Fifty—” Sakura stops and her eyes snap open.

She surges forward, towards Jiraiya, and Jiraiya is too surprised to stop her when she pushes her hand against his chest a moment before her ridiculous kai rips through the clearing.

When it clears, Sakura is half on top of Jiraiya, who has fallen back, and is staring up at Sakura in faint disbelief.

“You were taking in natural energy!” Sakura says, voice scolding. “You could have died!” Her kai rips through the clearing two more times, like Sakura just wants to be sure. “You would have turned into a statue,” she says, eyes round, “and then died!”

Kakashi smiles behind his mask. She’s wrong, but she’s wrong for all the right reasons.

“You noticed that, huh?” Jiraiya says, voice light.

She slaps his chest at his levity. “If you can’t, you shouldn’t be meditating!” She turns to glare at him. “Kakashi! You have your stupid eye out, why didn’t you help?”

Before he’s forced to defend himself, Jiraiya gathers Sakura up in his arms before sitting up and setting her back down in front of him, and says “Kid—”

“Sakura.”

“Sakura, I have a technique that uses natural energy. I know how to not turn myself into a toad statue.”

Sakura makes a supremely dubious face. “But you’re not even a real ninja.”

Jiraiya laughs, shaking his head. He checks the marks on his face, and then clasps his hands again.

This time, he doesn’t tell Sakura to practice, and she doesn’t. She just sits in front of him, hands in her lap, glaring at him.

Her hands start twitching on her legs when his hands start to glow. When his features start to change, he plants a foot against her chest when she tries to lunge for him.

“Still part of the technique, kid.”

“Sakura,” she corrects, but sits back a bit.

Then two toads appear on his shoulders, and he positively lights up under Obito’s Sharingan. Kakashi squints, and only barely manages not to cover it.

Sannin are so incredibly bullshit, evidence piece number three hundred and forty-one.

“Jiraiya-chan, what the hell have you brought us out fer this time?” squawks the male toad.

“Fukasaku-sama, Shima-sama,” Jiraiya says, making a little bow to each of them in turn. “Just trying to heal a kid.”

“Y’ need our help with that?” Fukasaku continues to squawk.

“Her tenketsu are horribly scarred, can’t you see that, you old coot?” Shima squawks, voice no softer than her male counterpart.

Sakura, for her part, is just staring open mouthed at the two toads attached to Jiraiya’s shoulders.

“Talking frogs,” she whispers in awe.

“Toads, and you get used to it,” Jiraiya says, holding his hand out for hers, which she gives him after she recovers from the talking toads.

Sakura’s other hand drifts towards Shima, who snaps “I will bite your fingers off, girl.”

She stops, at that, and then reaches towards Fukasaku, who snorts roughly. This incidentally puts her arm in Jiraiya’s way.

“Sakura, your arm’s in the way.”

“You have talking toads on your shoulders,” she says, enraptured.

She pokes Fukasaku, who endures it for two pokes before barking at Sakura to stop.

Sakura does, retracting her hand and poking Jiraiya’s nose in passing.

“Using natural energy lets you do this?” she asks, voice still bright and airy.

“No,” Jiraiya says. “Do not use natural energy, do you understand me? I had the toads to look after me and still almost died—look. At. Me.” Sakura, whose gaze had been drifting guiltily away, does. “Promise me,” Jiraiya says.

Sakura hesitates.

“I’m being serious, Sakura, this is important.”

“Listen to him, Sakura,” Kakashi offers from his position against the tree. Sakura glances towards him, and then back to Jiraiya.

“Okay,” she grumbles, “I won’t.”

“Promise,” Jiraiya repeats, very astutely noticing that she didn’t actually promise and that children are tiny little liars.

“I promise.”

Jiraiya nods. “Good, now let’s take a look at those tenketsu of yours.”

“First Toad,” Fukasaku squawks. “What in the hells happened to you?”

“Itachi,” Sakura says in a small voice.

“She cancelled the Tsukuyomi,” Jiraiya expands.

“Twice,” Sakura adds, voice still small.

“I was pretty sure that was s’pposed to be impossible,” Shima comments idly, while Fukasaku looks at Sakura with an evaluating eye. “Bring that hand closer to me, my eyes ain’t what they used to be.”

Jiraiya lifts Sakura’s hand closer to her.

“You wanna learn how t’ summon toads, Sakura-chan?” Fukasaku squawks.

“Really?” Jiraiya says. “You ask that now?”

“Good to get ‘em early. So, how ‘bout it?”

Sakura makes a considering face. “Summoning sounds cool.”

Kakashi sighs.

Sakura will never have enough chakra to summon anything much larger than—

“How about dogs?” Kakashi offers.

Sakura’s eyes light up.

“Dogs are useless,” Fukasaku squawks.

Wow, fuck off, toad sage that is probably hundreds of years old. Dogs are great.

“There ain’t nothin’ we can do,” Shima interrupts the summoning talk. “It looks an awful lot like someone already did quite the healing job. I’m sorry, boy, but there ain’t nothin’ more we can do.” She looks meaningfully at Kakashi.

“Hyuuga Toumi,” he says.

She frowns faintly. “I think I’ve heard of her.”

“She helped me, Shima-sama,” Jiraiya says, “at the cost of three forges for the Hyuuga metalworkers.” He sounds a little bitter, which Kakashi supposes is fair.

“Oh, yeah, her. She was pretty good. Useless, but quite a talented young girl.”

If Kakashi’s math is right, she was already at least sixty at the time.

“Thanks for your help, Fukasaku-sama, Shima-sama,” Jiraiya says.

“If you ever want to learn to summon toads, Sakura-chan—”

The toads vanish, and Jiraiya’s features lapse back into humanity.

“That was cool. Can you teach me to do that?”

Jiraiya shakes his head. “The toad sage techniques require a lot of base chakra, and that’s not something you’re probably ever going to have.”

Sakura frowns thunderously.

“Do you want to heal your tenketsu or not?”

Sakura finally nods, and Jiraiya rolls his eyes.

“First, I’ll show you,” Jiraiya says.

Sakura frowns. “But you—”

A spot on Jiraiya’s right hand flares wildly with chakra, nearly blinding Kakashi, and Sakura gasps.

“Jiraiya, your hand!”

Jiraiya lets her tug it from him, clutching at it anxiously with both hands.

“It’s—it’s burned like me.”

Jiraiya gives her a second to figure it out.

She doesn’t.

“That’s the point,” he says. “Now I’m going to show you how to fix it.”

He pulls an inkwell and a brush from his seal, and then mutters to himself “probably shouldn’t have done this to my right hand,” dipping his brush awkwardly in the inkwell, “gotta write with my left hand.”

Sakura still hasn’t dropped his right hand, and he lets her keep ahold of it as he inks a miserably complex seal on his forehead. Dense in some places and peculiarly sparse in others.

Kakashi’d say it was slipshod, but when it buzzes to life, Jiraiya’s entire chakra system doubles—the seal forming a perfect copy of Jiraiya’s chakra system over his own, so it’s clearly anything but.

That’s what we call stupid bullshit, in the ninja business. Kakashi would know, he’s an expert in stupid bullshit—his teacher was Minato, after all.

“I’ll write the seals for you,” he says. “It keeps your chakra flowing right while you do it.” With one hand, Jiraiya recaps his inkwell, and balances his brush on top of it. “Do you know what a healthy tenketsu feels like?”

Sakura shakes her head.

“I didn’t either. Here,” he holds out his left, uninjured hand. A small yellow flare appears over its copy of the tenketsu he burned out on his right. “This is a healthy tenketsu.”

Sakura immediately pokes it, and Jiraiya winces a little.

“You’ll need to get a feel for what it feels like to—” He winces again. “Right, just go on in, stab other people in the tenketsu with your chakra. Everyone loves getting a juuken to the tenketsu.”

Sakura looks up at him, a little chagrined.

“It’s fine.” There’s a small flash of chakra from his tenketsu as it unblocks itself.

She hesitates.

“Go for it, kid. Be gentler.” He makes a face. When she looks up at him worriedly, he waves her off. “You’re good, it’s just never fun.”

Eventually she stops, and he pulls his un-injured hand from her grip, replacing it with his injured hand.

“Now, you understand that your tenketsu are made of chakra, right?”

She nods.

“Actually, wait. I don’t trust you.”

She frowns thunderously up at him, and he ignores her, uncorks his inkwell with one hand, and quickly draws a mirroring seal across Sakura’s forehead. It flares, and she shudders.

“Now, here’s the steps—they sound easy, they’re not. Step zero: know your tenketsu inside and out. I want you to be able to know every detail, every ugly little wrinkle, ever pimple. However it’s broken, I want you to know everything. Can you do that?”

Sakura nods, very confidently, in the way all children are confident about basically everything.

“Not that fast you can’t,” he says, and then taps her hand. “Not a generic tenketsu, I want you to be able to see the one you want to heal. This one. I want you to see this tenketsu in your head. All of the scarring, every blemish, everything.”

Sakura sits there, head hung, and he sees the tenketsu Jiraiya tapped flash intermittently as she runs chakra through it and over it, getting a feel for it.

Five minutes later, she nods.

“You’re thorough, that’s going to help you. Now, step one: pull apart the bad parts of your tenketsu. Everywhere it’s somewhere the healthy tenketsu isn’t, I want you to pull at it, just like you would a sweater. Like this—”

He says that, and then winces. He isn’t doing anything, at least… not anything Kakashi can detect. Not anything the Sharingan can detect. But clearly, it’s something Sakura can, because she is completely and totally focused on Jiraiya’s hand in her own.

“Like that, you see?”

Sakura nods.

“And then you gotta keep doing it.” More wincing. “Keep on doing it, even though it hurts,” he smiles but it’s strained. “Until there’s none of those bad parts of your tenketsu left.”

Again, Sakura nods, all of her focus on his hand before her, her eyes faintly unfocused, because she isn’t actually looking with her eyes.

“Alright,” Jiraiya says, with a bit of a pained sigh. “But you see how it’s all ragged, the shapes all wrong?”

She nods again.

“That’s where step two comes in. You take just a little bit of your chakra, flatten it real thin—” he pauses, like he’s doing just that, and Sakura’s gaze snaps down to the hand in her own, “—and then you fit it into those ragged edges, push it until it’s perfectly flush with your coils, hold it.” Another pause, in which they are both incredibly interested in something Kakashi one hundred percent can’t see. “And then you release it.” Another pause in which nothing happens. “If you did it right, it’ll stay.”

Sakura nods eagerly.

“Step 2.5: Do that until all the ragged edges are smooth, alright? Here’s one.” A pause. “Another.” Another pause. “Another.” About a minute later, and he nods with finality. “Alright, see how it’s all smooth, now?”

Sakura’s whole body is shivering in excitement as she nods.

“Now, you might think that’s it, but—” with his free hand, he taps the seal on his forehead, the weird duplicated nature of his chakra system vanishes, and chakra erupts from the tenketsu on his hand. Sakura staggers back, and then slams her hand over his, like she’s trying to keep his chakra in. Jiraiya’s finger was already over his seal, ready to re-activate it, but he hesitates a bit, his face crinkled with a fond smile. Finally, he taps the seal on his forehead again, and his chakra system doubles up once more. The trickle chakra that had still been leaking out from under Sakura’s hands vanishes. “You can let go now.”

Sakura does, very slowly, like she doesn’t trust his hand not to explode.

“Now, step 3: before, we were just filling in the gaps. Now we have to actually rebuild our tenketsu. It’s real similar to step 2, but you have to be a lot more careful. Take your chakra—” pause “—pull it into a little string—” pause “—fit it along that nice smooth edge you made—” pause “—hold it—” pause “—and release it.”

Sakura nods eagerly.

“You keep doing this until you’ve made exactly the shape of a healthy tenketsu. They’re not special. It’s just a small enough hole that you have to push to get your chakra to go through it.” A pause, presumably as he continues. “But, you gotta make sure to get the position exactly right. You feel all those tiny little chakra tubes, that all connect with my chakra system at a single point? You gotta make sure your tenketsu is right at that point they connect.”

There’s a long pause, presumably as he does exactly that.

He… must have finished, because Sakura raises her gaze to Jiraiya’s, mouth hanging faintly open.

Jiraiya smiles at her, raises his hand to his seal, and taps it.

Sakura instinctively jerks towards his hand, but no chakra erupts from his body this time.

Yeah, okay.

Sure.

Real quick.

Kakashi has a question.

How the fuck had Jiraiya come up with this procedure? What the fuck?

Alright, alright.

Kakashi’s fine.

Everything’s fine.

“Do you think you can do that?” Jiraiya asks.

Sakura swallows. She looks uncertain.

“Does it hurt?”

Jiraiya makes a face.

“Yeah,” he says after a bit. “It hurts.”

Sakura takes one deep breath and then another. She looks back up at him.

“Can you—can you show me again?”

Jiraiya takes a second, and then nods.

He does it seven more times, before Sakura doesn’t ask him to repeat it.

“Can I try it now?” she asks.

Jiraiya nods. “You can. Do you want to? If you want—”

“I want to do it now.”

Jiraiya nods. “Okay. Close your eyes.”

Sakura closes her eyes.

He taps her hand. “This tenketsu. None of the others, just this one, okay?”

Her chakra begins to gather around the tenketsu Jiraiya tapped.

“Now, focus on this tenketsu, this one, none of the others, are you doing that?” She nods. “Tell me about it.”

Sakura hesitates.

“The hole is… mostly closed. It’s—a line, like this—” she draws a line with her hand. “This side, is a little more open. It’s… kind of heart-shaped.”

Her…

Her tenketsu are scarred into lines?

By the First’s trees.

Damn Itachi to death by fire.

“That’s right,” Jiraiya says. “Now, before you start I want you to see one last thing.”

Sakura opens her eyes, and frowns up at him. Jiraiya lowers his hand to his arm, and—rips his chakra system wide open.

Kakashi staggers towards him before a glance from Jiraiya sends him back to the tree.

Sakura, however, is clutching at Jiraiya’s arm, looking at him with wide, terrified eyes.

Jiraiya raises his hand to the seal, and sends a pulse of chakra through it.

Then, unbelievably, Jiraiya chakra coils knit themselves back together.

“This seal, it’s called the seal of false chakra. It duplicates your chakra system, layers it on top of itself, so that you can pull your chakra system apart, and you won’t start losing your chakra to the air. And, no matter how bad you screw up, it can always put you back to the way you started.”

Kakashi blinks.

What an outrageous, bullshit fucking seal.

“I had to use that a lot back when I was first learning, so don’t worry too much about going too far, we can always start over.”

Slowly, Sakura nods up at him.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jiraiya says. “Should have started with that, huh?”

Sakura nods, because she has no sense of decorum.

“Alright, focus on that tenketsu again.”

She closes her eyes.

“You still got it?”

She nods.

“Still a line with a little heart at the end?”

Hesitation, as chakra weaves its way down her arm, searching for the right tenketsu, because she clearly didn’t have it.

She nods again.

“Now, I want you to take part of that middle part, the line that’s sealed closed, and I want you to start—”

Sakura winces, and her fingers dig into Jiraiya’s.

“It’s fine, you’re doing great,” he says.

She nods, takes deep breaths, and… there’s nothing he can see under Obito’s Sharingan.

He’s totally blind.

Sakura rocks with it, until—

“That’s enough, you got it.”

Sakura bows her head.

“Great job, Sakura. It took me forever to get that far.”

Sakura smiles a proud little smile.

“Now, ready for the—” Jiraiya stops talking. “Sakura, I’m teaching you how to do this. Wait for my explanation.”

If he puts all of his focus into it, he can almost see a tiny little glow around that tenketsu Sakura is working on.

That might just be in his head, though.

“Am I doing it wrong?”

Jiraiya heaves a sigh.

“No.”

Sakura hmphs, her grimace of pain slowly easing.

“Yep, yep—exactly like that, yeah, yeah—stop.”

Sakura stops, leaning her head forward against his shoulder.

“You still good?”

She nods.

“We can stop.”

“No.”

Jiraiya laughs.

“Now—Sakura, this time you need to listen to me.”

Sakura stops, looking up at him a little mulishly.

“I want you to picture a healthy tenketsu in your mind, Sakura.”

Sakura pulls her head off of his shoulder, closes her eyes, lips still pinched in irritation.

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s… a circle?”

“How wide is it?”

“As wide as the hurt one.”

“That’s too wide, that tenketsu was deformed. Make it a little smaller.”

Sakura nods.

“Now how wide is it?”

She makes a face.

He places one of his hands on the back of hers, and holds his hands an inch or so apart. “If the hurt one is this wide, how big is your new one?”

Sakura shows him.

“A little smaller.”

Her fingers pinch together a little.

“A little more—yes, just like that. Alright, now you can keep going.”

Sakura nods, and Kakashi once again is left just watching as sweat once again beads at Sakura’s hairline, and her head falls.

“Doing great, kid, just like that.”

Sakura’s forehead is creased, and her pink hair is stuck to her forehead with sweat.

“Yep, yep—”

Sakura’s body relaxes.

“Great job.”

Sakura smiles, a little weakly.

“Let me see it,” he says softly.

She pulls herself off of him, and he prods at her skin with his fingers.

“It seems good,” he says, and she nods, a little less shakily. “Are you ready?”

She nods.

He presses his fingers to the seal on her forehead, and the double chakra system around Sakura vanishes. As soon as it’s gone, Sakura is pissing chakra out of her new tenketsu, but by the time Kakashi’s brain has processed that information, Jiraiya has already reactivated her seal.

“It’s okay, you should have seen what a mess I made with my first try.”

He had a blown a wall off the hospital, and almost died of chakra exhaustion. It had been in the report. He’d tried to replace one of the main chakra arteries in his right arm, because he’s fucking insane. He had passed out before being able to reactivate the seal. He would have died if Tsunade had not been literally on top of him.

Sakura, visibly shaken, nods.

“You don’t have to keep doing this today—”

“No.”

A faint smile plays around Jiraiya’s lips.

“A little smaller, but you could feel the wrongness, couldn’t you?”

Sakura nods.

“So you know how big it needs to be? Big enough for you to pass chakra through it if you want, but not big enough any leaks out, right?”

She nods again, pinches her eyes closed. She stays like that for another minute before her eyes snap open, and her hand raises to the seal on her forehead.

“Sakura slow down—”

The seal deactivates, and—

Nothing happens.

“Great job,” Jiraiya says. “If a bit rushed.” he adds pointedly. Sakura doesn’t meet his eyes. “Can you still pass chakra through it?”

A small pink flash sparks from her hand, and Sakura squeals.

“Cute,” Jiraiya comments as Sakura leaps into the air and flails.

“I did it I did it I did it!”

“Congratulations,” Jiraiya says, finally standing to his full height, and popping his back with a stretch. “Now Sakura—”

He looks down to find her gone, off climbing up a tree to rip off a leaf, despite the plethora of leaves on the ground around them. She drops to the ground and sticks it to her new tenketsu, and displays it proudly.

“I can be a ninja again!”

“Yes,” Jiraiya agrees.

Sakura screams and runs in a circle.

Dealing with children sure is an exercise in emotional whiplash.

In her circles, she makes her way to Kakashi, and shoves her leaf in his face.

“I did it,” she said, like he had ever doubted her.

“You did.”

“Sakura,” Jiraiya says, clamping his hand down on Sakura’s shoulder as she runs past him for probably the fiftieth time. “We need to wait a couple days to make sure your new tenketsu holds. And in that time, you can’t do anything to any of your other tenketsu, okay?”

She nods excitedly.

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” she says, concerningly solemnly.

Jiraiya nods, drawn in by her tiny, adorable face.

(Rookie mistake.)

“Also,” she says, standing up on her tip toes and ratcheting her voice up to a scream, “I’m gonna be a ninja again!” She pulls his forehead protector from his face, and then proceeds to run around the clearing like a chicken with its head cut off, waving it proudly above her.

Kakashi laughs into his hand as Jiraiya gamely chases after her, instead of stealing it back with a body-flicker.

At least this time, he’ll be the one who gets to spread the stolen-forehead-protector stories.

But she was a genin when she stole Jiraiya’s, he can already hear people making excuses for Jiraiya in his head.

She was horribly chakra scarred at the time! She didn’t even use any jutsu, he can imagine his response, followed by everyone shaking their heads sadly at his pitiful excuses.

Man, people are the worst.

Jiraiya leans into Kakashi’s side, as Sakura frantically jumps up and down on the pond, stomping on it with both feet, gloriously joyous now that she can use the tenketsu on her feet again.

There is a moment of silence as Jiraiya watches Sakura’s ridiculously frivolous use of her extraordinary chakra control.

“You got any plans tonight, oh grand-student of mine?” he says.

Before them, Sakura spins in the air, pink flaring out from every tenketsu in her legs, and comes crashing down upon the pond, back first, having forgotten that although she’s done both arms, both legs and her chest, she has not done her back yet, and therefore she falls straight into the water.

She gives out a squeal of surprise, catching the surface of the water with her hands before she falls all the way through, and Kakashi shrugs.

“Read some porn, sharpen some kunai.”

Finish the seal array for the Hiraishin.

“Then you’re drinking with me,” Jiraiya declares, throwing an arm around Kakashi’s shoulder that Kakashi would like to claim he could have avoided, but really, really couldn’t have.

(The Sannin are still such incredible bullshit.)

Sakura scrambles back over to them, and turns around, whipping her hair to spray them with water.

“I can walk on water again!” she crows.

And that’s how an hour later, Kakashi finds himself at a dingy table in a dingy bar-brothel, as Jiraiya slams his sake cup down onto the table with a satisfied sigh.

“That’s the stuff,” he exclaims, cheeks faintly red, even though there’s no way on Earth he’s actually had enough to get buzzed.

He really is quite good at being a buffoon. Kakashi didn’t even notice him activating the transformation technique.

Kakashi agrees with a non-committal hum, and Jiraiya responds with a boisterous laugh.

“If that’s all you’ve got to say,” he booms, pounding Kakashi on the back, “you clearly haven’t drunk anywhere near enough.” He leans back, his massive bulk only barely contained by the chair, and gestures at the madame of the brothel-bar they’re in, spreading his other arm wide. “Just bring over the whole bottle, beautiful.” She gives him a smile and a quirked eyebrow, and he laughs. “You drive a hard bargain—bring the whole damn shelf.”

She laughs, a low, rough thing, and Kakashi hears a matching rumble in Jiraiya’s chest, a different beast from the booming cackle he had so proudly just crowed out.

The woman struts her way over to the shelf, every step a production, and pulls three bottles off the shelves with a smile that has a whole lot of promise for a man who isn’t him.

He downs the cup before him, and it burns as it goes down. He coughs as he puts the cup down, and Jiraiya’s hand is on his back again, pounding away.

“That’s the spirit!” he exclaims, not looking at Kakashi.

Kakashi pours himself the last of his current bottle, burns away a bit of the alcohol in his system because he was in Anbu way too long to let himself ever get drunk. He’ll let himself get just a little tipsy, though.

He is with a Sannin, after all.

The madame lets Jiraiya wrap her up with one of his massive arms as she sets the three bottles before them, and she says—

“I’m very flattered, but—” she leans down to Jiraiya’s ear, and then whispers in a voice that hides nothing from a ninja, “—I ain’t free.”

She pushes away from Jiraiya as he makes crushed noises at her back.

“You wound my honor, Madame,” he crows after her back, and she mouths prove it over her shoulder. Jiraiya lets out a very honest sounding groan.

“Did you invite me just to ditch me for a woman, oh great toad sannin,” Kakashi asks without venom, because uh. No judgement here.

Jiraiya slams down his cup on the table between them, and in the sound, Kakashi can hear the genjutsu.

“Later,” he says, in a far more reasonable voice, redness gone from his face, pouring himself an overflowing cup that spills out onto the table.

Kakashi sets his cup down, and Jiraiya fills that one up until it’s spilling out onto the table, too.

“Tell me, Kakashi, could you have pulled that shit Sakura pulled with that pond today?” He takes his cup, the liquid sloshing up out of the cup and then miraculously falling back into the cup as he raises it to his lips and takes a nice long drink. “Because let me tell you—I couldn’t.”

Jiraiya legendarily has the chakra control of a brain-dead rabbit.

But.

You know what they say about legends.

“Could Tsunade?” Kakashi asks, taking a drink, then burning away the alcohol in it as soon as it hits his system.

Jiraiya snorts, setting his cup back on the table with a hearty thunk, reinforcing the genjutsu hiding them from prying civilian eyes.

And low ranked ninja eyes.

Most jounin eyes.

(The sannin are bullshit.)

“Of course she could, answer the damn question.”

Kakashi has hit water travelling at body-flicker speed before. He had ended up wet up to his ankles—

The water hadn’t even been splashing as she slammed her feet into it.

“No.”

Jiraiya laughs, loud and long.

“That’s good,” he says, topping off his cup, topping off Kakashi’s. “You gotta start by acknowledging the little things.”

Another swig, slam.

“She broke a jutsu that I couldn’t,” Kakashi points out.

“You’re fine. She needed Toumi Hyuuga and my assistance to be able to perform E-rank jutsus again,” Jiraiya says dismissively, waving his hand, the sake in the cup once again sloshing every which way and all right back into it again.

Kakashi takes a drink, relishes the burn.

“You know how old Minato was when I knew he was stronger than me?”

Kakashi’s hand stutters on its way back to the table, and his Sake splashes onto his fingers because he is just a lowly jounin. He flicks it away with a quick water jutsu. He isn’t sure how to respond, but thankfully, Jiraiya doesn’t actually require a response.

“Eleven,” he says.

That was—not the answer Kakashi was expecting.

Jiraiya tops off his sake, and Kakashi banishes the sake from his finger as it overflows.

“When he was a chuunin?” he says.

“During his Chuunin exam. You know none of the kids even touched him? Didn’t have his Hiraishin yet, no Rasengan, nothing more than the academy three and some D-rank jutsus. Not a single kid could touch him.”

“They were genin,” he offers.

Kakashi takes a drink as Jiraiya slams his cup back down.

“In the first round, he fought this kid from Mist. You might have heard of him. Kisame?”

Kakashi has, in fact, heard of him.

“That chakra of his isn’t a recent thing, I promise you. I could feel the pressure of it from the stands, scared the life out of me, you know. My adorable student, how would he stand up against half a damn tailed beast of chakra?”

“What did Minato-sensei do?”

“Beat him into the damn ground. No weapons allowed, Sage knows why, so he had to use his fists, because he didn’t have any good offensive jutsu. Took twenty minutes to beat through all that damn chakra. Didn’t let the Kisame kid get off a single jutsu. I could beat the Kisame kid, sure. But I couldn’t have beat him like that. You think you could have done that?”

He really doesn’t.

“That wasn’t all. That chuunin exam was stacked. Cloud was neutral ground at the time, so that’s where everyone sent their hopefuls. He got his first Bingo Book entry from Cloud that day. None of the other villages were smart enough to see what strength it would take to do that with their fists. Nobody gives straight up taijutsu enough respect.”

As a colleague of Guy, Kakashi knows that all too well.

“But Kakashi,” Jiraiya continues, filling both of their cups up until they overflow, “I think I knew what he’d be the first time I met him. Two normal genin and then Minato. Some kids, they’re just fucking monsters, straight down to the bone.”

He looks at Kakashi now, and Kakashi sees what he’s trying to say. He downs the cup.

“What is it you’re trying to say, Jiraiya?” he says because he doesn’t want to admit it.

Jiraiya downs his whole cup, slams it back down onto the table.

“Some teachers, they aren’t prepared to raise a monster. They get scared, lash out. Sometimes they kill their monsters. Sometimes they break ‘em, turn ‘em loose against the whole damn world.”

He leans on the table, and it creaks under his weight.

“Especially us normal ninja. You, me, Sarutobi-sensei. We’re strong, yeah, but there’s something different between us, and ninja like Tsunade, Orochimaru, Minato. We’re… well, we’re reasonable. They aren’t. You’ve got a monster, Kakashi. I want to make sure you know that, and you aren’t gonna go and do something stupid with her.”

His brain comes up with excuses.

She can barely do the academy three.

She’s got a chakra pool the size of a puddle.

What can you do with chakra control alone?

But he’s felt that feeling in his bones ever since he saw a seven-year-old girl make snake with her hands, and ram with her chakra.

Some kids, they’re just fucking monsters, straight down to the bone.

He remembers her kai, a fucking abomination of a thing he felt like a physical force.

He remembers Tsukuyomi, and how utterly powerless he was against it for forty-eight hours when she broke it in a matter of seconds.

He remembers her gathering nature energy as she meditated, how she told it to fuck straight off, and it listened.

“Yeah,” Kakashi says, downing the rest of his sake. “I know what I’ve got with Sakura.”

He feels a little light-headed, and realizes he had forgotten to keep burning away the alcohol in his system. He blasts it away, and feels a little better.

“She’s gonna be stronger than you one day,” Jiraiya says refilling his cup.

Kakashi downs it. Sets it down.

“I know.”

Jiraiya fills it again.

“You sure about that, Kakashi?” He isn’t drinking, just putting enough of his weight on the table to make it groan. There is pressure in the air, growing with each word, not a hint of a smile on his lips. “You ready to get your ass beat by a child? Twelve years old, if you’re lucky? You ready to watch as she shoots on past you, to places you only wish you could go? You ready to watch her achieve all the dreams you had to give up on, because you’re nothing but an ordinary-ass ninja?”

Kakashi looks at his sake, downs it.

Does Kakashi have dreams for Sakura to stomp on, by using them as nothing more than stepping stones?

He doesn’t know. It’s been a long time since Kakashi dreamed about much of anything.

“Yeah,” he says. And then. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Jiraiya laughs, then, the pressure lifting and his hard mask cracking into smile, slamming his massive hand into the table, making it creak and shake, and no one looks at them because the genjutsu is still holding strong.

“You’re a good kid, Kakashi.” Jiraiya’s hand slams into Kakashi’s back again, and he has to fortify his body with chakra to keep himself from going face first into the table. “Tell me about her, Kakashi. Not any of the Itachi shit, I’ve heard that before, and what a fucking story, I could go my whole damn life without having to hear it again.”

Jiraiya takes a drink then, great and overwrought, and this time Kakashi sees the transformation fall in place, in that moment Jiraiya slams his cup back into the table, using his own buffoonery as a distraction for his jutsu.

Kakashi slowly rotates his empty cup in his fingers. “The first time I met her, she was doing the transformation jutsu, focusing on every seal. Which were, of course, Dog, Boar, Snake.”

Jiraiya raises an eyebrow at him as he fills Kakashi’s cup.

“Is that so?”

“When I taught her the clone, she was trying so hard on her hand seals, but you should have seen how bad they were, her stubby little fingers could barely make them, let alone channel any chakra through them, so I told her she didn’t need them.”

Jiraiya laughs, drinks, slams.

“And did she go and do it?”

“She went and did it. Perfect clone, couldn’t have made one better myself.”

Jiraiya laughs, and Kakashi continues. He tells Jiraiya about her first transformation technique, sealless and flawless, tree-walking on her third try, water walking, water jumping, sand waking, grass walking. The way she cancelled Obito’s Sharingan’s genjutsu with barely a blink, her moaning and complaining whenever she had to do taijutsu and bukijutsu. Tells him about the trick she pulled to get his forehead protector from his head on her final exam, a trap three layers deep, using the jounin that had showed up halfway through to her advantage, copying Inoichi’s family jutsu. Even though Jiraiya told him not to, he tells Jiraiya about Tsukuyomi anyways, how it felt to be unable control his chakra, and—

“That jutsu closes in two seconds, Jiraiya. I had forty-eight hours, and she never felt a thing. She broke that damn thing in two seconds.”

He can feel the alcohol in his blood, now. He’s been forgetting to clear it.

“Let it go, Kakashi,” Jiraiya says, hand solid and steady on his back. “I’m here, there’s nothing you need to watch out for.”

Kakashi laughs, but does as he’s told.

He tells her about how bad her scarring was, the seizures, Toumi, and—

“First day she comes back, she snaps off a kai that almost turned Obito’s sharingan off.” His speech is getting a little slurred. “You’ve felt it. Does Tsunade’s kai feel like that?”

“No,” Jiraiya says, downing another cup, refilling both of their cups again.

“No?”

“Nah.”

“And then she goes and steals your forehead protector—did you let her?”

“Not the first time.”

“The first time she stole my forehead protector for real, she did it in the middle of a civilian market, paid off some civvie kids to scream like a banshee from an alley, and then ripped it straight off me when I went to look. When I got to the alley, she’d left one of her clones, waving at me—it took me an hour to find her again. I had to use my ninja dogs, because she doesn’t have enough damn chakra to find any other way.”

Jiraiya laughs, refills Kakashi’s cup. Kakashi sends it slamming back and blinks against the new burn. He glances at the table, and finds two sake bottles on their sides, a new bottle uncorked.

“Everyone laughs at me like—haha you let an academy student steal your forehead protector. But fuck, Jiraiya. I’d like to see them face that little terror for three damn months and stop her from getting it at least once.”

Jiraiya laughs. “I didn’t last a day.”

“Damn straight.” Kakashi blinks, and the room’s at a really funky angle. But then Jiraiya’s hand is there on his arm, holding him up, pushing him back to vertical.

Silence falls between them, and Kakashi decides he’s had enough of this being drunk business as he topples to the other side and Jiraiya has to grab him by the flak jacket to keep him from toppling to the floor. He burns it all away, and shivers as his sobriety hits him like a truck.

It knocks him straight back into his chair, and leaves him gasping at the ceiling. Jiraiya claps him on the shoulder, and starts to speak. “You know,” he says, “it took me eight months to regrow my chakra system, and your student is going to do it in a week.”

“You had to develop the technique,” Kakashi counters.

“Nah,” Jiraiya shakes his head, draining his cup, sending it slamming down. “That’s Hashirama’s technique. Everything good in this world is originally his, I swear on the Sage.”

If it’s Hashirama’s, that means—

“Yeah, it was a forbidden Senju technique. We were still kids—maybe thirty?—and there were still other Senju around—Tsunade wasn’t even clan head yet, and I’m sure they tried to stop her, but have you ever seen someone stop Tsunade from getting what she wanted?”

Kakashi has never seen someone try.

“They almost threw her out for that. And she did it for me.” Jiraiya’s smile is misty. “I didn’t deserve it but she went and did it anyways. Best friend I ever had.”

Kakashi takes a drink, doesn’t interrupt.

“You ever see her heal someone, Kakashi?”

He nods, lets Jiraiya fill his cup, burns away the alcohol in his system before raising it to his lips.

“It’s total nonsense is what it is. She healed a hole the size of a fist someone had punched in my abdomen in the war in the middle of a damn battlefield, because I couldn’t have made it out. One-handed, fighting with the other to beat away any idiot who tried to stop her. I’ve got scars, Kakashi, but not from that.”

Jiraiya slams back his drink, and then stares up at the ceiling.

“Before Orochimaru almost scarred me down to the bone, my chakra control was horrible. I couldn’t walk on water, could barely perform the academy three. I wasn’t defenseless, not by a long shot, give me a summoning jutsu or a mega fireball, and I could do that all day,” he pats his stomach with a laugh, and yeah, Kakashi’s heard the tales of Jiraiya’s comically large chakra reserves. “But my chakra control was, well, it was legendarily bad.”

And you know what they say about legends.

Kakashi waits, taking a sip of his sake, relishing the burn.

“But after I rebuilt my chakra system, one miserable, eternal inch at a time, I was suddenly top of my class. No Tsunade, mind you, but well—” he gestures to Kakashi. “Like you.”

Ouch.

“And it was hard, for a long time. That, on the one hand, Orochimaru was trying to kill me, trying to burn me out from the inside. But, on the other, I would never be the ninja I am today without him. If I hadn’t had to do that. I… lost sight, for a little while. Started being thankful to Orochimaru, forgetting why he’d done it.” He takes a drink. “I was so much stronger after, night and day. Jutsu I’d never been able to get the hang of, always breaking or busting from not, well, not the general ballpark of the correct amount of chakra,” he laughs, and Kakashi laughs, “and suddenly I could get ‘em, just like—” he snaps his fingers “—that.”

Jiraiya turns that heavy gaze on Kakashi.

“Tsunade was the one who, well, beat the sense right back into me. ‘He didn’t give a shit about you, he was trying to kill you, what hell are you doing being grateful? You did this, not him.’ And when I say beat, I mean beat. The woman’s got a punch like a tailed beast.”

He laughs, but his heavy gaze doesn’t leave Kakashi’s, pinning him to his seat.

“It’s gonna happen to your student, too. We’re not all blessed with Tsunades ready and waiting to beat sense into you with her fists—” Kakashi thinks, briefly, of Ino, and thinks that maybe, Sakura is— “so you’re going to have to be the one to deal with it.”

Kakashi nods.

“Could she have done that shit with the pond before? Flashed chakra from her tenketsu like that?”

“No.”

“I don’t know if she’ll even notice, she seems to have the attention span of a tadpole—” Kakashi remembers Sakura, content to do nothing but track her chakra pathways for hours upon hours, until Kakashi wants to rip his hair out with the tedium of it all— “so she may not notice, but even if she does she won’t tell you—you have to tell her, convince her, this is her doing. She did this. Itachi just wanted her to hurt.”

“I will,” Kakashi says, a smile playing a bit at the corner of his lips.

“What?” Jiraiya says, when Kakashi’s smile fails to die.

“I can see how Minato was your student,” Kakashi says.

Jiraiya laughs. “Is that an insult, or a compliment?”

Kakashi shrugs, and receives a massive hand to the back for his trouble.

“And for the sage’s sake, teach the girl how to properly cancel, you moron. No way someone with chakra control like that should be eating jutsu backlash, what the hell is wrong with you.”

Kakashi laughs, settling back in his chair. “I will,” he says, trying to think of how to do it safely—maybe he could—

“Think later, brat,” Jiraiya interrupts him, pouring him another cup. “Now I want to see you so drunk you piss yourself.”

“I didn’t know you were into that,” Kakashi says, downing the cup.

“If you get as old as I am,” Jiraiya says, matching him, “you find you’re into just about everything.”

Kakashi laughs, lets Jiraiya refill his cup.

Three days later, and Jiraiya is kneeling before Sakura, his fingers over the seal on her forehead.

“Now, Sakura,” he says to her as she bounces faintly. “You’ve just regrown some of your chakra pathways. Unlike your tenketsu, if these give way, the results are… louder.”

Sakura stops bouncing, her green eyes widening with fear.

“So what I want you to do, if you can, is slow down your chakra flow. Just a little. I’ll be right here, so no matter what, I can catch you, but it’s still a lot easier on everyone, if your chakra flow is a little slower.”

Sakura nods, and then all of the chakra in her body stops. Kakashi shoots forward as she pales, and her legs give out.

Jiraiya, however, is faster, bellowing out a kai before Kakashi can cross half the distance.

It shocks Sakura’s chakra into moving again, and color slowly returns to her cheeks.

“Okay,” Jiraiya says. “I wasn’t expecting have to say this, but—slow, Sakura, not stop. Do not stop your chakra flow. Never stop your chakra flow. You need that to live.”

Sakura, blinking groggily, responds, “But isn’t that how you do a kai.”

Jiraiya pauses, mouth open, and then turns to Kakashi, eyebrow raised.

Kakashi nods.

“That explains so much. Look brat—”

“Sakura.”

“You just stopped your damn chakra flow, you’re a brat right now.” Sakura wilts a little and glares at Jiraiya. “I guess, theoretically, if you only stop it for a moment, it’s fine. Clearly. Because you do that kai all the time.”

In response, Sakura kais, and Jiraiya fails to suppress an uncomfortable shiver.

Of course, once Sakura learned her kais make other people uncomfortable, she started doing them all the time. For fun.

“Okay,” Sakura says.

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” she grouses.

“To?”

“Not stop my chakra flow too much.”

Jiraiya sighs.

“Thank the Sage I can hand you back off to Kakashi today.”

Sakura’s expression brightens at that, and she starts to bounce.

“Now, Sakura. Slow.”

Sakura frowns, and her chakra flow visibly slows under Obito’s Sharingan.

“Good, just like that.”

Slowly, Jiraiya presses his fingers to her forehead, deactivating the duplicated half of the seal, clearly ready to slam it back onto her at any moment if a chakra pathway breaks and Sakura gets blasted across the clearing.

Sakura squeals, flinging her arms up in the air. She tries to dash towards the pond, but Jiraiya’s arm is suddenly around her middle, holding her to him.

“Wait,” he says, and Sakura listens.

They wait. The seconds tick into minutes.

“Okay, I want you to do a transformation into uhh, Kakashi.”

“Kakashi’s gross.”

“Fine, pick your favorite.”

Sakura is immediately replaced by Ino, and Kakashi coughs in surprise.

“Is this—Is this Inoichi’s kid?” Jiraiya asks, glancing at Kakashi out of the corner of his eye.

Kakashi nods.

“What do you think the chance is that he sees this?”

“About a hundred percent.”

“Great,” Jiraiya says.

“Can I go now?”

“No,” Jiraiya says, now holding a squirming Ino instead of squirming Sakura. “I need you to do some more—”

Sakura changes into Hinata, Shikamaru, Naruto, Sasuke, Kakashi, and finally Jiraiya in a concerningly rapid sequence.

“I’m a poopface,” she declares in a perfect replica of Jiraiya’s voice.

Jiraiya relaxes a bit.

“I think everything’s fine, but I want Shima-sama to check. Don’t go hiding anywhere, brat.”

“Sakura.”

“Sakura,” he corrects himself with a sigh.

Sakura transforms into a leaf, swaps with a leaf falling from the trees around them, and then proceeds to continue to swap with all of the falling leaves around them.

“That counts as hiding!” Jiraiya yells after her, and Sakura pops out of a leaf off to their side.

“Boo,” she says.

Jiraiya bites his thumb and swipes a bloody streak under each eye before clasping his hands together.

“Don’t give me that look, Kakashi, normal summoning isn’t guaranteed to get them.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Kakashi says, despite having thought it real loud, eyes following Sakura as she runs into the forest and breaks off two branches before returning. She throws them into the air, leaps after them, and then proceeds to replace herself through them as they fall.

As faintly offensive as it is to watch a child perform the sealless replacement technique faster than Kakashi can, it’s a useful for metric for how much Sakura has improved from regrowing her chakra system. She appears to be about three to four times faster, and she was already faster than he was.

(Give him seals and he can spin through them faster, but if he has to manually mold his chakra, he doesn’t have a chance.)

You gotta start by acknowledging the little things.

Sakura hits the ground, and then the ground explodes with clones. Sakura staggers, because her chakra reserves haven’t improved at all.

They pop, and all that chakra goes sucking back into her.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jiraiya’s eyes widen.

Kakashi gets another look.

Not new, Kakashi mouths back.

Sakura tries again with four clones, and then they all throw their hands into the air and start to bounce in perfect synchrony.

“I’m a ninja again!” they all crow in unison.

“Wheee!” She jumps up, flares pink from 361 points across her body, and then runs to the pond (her clones bursting as they run into him, Jiraiya, and a rock), leaping up and then falling down onto the water, back first.

The pond gives under her and bounces her up once before she settles back down upon it, arms spread in every direction.

She starts to make water angels. When she twists to look at the quickly vanishing ripples, she frowns.

There’s a flash of light from his right, and he hears—

“Again?”

“I want to make sure she put herself back together right, Shima-sama. My pathways gave mid-mission, and I would have died if it hadn’t been for Tsunade.”

Shima sighs, sounding very put-upon.

“Well, come here, then, girl,” the Shima says.

“My name’s Sakura,” Sakura says mulishly as she sits up from the pond and bounds over to them.

“Uh-huh, I’ll make sure to remember that when you’re more than a girl.”

Sakura scowls up at her.

“I can’t see anything from here, boy,” she says, and Jiraiya kneels obediently, leaning forward so Shima can stretch out towards Sakura. Her toad eyes narrow consideringly.

“You did this yourself, girl?”

Sakura looks confused. “Everyone kept telling me I was the only one who could do it?”

“Yeah,” Shima comments, looking consideringly at her. She suddenly detaches herself from Jiraiya, whose features snap back into humanity, and hops down from his shoulder, revealing arms from where they’d been hidden under her cloak.

“Shima-sama,” Jiraiya complains, staggered by his sudden loss of sage mode.

“Suck it up, Jiraiya-chan,” Fukasaku says, patting him on the back of head and hopping off his shoulder to follow Shima.

Shima stops before Sakura, reaches up with her hands. “Come closer, girl,” she says, taking Sakura’s face in her webbed hands when she grows closer, twisting Sakura’s head this way and that. The worst scarring and most extensive re-growing she had was in her head, because, well. Genjutsu.

Fukasaku hops down to a stop beside Shima, looking consideringly up at Sakura.

“Looks like she did a damn better job than our boy did,” he squawks.

“Yeah,” she squawks back. “Boy, give me the contract.”

“Shima-sama?”

Shima turns a baleful glare back at him, and he obediently summons a massive toad, who produces a massive scroll from his mouth, and hands it to Shima, who takes it in one hand, despite the fact it is twice her size.

Shima jumps up and unrolls the scroll under her, landing on Minato’s name.

“This here’s the summoning scroll for us toads of Mount Myouboku,” Shima says.

“But I’m gonna learn to summon dogs!”

Shima twitches faintly at being ranked under dogs.

“You can be a part of as many summoning scrolls as you want, girl.”

Sakura’s mouth falls open and her eyes sparkle.

“But.”

Sakura jerks her mouth closed.

“Summoning is dangerous. It will take all the chakra you give it, and you don’t have much chakra to give.”

Sakura blanches, probably remembering what it felt like to be chakra exhausted.

“Yeah, that there’s the right attitude to take with summoning. You’ll never have enough chakra that you can actually get a toad that’d be useful to you in a fight, so don’t try.”

Sakura nods, slowly.

Jiraiya crouches behind the scroll.

“Shima-sama?” he asks. “If that’s true, then why?”

Shima looks back at him, and then back at Sakura. Her eyes fog, and her body stiffens.

“There will be a time when you need us. When all hope is lost. We are older than the entire world, and all that the world has forgotten, the toads of Mount Myouboku remember.”

Sakura frowns.

Some kids are just fucking monsters, straight down to the bone.

You’re ready to watch her achieve all the dreams you had to give up on, because you’re nothing but an ordinary-ass ninja?

Kakashi remembers the dream he gave up on.

Recognition as someone who mattered.

The ability to make a real, actual difference, to change this hellish world they’re all trapped in.

Shima blinks and seems to come back to herself. Sakura is looking distinctly awkward.

“Shima-sama?” Jiraiya asks.

She waves him off.

“Can I still summon little toad helpers?” Sakura says, and Kakashi laughs.

“Yes, girl.”

“But they won’t channel nature energy for you, brat,” Jiraiya adds from where he’s crouched behind the scroll.

Sakura sticks her tongue out at him.

“So, will you sign our contract, girl?”

Sakura looks considering.

“My name is Sakura,” she says.

“Sakura,” Shima says with a smile.

“Okay,” Sakura agrees. She crouches down, looks around for a brush, and then frowns. “How do I… do it?”

“You sign in blood, brat,” Jiraiya says.

Sakura makes a face. She looks at Jiraiya, and then over at Kakashi.

He likes having Jiraiya here, it makes him look like a reasonable authority figure.

“What are you doing looking at him, I’m a better ninja than he is!”

“You don’t even have a forehead protector,” she grumbles.

“I am such an amazing ninja I don’t need one!”

Sakura scowls, and touches her forehead protector protectively.

She bites into her finger, and starts to sign her name in blood, one thumb-stroke at a time. “I’m gonna be stronger than you, and I’ll keep wearing my forehead protector.”

Jiraiya smirks.

“Yeah, yeah, tell that to me when you actually get stronger than me, brat.”

A moment later, Sakura appears out of a leaf behind Jiraiya, and he grabs her by the back of her dress with one hand and pitches her back in front of the scroll.

She glares at him as her body crashes through her clone, dispelling it.

“Finish signing your name,” Jiraiya orders.

“Not even a real ninja,” she grumbles.

“I trained the Fourth Hokage!”

She bites each of her fingers, and then finishes the contract.

The contract blazes with light under Obito’s Sharingan for a moment before going back to just being paper, once more.

“Okay, okay, okay, show me. How do I summon a toad helper?”

Shima jumps up, rerolling the scroll and tossing it back to the toad Jiraiya summoned, who Jiraiya dispels with a twitch of his neck, as Shima lands lightly back on the ground.

“Sakura,” Shima interrupts. “Don’t forget what I’ve told you.”

Sakura looks down at her and then nods.

“Boy, our work here is done, send us back.”

They vanish, and Jiraiya catches Sakura by the back of her dress when she makes another attempt at his forehead protector from behind him. He tosses her onto the ground before him.

“Watch,” he says, biting his finger and slamming it into the ground. The massive toad reappears.

For the record, you don’t get your chakra back when you dispel your summon.

Jiraiya just has a literal ocean of chakra.

“Again,” Sakura says, and the fucker does it again. Two more times after that for good measure, because Sakura is nothing if not thorough.

When Sakura bites her thumb, Jiraiya catches her hand before she slams it into the ground.

“Don’t think about what you want to summon. Focus on how much chakra you’re willing to give up. Understand me?”

Slowly, Sakura nods.

He releases her, and with a bit less vigor, she places her hand on the ground.

Seals unfurl around her hand, and a partially molted tadpole pops into existence before her.

The loss of chakra required still visibly staggers her. She’ll get a bit more chakra with age, but for now this is likely the best she can do.

Sakura, however, does not appear disappointed, and gives out a ear-splitting squeal.

“Who are you!” she squeals.

“Gamami,” the tadpole squeaks, as Sakura gathers it (her?) up in her hands.

“You’re so cute!”

“I’m not cute. I’m strong. I can beat you up,” Gamami responds, flapping her tail and stomping her arms on Sakura’s hand. “Who do you want me to kill.”

“No one! Can you ride on my head?” Sakura puts Gamami on her head without waiting for an answer, and winces only a little when Gamami scrambles and grabs fistfuls of pink hair in each hand.

Sakura bounces over to the pond, and squeals at her reflection. She poofs into Ino, much to Gamami’s very vocal consternation, and squeals some more.

Jiraiya makes his way to Kakashi’s side, one eye on Sakura. “Looks like I can finally go back to The Land of Hot Water, where everyone is naked, all the time.” Jiraiya sighs wistfully, before turning a meaningful glance at Kakashi. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Kakashi says. “But before you go, I have a favor to ask.”

Jiraiya turns to him with a raised eyebrow. “I think I could stay one more night,” he says, looking Kakashi up and down evaluatingly, and—

Well, that hadn’t been what he’d meant, but hell.

“You’re insane,” Jiraiya says, when he steps into Kakashi’s apartment. Against every wall are papers, each one with a variation of a single seal drawn upon it.

“It’s nothing Minato didn’t do,” Kakashi says, pushing the door closed behind Jiraiya.

“Minato was fucking insane, and I told him so when he came to me with this stupid-ass idea. Maybe I was wrong to group you into the group of us normal ninja,” he says, glancing at Kakashi sideways.

Jiraiya was definitely wrong to put himself in that category, but hey.

Kakashi moves further into his apartment, until he reaches the living room he’s totally cleared out, now almost entirely filled with a single seal, twenty feet on a side.

Jiraiya stops at the edge of the living room, and takes a deep breath.

“How does it look?” Kakashi asks.

“You’re still insane,” Jiraiya says, kneeling carefully down at the edge of the seal, and letting his eyes trace over the full, glorious expanse of it. “But this is well drawn. It won’t vaporize you.”

That’s comforting.

“But it’s also not the hard part,” Jiraiya says. “And man doesn’t that say something about how ridiculous this stupid technique is. Not the one hundred seal activation that kills if you fuck it up, not the twenty foot seal array that also kills you if you fuck it up.”

Jiraiya’s right, of course. None of this is the hard part. He’s tried, a couple hundred times, never gotten it quite right. But he thinks he understands now.

He takes a clean sheet of paper and carefully inks out the seal. Jiraiya is silent as he works, and when he completes it he can feel the rightness of it.

It is Kakashi, in seal form. Get it even a little wrong, and even if you get everything else right, the universe will tear you apart, trying to make you into something you’re not.

It’s what will bind Kakashi into the fabric of the universe, make him a beacon for every Hiraishin seal he’ll ever lay.

He turns to Jiraiya, and shows him the seal.

What the seal had been missing.

It’d been missing that dream he’d forgotten about.

Burned out of him by Obito’s death and Rin’s death and Minato’s death and the damn war and the whole damn village hating the boy that saved their sorry lives.

Peace.

A better way.

Kakashi will drag the world kicking and screaming with him, if he has to.

Jiraiya shakes his head and smiles a little broken smile.

“Don’t go and get yourself killed over some pretty words, Kakashi,” he says.

“It’s the truth.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said, too.” Jiraiya sniffles and wipes at his eyes. “Fucking kids. Go finish your damn seal.”

Kakashi finishes his damn seal. That seal that is himself, drawn two feet across in the center, where Kakashi will be kneeling when the whole thing activates.

He jumps back to the edge of the seal to let his blood ink dry, and Jiraiya is silent beside him.

“Let’s get this done, then,” he says. “I’d threaten not to help you, but then you’d just go and try and do it by yourself, wouldn’t you?”

“I would,” Kakashi lies. He’s not stupid. He’s not going to draw a seal on himself that’ll kill him if he screws up a stroke.

But Jiraiya doesn’t need to know that.

“This is not how I was expecting to get you naked,” Jiraia says, stripping off the massive scroll from his back, and then pulling the outer layer of his yukata off, and tossing it away as well.

“First time for everything,” Kakashi says, pulling his flak jacket from his shoulders, and Jiraiya snorts.

“You have some extra ink, I assume?”

Kakashi bites his thumb, and unseals his blood ink from the storage seal he’d left on his kitchen counter. Blood ink doesn’t keep, and someone can do horrible things to you if they get enough of it.

“Smart,” Jiraiya comments drily, picking it up and pulling a brush from nowhere.

Kakashi pulls off his shirt, leaps into the center of the seal, and then kneels there, his hands on its two activation points.

Jiraiya re-adjusts the long bench Kakashi had used for drawing the seal without having to walk through it, and crouches behind him.

As Jiraiya paints the distressingly warm blood ink over Kakashi’s shoulders and down his arms, he says, “He loved you, you know.”

Kakashi doesn’t move, can’t move.

“I know,” he says, without moving his lips.

“I still think this is insane, but—” Jiraiya finishes Kakashi’s right arm, and moves to his left, “—he would have been proud.”

Kakashi says noting, just closes his eyes.

“He would have wanted to have been the one to do this,” Jiraiya says, as he finishes Kakashi’s left arm, and then moves on to his back.

Down his back to his waistband, then finally returning to the center point of the whole seal, a second instance of Kakashi, right there on his back. Binding him to the seal array, to the hole he’s about to tear in the universe.

Jiraiya stops, leans back. He jumps away, and Kakashi hears him drag the bench away.

“It’s done,” he says. “Don’t you dare go dying on me. When I finally see him in the next life, he’d never let me hear the end of it.”

Kakashi takes in a breath. He channels just a spark of chakra into his hands, and he watches as it works its way through the whole array before coming back to him—some to the seal beneath him, so bright he can feel the warmth on his bare skin, and some up the lines Jiraiya drew in his skin, and to the second seal on his back.

It—hurts.

Kakashi would rather not dwell on the pain. He’s been trained to endure worse, and he does. Never moving, just breathing.

In and out, in and out, as the seal array unravels from its outer rim, folding in towards him, up his arms and his back until there are only two seals left: the one under him, and the one on his back.

The two Kakashi seals.

And then Kakashi feels it—

From somewhere beyond the world, up through the the seal beneath him, and into his back.

There is pain, and then there is pain.

Kakashi passes out.

He wakes to Jiraiya’s face.

Jiraiya smiles.

“You did it, kid. You’re officially the third user of the Hiraishin.”

Kakashi pushes himself to his feet shakily, and can hardly believe it. But he lowers his hand to the wood floor of his apartment, and his chakra leaps to the task eagerly, burning a—white fang—into the wood.

The Will Of Fire, written in white characters in the shape of a fang.

Well, they can’t all be as single-minded as Minato. Four characters—

Some kids are fucking monsters, straight to the bone.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jiraiya says, looking up at him. “The White Fang lives again.”

Kakashi can’t help but smile back.

Two minutes and one hundred and twenty three agonizingly precise seals later, Kakashi travels five feet without travelling any of the intervening space.

Kakashi performs the Flying Thunder God technique for the first time.

Chapter Text

“We have a C-rank mission.”

Sakura whoops with joy from behind him. The Sakura-clone before him smiles sheepishly and disappears. Kakashi turns to face Sakura, where she’s hanging from a tree branch. She isn’t even bothering to close it around the branch. She’s just sticking it there with chakra, as she wiggles her body excitedly.

She’s nine now (Kakashi might be a little gun-shy about putting his apprentice into the line of fire. A little.)

Gamami is on her head, now a full toad, but no bigger than she was as a tadpole, because—

Are you gonna get big?

I’m gonna be the biggest toad in Mount Myouboku!

Then… then I won’t be able to summon you anymore.

Gamami is glaring at him, but that’s fine. He’s not convinced she’s capable of any emotion but hate.

She spits a ball of oil at him, one that’s literally twice her size, and he casually deflects it with a kunai.

“You have your own forehead protector now. Why do you keep trying to steal mine?”

“It’s not right that you just keep walking around like you’re a real ninja,” Sakura says brightly, dropping to her feet. When he does not react to her satisfaction she continues—“Even though you’re not.” You know, in case he missed the implication.

“M’hmm,” Kakashi agrees, walking backwards, away from the forest, picking up a rock as he passes it. He tosses it into the air, and Sakura obediently swaps with it, un-transforming smoothly to land on his upturned palm.

He drops his hand in an attempt to get her to fall on her face, but unfortunately that only worked the first ten times, and she safely replaces herself with a nearby leaf, landing lightly on her feet. Gamami jumps up behind her, catching the back of Sakura’s dress in her little toad hands and crawling her way up to settle on Sakura’s head once again.

“Before we leave,” Kakashi says, “you have to catch me.”

Sakura frowns. “I do that all the time!”

Kakashi smiles. “This time, I’m not gonna go easy on you.”

She takes Gamami from her head and tosses her up to a branch above her, and while she’s doing that he speeds through the seals for an earth jutsu, burying all the broken leaves around him, then follows it up with a wind jutsu, blowing all leaves away from him. He wraps his clothing in his own chakra, and then smiles brightly at her when she turns back to him.

She scowls.

“That’s cheating!”

It’s an object lesson. Eventually, she’s going to have to fight in rock, or wind, where leaves and broken blades of grass are not so plentiful.

“What, you’re giving up? I guess we can go back to D-ranks…”

This isn’t as good of a threat as it should be, because Sakura is really unpleasantly good at catching that damn cat.

Catch me, she likes to yell, throwing herself into his arms, and then leaving him with an armful of screaming cat.

Sakura growls, pulling out a fistful of shuriken. She throws them at him, and he signs through a katon jutsu before belching a fireball at them.

One of the shuriken squeals and vanishes.

Sakura re-appears at the edge of his patch of dirt, and he waits, eyebrow raised. “I’m not even counter-attacking,” he taunts. “Is that the best you can do? Any chuunin could do this.”

He does not mention the small fact that she is in fact, a genin.

As Kakashi said, he’s feeling a little overprotective.

Sakura frowns at him, tapping her foot. Gamami makes her way through the trees to her, and Sakura dips her head in invitation for Gamami to jump down.

“Wait,” Sakura says, jabbing a finger at him. “No peeking.”

Kakashi raises his hands in surrender but does not let down his guard. He fires off a preventative wind jutsu every minute or so.

Three minutes later, and he spins on instinct, Sakura vanishing into a leaf a moment before his fist would have connected with her side. As soon as his fist is passed Sakura is back, blooming back out of the leaf, her kunai slicing up at his headband. He backs away, and his kick misses as she poofs back into a leaf.

Before she can turn back, Kakashi hits the leaf with a wind jutsu—but that does nothing but whistle past it, as it tilts and angles just right. The jutsu ends, and Sakura is back, hands dipping into her weapon pouches and flinging handfuls of leaves all around them. He jabs forward, and she is a leaf again, but she’s predictable, and he grabs the leaf in his hand.

But then she’s behind him, her kunai going high but catching the knot of his forehead protector, loosening it enough to fall in his eyes. This time, he catches her with an elbow before she vanishes. He fires off another wind jutsu but it doesn’t do anything more than spin the leaves all around him.

She appears at his side, throwing shuriken towards him, and as he catches them, he signs through a katon jutsu to get rid of these damn leaves, and a spitball of oil catches him right in the face.

As he desperately swallows back his katon jutsu to keep from setting himself on fire, a tiny hand closes around his forehead protector, and she’s gone before his elbow can connect. Gamami smiles victoriously at him from in front of him as he wipes her incredibly disgusting oil from his face.

Sakura is bent over double when he turns to her, hands on her knees, chest heaving. She’s not in danger of chakra exhaustion, but the trick with the spinning leaves took a chunk of her reserves.

He body-flickers to her, takes his forehead protector, and ties it back around his head before she realizes it’s missing.

She blinks at her suddenly-empty hand, and then looks up at him.

He has spent the last year and a half building her up. It was easy because she’s quite talented, and it was necessary, because she’s civilian-born, and never really thought she’d be a ninja. She’s going to leave the village with him. Maybe this is just a standard protection mission, but anything can happen outside the village walls.

He signs through a doton jutsu, and the dirt flips back over, revealing the grass he hid. He signs through a wind jutsu, and it drags in all the leaves he had blown away. He activates Obito’s Sharingan.

He threads chakra through his whole body, strengthening his muscles, sharpening his senses.

“We’re going to do this again,” he informs her.

Sakura backs away from him, and he can hear her heartbeat increase, smell her fear.

She tries to tag a leaf behind him with her chakra, and he slaps it away.

She blinks, and backs a little further away.

The second time, he lets her tag succeed, and blocks the chakra string.

Sakura staggers at the blowback from her failed replacement jutsu.

Finally, he lets her do the swap, and catches the leaf she is transformed into between his thumb and forefinger. He closes his hand around it before she can do any replacement, and she explodes out of the leaf to find his kunai against her neck.

She’s shaking.

“Do you want to keep trying?” he asks her. Sakura may be a little monster, but she’s still just a genin. There are people she just can’t beat, no matter how hard she tries.

He rests the point of his kunai against her belly button when she appears behind him.

He sidesteps Gamami’s oil spitball, slaps down the flurry of shuriken she throws at him from the trees, sets the point of his kunai against her throat when she expands up from one of the shuriken.

He reaches into his side pocket, and pulls out a copy of Icha Icha.

It takes her an hour to quit. He doesn’t use a single jutsu.

She’s staring at him, red-faced and crying, and Gamami jumps on her head to glare at him.

“Can we—can we not go?”

Kakashi looks up from his book.

“If you can’t get my forehead protector,” he tells her, “we can’t go.”

Sakura retrieves Gamami from her head to hold her cradled in her hands.

“I—I can’t get it.” Gamami glares at Kakashi with murder in her eyes as Sakura rubs a finger along her back.

Kakashi puts his copy of icha-icha away, and de-activates Obito’s Sharingan.

“Good,” he says. “You pass.”

She looks up at him.

“You’re a strong genin, Sakura, but you’re just a genin. I’m a jounin.” He walks towards her, and crouches before her. “Sakura, if you meet a jounin like me when we’re on this mission, do you think you could beat them?”

She hesitates, and then shakes her head.

“What should you do, if you meet a jounin like me on this mission?”

She hesitates.

“Run?”

“And what if beating that jounin was the only way to finish the mission?”

Sakura frowns, still rubbing at Gamami’s head.

“Then I guess”—Sakura sniffs—“I guess I wouldn’t be able to complete it.”

“That’s right.” He stands, and ruffles her hair until she slaps his hands away, and he has to bat away an oil spitball from Gamami. “It’s important to know when to run away, Sakura. Almost no mission is worth dying for.”

She looks up at him. “Almost?”

“You’ll know which ones,” Kakashi says.

“But not this one?” she confirms.

“Definitely not this one,” Kakashi agrees with a laugh. They’re going to be delivering a clothes shipment. The merchant and his two sons would be traveling with them, but rule number one of being a shinobi was not valuing the life of your client above the ryou they're paying you.

Sakura gives another sniff.

“But one day,” she says. “One day I’m going to be strong enough, I don’t ever have to run away.”

“That’s the goal,” Kakashi agrees.

She nods, and Kakashi’s gaze drops to the white fang hanging from a string hung loosely around her neck. He had worked his activation time of the hiraishin from three minutes to five seconds. It was better than nothing.

It still wasn’t good.

The mission was a silk kimono delivery to the house of Imamura, ordered by the Shirai shipping house. The value of the cargo was valued at about thirty million ryou. If they left it behind, they’d get an earful from the treasurer, but no one else. Expensive, but expendable. If they left it and the clients behind, they’d get an earful from the Hokage and the Treasurer. Letting clients die was bad for business. But if Kakashi couldn’t protect them, they had tried to pass off an S as a C, and deserved what they got, as far as everyone else was concerned.

Eight days out, two days back. Listed dangers by the client were bandits. The village’s research also listed an outside danger of low-level Cloud shinobi paid by the House of Imamura. They were close to the border, and liked to order missions from both sides, trying to get the best deal. Nothing too concerning, but they could decide that they didn’t want to pay the cost of the kimonos. That amount of money could hire a team of genin with a jounin instructor for four days, but only if they hid the fact the Shirais were hiring Konoha ninja of their own. On possible contact with Cloud nin, their instructions were to make diplomatic noises and inform the Cloud ninja they were being underpaid. If that didn’t work, take the clients and flee. If that didn’t work, leave the clients to die. See: passing an S rank off as a C. If that didn’t work, Konoha had bigger problems, because Cloud has a jounin who could take out Konoha’s fourth strongest jounin without leaving him an out to escape.

It was all fine print, and hopefully wouldn’t come up. The order of the day was boring-ass C mission, which makes Tora look like a riveting afternoon.

Kakashi arrives at the mission starting point two hours late, because he’s got a reputation to uphold. Sakura is already there, Gamami perched on her head (he’s not convinced she ever sends that toad home), bellowing at the client about how it isn’t her fault that Kakashi is the worst, and a fake ninja, and super gross. Also—

“You’re gross! I hate you! You’re not worth the money! Why are you so mean!”

Kakashi body-flickers behind her, and bops her on the back of the head with his copy of The Adventures of the Pirate Ninja, Volume 59. “Don’t be rude to the clients,” he says.

“They were rude first! They said I was just a little girl playing ninja and I’m—”

The older, and apparently less intelligent son interrupts her, saying “Come on, you really expect us to—”

He shuts up when his head jerks back from Sakura’s hand in his hair as she perches on his shoulders. “Say it again,” she hisses. “Come on—say it again.”

Gamami snaps out her tongue as she falls, and catches on the hilts of one of Sakura’s kunai to rocket her back over to Sakura, just in time for her to be sent spinning into the air as Sakura re-appears in front of Kakashi. Gamami hits the Konoha gate with a grumble and then leaps back towards Sakura.

“What the hell!” the stupid son declares, pointing at Sakura, who catches Gamami when she misses Sakura by about a foot before tossing Gamami up to her head. He looks expectantly at Kakashi. Hm, funny that now that Kakashi’s the superior of someone he wants punished, he’s treating Kakashi as a reasonable authority figure.

“Sakura, don’t antagonize the clients, it’s rude,” he repeats, bopping her on the back of the head again.

Sakura grumbles and tries and fails to steal his book in retribution.

“And Kentarou,” he says to the idiot, “word to the wise. Don’t antagonize your protection detail. If they leave you to die, all they get is a reprimand.”

That shuts him up real quick.

The father bows to Kakashi, grabbing the back of his son’s head, and forcing him into a bow as well.

And with that incredibly smooth first meeting, they set off, both of them riding on the top of the caravan, Kakashi facing forward and Sakura facing back. As they set off, Kakashi summons his ninken and has them comb the area at a distance of about fifty feet. He’d like a nice, smooth first mission.

It’s not a secret that he can summon ninken, but Sakura won’t be able to summon anything but a newborn puppy for another two years, so he’d rather not remind her that he promised to add her to his contract.

“Gamami saw that!” Sakura bellows despite the fact they are five feet apart, if that. “When are you going to let me summon them?”

What was it adults always said to him when he was a kid, and he hated so much?

Oh, right.

“When you’re older!” he shouts back. He feels like there was a second part. Oh— “And more responsible!”

He feels that refreshing wave of killing intent, and sighs with the satisfaction of a job well done.

He glances back over his shoulder, and finds Sakura humming while rocking back and forth, a line of pale pink circling her body as she fires tiny chakra flares out of each of her tenketsu in rapid succession. Really. Kakashi’s pretty sure he deserved a lazier student.

On her head, Gamami glares at him with the fury of a thousand suns.

He wiggles his fingers at her in greeting and she belts an oil spitball three times her size at his head. He deflects it to the ground in front of the stupid son, and enjoys his horrified squawk when he steps in it.

Kakashi turns back to the road, and then burns two hiraishin seals on either side of him. He can’t let his student show him up, now, can he?

They’ve almost stopped for lunch before Sakura has tired of what she calls her “Pink Ribbon” technique. (It’s not a technique. It doesn’t do anything.) “No jutsu,” he calls out to her, and gets a farting noise in return. Sakura can practice the academy three for maybe three hours before her chakra reserves start running dangerously low. (She could theoretically run chakra flares for twenty-four hours straight without running through her reserves, so he doesn’t stop her from doing that.)

Nothing happens that day. They stop for lunch in a clearing, where Kakashi and Sakura eat on the top of the caravan, and the civilians eat on the ground and nothing happens. When they stop for the night, and Kakashi changes out his ninken for new ninken, he and Sakura split the night watch, and nothing happens then, either.

So continues the glorious C. AKA: A C-rank mission which is appropriately ranked. Good money for no work at all.

Also the most boring kind of mission on the face of the planet. At least Tora puts up a fight.

On the third day, as nothing at all changes and nothing at all happens, Kakashi yawns, only to get punched in the back of the head for his trouble.

“I had to make sure you didn’t fall asleep,” Sakura explains.

Such a kind and caring student he has.

The next time he yawns, he grabs her and tosses her off the caravan when she tries to punch him.

He was hoping this would dissuade her, but it doesn’t.

In fact, it only seems to encourage her, so he resigns himself to the head punches.

She loses interest after maybe the fifth time she punches him in the head and receives no response, audibly huffing as she settles back into her spot on the back of the caravan.

On the fourth day they see their first cherry blossom tree, and Kakashi cheerfully points out to Sakura, “Look, it’s you!”

Fun fact:

It’s just as fun to get a nine-year-old to release killing intent towards you as it is to get a seven-year-old to do it. The things Sakura’s teaching him. Truly, he’s growing as a person.

And it’s then that his dogs detect a group of bandits approaching the caravan from seven o’clock (Sakura’s half of the caravan). Seven of them, four standard civilian level, and three genin level. Without moving his head, he confirms the position of the civilians: the father (Ryouta) and older son (Kentarou) are out front, the younger son (Saburou) is off to the side at about 2 o’clock. The civilians are safe.

Kakashi signals for his dogs to stay out of the fight and settles into wait. And by that, Kakashi means that he yawns, settles his head into his left hand while activating Obito’s Sharingan, and works chakra through his stiff muscles with a roll of his shoulders.

“Bandits!” Sakura cries out, just a bit before they’re visible through the trees. Not a great start. The civilians start running, and although they were safe at the front of the caravan, Kentarou has run back—straight into the path of the oncoming bandits.

Sakura doesn’t wait for orders. He would rate that as… medium. He turns once she’s jumped off the caravan, and watches her kick Kentarou back to the front of it. Before Kentarou has hit the ground, she has engaged the first of the bandits. She meets him head on as Gamami crashes into the tree above her, raining cherry blossom petals down all around them.

She doesn’t bother to dodge the bandit’s first swing, and it goes clean through her, dispelling her clone and leaving nothing but a cherry blossom fluttering in her wake.

She reappears behind him, drives her kunai into the back of his knee and then disperses when he flails in agony.

The remaining bandits have all caught up, and are glancing suspiciously at the cherry blossom leaves falling all around them.

She starts with the bandit furthest to the back, driving a fist into his solar plexus and then driving a kunai into his thigh. The bandits spin at the sound of their teammate’s agonized cry, and find her waving bloody fingers at them in a girly wave.

Two of the bandits charge, their weapons passing cleanly through her, and now the bandit closest to the caravan falls, a blow to the ear and a kunai to the calf. The bandits turn towards her, but they hesitate before charging. She re-appears in the middle of them, taking out another two bandits with long slices along their thighs, leaving them on the ground and her standing in the middle of them. She waves again.

“Hi,” she says, and then flicks her hands at the ground, like she’s trying to get the blood off. “Gross.”

Nobody notices that no blood hits the ground, and the two bandits that charge her pass through her, taking a crushing kick to the back and a knife to the thigh for their trouble.

The last bandit stands between Sakura and the caravan, and rather erroneously decides this gives him the upper hand. He spins to charge the caravan only to catch Sakura’s fist to the face, and go crashing down to the ground.

Gamami shoots an oil spitball at Kakashi, and it turns momentarily into a cherry blossom petal before turning into, well, Sakura. She drops to the top of the caravan before him, and keeps her eyes focused on the scattered and groaning bandits.

“Is that all of them, Sensei?”

The one she kicked in the back takes that moment to get up and try to run, and Sakura vanishes to stab him in the leg before reappearing before Kakashi. One day, she’s gonna have to learn to throw the damn things, but—

She had looked so much like his father.

“Yes, that’s all of them,” he says, dropping from the roof of the caravan.

“What are you going to do with them?” Sakura asks, not following him to the ground. Her eyes are on the forest around them, on the lookout for follow-up attacks, which is not actually necessary, but good practice regardless.

“I’ll deal with them,” Kakashi says, knocking each bandit out properly and then laying them all out by the side of the road. “You—”

He feels her switch with a petal behind him, and turns to face her as she expands out of it.

“You’re going to kill them, aren’t you?” she asks, voice low, so the clients won’t hear. On the surface of the caravan, he can see Gamami’s chakra, on lookout while Sakura stands before him.

“Yes.”

“Because we have a standing order from the daimyou for bandit heads.”

So she has been reading the bounty boards. “Yes.”

She’s silent for a moment, and Kakashi takes that moment to check in with his ninken. If there was a ninja team following them, this would be the ideal time to strike.

He gets an all clear back from the whole pack.

“They would have killed the Shirais if we hadn’t been here, right?”

Bandits generally did worse than kill you, and if Kakashi recognizes the faces of these bandits, then they’re worse than most, but Kakashi just nods.

“I—” The hand holding Sakura’s still-bloody kunai shakes. “I’ll do it, I should have just done it before.”

Kakashi sets his hand on her shoulder, and she looks up at him.

“Go back to the caravan, Sakura.”

Slowly, she nods.

Gamami fires off an oil spitball, and Sakura vanishes. He resists the urge to make a face at the oil spitball that replaces her.

From the top of the caravan, he hears Sakura ushering the civilians to the other side of it. Saburou doesn’t understand, but his father and older brother do and they keep him out of sight.

Kakashi makes quick work of it, sealing away the heads for delivery at the House of Imamura, then using a quick doton jutsu to dispose of the bodies. He Hiraishins back to the top of the caravan, and signals for the caravan to move forward.

The silence between him and Sakura is heavy, but he doesn’t break it.

Finally, she speaks.

“I like these flower petals,” she says. He resists the urge to make a jab about her name. He gives her a quick glance over his shoulder, and finds her staring down at her palm, a small pile of cherry blossom petals cradled there. “I think I like them better than leaves.” She glances back at him, Gamami scanning the area around them while she is distracted. “Is there… a way for me to fight with them? All the time?”

His father was particular about his leaves. He liked to use only leaves from the tree that grew at the center of the compound he built for the clan he thought he’d build. Twenty years of tending that tree with his own chakra infused his chakra into the petals, negating the need for him to tag them. The tree died when Kakashi was four, but his father used those leaves until the day he died.

(The day that the tree died was the first time Kakashi saw his father cry.)

“I have some ideas,” Kakashi said, trying to recall where his father had kept the scroll he had written for the jutsu.

Sakura lifts her palm to her lips, and blows the flower petals out into the wind.

“Thanks,” she says, voice still strained, a little too quiet. “I’d like that.”

That night, after deploying his whole pack, and trading watches with Sakura, he marks the tree behind him and takes the Hiraishin back to his apartment. As he goes through his father’s things, he wonders what the stupidest, and most ridiculous thing Minato ever used his S-class jutsu on was. He bets he used it to kiss Kushina good night when they were out on missions.

In a Hatake-blood seal he’s never opened before, he finds five scrolls. One for each of the academy three (probably the most detailed treatise on the subject ever written). One for the Hidden in the Leaves technique. One for the White Light Chakra Sabre.

He looks down at all of them, and spends a moment being ashamed of himself. He had remembered he was Minato’s heir, but he had forgotten he was also his father’s. These techniques aren’t really for him, but he never even bothered to learn them properly. He sighs and then gets over himself.

Sakura is waiting alone in potentially hostile land. He can have a pity party later.

The scroll he wants is the Hidden in the Leaves technique. He takes it and re-seals the others before returning to their campsite, only to find Sakura leaning over where he vanished, leaves falling all around them, eyes wide and bright and scared.

Kakashi really is just—the worst.

“I’m here,” he says.

Her eyes snap to him, and her kai rips through the clearing like a physical thing, waking their clients. She does it twice more, just to be sure, and Saburou makes a sound not unlike a newborn faun. She then double-checks with her hand before sinking back to the ground with a sigh.

She doesn’t even yell or scowl at him.

“I found a scroll for you,” he says, to mollify her.

She turns to him, and it takes her a moment to register his words before her face lights up. Gamami, of course, does not allow herself to be distracted. She glares him with all the hate in Mount Myouboku, which doesn’t sound like much—but now that he’s met Gamami, he’s starting to think that Mount Myouboku has a really unjustly squeaky clean reputation. He lets her get him with one of her oil spitballs, and then immediately regrets it.

Nothing he has ever done deserved this.

“Show me show me,” she whisper-yells at him, as Gamami turns her attention back to the dark woods around them.

“You’re on watch,” he says to her.

She scowls at him, and that’s more like it. She looks at him, looks at the scroll in his hand, and he can see her weighing how badly it would reflect on her as a ninja to try and steal a scroll from him during a mission. He sees her good sense win out, and she vanishes to reappear on the other side of the fire, to glare morosely at the dark. Gamami, with one final glare, accompanied by a my-eyes-are-on-you gesture, hops over to Sakura and settles on her hair. Sakura doesn’t even wince anymore when Gamami grabs a handful of her hair to crawl her way up.

Kakashi settles back against the tree behind him, and he opens the scroll. He can’t help but laugh at its length. He’d forgotten what his father had been like.

It isn’t so bad to remember.

Sakura and Kakashi sit alone in a rather distressingly lavish room. To Sakura’s right is a rather massive box of cherry blossoms. He’d told her they’d need some for the jutsu, and she’d just asked one of the lower nobles of the House of Imamura for some. The result:

This box.

Either Sakura was just that cute, ninjas were just that scary, or Sakura and Kakashi had made them just that much money.

One of those.

They got to the House of Imamura this morning with no further incident. Thirty million ryou safely changed hands, and the merchants working for the House of Imamura looked altogether too pleased with themselves, so Kakashi’s pretty sure his clients just got ripped off.

Thankfully, they didn’t pay him to stop that, just to keep them from getting killed. That job would have been way harder.

He hands Sakura the scroll, and laughs as she unrolls it all over the floor. She looks down at it with a faint sort of disbelief before she starts working her way through it. When she finishes it, she looks back up at him.

“This is the technique you promised to teach me.”

She re-rolls it very carefully, and then sets it down between them.

“It is.”

“I know most of it already. Or—I thought I did.”

I mean.

Kakashi had also thought that.

He doesn’t say that, though.

“This is one of the last pieces.”

Sakura blinks.

“One of the last pieces?”

Kakashi just smiles enigmatically.

Slowly, she grins, wide and toothy. Gamami scowls from where she sits on the side table. She’s a little bigger than before, probably to match Sakura’s increased reserves. She also has a knife.

She’s eyeing Kakashi in a very concerning way, her tiny hands kneading her knife.

Instead of going for his jugular, which she’s been eyeing for the last five minutes, she sheathes her knife, swallows it, even though it’s longer than she is, and leaps onto Sakura’s head.

“You’ve gotten bigger,” Sakura giggles as Gamami collides with her skull. She doesn’t mention the knife. Kakashi feels like he would mention the knife. Then, looking at Kakashi, she says, “So… what do I do?”

Kakashi taps the secrecy seal he has taped to the wall, checking it’s still functioning, and does his best enigmatic teacher smile.

“I don’t know, Sakura. That’s not my technique. What do you do?”

Sakura will never fight like he does. She’ll need to learn techniques he doesn’t know, and be better at them then he’ll ever be.

This is a good place to start.

Sakura swallows.

“First, first I make an”—she pauses, stumbles over the new word—“an exemplar.”

Kakashi keeps Obito’s Sharingan covered, because although Imamura is allied territory, they also like to employ Cloud nin. He can’t afford to spend the chakra that using Obito’s Sharingan would requires.

She looks up at him, and he shrugs. Her face crinkles with a scowl for the barest hint of a moment before she nods to herself.

“Okay.”

She leans over her box of cherry blossoms, and then carefully extracts one that is almost perfectly preserved. She cradles it in one hand and covers it with the other. She closes her eyes, and he’s sure that if he was using his Sharingan he would see them glow with chakra.

Her hands start to smoke and she jerks in surprise. She opens her hand, and the cherry blossom she finds there is charred and ruined.

“Too much,” Gamami says from her head, voice softer than he’s ever heard it. “Pick me up, Sakura.” Sakura picks her up, and Gamami remains completely still.

“You’re filled with natural energy,” Sakura whispers. “Are you okay?”

“Toads do this, and even if I screw up, I’ll just go home,” Gamami says.

“Gamami,” Sakura whines.

“I’ll be fine,” Gamami says, voice hard.

After a moment, Sakura nods, and sets Gamami on the ground before her.

“Plants,” Gamami says from where she sits frozen before Sakura, “they aren’t like people. They can only have a little bit of chakra.”

“I didn’t put much in,” Sakura says. “Not even half of what I have in my pinky.”

“It’s like your hair,” Gamami says. “Think of it like your hair.”

Sakura blinks, and her hair seems to buzz for a moment, lifting just a little from her scalp.

“Oh,” she says softly. “I didn’t know I had any in my hair.”

“Humans,” Gamami scoffs softly, and Sakura giggles.

Sakura pulls a strand out of her hair without hesitation, and holds it in front of her.

“It’s losing its chakra,” she says.

“The flowers will, too. They’re dead now, just like your hair. You need to use your chakra to keep them alive.”

Sakura nods, and clasps her hair between her hands.

Black smoke trickles out from between them, and Sakura frowns before pulling out another strand of her hair.

It takes her another three tries, before Gamami says “Like that,” from where she sits like a statue before Sakura.

Sakura must have the same thought, because she presses a finger to Gamami to make sure she hasn’t turned to stone.

She opens her hand and looks at the strand of her pink hair she finds there. She blows at it experimentally, and it goes directly into Kakashi’s face.

She makes a face and giggles.

“Hidden in the Hair is actually kinda gross.”

Gamami giggles back. “I like the cherry blossoms.”

“Heheh,” Sakura says, grinning, and Gamami grins back.

Sakura takes out a cherry blossom, and clasps it between her hands. A moment later, she opens her hand, and what lies there is like an artist’s rendition of what a cherry blossom is, just a little too healthy, colors just a little too vibrant.

Exemplar, indeed.

“Oh no,” Sakura says. “The actual first step was to make a contract.”

She looks down at her beautiful little cherry blossom, then at Gamami, and then at Kakashi. Kakashi fails to resist the urge to snicker.

“You knew!”

He did. He’s been copying people’s jutsus for a long time. He knows how to read a scroll.

He draws a scroll out from behind his back and lays it out before her. It is about half filled with a storage seal, and about half empty.

Sakura tries to put down the cherry blossom, but it noticeably loses color when it loses contact with her skin, and she picks it back up. She looks between the cherry blossom and the contract, and then bites her lip.

If he had been teaching her, he would have said—just let it die and make a new one after you make your contract—but he isn’t. He rests his chin on his hand and flips out his book, but doesn’t even bother reading the words.

“Give it to me,” Gamami says, when Sakura continues to waffle.

Sakura does so without an instant of hesitation, placing it before Gamami.

Sakura’s mouth falls open as she feels… whatever it is Gamami is doing to her flower. He can feel something happening with his fairly pathetic chakra sense, but not much more than that.

“You can let it go now,” Gamami says.

Sakura does, and the cherry blossom tips over, but doesn’t lose any of its vaguely unsettling lustrousness.

“If natural energy is so useful for everything why doesn’t anyone let me use it,” she hisses at no one in particular.

“Because it kills people,” Kakashi says, prepared to nip that idea straight in the bud.

“Gamami’s using it—”

“Gamami can’t die. You can.”

Sakura turns to Gamami for support, and, much to Gamami’s obvious dismay, she finds herself agreeing with Kakashi.

“If you need it, I can mould it for you,” she says.

“Aww,” Sakura says, and rubs Gamami’s comically tiny head.

Gamami endures this for maybe ten seconds before saying—“Make your contract, it won’t last forever.”

Sakura turns to her contract, and then looks at Kakashi beseechingly.

“Blood ink?” she asks.

Kakashi unseals some ink, and places it in front of her.

“One or two drops should be sufficient.”

Sakura does so. Then she rolls out the Hidden in the Leaves scroll out on one side of her, and carefully copies out the seal, a rectangular border that takes up most of the empty space, replacing the Konoha insignias with the kanji for cherry blossom. When she is done, the scroll now has a rectangular, dense seal array with a small empty area in the middle, then an empty column, and then the storage seal.

Sakura looks over her work, checking back and forth with her new summoning contract and the copy in the Hidden in the Leaves scroll. When she’s satisfied, she then, very carefully, very diligently, draws a horrible, terrible picture of a cherry blossom.

She looks at it, nods like she has produced the greatest work of art in the world, and then moves Gamami so she can view both the Hidden in the Leaves scroll and her new summoning scroll.

“I think that’s all right,” Sakura says. “What do you think, Gamami?”

“It looks right,” Gamami says, kindly not commenting on Sakura’s horrible drawing ability.

Sakura sets her unnervingly vibrant cherry blossom down upon her horrible rendition of a cherry blossom, lets a single drop of her blood fall on the flower and another fall upon the seal array, and then clasps her hands together.

The sharp, acrid taste of Sakura’s chakra fills the air as she closes her eyes and whispers—

“I give myself freely without duress. Let my blood bind me and bind those who would summon me. Let no lies taint us and no deceptions deceive us. My blood is yours, and your blood is mine, let us be forever—” the chakra reaches a fever pitch and Sakura’s eyes snap open as her body lifts itself partially off the ground. All around her is the blue glow of her chakra, and the pink glow of what can only be nature energy. “One,” she declares, and it is like a clap of thunder through the universe. In its wake, the summoning scroll before her is remade, the jagged lines of her cherry blossom picture smoothing into picture perfection, every messy character in her seal array lengthening in calligraphic beauty, and a faint pink tinge spreading over the paper.

Sakura falls back to the ground, chest heaving.

She smiles at Gamami, and then at him.

“I did it,” she declares. “I did it I did it!”

He looks pointedly at the cherry blossom that still lies on the summoning scroll, and Sakura hurriedly seals it away in the storage seal.

Seem like bullshit?

Here’s the procedure:

Inanimate objects can’t enter contracts. Obviously. But you can. So you take an inanimate object, infuse it with your chakra and blood so that as far as the universe is concerned, it is you, and then build a summoning contract with this particular part of yourself. You then seal those objects away in a storage seal, which conveniently places them in another dimension, which is where summoning jutsu can pull things from.

Voila, you can now summon an inanimate object. Why isn’t everyone part of the kunai summoning contract? Fully infusing non-organic material with chakra is like trying to fill a crater with a bucket. If anyone’s ever managed it, they kept it to themselves. (Also, it’s a secret Senju technique, and how his father got ahold of it is a mystery for the ages.)

If you feel like this is total bullshit, you’re totally right. It was, like everything truly bullshit in the world, originally created by Senju Tobirama. Kakashi’s not sure if he’s comforted or not that his father didn’t come up with this out of whole cloth.

Sakura giggles and bounces, looks up at him, over at Gamami, back at him, and then bounces some more.

“I did it,” she says.

“Did you?” Kakashi asks, twitching his nose, like he doesn’t care. “How do you know?”

Sakura scowls at him, and then bites deeply into her thumb and starts scrawling her name on the one contract line in her tiny little summoning contract. She places her bloody handprint below her name and sucks in a breath as the magic of the summoning scroll washes through her. She then looks at the Hidden in the Leaves scroll, and works her way agonizingly slowly through five signs: Boar, Ram, Tiger, Boar, Snake. She holds her hand out, and the cherry blossom appears in her hand.

She doesn’t even look winded. Summoning costs are based on mass, which means… well it means she can probably summon a whole lot of cherry blossoms.

She crushes it in her fist, opens her hand, and blows the resulting petals in Kakashi’s face, but before they reach him, they vanish. Sakura goes through the five signs again, holds out her hand, and there’s that same cherry blossom again, like it had never been broken.

She crushes it, blows it at him again, and this time, she doesn’t cancel the jutsu, and he has time to see the bizarre and incorrect way they float before all somehow settling on his face.

She smiles innocently at him, and he’s known her for too damn long to trust that innocent smile. Without cancelling her summoning jutsu, she then proceeds to enter every single damn cherry blossom and cherry blossom petal in that box into her summoning contract. She infuses them, gives them to Gamami to preserve them, and chants the spell of summoning on every last one of them.

He has to stop her, halfway through, when she’s on her knees and pale. The look she gives him is so pathetic that he gives in, and gives her a chakra infusion. In return, she finally recalls the cherry blossom petals that are stuck to his face.

He gives her one more infusion, when she has just one petal left, because she gives him that same damn look.

Kakashi is weak.

When she’s done, all that’s left of the box of cherry blossoms is that single blackened flower. The one she burned with her first attempt, sitting sad and wilted next to her.

She looks at it consideringly, and then takes it gently into her hand, careful not to handle it roughly enough to break off any of its sad, black petals. She cups it in her hands and Kakashi gives in.

He activates Obito’s Sharingan, and—he watches as she rebuilds the chakra network of the damn flower. Just like she had with her own chakra network, almost a year and a half ago.

As she infuses it with the right amount of chakra, this time, the color returns, and when she opens her hand, it’s like it had never been burned.

By the First’s Sage-damned trees.

She gives it to Gamami, and this time, he watches as the orange natural energy in Gamami weaves itself into the flower, integrating itself into perfect balance with Sakura’s chakra, holding it stable and in place.

He watches as Sakura speaks for the once-dead cherry blossom, the pink natural energy that seems to prefer her swirling around her as the summoning contract takes hold of its own, and then gets sucked up into the scroll.

She seals that last cherry blossom away into her summoning contract, and then smiles.

He turns off Obito’s Sharingan and settles back on his ass.

“Gamami,” Sakura says as she rolls her summoning contract closed.

“Yeah?”

“Can you move?”

Sakura pokes her with a finger, and Gamami huffs out a laugh. “Of course I can move. I told you, it’s what toads do.”

She jumps up onto Sakura’s face, and then crawls roughly up into her hair, and Sakura giggles, patting about her head until she finds Gamami and then rubbing her tiny head.

Gamami settles her head down on Sakura’s pink hair and closes her eyes.

“Gamami,” Sakura says, taking her scroll in her hand and holding it up to Gamami. “Can you take this back to Mount Myouboku for me? I think it would be safer there than it would be with me.”

Gamami reaches out and grabs the scroll, despite it being about two or three times bigger than her.

“Are you sure?”

“I can always get it back if I need it, right?”

“I can always take it with me, but once something enters Mount Myouboku, it’s tied to us. It’s not an easy bond to break,” Gamami says. “Are you sure?”

Sakura hesitates, and then nods. “I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Gamami says. “Send me back.”

After a moment, Sakura does, dismissing Gamami without moving a muscle.

“Good job,” Kakashi says to her. “You did it.”

Sakaura grins at him, and then promptly collapses with exhaustion.

Whoops.

They’re attacked the next day. Half a day after they leave.

Kakashi has his ninken out, but it doesn’t matter. Their attackers are upon them before his dogs can tell him of their approach.

Three adults with Cloud forehead protectors, all with flak jackets, which means Jounin. A dark skinned man, a dark skinned woman, and a pale woman.

If Kakashi’s Bingo Book knowledge is correct (and it’s never been wrong before), they’re Tsumetai (of the Lightning Web), Akai (of the Drunken Fist), and Kanashii (of the Sundered Earth).

Bloodline thieves.

They’re after him.

Three on one, all with flee-on-sight orders from Rock and Mist. Kill-on-sight in Konoha. He has no chance.

“Run!” he bellows, and, to Sakura’s credit, she does so without a moment of hesitation, as Kakashi ducks under Tsumetai’s lightning web, and leaping up when the earth shatters under Kanashii’s fist. Akai is taking a swig of alcohol—which is good for him, because it means she isn’t drunk yet. Obito’s Sharingan spins into existence, and chakra surges through his body. The world slows down, giving him a window to slice open Tsumetai’s web and deep into his right arm and dash in the opposite direction from where Sakura is running.

Which is towards the House of Imamura, which isn’t safe. They could have been the ones who tipped the Cloud off to his presence. “Not there, go home!” He makes a Lightning clone to take Kanashii’s punch, and a Water clone to spray electrified water all over Tsumetai, and keeps running.

Right now, he has enough space for Hiraishin. Right now, and possibly never again.

But he can still see Sakura and there’s no guarantee that one of these three doesn’t have a sensing ability that would let them chase her down. He needs to lead them away.

Whether it was the right choice or not, the moment is gone, because Akai is right at his side, hands wild and unpredictable, even to the sharingan.

He takes a hit to the solar plexus he thought he’d blocked and one to the chin that was aimed at his nose.

He tries to strike back at her, but she slithers as much as she moves. He gets her with a kick, but she’s slowed him down enough, and all three of them are on top of him.

“Thanks for getting rid of the kid,” Kanashii says as she goes straight for the kill, like she’s willing to punch right through Akai, which he hadn’t been expecting. Akai sways backwards, towards Kanashii but right under her fist, and he can do nothing but block it, even as it breaks one arm and bruises the other.

“It’s nothing personal,” Tsumetai says, voice flat, his lightning web everywhere. Kakashi’s got a second, which isn’t enough for a Hiraishin, but it is enough for a—

The web closes on wood, and in the corner of his eye, Kakashi can see Sakura slowing.

“Don’t you dare fucking stop,” he shouts, to a full ninety degrees off her position. And then, in desperation. “Get Guy, don’t you remember? He can save me!”

Sakura speeds up, blasting through the forest at body-flicker speeds.

Normal clone for Akai, but she hits him through it anyways. Electric clone for Kanashii, but she doesn’t even twitch, and he’s running again.

“Aw, that’s sad,” Kanashii says, the earth shattering under her feet as she launches herself forward. He can’t lose both arms so he grits his teeth and takes it with the one she’s already broken, breaking two ribs in the process. He’s losing chakra fast. “She’s going to blame herself for this for the rest of her life.”

Just his luck he’s facing two fucking people whose jutsu he can’t copy. (Probably not a coincidence, now that he thinks about it—no way Cloud built this team without intending to eventually steal a sharingan.)

He dives, but Akai’s there, tagging him as he goes, breaking the shoulder of his good arm, slowing him down, but he dives all the same, deep into the earth. Even as she hits him, he’s twisting his chakra into the shape of the Hiraishin.

He’s a dead man, he can’t protect Sakura here, and she’s still wearing his seal around her neck, he can find her—

Three seconds—he just needs them to hesitate for three fucking seconds.

He’s twisting the last pieces into place when he can feel Tsumetai blasting a lightning jutsu through the earth, and he digs as fast as he fucking can, if he had his arms he could do this, but—

The lightning charges through him and his Hiraishin misfires, the blowback knocking out whatever parts of him the lightning didn’t.

He wakes to that distinct feeling of being dead inside that only chakra-suppressing cuffs can induce. Also the feeling of being lightly barbequed that only being electrocuted can induce.

He keeps his eyes closed, his breathing steady. He was top of his class of pretending-to-still-be-unconscious in Anbu academy. Sounds like a joke, but it’s not. It’s saved his life three times.

It doesn’t work this time.

“I know you’re awake,” Tsumetai says.

That doesn’t actually mean anything. If you have someone knocked out, it’s standard procedure to say I know you’re awake every couple of minutes, and any time they twitch.

He gets kicked.

Okay, that does mean something. It’s actually nicer than it seems, because it’s a nice, efficient way to get everyone to stop pretending.

Kakashi groans, like it was the kick that woke him up, and opens his eyes.

“Cute,” Akai says from beside him.

Kakashi tries.

He starts by taking stock of his body. His broken arm, ribs, and shoulder have been healed, which is a hell of a power play, he’s gotta say. Doesn’t say great things about his likelihood of getting out of these cuffs.

He tests his cuffs anyways. They’re made of chakra-suppressing wood, which is… concerning. It doesn’t keep for that long, which might mean they’ve stolen a mokuton user. That would be really bad—Konoha only has the one, so it could be a whole new bloodline. Maybe a lost Senju? Outside of Tsunade, they’ve been dead since the war, and there’s no way that Cloud could keep a secret that long. Best case scenario is Cloud has somehow stolen some cuffs recently, but even that’s not great—Konoha does not make them easy to steal.

“Did you find my student?” Kakashi asks, testing the standard chakra suppression exercises. Bad news: Chakra suppression wood is as good as you can get. He’s got nothing. He winces as someone new comes into the cave, light flashing off a forehead protector, and tries out Obito’s Sharingan while his eyes are clenched closed. No dice.

“We didn’t look,” Kanashii says from where she stands by the door, taking a swig from a water bottle and offering it to him. Nice touch, but he’s not desperate enough to take water from an enemy yet.

He has no way of checking the veracity of the claim, but he can at least hope it’s true. Having his student would be an easy way to keep him in line, if he was able to get free, and considering they’re going to kill him no matter what, it’s not like it would give him that much more reason to escape. And he’s probably going to get tortured and his eye cut out. At least it’s him, and not a real Uchiha. All they can do to him is steal his eye—there’s no bloodline limit in the Hatake blood.

In a corner of the tent, Tsumetai looks mildly irritated. “Although we should have. Leaving witnesses is bad for business.”

“They’ve already got us in the Bingo Book as bloodline thieves, what else are they gonna do?” Kanashii finishes off her water and lets out a hearty sigh.

“They have us as bloodline thieves operating in Lightning, not Fire,” Tsumetai says, taking a bite off some jerky, and then scowling about it. That means a long, secret mission. No time to hunt, and too long to bring enough real food for the journey. Considering they had attacked in Fire territory, and had approached from further into Fire territory, that means no good things.

“We claim they were in Lightning, she claims we’re in Fire. Three jounin against a what, genin?” she looks at him, and Kakashi gives her his best totally mystified expression, which she scoffs at. “Konoha doesn’t do that, so chuunin, I guess? Besides, they’re the ones that don’t want war.” She holds a hand out to Tsumetai, and makes a grabby motion. “Gimme some of that.”

He tosses her a hunk of jerky, and she starts gnawing on it without much more relish than her comrade.

Akai has remained silent since she woke Kakashi up, leg resting concerningly close beside him. She’s flushed, but not swaying, and her eyes are focused. Might mean she’s sober, which could give him a few extra seconds. They were first entered into the Bingo Book—three years ago? But they don’t seem close. It’s possible he can drive a wedge here. It’s dirty work they’re doing, and maybe he could convince one of them to go traitor.

As he thinks that, he keeps his gaze carefully on the jerky that’s Kanashii’s gnawing on. He’s never mastered getting your stomach to rumble on command, but you can generally sell I’m starving without it.

Tsumetai seems like the worst option. Even setting aside Kakashi’s personal hatred for him because of his willingness to kill Sakura just to clear out witnesses, he also seems the most okay with what they’re doing.

“We’re civilized people, here,” he says to Kakashi. “We’re not gonna torture you, we don’t want your damn secrets, we’re just gonna take your eye—”

“And kill him,” Kanashii interrupts, scowling.

“We can’t just go around leaving witnesses.”

“It’s bad for business,” she finishes mockingly.

It’s too perfect. He doesn’t trust it.

Akai, then? He doesn’t look at her, keeps his eyes on Kanashii, now, moving away from her jerky. Apathy is an easy cover, but it’s also genuine. No one can last three years as a bloodline thief hating it, but apathy is possible. She didn’t speak in the attack, and hasn’t spoken since he woke (except Cute, he supposes).

She kicked him when Tsumetai claimed he was awake. If Tsumetai really did know, that was a kindness.

She didn’t start drinking until the fight started. Kanashii and Tsumetai were all in from the first blow, but not her. Kakashi doesn’t look at her, keeps his eyes on Kanashii, then pointedly looks away. Doesn’t turn his head, just jerks his eyes a little faster than normal, back to her jerky. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a twitch in Tsumetai’s face. Not a smile, but possibly the rapidly suppressed beginnings of one.

It’s not a hundred percent, but it’s his best guess. If he’s got a wedge, it’s Akai.

Now, how to use it.

“We’re in Cloud,” Tsumetai says, and he snaps his gaze to Tsumetai, but keeps Akai solidly in his peripheral vision. “We’ve already reported in that we’ve got you. You escape, and if you kill any of us, A’s gonna go looking for concessions.” His smile is unpleasant, and Kanashii’s face twitches a little. Corners of the eyes, corners of the lips—a smile. Akai presses her lips together, stretching her legs a little before her. Boredom, irritation? “And you know what A can do with those.”

Hizashi’s loss was a damn shame, but not a catastrophe. Konoha got more than it gave, and it wanted what it got, but he grimaces anyways, because that’s what a red-blooded Leaf ninja is supposed to do.

Unfortunately for them, he’s got ice in his veins. Anbu freezes all that heat out of you. Heat gets people killed.

Even if he gets out, he’s going to have to kill at least one of them, maybe two, but if what Tsumetai is telling him is true—and the angle of the sun is substantially more oblique than yesterday, so signs point to yes—it’s critical he gets a hostage. The Hokage can probably get something to work with a hostage—Cloud’s full of bastards, but they aren’t Mist. They don’t consign their ninja to death when they can trade them out.

Tsumetai’s got the smell of a true believer, which makes him a suicide risk, which could be catastrophic, particularly if it happens after a deal has been struck. If Kanashii’s in it far enough to try and trick him, then she might be in it enough to pull the same shit. Regardless, if they’re lying about the torture, then they might kill themselves just to avoid getting taken in. Hot-blooded nin are bad hostages.

They’ve got equal bounties, so hopefully Cloud values them all equally. Outside of a chance of a Kage relative—all they know is skin and hair color, of which only Akai matches. No letters so far.

Once again, all signs point to Akai. Funny how that works. If she gets him out of this, he’d prefer to let her go and steal one of her comrades, but it looks like there’s no dice on that.

Best plan of action—kill Tsumetai and Kanashii, take Akai hostage.

He runs over everything Tenzou has ever told him. If they don’t have their own mokuton, these are Tenzou’s cuffs. They look not exactly as he remembers them, but he’s been off Anbu for too long for differences to mean anything. If these are his, then there are actual physical keys, keyed with his chakra to prevent forgery, but otherwise purely mechanical construction. Mokuton’s habit of eating chakra means chakra locks are out. That’s good for him, because it means if he gets his hands on the key, he can use it.

Ideally he wouldn’t have to, though. Did Tenzou’s cuff’s have any engineered weaknesses? Nothing Tenzou’s told him. Anything that made him jumpy when they had someone in cuffs? That takes him longer, and in the meantime, Tsumetai and Kanashii have started chatting. Their postures are relaxed, and they lean into each other a bit. Lovers? Maybe, and if so, they’re not estranged. He hasn’t seen obvious sexual interest in him from either, so it’s not a great avenue, but it’s something to attend to. He doesn’t have a lot of control here, but he can hopefully get his mask down when they feed him and can probably screw up his clothes to show a bit more skin. It’s desperate, but if it gets him out of here alive, he couldn’t care less, and if he dies, who gives a shit.

He returns to Tenzou, comes up with nothing. He stretches his arms, gaze on the food on the table, but puts his focus on the underside of the cuffs. Nothing. Just a keyhole on the outside. It’s not in reach, but he could toss a key into it and use the table turn it. He should tell Tenzou about that—the inside would be much harder to access, if a bit more dangerous for the jailer to get at—but he’ll just be thankful for it for now.

Now, how to—

A leaf blows into the cave.

Kakashi’s blood freezes in his veins. He does his best not to react, and moves to hide whatever tenseness he can’t conceal.

It’s a rough, jagged thing—clearly a lightning tree leaf, but there’s something just a little wrong with how it floats. It’s probably nothing, but if it’s not—

Well, if it’s not, he has two options.

Option 1: He can signal for her to run. Small chance it will convince her, given she’s already here against his orders. Larger chance it’ll be noticed by his captors. Bad news all around.

Option 2: He prepares for her attack. Large chance it won’t be her, which means he’ll make several less than optimal moves to prepare for an attack that’ll never come, but on the off chance it is her, he can improve the odds of her attack substantially.

The choice is obvious.

He finishes his stretch, leaning him towards Akai, and licks his lips a bit, gets his voice down into the croaking register. “I”—he swallows—“I was a lot thirstier than I thought. Any chance—Any chance I can get some water?” Double duty: if you get someone to do a favor for you, they’ll like you better (cognitive dissonance at its finest) and it will get her away from her jar of sake, which is lying by her side.

Reasonable chance of success, given that she was willing to wake him up instead of letting him just lay there pretending to be asleep.

Akai gives him a look, one eyebrow raised, before shrugging and pushing herself to her feet.

“Why do they always like you best?” Kanashii gripes.

The part of his brain that is not in panic-because-Sakura-is-here mode sticks on that. That’s a bad sign, that means he’s not the first to recognize Akai as the clearly weak link in the team.

“Us bloodline limit users just have a type, clearly,” Kakashi croaks a little weakly, on automatic.

Success. This puts Akai closest to the cave opening. If he can trust Sakura’s performance against the bandits, she likes to make a clone on one side, and then attack the other. Her best shot is on her first victim, before they know what she’s doing. This would put her on Tsumetai, who is the most dangerous as a hostage, and is currently Kakashi’s most likely bet for having the keys. Unfortunately, he’s also the least dangerous to her. He likes his web too much, and if Kakashi could replace out of it, Sakura could without a doubt. Kanashii’s the most dangerous, because Sakura’s biggest weakness is her lack of speed and her frailty, both of which Kanashii can punish. That also means she’s the most likely to be able to stop Sakura’s initial attack, though.

He’s got a shot at directing her attack in the moment of confusion when she enters so he needs to pick—

“So,” Kakashi says to Tsumetai, still croaking, “you’re the one who’s got the keys, right?”

If Sakura’s not coming he’ll need to uplevel his persona to smartass, but he was probably going to get there eventually.

Tsumetai coughs out a laugh at his insolence, but he’s got a twitch of surprise from Kanashii, which is all the confirmation he’ll get.

He holds Tsumetai’s gaze, eyes quirked into a smile, and, sure enough—

Sakura snaps into existence in the cave entrance. A woman with long pink hair, and a cloud forehead protector displayed proudly on her forehead. (Solid points for a minimal disguise—any Leaf face could be leaked, and her own face was already out. Most ninja don’t start fights in transformation, and the Cloud forehead protector should give her seconds she doesn’t deserve.)

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Okay.

All gazes turn to Sakura. Kakashi follows them, and in this moment in which no one is looking at him, he signals Tsumetai, shifts his stance to dive after him when he falls.

Sakura doesn’t react. “I heard you had captured Hatake Kakashi,” she says, relaxed, not holding her hands up, but not holding them threateningly either.

“Who are you?” Kanashii asks, and her speaking first is bad for him. If she’s the leader, then she has the keys. Which means her surprise would have been that he mistook Tsumetai for the leader. Fuck.

Sakura’s still got the best chance to kill Tsumetai, even if the chance he has the keys has dropped. Kakashi just has to pray Kanashii’s surprise was that he pegged Tsumetai for the keys despite his subordinate role.

“Haruno Sakura,” Sakura says, opening her hand up to revealing a cherry blossom. “He killed my parents, and—” She crushes it, and then blows a stream of cherry blossom petals into the room—way more than she could have been holding. “I came to pay my respects.”

The moment she gives her cover, he sets his face into it, a mild sort of disdain ninjas like to hold when someone comes after them for vengeance on a job.

“I don’t know about you,” Akai says, turning to look at Kakashi, and then at the bottle of sake she’s half a cave away from. “But I’ve never heard”—Akai surges into Sakura, hand plowing straight through her, right as Sakura appears behind Tsumetai and drives her kunai into the gap between his spine and his skull—“of a Haruno Sakura.”

Kakashi dives for Tsumetai, breaks open the first storage seal he comes across with Tsumetai’s conveniently available blood. Nothing.

Sakura still stands above him, her hand under her kunai, catching the blood and hiding the fact that it’s illusionary.

Kanashii throws a kunai through Sakura’s clone, and Kakashi grabs it and tosses it through Akai’s sake bottle before she can go for it. This puts Akai’s focus on him but Kanashii doesn’t even glance in his direction, her eyes blazing as they rove over the flower petals in front of her, all dancing, none falling. The difference there points to him being right about the dynamics of this team.

Normally, Kakashi would enjoy being right, but he’s been through half of Tsumetai’s storage seals without hitting the keys, which means he might have been wrong about the only damn thing that mattered.

Sakura appears behind Kanashii, just barely slips back into a flower petal before Kanashii cleaves her in half with a strike that has the cave walls shaking. Sakura is using a henge to look like an adult, which means whatever compassion Kanashii maybe had towards children is gone. Sakura makes an aborted attempt on Akai, but takes a hit for the attempt, sending her tumbling out of the cave before vanishing again.

The fact that Akai is letting him continue to go through Tsumetai’s seals means nothing but bad things for him, but he doesn’t stop.

This is the worst possible team setup for Sakura. She’s strongest against genjutsu, fine against ninjutsu, but against straight taijutsu, she’s all but helpless.

They’ve hit a standstill. Sakura is smart enough not to try the same thing twice. He showed her what Jounin-level taijutsu could do to her, and she’s seen two examples in her adversaries.

He gets through the last of Tsumetai’s seals and all of his pockets, and he’s shit out of luck. Kanashii is wearing skin tight clothes, not a pocket in sight, nothing to pickpocket while she’s distracted.

Tsumetai knew he was awake, which means there’s a solid chance he was the sensor on the team. That means that Sakura might just be able to get away if she runs.

That’s bad for him, but—

Kanashii twists her hands through a jutsu, has to be something to clear the cherry blossoms, he knows what it is what is it—

“Fire!” he shouts, and oil shoots at Kanashii from the ceiling. A moment later, Akai has slammed into the roof, and Kakashi feels the wave of chakra that is a summon unsummoning through death. She’ll be fine, by the bullshit of the summoning jutsu—it’s them they need to worry about.

Kanashii doesn’t stop her Katon jutsu in time and Kakashi raises his hands to his face just before the explosion tears through the cave.

Sakura doesn’t let the moment go the waste, and appears before Kanashii, driving her kunai up through her chin. She doesn’t get away soon enough, though, and receives a fist to the side for her trouble, and Kakashi can hear her bones break. She’s gone before Kanashii’s fist crashes down into the place she’s fallen. Kanashii drags the bloody kunai from her chin, skin glowing green because fucking. Fuck.

Sakura appears behind her, and Kanashii’s fist cleaves her straight in half. Akai tumbles down from the ceiling, dazed by the explosion, and Kakashi makes sure to be there so that she lands on a nice hard surface. Her head cracks against his cuffs and cracks his cuffs against his non-chakra-reinforced legs, which hurts like a motherfucker, but then he grabs her from behind, and keeps solid pressure on her carotid artery to put her under without killing her. Before him, Kanashii is swinging wildly at clones, while taking kunai to her neck and back for her trouble, but the green swirl of her chakra isn’t abating. Kakashi gets the feeling this is what fighting Tsunade feels like, and he does not enjoy the feeling. Thankfully, she isn’t enough in control of her faculties to realize she should be targeting him, too blazingly focused on Sakura.

“Come out you little shit,” she bellows. “I will rip you limb—”

She dispels a Sakura clone with an elbow, and takes a kunai to the back, which she tears out and flings at one of the petals.

She then starts snatching the petals one by one out of the air.

They have a minute, maybe less.

Come on come on how does he get out of this, he can’t reach her, Sakura can’t transform, but—

(Part of him remembers when Sakura damn near ripped his Icha-Icha out of the storage seal in his pants.)

“Sakura, kai!”

A kai rips through him, and it is a physically painful thing. With all of his chakra locked inside of his body, none of it can respond to the assault.

Kanashii staggers, eyes blinking, but it’s not enough. The seals in the cave hold.

But Sakura has never been one to do things halfway, so she just keeps on doing it over and over until, finally—

Every seal in the cave breaks open. His ears pop as the pressure changes, the storage seals on Kanashii’s upper arms and lower arms pour onto the ground.

Kanashii turns to him, as if she’s just realized he was there, and suddenly Kakashi is out of the cave and tumbling to the ground. Kanashii roars from inside the cave, flying out towards him with murder in her eyes, and then Kakashi is back inside of it. And there, on the mess on the ground, is a wooden key. He scrambles for it as fast he can as he hears Kanashii crash through the trees. He tosses it into the air, catches it in the lock—Kanashii hits the ground, is speeding towards them—slams the key into the table, and turns.

He drives a chidori through Kanashii’s heart the moment she passes back into the cave. He follows her down, charges a chidori in his left hand, and drives that through her skull. She stops moving, but her wounds do not stop glowing green. First’s Fucking Trees, what the fuck. “Sakura,” he yells, “cut off her head!”

Sakura is expanding from a pebble by his side a moment later, body shaking and pale, clear signs of oncoming chakra exhaustion, but she does as she’s told, hacking through Kanashii’s neck until Kakashi can take her head and pitch it as far away as he can. The cavity where her heart used to be is still glowing faintly green, which means a) Cloud’s got some fucking monsters of their own and b) he’s still under a time limit. He body-flickers back into the cave and has a moment of hesitation when he looks down at the chakra restraints. If he puts them on Kanashii, he could probably kill her.

If she catches up to him, he’s fucked. However, the fewer of A’s shinobi they kill, the better bargaining position they’ve got. He can’t take her as a hostage, putting the cuffs on her would kill her, and if she wakes up, he’s not convinced he can fight her off with only a third of his chakra left, while protecting Sakura and Akai.

There was no reason for her to have held back when they were chasing him, which means—

He’s faster than she is.

Decision made, he sweeps up the six scrolls scattered across the floor of the cave, seals them away into the now-empty storage seals in his pants, slaps the chakra restraints on Akai, who he hopes to the Sage is still breathing, and tosses her over his shoulder. He gives the cave one last once-over. He was obviously here, nothing can hide that, but he’s not missing anything. He body-flickers back out, catches Sakura as she crumples to the ground, and dashes south.

Chapter Text

Kakashi runs straight through Cloud’s border. They’ll know he was here no matter what he does, and there are so many ways teams of jounin could be just immediately on his ass, so he can’t bother sneaking through. He crashes over the chuunin, plowing straight through them, doing his best not to kill them, but not putting a lot of effort in being subtle past that. He runs straight on through Frost, Hot Water, and then through the Konoha outposts on that border, because they’re manned with chuunin as part of a demilitarization effort he really does not approve of right now.

His target is Base 83. It is, at his current pace, two hours into the Land of Fire, far enough that any show of force from Cloud would be unavoidable war, and if they’re okay with that, then, well, he’s got bigger problems.

He’s running dangerously low on chakra, so he summons his smallest ninken to give him a ration pill. It’ll kill him eventually, but if he stops, Cloud ninja will sure as shit kill him right now. As soon as he’s got the chakra for it, he summons his ninken, and sends them out to lay false scent trails, including one straight forward as he curves off to the right.

The two of his dogs that curled back towards the Hot Water border get unsummoned, which means nothing but horrible things. He can feel the weight of being a Hatake weighing down on him, the curse to cause wars by doing the right thing, but he puts it out of his mind. He makes Base 83 in record time, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, and makes his way through the trapped maze to the entrance, opening it with his blood.

His name is still good, and the door opens before him. He stumbles in, and is faced with three jounin on full alert. Inuzuka Kono, Hyuuga Kanna, and Igarashi Homura. All jounin, but he has seniority on them all, and they snap to attention.

“Who’s the commander here?”

Kanna steps forward.

“Kanna, I wish this was under better circumstances.”

Kanna inclines her head in agreement.

“I have an unknown number of Cloud ninja after me. There is a possibility of hostile military action.” He kneels, and lays Akai and Sakura down on the ground before them. “This,” he points at Akai, “is a hostage, our best bet for avoiding war and my best bet for surviving the week. Kanna, check her for internal injuries and poison pills, please.” Kanna nods, and activates her Byakugan. She kneels briefly beside Akai.

“She is in no immediate danger,” she reports. “And she has no mechanical poison pills.”

Kakashi forgot how nice it was to work with a Hyuuga.

“This is my student. She’s suffering from chakra exhaustion and an unknown number of other injuries. If you would?”

Kanna kneels briefly beside Sakura before straightening.

“She has a broken arm, several broken ribs, and severe chakra exhaustion. Significant internal and external bruising, but no organ damage or internal bleeding.”

He knew about the arm, and splinted it halfway to the Cloud border. He did not know about all of it, though. Fuck.

“Any medic-nin here?”

Each shakes their head. It hadn’t been in any of their files, but it was worth a shot. He sighs.

“Keep her safe, please.”

Kanna nods. “I will protect her with my life.”

Hyuuga are great. “Kanna, what’s your range?”

“Depends on what is required.”

“I need you to detect Cloud nin.”

“Nine miles.”

Fucking.

Hyuuga.

“I’m feeling paranoid, so if they get that close, you should assume we’re at war, and retreat immediately. Protecting the land around this base from a foreign attack is untenable.”

Everyone stiffens, and then nods. Kakashi kneels, and brands his Hiraishin seal into the ground. Eyebrows raise, and Homura gasps faintly.

“Any questions?”

Kono takes a letter from her flak jacket, and hands it to Kakashi.

“For my wife,” she says.

Kakashi tucks it away. He looks at Kanna and Homura. Both shake their heads.

“In that case, you have your orders. I’ll return as soon as I’m able. Let us all pray for peace—” Kakashi begins.

“And prepare for war,” they finish.

By the time they’ve finished speaking, Kakashi is gone.

Kakashi stands before the Hokage, hands folded behind his back.

The Hokage takes off his hat, and slumps back in his chair.

“Fuck,” he says.

Kakashi has never heard the Third curse, but he supposes this is as good a time as ever.

Kakashi lets the Hokage take a moment. He takes several, then pulls himself back forward and sets his hat back on his head.

“Good job coming back to us, Kakashi-kun,” he says. He looks Kakashi straight in the eye. “I have learned my lesson, and no matter how this ends, you have my full support. If Cloud declares war over this, that wasn’t a war we could avoid. If anyone else says different, they answer to me. Do you understand me, Kakashi-kun?”

Kakashi pushes down the warm and fuzzy feeling, and nods.

“Good. I want that hostage away from the border as soon as possible. The mission scrolls you brought back with orders for noble assassinations should give our Daimyou enough leverage on the Lightning Daimyou to get him to back off, but A’s never been as subservient to the Lightning Daimyou as we’d like, and we all know what he’s willing to do to get back one of his own. I want her in this village, where he can’t just stroll right in and take her back.”

The thought of A in Base 83 makes him shiver.

“I’m running on ration pills,” Kakashi reminds him.

“Status?”

“It’s been two and a half hours and about a third of my chakra reserves.”

“I’ll send Guy out to meet you. He can carry her the rest of the way.”

Kakashi swallows.

“My student?”

The Hokage looks at him evaluatingly.

“How much will she slow you down?”

“Ten percent,” he says.

“Take her with you,” the Hokage says. “Consider this a personal favor.”

Kakashi bows his head.

“I believe this is yours,” the Hokage says, sliding the Hidden in the Leaves scroll across his table to Kakashi.

“Can you hold onto it for me?” Kakashi asks. “I’ll be going directly back to Base 83.”

“Of course.” The Hokage slides it back. “Tell the shinobi there to retreat back to the village. I don’t want anyone in that base if Cloud track Akai back to it.”

Kakashi bows.

“Go,” he says. Then, in a voice that’s a little lower, mutters. “I have to recall Jiraiya for the second time in two years—he’s a spy, you know? Maybe this time Tsunade will listen to me, she was always competitive—it’s not like I’m the Hokage or anything, and my word is literally law, no I have to convince her like—”

Kakashi vanishes before he can catch the end of the Third’s grumblings, and re-appears by Sakura’s side. There is no ground beneath him, and he flails despite himself for a moment before tumbling about thirty feet to the ground.

Kakashi hits the ground running, because, you know, he is jounin, quickly catches back up to the Base 83 team. He checks the hostage as he approaches, and finds her breaths hitched in pain. Even-ish, but rough. Probably asleep, but no guarantees.

A glance with Obito’s Sharingan reveals no abnormal chakra activity, but she’s suppressed, so that doesn’t mean much.

In the corner of his eye, he checks on Sakura, finds her in a similar state. He wants to give her an infusion so that her body can start healing itself, but if her chakra exhaustion is as severe as he thinks it is, he really can’t risk it.

Being on the run makes for bad informational security, and he can’t split the team to get some good informational security, on the off chance Akai wakes up and can fight.

Which means he needs to take her, and ideally get Kanna to block her Tenketsu. He should have done that immediately on reaching the base, but it’s too late to worry about that—

Homura’s back arches, eyes going blank, and Akai leaps off of her hopefully-unconscious back into the trees. Kakashi catches Homura, and checks her pulse on instinct, happy to find it’s still going strong—she’s just unconscious. Small mercies. He tosses her to the Inuzuka, who takes her on the shoulder that isn’t holding Sakura, and then he spins to follow Akai, activating Obito’s Sharingan to bring the world around him down to a reasonable speed.

Bad news. She’s faster without a drop of Chakra than the team he’s with.

More bad news: she has a flask in her hand. He should have told the base 83 team she was a drunken fist fighter. She’ll be able to drink before he can reach her. Too late now, he can dwell on it later.

It’s better to let Akai get away than to kill her. It is, however, much better to capture her alive than both options. Best option there is Kanna, especially now that it’s clear chakra suppressors do no good—blocked tenketsu are a lot meaner than chakra suppressors, and can bring even pure taijutsu users down for the count—but that means putting Kanna closer to Cloud. He has no interest in giving them two for the price of one.

He weighs his options, decides having Kanna with him is still his best shot.

“Kanna, on me, Kono, take our injured comrades and run to the village.” He throws a sealed kunai at Akai, while weaving the Hiraishin. She dodges the kunai, and turns to him as he lunges towards her. “Guy is coming to meet you, so run like you only have to get halfway.”

He vanishes from before Akai and reappears behind her, driving his fist into the base of her spine (most likely to cripple, least likely to kill) but she arches her back just enough to take it to the ribs. They crack, but she uses the force of it spin away from him, a whirling tornado he knows better than to try and touch. As she falls, he sprays Hiraishin kunai around them, because kunai are cheap. He starts another Hiraishin.

Akai lands on her feet, stance wide, but her upper body doesn’t stop, using her momentum to slam her cuffs into her knee. They break. Thankfully, they have chakra suppressing properties while broken, but if she can break them in half, she can probably break them the rest of the way off, too.

Tenzou never could beat Guy.

Kakashi lands on one side of her while Kanna lands on the other, Byakugan active, legs spread and hands extended. Akai charges Kanna and Kakashi follows, charging a kunai with lightning as he holds his Hiraishin an instant from activation.

Kanna counters Akai, but Akai’s body contorts easily around Kanna’s blows, forcing her to spin to stop Akai from landing a blow. It tosses Akai into the air, and Kakashi flashes directly behind her and drives his kunai at her leg. She twists in midair, and he only gets a glancing blow, but that’s enough, and her body seizes—

Kanna does not need to be directed, Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two palms already in motion. Akai, even as her body seizes, twitches her body just right, and he can see only half of the thirty-two strikes land.

Akai lands, favoring her left leg, and chest heaving. Kanna pushes her advantage and Kakashi takes point to assist.

Before they reach her, Akai slams her wrists together, and the sound of wood cracking against wood echoes through the clearing a moment before Kakashi has to block a fist to the stomach that slides around his guard to still hit him in his very-recently-broken ribs. Akai meets Kanna behind her with a flail with her left leg that connects with Kanna and tosses her back.

He dashes back, taking advantage of his greater maneuverability, and Akai doesn’t overextend herself to follow him, standing in the center of the clearing, favoring her left leg but making it look like an intentional slouch, face a little slack, hands loose at her sides.

If he could kill her, he’d have a lot more options, but, as previously mentioned, that’s not an option. They can still run—she can’t outrun them in her current state.

“Kanna, any Cloud ninja in your range?” he asks.

“No,” she says.

That means they’re reasonably safe, even if say, one of them is incapacitated. He has an idea. Before he goes for it, though—

“This is a live-capture mission,” he says. He doesn’t like revealing this to their opponent, but he doesn’t want any accidents. “If you have to kill her to prevent her from running, let her leave.”

Kanna’s eyes widen, but she nods.

“Huh,” Akai slurs. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Kakashi charges her before she finishes speaking. Akai shifts her stance infinitesimally towards him, head lolling back to keep Kanna in sight as Kanna matches his charge. His plan’s not his best, but it should work.

He charges his kunai with lightning while preparing a chidori, holding it a moment before release. Akai easily dodges the kunai, controlling his hand effortlessly, striking at his now-broken ribs with her other hand as she dodges Kanna’s attack with an awkward, ungangly sweep of her back.

The moment her hand touches him, he lights his entire body up with a chidori.

Akai stiffens, and yeah. Kakashi can confirm it hurts like a motherfucker. He grabs her with both charged arms in that first limb-locking moment.

Kanna, always on the ball, has already started her technique, and hits Akai the moment after Kakashi has her restrained. He takes a kick to the knee and a fist to the gut, but this time, Kanna’s hands strike true, chakra around her fingers protecting her from Kakashi’s failing lightning. Akai gets out of his numb arms, but falls to her knees, legs out of commission. Kanna doesn’t hesitate before repeating her technique again, and again, and again, until Akai falls, unconscious, at her feet.

Kakashi, slowly pushing himself to his feet with a wince, gestures to Akai. “Every Tenketsu you can block without killing her. We don’t want a repeat performance.”

Kanna nods, and kneels before Akai, hands flying.

Kakashi shuts down Obito's sharingan, and grits his teeth against the fatigue. He’s down to a third of his chakra reserves.

“Status?” he asks.

“No injuries, most of my chakra reserves.”

“Then you carry her.” His ribs hurt like a motherfucker, and his arms are screaming at him—apparently they weren’t as healed as he though. Kanna heaves Akai up onto her shoulder as he gathers the pieces of the chakra lock Akai shattered, and seals them away. They probably have more, but no reason to make this easier for Cloud than it has to be. He does the same with his Hiraishin kunai.

“We missing anything?”

Kanna points to his last Hiraishin kunai, hidden under a pile of leaves. The first one he threw. He takes it, and tosses it to her. She looks at it in surprise, and then slides it into one of her pockets.

“Let’s go. Remember, we only need to get halfway to Konoha, operate with that in mind.”

They take to the trees, him on point because he’s the commanding officer, even if she’ll be more good in a fight than he will.

“Report,” he says, running at Kanna’s top speed. He won’t have the chakra to reach Guy at this point, but that doesn’t matter. Kanna will be the one carrying the hostage, so he’s just here as backup and communication.

“Cloud scouts were sighted at eight miles. One of them had a Byakugan. We retreated as ordered.”

“Were you sighted?”

“Unlikely—I know of only two other Hyuuga members who have that kind of range.”

“How many?”

“Team of two.”

“Did you see them once you left the base?”

“No.”

“How far are we from the base?”

“Three miles.”

That probably means Akai woke during the run, rather than in the base. The point is rather academic at this point, but it’s good to know.

“I’m sorry for not blocking her tenketsu at the base,” Kanna says, and he waves her away.

“I’m the commanding officer, and I knew her fighting style. I should have known better.” Too many balls in the air. One of them was bound to get dropped.

“Hold course. If any hostiles are sighted, throw my kunai,” he says. Kanna nods, and he flashes to Sakura’s side. This time, he falls into step with them without tumbling through the branches. Homura is up and running at full speed, which is a good sign. She doesn’t look happy about it, which is less good, but she’s keeping pace.

“Report,” he says, taking a brief glance at Sakura, and confirms that she hasn’t visibly changed since he last saw her. She still looks like hell.

“About two hundred and fifty miles from the village, no hostiles sighted.”

Their planned meeting point with Guy is at one hundred and sixty miles.

He tosses Kono one of his kunai, gives her the same orders as Kanna. Once she nods, he flashes to the seal he dropped before the Hokage building. He blinks, and Shikaku is before him.

“Report.”

“The hostage escaped, and was re-captured with minimal damage. Kanna has the hostage alone at two hundred and seventy miles, Kono and Homura are at two hundred fifty miles. Homura is injured, but is still mobile. I don’t have the chakra left to keep pace with them. I left both groups one of my kunai and orders to throw it if hostiles are sighted.”

Shikaku sighs, grumbling a troublesome under his breath. He gets over it. “Go to the hospital. They’ll keep you on your feet until we have the hostage inside our walls. Cycle through the two teams every ten minutes.”

It takes five hours for Kono’s team to meet Guy.

When Kakashi reappears beside Kono and Homura for the twenty-eighth time, Guy says to him—

“You outdo me again, eternal rival!” he says, Sakura over his shoulder. “I will deliver your adorable student back to the walls in three hours or I will do ten laps backwards on my hands through the streets of Konoha!”

Three hours is obviously impossible, but Kakashi appreciates the thought.

It takes him five minutes to collect Akai, and then three hours and fifty-three minutes to get back to Konoha. (Yes, Kakashi was counting.)

The time is utterly preposterous and Kakashi can’t help but love Guy for it, as he passes out into Guy’s arms while Guy loudly bemoans his own weakness.

Kakashi wakes up to Tsunade’s incredibly pissed-off face.

“You shouldn’t be awake,” she informs him angrily. “Chakra infusions are dangerous for ninja suffering from severe chakra exhaustion. It negatively impacts their natural chakra regeneration for months. Sometimes an awful lot longer than that!”

“We need him at the exchange as a show of strength,” Inoichi says from where he stands beside her.

He only barely gets his arms up in front of his face before Tsunade’s arm crashes into them, tossing him into the wall with a crunch.

“I shouldn’t even be here,” she sighs, dragging her hand through her hair like she didn’t punch a man literally into a wall. Then: “Stop being a baby,” she says to Inoichi as he staggers out of the dent he just made in the wall. Tsunade stalks to the door and looks back at Kakashi, jabbing her finger threateningly.

“Do a single jutsu in the next week, and I will rip your spine out and make you wear it as a hat.” She steps out of the door, then comes back. “That includes your damn eye. You hear me, Kakashi?”

“Loud and clear,” he says, looking as innocent as he can.

She scowls at him, lips twisting faintly, and then stomps off.

“Doesn’t she still have problems with blood?” Kakashi asks, pushing himself into a sitting position, and then standing.

“Cloud doesn’t know that,” Inoichi says, rubbing at his back.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Kakashi remarks, stretching and feeling remarkably human for apparently having been woken up prematurely for chakra exhaustion. He tests the arm that Cloud had so kindly mostly-healed and finds it…

Perfectly healed.

His ribs are, too.

If he didn’t know better, he’d swear they’d never been broken.

He’d bet his apartment that that’s Tsunade’s doing. The Sannin are bullshit.

“Hah,” Inoichi says without humor, looking Kakashi up and down. He then tries to punch Kakashi in the gut, which Kakashi blocks easily, because uhh, yeah. Ino comes by her lackluster taijutsu and slow-ass legs honestly. “Good enough,” he says. “Come on.”

Kakashi falls into step behind Inoichi as Inoichi walks him through the hospital.

“The Lightning Daimyou was not happy about Cloud taking missions to kill the heads of the border houses. He’s been trying to make inroads on them, get tariffs lowered, and maybe even re-ally some of them with him, maybe even flip the power balance in the region. All plans there are shot if we leak these scrolls to the right people. It’s a nice bit of leverage, and the Hokage was able to use it to arrange a prisoner exchange.”

Well, shit.

“One of A’s for a Hyuuga branch member they’ve taken. Kept alive, to keep his eyes from sealing. The Hokage makes it quite clear he expects him back with his eyes intact, or we’ll need to do something fairly grisly to our own prisoner.”

Kakashi winces.

“We’re going out in force—one member from each of the noble houses to remind Cloud why they don’t want to fight us. We got Tsunade back for this, so the Hokage will be able to stand with Tsunade to his right and Jiraiya to his left.”

“So you’re going?”

“Hell no. We’re sending jounin, not clan heads. Having the Hokage and his students there is already stupid enough.”

“What’s my job?”

“You’re making the hand-off.”

Oh.

Cool.

Most dangerous job.

Cool.

“I know Tsunade said you shouldn’t use jutsu, but that’s exactly what we’re going to have you do. We want you to Hiraishin in. Akai’s seen it, so we can’t keep it secret anymore. Might as well show it off.”

Show of strength indeed.

“I kind of like my spine where it is,” Kakashi comments idly.

“The Hokage owns that spine, he can do what he wants with it.”

Fair criticism. They stop in front of an unmarked door.

Inoichi pushes the door open, revealing a small body in an adult sized bed, a mass of pink hair around her head.

“She’s fine now, just recovering from chakra exhaustion. We leave in two hours.”

Kakashi steps into Sakura’s hospital room, and the door closes behind him.

Kakashi waits, ten miles from the border, with his Hiraishin held a hand seal from completion.

He’s had this jutsu held since ten minutes before the exchange was expected to take place, and the signal is already five minutes late. He has four Anbu arrayed around him, Rat, Monkey, Dog and Rooster. He’s worked with three of them before. Rooster is new, but the team is solid, comfortable. It’s a good team.

They’ll die before they let someone touch him.

Hopefully it won’t come to that.

The signal comes and Kakashi completes the last seal, catching his kunai before it hits the ground with one hand, and grasping Akai’s arm with the other. He tucks it into his belt, and stands straight.

Several paces to his left is the Hokage, Tsunade to his right, Jiraiya to his left. Jiraiya isn’t smiling, the buffoon nowhere in sight, his face tight and hard. Tsunade twitches when he arrives, clearly furious at his jutsu usage. The assembled jounin are standing a step behind the hokage, both Uchiha Kyou and Hyuuga Kanna with their eyes active. To his right is Akai, three heavy wood cuffs on her arms and two sets of wooden shackles on her legs. Kakashi blinks once, and when he opens his eyes, Obito’s Sharingan is spinning in its socket.

They’re standing in the open gate on the Hot Water side of the Frost-Hot Water border, and the Cloud contingent is standing in the open gate on the Frost side of the border.

A stands at the front, back straight and face hard. To his right is a man who can only be B—the eight-tails jinchuuriki. To his left are two men he recognizes from the Bingo Book as C and Darui.

In a mirrored position to him, Kanashii (healed, not a single damn scar) stands with a hand on the shoulder of one Hyuuga Tsukasa. He stands, unbound, his eyes covered with gauze that is faintly black with dried blood. His skin, where Kakashi can see it, is unscarred, the lines of his fingers straight, and unbroken. His hair is uncut, if a bit matted. His bared forehead has the unbroken Hyuuga curse seal. It seems Tsumetai hadn’t been lying about the treatment Kakashi would receive, then.

Behind them stands no one. Five Cloud ninja stand against fifteen Leaf ninja. It does not feel as lopsided as it should.

A is looking at him, gaze evaluating, before he snorts derisively.

“You can’t fool me, old man,” he booms. “His jutsu is nothing but a pale imitation.”

The Hokage doesn’t react to this entirely accurate criticism.

“We had an agreement, A,” he says, voice even. “One it looks like you’ve broken. Kakashi?”

Akai doesn’t flinch, and before Kakashi can even close his hand around his kunai, every muscle in his body freezes as what feels like two tons of killing intent fall down upon him. He can all but feel A bearing down on him, despite the fact that he can still clearly see him standing still across the border.

“Touch Akai and die, Wolf,” A says, and Kakashi does not doubt his threat. Unfortunately, the Hokage’s word is law. He draws his kunai, and A takes a single step forward, earth cracking under his feet.

The whole world stops, every ninja present going on alert and preparing themselves for battle.

“A,” Darui says from beside him.

A growls, the force of it shaking the earth, and then twitches his head at Kanashii. Kanashii raises her hand to Tsukasa’s face, and pulls the gauze from it.

Tsukasa blinks at the sun, squinting against it. The area around his eyes are matted with dried blood, but his eyes are his own.

“I’m going to need more proof than that,” the Hokage says, and Tsukasa’s eyes snap to him. He glances at Kanashii, and she gestures for him to continue. He holds one hand up in the seal of the Byakugan, and chakra swirls into his eyes in a familiar pattern as his Byakugan activates.

“Kanna,” the Hokage says.

“No illusions, those eyes are true.”

“Any other abnormalities?”

“Hiruzen,” A says, outraged.

“No, sir,” Kanna responds.

The Hokage’s eyes flick to Kakashi, and Kakashi nods in agreement.

“Tsukasa. Are you alright?”

Slowly, Tsukasa nods.

“Yes, sir,” he says, voice small.

Hokage turns to A.

“I hesitate to ask this of a friend—” Hiruzen starts, and is interrupted by A’s booming laugh.

“Ask, Hiruzen,” A demands.

“If Tsukasa, while under your care, happened to”—A snorts—“sire children, you understand that his children would be similarly marked.”

“I do.”

“We, as Konoha, would be concerned if you treated those children as you treated their sire, stole their eyes—”

“Let me make one thing clear, Hiruzen,” A says, voice shaking with fury. “If your ninja, while in our land, happened to sire a child, that child is as our child, and I will rip your slave brand out of them myself because the Cloud is not Konoha, and we do not allow our children to be slaves. We are different from you, Hiruzen. We are better than you.”

The silence that falls upon the two contingents is deafening.

Slowly, Hiruzen inclines his head.

“This news comforts me, A.”

“You sicken me,” A says frankly.

Hiruzen gestures for Kakashi to step forward.

“Now wait just a minute, Hiruzen,” A says. “I haven’t verified the state of my shinobi. What the the hell are those locks? We give you your shinobi unbound, how can we trust you won’t kill ours the moment you get your shinobi back.”

Yes, that’s because Tsukasa was a career genin.

There is a tense moment of silence as the Hokage considers this before gesturing for Kakashi to uncuff Akai.

Kakashi turns to Akai, and he meets her dispassionate eyes. He kneels before her, threading chakra through his muscles in preparation for her to kick him as soon as he unlocks her bonds.

He unlocks her first pair of shackles, and then her second.

“Akai!” A shouts, as Kakashi opens the second set of shackles, and he freezes, all of his senses on alert. “You alright?”

There is a moment of silence, and then the barest hints of a smile play at her lips.

“Yes, sir.”

“They treat you right?”

She inclines her head.

“Well enough.”

“How long has it been since you had a drink?”

Akai’s chest vibrates with a chuckle.

“Way too damn long,” she says.

Kakashi relaxes, and stands to unlock the cuffs around her hands. She lets him, and once she is free, he sees her chakra wash through her, reinvigorating her cramped muscles, but only moves to let her hands fall more naturally before her.

“B?” he hears A say as he stands.

“It’s her,” B confirms.

“Alright,” A says, gesturing Kanashii forward.

Kakashi keeps his hand on Akai’s arm as he moves forward, although he knows it’s nothing but a point of leverage she’ll use against him.

“It’s sad,” Kanashii says, as she approaches, hand on Tsukasa as her eyes drill holes in Kakashi. “If you hadn’t gone and killed my teammate, I wouldn’t have to hunt you down and kill you, after this is all over.” The uncontrolled rage has cooled into a cold, hard hate. “Is that student of yours still alive? I hope I didn’t end up killing a kid.” They come to a stop, and Kanashii doesn’t let Tsukasa go forward, so Kakashi keeps his futile hold on Akai as well.

He waits, and she doesn’t let Tsukasa go forward. In the corner of his eye, Kakashi can see A glaring at him, and not Kanashii, so it looks like an answer is required.

“She’s fine,” he says. It’s not something they could keep secret regardless.

“She’ll grow up eventually,” Kanashii says, releasing Tsukasa’s shoulder, and urging him forward. Kakashi mirrors the motion. “I can wait.” She wraps her arms around Akai when she approaches, movements soft and sure, years of familiarity. Teams that long-standing don’t have weak points. It looks like he never had a chance.

He places a comforting hand on Tsukasa’s shoulder, and Kakashi can feel the tension leave the man’s body.

“I’m fine,” he hears Akai say under her breath.

Kanashii turns her back to him, and then calls over her shoulder. “Watch out, Kakashi. Tell Sakura to watch out, too.”

Kakashi, keeping his face impassive, mirrors her motions, even though his every instinct tells him not to turn his back on the enemy. The Hokage nods approvingly at him as he returns to their line. Tsukasa jerks as he recognizes Kanna, and surges forward—

The Hokage motions for Kakashi to let him go, so he does, and turns back to the Cloud contingent as Kanna wraps Tsukasa up in her arms.

“Ane-ue,” he says.

“Otouto,” she responds.

A sets a hand on Akai’s shoulder, and Kanashii pushes a flask into her hand. Akai takes a long drink, her face flushing and tension easing out of her shoulders.

Tension hangs heavy between the two contingents, neither wanting to show their back to the other.

A is the first to speak.

“Go on ahead,” A says, legs spread, hands folded, glare on them. Everyone but B leaps away, and then, after a moment of hesitation, B follows suit. A moment later, lightning crashes down upon A, and he’s gone.

“Clan representatives, thank you for your service,” the Hokage says. “Retreat.”

There is a whoosh of air as they leap away.

“Kakashi,” he says, once they’re back to the Anbu line. “Use Hiraishin to get back to the village.”

Kakashi bows his head, and before he vanishes, he can hear Tsunade growling in irritation.

“If you want to make sure he’s alright, you can always—”

Chapter Text

It has been three days since the prisoner exchange, and Kakashi is sitting at Sakura’s beside, staring down at her comatose form.

Ino left fifteen minutes ago. Her parents, several hours ago.

The last time she was here, they thanked him for saving their daughter’s life. This time—this time they were under no such illusions. Their daughter got hurt saving his life.

He has burned one of his fangs into the underside of the chair he’s sitting on, and he’s practicing the Hiraishin. Every three seconds, teleporting to the same spot.

Too slow.

Again.

He was so proud of himself.

The Flying Thunder God.

It was useless.

Worse than useless, probably. Those seconds he spent on its seals, time spent considering it as an option—it’s time he might have spent running away.

It wasn’t useful for anything but fucking coordination. Nothing more than an S-class fucking radio.

He didn’t want to be too slow?

How the fuck has the Hiraishin helped him with that.

Kakashi clenches his eyes closed.

“Kakashi, go home.”

Kakashi opens his eyes to see Tsunade standing on the other side of Sakura’s bed. He’s been cleared for jutsu. By her, yesterday.

“She won’t wake up for another week, at least, Kakashi. Go home.”

He knows that. He just—can’t believe it.

He’s been chakra exhausted before. It’s kind of his M.O., what with spending a decade with a chakra-sucking jutsu forever implanted in his left eye socket. However, the longest he’d ever been unconscious was three days.

Tsunade sighs, running a hand through her hair and setting the other on Sakura’s temple, an unconscious gesture he doubts she even knows she’s doing.

“I could be playing mahjong right now,” she mutters under her breath before she turns her gaze on him. “Kakashi. What do you know about chakra exhaustion?” Once she finishes speaking, she seems to realize where her hand is, and looks down at Sakura. In a well-if-I’m-already-here sort of motion, she runs a green hand down the length of Sakura’s body.

Kakashi raises an eyebrow.

“Answer the damn question, or I’ll give you a real reason to be in this damn hospital.”

“Chakra exhaustion occurs when the patient’s chakra reserves drop below the self-preservation threshold,” he says, reading back a dictionary definition he read in his genin days in his mind’s eye.

“Wrong, try again.”

Kakashi blinks.

“I’m sorry?”

“If that was true, then people suffering from chakra exhaustion would never recover. Try again.”

“It was the definition in the Konoha medic training manual.”

“Story of my fucking life,” Tsunade says, resting her hands on the railing of Sakura’s bed and putting her full weight against it. It puts her uh—assets—on greater display, but Kakashi likes not dying, so he keeps his eyes on her face.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Good boy,” she says, and despite the condescension in her words, her face and tone are warm. “Not enough ninja go around saying that.” She sighs a little, before turning back to him. “Chakra begets more chakra. The more you have, the faster it recovers, every unit of chakra you have regenerating a fixed amount of chakra. The actual numbers aren’t interesting, but as a ballpark, someone with a healthy chakra system can regenerate from 10% of their chakra to full in about eight hours. Considering how varied chakra reserves are between ninja, you’d expect variation, but all we see in experiments is on the order of tens of minutes. In comparison, that same individual would regenerate from 90% of their chakra in thirty minutes. 99% in one minute. 99.9% in seconds. That same 0.1% costs from seconds to minutes, the less of your chakra reserves you have. It’s why people with massive chakra reserves like Jiraiya are fucking cheating.”

Kakashi tries not to snort, but he doesn’t succeed.

Tsunade, however, laughs with him.

“Your body takes chakra to operate. Your organs and cells require a steady stream of chakra, or they start to shut down. If you drop below a certain point, your body will start to drain more chakra from your reserves than your reserves can generate. This would kill you, so your body compensates by shutting down non-essential systems. There are several you can see in people with minor chakra exhaustion. They’re pale, cold, they stop being hungry, stop passing bowel movements.”

Kakashi has to admit, he has never noticed that last one.

“Oh, shut up,” Tsunade says, reading his thoughts from his face. “You always notice in the hospital, I’ll tell you that. That’s at 7% chakra reserves. If you reach 4%, then your consciousness goes. Your brain is big, and expensive.”

Kakashi kind of feels like the dictionary definition was basically correct, but he doesn’t say that.

“Kakashi, when you come to the hospital with chakra exhaustion, what percent of chakra do you think you have?”

“Two, three percent?”

Tsunade shakes her head. “You have solid chakra control, Kakashi. Solidly above average for Leaf jounin, meaning it’s fairly extraordinary, broadly speaking. So you can stave off chakra exhaustion by 0.2%, all the way down to 3.8%. Congratulations. It adds an extra day to your comas, because the math is a bitch.”

He looks down at Sakura, dread knotting in his stomach.

“How much did she have when she came in?”

“The actual self-preservation point for ordinary humans is a little under two percent,” Tsunade says. “Less than that, and if they do not receive medical attention, they will eventually die.”

“How much chakra did she have left when she came in?” he repeats himself.

Tsunade looks him dead in the eyes. “Zero point five percent. She had twenty hours to live.”

Kakashi can feel his blood drain out of his face. “What?”

“Ninja with excellent chakra control are capable of going deep into chakra exhaustion, by redirecting their chakra to their brain and the other areas that need it, despite the fact that their body can’t keep up with the drain. The better their control, the longer they can hold out. If their chakra control is extraordinary, they can sentence themselves to death in the process. Congratulations, Kakashi, your student is quite extraordinary.”

Tsunade does not flinch at Kakashi’s glare.

“During the third war,” she says instead, “I held a position for three days straight. On the last day, when help was finally in sight, I came up empty. Not a single drop of chakra left. If help had come five minutes later, I would have been dead. As it was, Orochimaru restarted my heart, sacrificed a couple dozen rock ninja to give me a chakra infusion that totally destroyed my ability to regenerate chakra until I went and learned to regenerate it the old-fashioned way.”

Kakashi turns to Sakura, hand drifting towards her before falling impotently on the railing beside her.

“How long will it be before she wakes up?”

“Seven days.”

“Can her body support itself?”

“Not yet. If nothing goes wrong, that will happen tomorrow.”

“How are you supporting her? None of the doctors ever come in here.”

Tsunade beckons to him, and crouches below the hospital bed. Kakashi follows suit, and then looks up at the seal array inscribed on its underside.

“Giving a chakra infusion to someone suffering from chakra exhaustion will trick their body into thinking it can regenerate chakra at a reduced rate. The more severe the chakra exhaustion, the more severe and longer-lasting the effect. However, with creative use of seals, we can provide their body with the chakra it needs directly, allowing their chakra reserves to regenerate unimpeded.”

She stands with a grunt.

“She’ll still have some after effects. When a chakra system receives a shock like this, it’ll be a little more possessive with its chakra than usual, which can make things like walking hard.”

“That explains my crutches.”

“Exactly. It will be a bit longer for her, and longer still before her body will let her do jutsu. Toumi is good at treating this, but I’ve never been able to figure out how, and the woman won’t share because she has no integrity as a medic.” Tsunade hisses out the last part, and Kakashi decides to not touch that with a ten foot pole.

He does not succeed, because she glares balefully at him. “Laugh it up,” she says.

Kakashi raises his hands in surrender.

“Now, are you satisfied that your student is not going to wither away and die while you’re not watching?”

Kakashi opens his mouth to protest, but Tsunade isn’t actually looking for an answer, because she is in front of him way faster than a body-flicker could get her there, and picks him up by the front of his flak jacket. She smiles sweetly at him, which Jiraiya has told him never means anything good.

Her actual smile is like a demon’s. If it’s pretty, you should probably run.

Still holding him up with one hand, like he weighs nothing more than a folding chair, she walks over to the window, throws it open, and then tosses him out of it. “Go home, Kakashi.”

He lands on the tree outside the window, and does his best to look injured.

Unconvinced, she jabs a finger at him. “And if you use Hiraishin to come back, I’ll break both of your legs and give you a reason to mope in that damn chair. Minato thought it meant he didn’t have to listen to me, too, and I’m pretty sure you saw the results of that.”

Kakashi flinches, which is a mistake because that’s clearly what Tsunade is going for. She grins triumphantly, and then slams the window closed behind her.

Just to be safe, he goes to his apartment, and actually sleeps in his own bed for the first time since he got back from the prisoner exchange.

Kakashi is there when Sakura wakes up.

It is eleven days after the prisoner exchange and therefore one day late, but Tsunade left two days ago, muttering about mahjong withdrawal, so the best answer anyone can give him is a shrugged “It happens sometimes?” He’s pretty sure the IQ level of the hospital dropped by an average of fifty points the moment Tsunade walked out the door.

He is a day away from going to drag Tsunade right back to Konoha. He’s pretty sure she’d beat him into a paste if he tried, so it’s good for everyone Sakura wakes up when she does.

He has to say, though—even after she told him this was all expected, if not ideal. This waiting thing—he doesn’t like it. He can almost understand why everyone seems to give him so much crap every time he pulls this kind of shit.

When she wakes, she tries to follow her training. Pretend to still be asleep.

Considering she opened her eyes when she woke up, it’s not very effective.

“It’s me, Sakura,” Kakashi says, and her eyes open fully.

She looks at him, and she must read something past the relief on his face, because her gaze dances away.

“Hi, Sensei.” Yeah, he’s not going to let her calling him Sensei distract him. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she says after a hesitant moment, and Kakashi closes his eyes with a sigh.

“You could have died, Sakura.”

Sakura doesn’t look at him.

“Sakura. We talked about this, before we left. You almost died, Sakura.”

Sakura looks at him, looks away.

“You said that almost no mission is worth dying for.”

“I said this mission wasn’t worth dying for.”

She shakes her head.

“You said I’d know. If a mission was worth dying for, you said I’d know.” She looks at him, green eyes brilliant. “I knew this was a mission worth dying for.”

Kakashi drops his head into his hands.

“You were against three jounin,” he says.

“I followed them for a day and a half, and they never noticed me. I could get away. If I thought I couldn’t win, I would have run.”

Kakashi slowly lifts his head to face her, and finds her green eyes boring into him.

“At the end, I was scared. The blue-haired lady, she was so strong, but I knew you’d think of something,” she says. “If I could delay her just a little longer, I knew you would think of something.” The thing he thought of was stupid, and had no right to actually work. “You did, and we won.”

May you be cursed with a brilliant student, huh?

What about a student that believes in you?

That’s what he’ll tell Sakura, when she’s a jounin.

May you be cursed with a student who believes in you.

“The man,” Sakura says, interrupting his thoughts. “He died, didn’t he?” Slowly, Kakashi raises his gaze to his student. She’s biting her lip, looking down at her hands. “I was—I was trying to kill him. I wanted to kill him. He hurt you. I wanted him to die.” Her green gaze darts back to him. “He died, didn’t he? I killed him.”

And then she starts to cry.

Kakashi reaches forward, and closes his hand around both of hers, and she clutches at it tightly as the tears spill down her cheek.

“The two women,” he says, when her tears begin to subside, “Akai and Kanashii, they’re okay.”

Tell Sakura to watch out.

In a manner of speaking.

Sakura looks back up at him, eyes red-rimmed. “But—but we cut off the blue one’s head.”

Don’t laugh.

Blue one.

Don’t laugh.

“That’s the ninja world, Sakura. Some people are”—fucking monsters, straight down to the bone—“really strong.”

Sakura considers this and then nods. “I guess that makes sense,” she says even though it really, really doesn’t—everything about Kanashii was hot fucking bullshit—before pulling her hand out of his with a half-hearted gross and wipes her gross, nasty face with her hands, and wipes them on her sheets.

A little too late, he hands her some tissues, and she switches to those.

As she cleans herself up, she says, “You’re welcome.”

He blinks.

“What?”

“I saved your life. You’re welcome.”

He raises his eyebrows at her sheer audacity. She looks at him, with a twitch of a smile at her lips.

“It was really dangerous, but I did it anyways.” Then, leaning towards him, in case he missed what was expected of him. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m not thanking you for almost getting yourself killed.”

She makes a farting noise.

“We’re going to go over what you did and I’m going to tell you everything you did wrong.”

She makes another fart noise.

“So that the next time you decide someone needs saving even though no one pays you to do it, you’ll do it right.”

She makes an aborted fart noise, and then turns to him, green eyes wide.

“You’ll do it right, and you won’t almost get killed in the process.”

She grins at him, a smile like the sun.

May you be cursed with a brilliant student, indeed.

It’s ten days after Sakura wakes before she can stand again. Another twelve days after that before she is cleared for duty. Twenty-two days. It’s never taken more than seven days to clear him. And everyone knows that the seventh day is always retaliation for running away on the third.

(If they keep punishing him for it, why does he keep doing it?)

(If you’re asking that question, you really don’t understand what it means to be a ninja.)

He’s standing by her side when she’s allowed out of the hospital, when a very nice and very competent medic named Ishida Komi who is about one hundred times less competent than Tsunade gives her the okay to use jutsu again. Her reaction is… not as jubilant as he’d been hoping. She just nods.

He sends her on ahead of him, to the third training ground, and tells her he’ll be right behind her, don’t you worry.

The glare she gives him is more like it.

He beats her there, because excuse you, Kakashi is a fucking jounin, but he stays in the trees and waits.

She gets there five minutes after him, and then she doesn’t yell after him. She just lies down in the middle of the third training ground with a sigh, staring up at the sky.

A minute or so later, pink rings circle her limbs, and then Gamami appears with a poof by her side.

Gamami’s a little bigger, and hops up on Sakura’s stomach, and they talk, in low tones.

“I missed you,” Sakura says.

“I was worried,” Gamami replies.

“Me too,” Sakura responds, because she still doesn’t really have the whole “empathy” thing down.

Gamami slaps at Sakura’s belly frustratedly, and Sakura giggles.

It takes Gamami a good ten minutes to drive it through Sakura’s head that she had no idea if Sakura was alive or dead, while Sakura knew for a fact she was alive.

“Next time, I’ll ask Jiraiya to get a message through.”

“Jiriaya was here and you didn’t ask him?”

“Ow ow ow,” Sakura says, laughing lightly, wiggling away as Gamami hits her with the sheath of her knife. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Their wrestling ends with them in front of the pond, and Gamami hops from Sakura to the pond with a little splash, because not everyone can be Sakura.

“Did you save him?”

Sakura nods. “Yeah, he’s okay.”

Gamami nods, like she doesn’t care, but her lips wobble a little.

Huh. It’s nice to know she cares.

Sakura summons what has to be every last flower petal she has into a massive cloud of pink petals around her, lies back, and stares up at the sky through her flower petals that dance and twirl on the wind but never seem to fall.

Gamami leaps from the pond, and Sakura catches her before dropping her on her chest. Gamami lies there, head tucked under Sakura’s.

“This is a good jutsu,” Gamami says.

“Right?” Sakura says. “I can’t wait to show Ino. She’ll be so jealous.”

She blows up, and the petals billow up from the cloud around her in a plume that slowly spreads across the clearing.

Finally, she turns her head up, and her eyes focus on the branch hiding him from view.

“Sensei,” she says, “I know you’re there.”

He body-flickers across the clearing, only to be greeted by a Sakura clone crouched on the limb a moment later.

“I followed your chakra for almost a day, Sensei,” she says. (Sakura hadn’t been fast enough to follow Kanashii’s team directly, so she followed his chakra signature, through the chakra-suppressing cuffs.) “I know it’s you.”

He drops from the branch, and walks into her cloud of petals, which flutter and dance just away from him, parting before him.

He reaches her, and crouches down beside her head.

“Have you always done this? Showed up early, and then pretended to be late?”

Kakashi shakes his head. “Of course not. Why would I do that? I just wanted to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself today. Imagine how bad that would look for me, if you hurt yourself right after you got cleared to use jutsu again.”

Sakura snorts, then blows a stream of flower petals straight at his face.

Out of the corners of his eyes, he sees flower petals poof out of existence so she can re-summon them to blow them directly into his face.

“You’re such a loser,” she says. That’s a new insult. “What are we doing today?”

Kakashi shifts, and sits down. His father’s leaf contract was a full contract. Two feet tall, a good ten, fifteen feet wide. He wanted to pass it down the generations, a Hatake legacy.

Kakashi hadn’t wanted it. His student had wanted her own contract.

Two nights ago, Kakashi signed his name into that contract.

Kakashi spins through the sixteen hand seals for the Hidden in the Leaves technique before opening one of his hands before his mouth, and blows his father’s leaves out into the flower cloud around them.

Sakura looks up at him in surprise.

“I thought you didn’t know that technique,” she says. She narrows her eyes, spinning up into a sitting position to glare at him properly, catching Gamami in her hands before she can tumble to the ground. “Did you lie?”

“I’m a ninja,” he says, ignoring Sakura’s mutter of you’re not a real ninja. “I lie all the time.”

Sakura’s glare does not abate.

“Today,” he says, in answer to her question, blowing some more leaves into the air, “I want to tell you a story.”

From the storage seal beside his porn storage seal, he draws out three scrolls and sets them, one by one, between them.

Sakura looks at them and then up at him. All around them, his father’s leaves spin with Sakura’s flower petals.

“It’s a story of a ninja who had almost no chakra. From a civilian family. Who was a genin for twenty years, but rose to be held in esteem equal to the Sannin.”

Sakura turns her head, looks at the leaves and the petals falling all around them.

“This technique. This is his technique?”

Kakashi nods.

“The White Fang,” Kakashi says. “AKA—” he takes a deep breath. “Hatake Sakumo. My father.”

Sakura stares at him, and then stares at the scrolls, and then stares at the cloud around them.

“You gave me—” she stops, swallows. “You gave me your dad’s jutsu?”

“I couldn’t be the heir he wanted,” Kakashi says honestly. “We’re too different. But I think he would have been proud to call you his heir.”

Sakura stares at Kakashi, eyes shining, and then sniffles and wipes her snot away on her arm. Kakashi resists the urge to wince. One day, he hopes, Sakura will grow up, and stop being so gross.

She looks back up at him. “I want to be your heir, too.”

“You are,” Kakashi assures her. “But we’re very different. His techniques are better suited to you.”

She makes a face.

“When you’re older, and you have more chakra, I’ll teach you mine, but Sakura—”

Sakura looks up at him.

“—my father was stronger than me.”

Sakura’s face goes slack with shock. It takes her a second to remember that in fact, he is not a real ninja.

“I guess it’s not a surprise, you’re not even a real ninja,” she mumbles, but her heart’s not really in it.

Finally, Sakura nods. “Tell me about him?”

Kakashi smiles.

He tells her what his father told him of his childhood. A happy life, of a sort, the son of civilian textile merchants. How he was orphaned by the second war in an attack that left his parents’ shop and caravan nothing but smoking ruins. How he was rescued and then taken in by one Nara Shikarou, who had rescued him from the attack.

He tells her of his father’s academy years. How he went to the academy with Shikarou’s daughter, Shikano—Kakashi’s mother. How they graduated at the bottom of the same class. How she retired after her first C mission, which had been a secret A, and taken her left arm and left eye with it, while he kept going, kept trying, despite never being anything more than mediocre. How they married and she shed her name to build a new clan with him.

He tells her of how his father developed his Hidden in the Leaves jutsu at thirty, finally reached chuunin, and from there, leapt to jounin a year after. How nine months after he turned jounin, Kakashi was born, and his mother died in childbirth.

He tells her of his father’s rising star. Of the impossible missions he completed. Of when he was sent as backup for the Sannin, when they needed an extra hand. How he was heralded as genius by the village that had told him he was an embarrassment only years before.

He tells her of his father’s last, disastrous mission. How he chose to save his comrades instead of completing it. How that failed mission was one of the ten, twenty dominoes that led to the third shinobi war. How the village turned against him, how his comrades turned against him. How they had said—just a genin, what do you expect.

He does not tell her that he had been one of those who had turned their back.

He tells her of his father’s last days.

He tells her of finding his father’s dead body, his own prided White Blade Chakra Sabre buried in his gut.

Sakura, who has been silent for duration of his story, starts to cry.

He doesn’t. He’s too old to cry. He’s failed to cry for his father enough already.

“He—” she hiccups, “he shouldn’t have killed himself. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No? The ninja handbook—”

“The ninja handbook is just paper,” Sakura hisses. “Ninja are people.”

Kakashi smiles behind his mask.

“That’s why you said that almost no missions are worth dying for. You think your dad did the right thing.”

Slowly, Kakashi nods. “I didn’t always, but then I met someone who taught me that ninja who break the ninja rules may be trash, but ninja who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.”

Sakura looks up at him. “Is he—”

“He died.” Kakashi taps the skin under Obito’s eye. “He left me this.”

Sakura reaches up to him and sets her fingers on his scar, and he winces. “I guess I shouldn’t call it gross, then, huh?” she says, sounding a little sheepish.

Kakashi laughs, and pulls his face away. “I don’t think he’d mind.”

Sakura says, in a small voice, “He sounds like a good teammate.”

“He was.”

“I’m sorry he died.”

“Thank you.”

Silence falls between them.

Kakashi takes a deep breath, and then turns to the scrolls he has lain out between them.

“These scrolls are his,” he says, pushing them towards her. “I think he would want you to have them.”

Her eyes fall to them, but she doesn’t scoop them up.

“What are they?”

“They are the Sakumo three. You probably know them better as the Academy three.”

Sakura’s eyes widen.

“He made them?”

Kakashi shook his head.

“No, he just showed how powerful they could be when used properly and used together.”

She touches them each of them lightly, before picking them up and stacking them in her lap.

“I can already use them, though?”

“Not like he could,” Kakashi says, and her green eyes brighten.

She breaks open the first seal, and squawks as it unrolls into a mess all around her.

She looks at Kakashi, then looks back at the scroll.

“Why are all of your dad’s scrolls so long?”

“I guess he just had a lot to say.”

Someday, Sakura will write scrolls of her own, and Kakashi is sure they will be just as preposterously long.

He sits there in the cloud of flower petals and leaves as Sakura reads through his father’s scrolls.

They are, if he is honest, totally beyond him.

As far as Kakashi knows, Sakumo was not born with flawless chakra control. He just worked and trained tirelessly for the better part of three decades, honing the few jutsu he did know into weapons of unparalleled sharpness. A ninja with ordinary chakra control, below-average chakra reserves, and above-average physical prowess had become one of the greatest ninja of his age. Kakashi is not his equal, and he has had every advantage.

Or well, he is missing one advantage.

Kakashi is lazy, and he’s not convinced his father ever rested a day in his life.

Sakura has chakra control his father could only dream of. She will have his chakra reserves by the time she’s eighteen. The only thing she’s lacking is physical prowess, and he has some ideas about how to fix that, although he doubts Sakura is going to like them.

Sakura finishes the scroll in her hands, and then rolls it back up to the top to start from the beginning again. Kakashi smiles.

Hidden in the Leaves is flashy, looks complicated. All of the work, however, has already been done. Any jounin could master it in a day.

The White Light Chakra Sabre is just as flashy and looks even more complicated. A complex seal to burn an equally complex jutsu into a blade, but all of the work is in the preparation of that blade, because the activation of that seal itself is trivial. An academy student could do it, which Kakashi knows because he did it as an academy student.

Sakumo’s bread and butter, however, were in his Clone, Replacement, and Transformation techniques. Kakashi knows of no foreign ninja who ever understood how he did what he did.

It’s the first time he’s seen Sakura have to read a scroll twice, and for good reason.

Here are the changes Sakumo made to the academy three:

He twisted the chakra of the sealless patterns into themselves, merging them into a single static pattern—something which could be fired in a burst, instead of needing to be moulded into several shapes in series. It was the same principle that Minato used to reduce the Hiraishin’s one hundred twenty-three seals into something that could be performed in a moment.

He created the same static patterns for each combination of the three jutsu—including the most critical transform-replacement-transform, to allow him to perform them in an instant.

By making all of the intermediate shapes taken by the transformation jutsu conscious, he became able to transform to objects anywhere within a couple feet of his center of mass, instead of his center of mass always remaining stationary.

By manually throwing the chakra strings required for the replacement technique, he became able to throw his chakra strings around obstacles, and swap with objects that would otherwise be unreachable.

And finally, by creating his clones with perfect chakra systems, he was able to have them appear to mould chakra, have them appear to perform jutsu.

His father may have started ordinary, but by the time of his death, his abilities were truly unreasonable in the way ninja of a certain level always are. How could anyone have understood he used nothing but the academy three, when he performed them instantaneously, performed jutsu from two places at once, and vanished into a leaf five feet away?

If Sakura ever masters the contents of these three scrolls, she’ll be stronger than he is.

She reaches the end of the her first scroll, and starts from the beginning again, her teeth digging into her bottom lip and her eyes shining.

He can’t just let his student get stronger than him, though. He sets a three pronged kunai in the ground between them, and sets himself to it. If she’s moving, then he’d better start moving, too.

Here’s Kakashi’s problem.

Sakura is weak. Like, physically. Just so very, very weak. She’s a child sure, but still. Good for a child, maybe, but that’s not enough.

Her taijutsu is bad, and it’s not improving.

For some ninja, this is fine.

Kakashi is, to be frank, not very good at taijutsu. He makes up for it with a Sharingan, the Chidori, and a truly insane repertoire of ninjutsu. He can engage an enemy at whatever distance is most inconvenient for them, with whatever technique they hate the most. It’s why he’s best in one-on-one, when he can control the distance to his opponent the most easily.

He fought Itachi in spitting distance because Itachi likes shuriken and katon and genjutsu. He does not like being in punching range.

He should have fought Akai from half a mile away, but he had to neutralize her without killing her or cutting off any bits of her, so he had to compromise.

He put a Chidori through Kanashii’s chest because the Sharingan is cheat mode.

Sakura is not like him.

The Hidden in the Leaves technique requires getting up close and personal with your enemies. Dangerous long-range ninjutsu are expensive. For people who don’t have much chakra, their only choice is being point-blank. (Thrown weapons stop being effective when you reach jounin—air makes it impossible to throw things hard enough, fast enough, to hit anyone.) The White Chakra Sabre, which he’s not sure is even the right choice for her, is at best an arm’s reach technique.

Ideally, he wants to teach her Tsunade’s taijutsu style. But as slipshod as that technique looks, it requires a basic mastery of taijutsu Sakura doesn’t have and reflexes she definitely lacks.

So.

Kakashi has a problem. He can drill her himself. He might be bad at taijutsu, but he is so much better than her it doesn’t matter. He could also pass her off on Guy, who will be a much better teacher, at the cost of a couple dozen challenges.

However—Sakura hates taijutsu.

She will read scrolls for hours on end. (She sat there reading his father’s scrolls on the academy three all day, which was not how Kakashi had been expecting spend that day.) She’ll practice the same ninjutsu until she knuckles under from chakra exhaustion, and will meditate from sunup to sunset. She’s very dutiful—he’s blessed.

She hates taijutsu.

He can make her practice it, but her hatred interferes with her ability to get anything out of it. If he forces her for long enough, she’ll eventually hate him, and find someone else to train her. He doesn’t like the idea of sending her into the chuunin exam in her current state, because a strong genin who understood her gimmick or got lucky could do serious damage to her.

So—how does he deal with this?

Well, conveniently, Sakura hates losing. He’s hoping she hates losing more than she hates taijutsu. If she trains with him or Guy, she doesn’t feel the sting, because obviously they’re going to beat her. But if he can find, say, an academy student of about her age?

Ideally someone brilliant, to really give her something to strive for.

Well, that would be just perfect.

Rather conveniently, the Hyuuga owe him a favor.

Kimiko greets Kakashi at the gate of the Hyuuga compound, bowing faintly. “The Head of the Clan will see you,” she says.

He’s on time, because he’s asking for a favor, and Hiashi is exactly the kind of petty bastard who would refuse a favor because he showed up late.

“Kakashi,” Hiashi says from behind his desk, which is quite a bit messier than Kakashi remembers it being the one time he’s been here before.

Kakashi inclines his head the required amount, and no more, while Kimiko closes the door behind her as she leaves. Kakashi can feel the buzz of the blood room closing in around them, that too-quiet pressure around his ears.

“Hiashi,” Kakashi returns, because they’ve been comrades in the field, which gives him at least a reasonable defense for dropping the sama, and also he just likes being obnoxious.

Hiashi rolls his eyes. “Sit down, Kakashi.”

Kakashi sits down.

“What do you want?”

So rude. Here Kakashi was, ready to ask Hiashi about his day, how his daughter’s doing, how his nephew is feeling, and Hiashi just wants to get right to the point. Honestly—

“My student’s taijutsu is… lacking. I was hoping to find her a training partner.”

Hiashi’s eyebrow raises in an elegant and intensely unimpressed quirk.

“You want her to train with Neji.”

“I want her to train with Neji,” Kakashi confirms.

“Well, considering you were instrumental in retrieving one of my clan’s children from the Cloud, I can’t really say no.”

Kakashi gives Hiashi his best aw, shucks face.

“But why do you want him?”

Kakashi considers Hiashi for a moment, mentally going through the pros and cons of telling him the truth.

“He’s around Sakura’s age, brilliant with taijutsu, and is conveniently lower rank than her. It’ll rankle her pretty bad to lose to him.” Kakashi smiles, imagining Sakura losing to an academy student. “Over, and over, and over again.”

It makes him a bit misty-eyed to think about it.

“I don’t understand why they let you around children,” Hiashi says, because he can be a pretty funny guy when’s no one’s around to see it.

“I don’t understand why they let any jounin around children,” Kakashi tells him honestly, and Hiashi gives him a huffed laugh of agreement. “Hiashi,” Kakashi says, more seriously. “You’re hardly without options, and even if you were, I wouldn’t be interested in forcing it on you. With his father gone, you are the boy’s guardian.”

Hiashi ponders this, tapping his fingers contemplatively on his chin.

“Neji is… troubled,” Hiashi finally says. “My brother’s death weighs heavily upon him still.” There is a pause, as Hiashi seems to mull over whether to tell Kakashi more. “I wish for you to oversee them… off site.”

Kakashi swallows any surprise, because they are not friends. He puts forward his best accepting but bewildered expression.

“Cute,” Hiashi comments shortly. “Neji is dangerous. He has on several occasions gone too far with his training partners. He needs supervision, to ensure he does not injure your student too severely.”

“And you wish for none of his kin to see him if he loses control?” Kakashi says, as innocently as he can.

Hiashi frowns at him.

“I wish for him to be free to lose to an outsider without shame.”

Kakashi gives his best oh, of course expression, like it had never occurred to him.

Hiashi takes a deep, steadying breath, because Kakashi has that kind of effect on people, before continuing.

“I’m going to be honest with you, Kakashi. And in return, I ask that you care for my nephew as you would your own student.”

Kakashi considers this, and then nods. “It would be my honor,” he says, and he isn’t lying.

“Neji does not believe that my brother gave his life for me of his own free will, rather justifiably. My brother hated me, and insofar as someone is capable of giving his life in spite, he did so. This has festered in Neji’s mind, and he has become preoccupied with fate.” Hiashi glances down at the messy state of his desk with a sigh, then back up at Kakashi. “He believes that his father was fated to die for me, and that he is fated to die for whoever follows in my place. As much as you wish for your student to fall to Neji, I wish for Neji to fall to your student. Civilian born, with a chakra pool to match. He has all of our pride, and it has twisted up with his self-loathing into something that is tearing him apart and threatens to make him a danger to everyone around him as well. If your student can beat him, then maybe he will understand that there is something more to his life, as well.”

Kakashi sits in silence for an appropriate amount of time to have appeared to have deeply considered and then inclines his head in understanding.

He has been in that place. He is not so hopeful that getting punched by a civilian-born ninja will fix it. But—he lost his two best friends before getting his head out of his ass. He’s willing to try a kinder approach.

“I will support him as I support Sakura,” Kakashi says. “If he falls to her, then I will be there to help him pick up the pieces, just as I will help Sakura pick up the pieces, if she falls to him in turn.”

He’s actually going to laugh at Sakura every time she loses. But that doesn’t sound as nice, and he will support Neji as best he can, if he loses to Sakura.

“You honor me,” Hiashi says, but he doesn’t meet Kakashi’s eyes, his eyes on the mess around him. Then—“Kakashi, you were at the prisoner exchange, were you not?”

“I was.”

“I have heard of A’s words. They are whispered in low tones in my compound, and whispered quite a bit louder outside of it. Tell me, Kakashi, what do you think of them?”

Well—

Shit.

The InoShikaChou coalition has been trying to reform the Hyuuga for generations. Partially for altruistic reasons, and partially to reduce the cohesion of the Hyuuga, to dissolve some of their political power. They are almost definitely the source of the whispers outside of the Hyuuga compound. The fact that a man who condones ripping people’s eyes out finds the Hyuuga’s practice morally repugnant is a rather exquisite piece of theatre—if Kakashi didn’t know better, he’d suspect they planned it this way.

The fact that Hiashi is asking Kakashi this here, in possibly the best sealed room in Konoha, says something. Kakashi, who referred to him as Hiashi when he entered, and has only ever shown him the minimum required amount of respect. He wants an equal, or at least the closest thing he’ll allow to one.

“Are all clan members not slaves to their clan heads? All of us but slaves to the Hokage?” Kakashi asks him, citing the party line back at him.

Hiashi’s face twists.

“They say Itachi killed his parents, but spared his brother. That Madara went mad with grief when his brother died. Tobirama succeeded his brother, supported him, and did his best to lead this village where he left off. When Tsukasa was rescued, he ran to the arms of his older sister as a source of solace.”

Kakashi is pretty sure Itachi spared his brother for horrible Uchiha reasons, but doesn’t say so.

“My brother was my slave, and hated me for it. He was right to—I treated him like one. All of the main branch treated him the same. I will enslave one of my daughters to the other. Hanabi stopped smiling when she learned of the seal. We have had this seal for as long as our records last, and we have never had a civil war that has torn us apart like the other clans. But Hyuugas have killed more of our brothers than anyone. Killed them, tortured them, forced them into debasements unspeakable.”

Hiashi looks at his hands.

“It doesn’t even protect us. Cloud ripped Tsukasa’s eyes out and threw him in a hole. We rescued him, but how many of our members died, eyeless? Alive just so that our seal would not seal their eyes?”

Hiashi bows his head.

“Tell me, Kakashi,” he says. “What do you think of our seal?”

Kakashi looks down at the top of Hiashi’s head, and tells him the truth.

“It is an abomination. It is a stain on Konoha.”

Hiashi takes a breath, and lets it out. He lifts his head to Kakashi.

“There is no counterseal.”

Kakashi feels sick to his stomach.

“Passed down, father to son and mother to daughter, for as long as our records run.”

Kakashi thinks of Toumi, and her faded seal.

“Would you break it, if you could?” Kakashi asks.

Hiashi is silent. His silence is deafening.

“I will care for your nephew as my own student,” Kakashi says. “Thank you for granting my student permission to spar with him.”

He stands, and leaves Hiashi to his silence.

Neji, when Kakashi comes to meet him, is simultaneously obedient and defiant. It is a peculiar combination. He bows his head to Kakashi as Kakashi leads him out of the compound, but his eyes burn with hatred.

Hiashi does not come out to greet him. Kimiko leads Kakashi in and then leads him back out with Neji on his heels.

Kimiko bids them farewell, and Neji looks upon her with contempt.

Kakashi can see Hiashi’s concern.

“So Neji,” Kakashi chats idly as they walk. “What do you do for fun?”

“I train,” Neji says.

Kakashi hums.

“That sounds fun. I think you’d get along great with Guy. I’m sure you’d look great in green.”

Neji frowns and there is a moment of true bewilderment on his face before he dismisses it as beneath his notice. What an incredibly contemptuous ten-year-old.

He could have given post-Sakumo’s death pre-Obito’s death Kakashi a run for his money, which is really saying something. Kakashi kind of thought he was undisputed King of Contemptuous Child Hill.

“Whenever he meets someone, he dyes their clothes green. Carries around these big buckets of green paint sealed in shoes. I’ll introduce you.”

Neji vibrates with visceral distaste, but says nothing. Maybe he should book one of the muddy training grounds. He wonders when this crosses from helpful ribbing to abusing a traumatized child. Interacting with kids is hard.

He arrives at the third training ground almost exactly an hour after he told Sakura he’d be there. Now that she caught him arriving early once, he needs to actually arrive late to keep up his image. Color rises in her cheeks when she sees him approach and he can see her yell in her throat when she notices Neji, but it’s already too late, so she says something like—

“YOU’RE late?”

It’s a thing of beauty, he’s really quite proud to have been a part of it.

“I had to pick up Neji-kun, here, and he had to spend an hour on his hair.”

There’s that furious shake again.

“I did not,” he corrects, now that he has someone to defend himself to.

Kakashi places a comforting hand on his back.

“It’s okay. Mine takes two.”

Neji twists his head to glare up at him, and he can see as the kid starts to visibly consider going back to the Hyuuga compound and telling Hiashi that he won’t do it.

“Hi, I’m Sakura!” Sakura says, moving forward, and extending her hand. Neji doesn’t take it.

“I’m aware,” he says. “I’ve been ordered to assist you.”

“Spar,” Kakashi corrects.

“This will not be a spar. That would require her to be my equal. She’s just a civilian.”

He can see fury build through Sakura. This is not the kind of fury that she directs at him, this is full-bodied and hateful.

“Spar,” Kakashi repeats, and Neji lips tighten.

“Come then, civilian.” He makes the symbol for the Byakugan in the center of his chest, and then spreads his hands into the wide, loose stance of the gentle fist.

Flower petals bloom from behind Sakura, swirling around her and spreading across the training ground. Neji doesn’t twitch.

Sakura takes Gamami from her head, and tosses her gently to the pond, where she lands with a ripple and a splash. Sakura vanishes, and Neji’s eyes follow her as she becomes a petal, then the chakra string to the petal behind him, and then strikes her in the chest when she reforms before him.

Sakura goes down with a gasp, breaths stuttered.

Neji de-activates his Byakugan, and turns to Kakashi. “It will take her several hours to recover. Can I return to the Hyuuga compound for the day?”

Kakashi just turns his head to where Sakura is pushing herself up from the ground, stretching her neck as pink flares from the tenketsu Neji blocked. Neji slowly turns as well, and his eyes widen when he sees Sakura glaring at him.

“What was that, Neji?” Sakura asks.

“Have fun, kids!” Kakashi offers cheerily, and then crosses the clearing to lean against a tree, and pull a volume of Icha-Icha from a seal. He’s still working on replacing some of the volumes he had lost in that cave in Cloud.

Truly, that was a hard mission for everyone.

Neji re-activates his Byakugan.

“What did you do?” he asks.

“I re-opened the tenketsu you closed,” she says, smiling an unpleasant smile. “What’s wrong? Can’t you do that?” She touches her forehead protector ponderingly. “Or is that something they only teach real ninja?”

He surges towards her, and she vanishes into a flower petal. He snatches it out of the air, but immediately tosses it away and spins to face the cloud of flower petals Sakura is (apparently) hiding in.

He watches as Neji’s head swivels to follow Sakura’s movements. She pops back into existence behind him, but he does not turn away from the cloud before him.

She pops out of the cloud halfway across the clearing to pout.

“You can see me,” she says.

“The Byakugan sees all,” he says shortly.

“That seems unfair.”

Neji lips tighten, and settles in to wait.

“Hmm,” Sakura says ponderingly, and he spins to face her clone, which she apparently swapped with, catching her with a full Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two palms before she can vanish.

Sakura falls to her knees, and coughs, a little blood coloring her spit.

“Ow,” she says.

Neji stands over her, hands moving again, and—

“Do not strike Sakura while she’s down,” Kakashi orders. “This is a spar, not a fight to the death.”

Neji doesn’t stop, so Kakashi body-flickers between them and tosses Neji into the pond. Neji hits the pond at an odd angle, and, because he’s not Sakura, he goes under.

Behind him Sakura grunts as she returns to her feet.

He turns back to face her, and finds a bit of anger in her gaze. It’s not the full force of what’s directed at Neji, but there is a fraction of real, honest anger there.

He clasps her shoulder.

“Trust me?” he asks, and, after a moment, she nods.

Neji drags himself out of the water on the shore and pulls himself to his feet, face hard.

“Of course you need to be protected, civilian,” he says, and takes an oil spitball to the side of the face.

His stunned expression is priceless. He turns to see Gamami squatted on the shore beside him. He lifts his foot to stomp her, and she reveals her knife.

He steps away from her. The motion puts him off balance, and he can’t spin fast enough to meet Sakura when she appears behind him, catching a glancing blow to the back before catching her with the first four hits of a Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two palms before Sakura vanishes and reappears behind him to tag him again while he is still mid-technique.

He catches her with the full technique this time, and she falls back onto the pond, back tenketsu still intact and keeping her afloat.

Her body flares briefly pink, and she pulls herself back to her feet, face twisted in the beginnings of a smirk. “Got you,” she says.

He slicks his wet hair back away from his eyes with a faint frown.

“You barely touched me, and you had to use a frog.”

Sakura holds her hand out to Gamami, who hops up into it, and smiles.

“She’s a toad, actually. And her name—”

Gamami tumbles from Sakura’s hand and Neji spins to catch Sakura’s chest, but she’s gone before he can follow through.

Sakura reappears on the pond, her chest lighting up faintly with pink as she straightens.

“—is Gamami. We’re a team.” Ten clones of Sakura appear throughout the clearing. “And we’re going to beat you.”

Three weeks later, and Sakura is still lying on the ground, chest heaving, when the day is over. Ten spars. She can still get up.

She doesn’t.

“Give up,” Neji says, looking down upon her with disdain. “You can never win.”

Neji has improved more in that last two weeks than Sakura has. Sakura has one gimmick, plain as day to the Byakugan, and while Neji has just had to learn that one trick, Sakura has had to learn taijutsu. She is making progress, but it is rendered invisible by Neji’s own.

He has learned to center himself, control his attacks so that he never leaves an opening for Sakura to counter-attack. He has also, incidentally, learned not to ignore the toad, which, in Kakashi’s opinion, is really the most challenging lesson of them all. He still hasn’t really mastered it.

She is improving, though. She has learned to move her body just enough to knock his strikes off of her tenketsu. Her reflexes have improved substantially.

“Good job, today, Neji,” Kakashi says. “You can go home.”

Neji, with one last contemptuous glance at where Sakura lies on the ground, does just that.

“Do you really think I can beat him?” she asks him, once Neji is out of earshot, turning her face to nuzzle Gamami when she approaches from the pond.

Neji is a real piece of work. Not just in the sense that he fits so much contempt and disdain into such a tiny body, but also that his skill in taijutsu is totally unreasonable. He is a ten year old academy student, and his taijutsu skill level is clearly chuunin.

“There’s no doubt in my mind,” Kakashi tells her, and he can see some of the despair that been hardening in her face dissipate.

“How?” she asks him.

Kakashi considers this. “Sakura, what do you think the Byakugan is?”

Sakura frowns.

“It sees through everything, right?”

“No,” Kakashi says. “It sees everything as it truly is.”

Sakura’s frown deepens.

“That’s what I said.”

“It’s not.”

Sakura glares at him.

Kakashi crouches down and picks up a rock. “I’m going to turn into this rock,” Kakashi tells her. “And I want you to tell me which rock is the real me.”

Sakura sits up and looks at him, irritation draining from her face.

“Turn around.”

Sakura turns around, spinning on her butt and 100% getting even more grass stains on her dress. “You too,” he says, pointing at Gamami.

Gamami scowls thunderously at him, and hops into Sakura’s lap, notably not turning around. He swears he can feel her glare through Sakura’s body.

“In five seconds, turn around,” Kakashi instructs her, then switches the hand he’s holding the rock in, sets it down, and transforms into the rock.

Sakura turns around and glares down at him.

It is a mildly disorientating experience. Kakashi does not enjoy being inanimate objects, seeing without eyes, his chakra system tucked away into some weird not-space.

Sakura looks at him. Looks at the rock. Looks at him. Looks at the rock.

She picks the rock up, then picks him up. She weighs them in her hands.

Kakashi is a fucking jounin, excuse you, that won’t work.

She looks like she’s about to throw him, and he makes a clone to hold up a sign that says, “if you throw me, I will never teach you anything ever again.”

Sakura freezes, eyes boring into him. Him, and not the rock. Well, shoot, he might have just given up the gambit.

She waves his clone away, and then drops her head to peer at him. She moves to the rock, and then immediately back to him. She tosses the rock over her shoulder, and it falls into the pond with a splash.

A smile crawls across her face.

“Hi, Sensei,” she says, eyes sparkling. Then she stands and flings him at a tree.

Kakashi sighs as he un-transforms mid-flight.

“That’s it,” he says, raising his hands. “I’m done. You’re on your own. Forever.”

“Your dad’s scroll talks about this!”

His dad’s scroll talks about literally every aspect of the transformation jutsu. This one included.

“He knows it’s me because there’s too much chakra, and it’s all human-shaped!”

It’s one of the reasons that the Hidden in the Leaves jutsu is so powerful. Because all of the leaves are touched with the user’s chakra, they don’t have to fully suppress their chakra when transformed, leaving them still able to perform jutsu.

Perhaps his father’s most egregious technique was moulding the same jutsu in twenty leaves at once so that the one that was him wouldn’t be obvious.

“And he sees my chakra strings! And my clones…” She pauses. “I don’t put my chakra system in my clones?”

Kakashi taps his nose.

Sakura squeals and jumps into the air.

“I’m gonna beat him so bad. I’m gonna make him bleed. I’m gonna make him cry.”

That’s the spirit.

It’s been two weeks, and Sakura still hasn’t managed it. Neji has started frowning a bit more, but the days still end with Sakura, breathing ragged, back flat on the ground.

Now, however, she keeps getting back up, until Kakashi calls it for the day.

Sakura looks up at the sun, and pushes herself back up. Neji lunges forward at her, and she vanishes and reappears on the pond, leaving Neji striking a flower petal.

Whenever she needs to think, she stands in the center of the pond, because she’s more sure-footed on the water than Neji is.

“Give up—” Neji starts, but Sakura isn’t listening to him, chewing on her thumb.

“It’s not quite right,” she says, muttering to herself around her thumb, glaring at Neji. She glances down at Gamami, sitting with unnerving stillness on the pond beside her. “Am I getting closer?”

Gamami doesn’t say anything, because she doesn’t like talking and she can’t nod while gathering natural energy. He can feel a little pulse of… something, though, and Sakura nods.

“Okay. Just a little more.”

She vanishes into a cloud of petals. It’s a neat trick she learned a week ago, without his help. Summoning jutsu layered on top of her transformation, hiding which petal she is in the cloud. A veritable petal clone, which his father detailed in his transformation and clone scrolls. Separately, because his father wouldn’t just have one way to do the same thing.

He can see the moment in which Neji loses track of her before his attention snaps to one particular petal in the cloud.

He steps to the side, as Sakura sprays chakra strings across the clearing, to a point further from every possible point she could swap to, then snaps to his right, driving his palm into Sakura the moment she reappears. She doesn’t fall, chest sparking with pink light, so he follows it up, but his hands catch nothing but more petals, and his attention snaps back to the pond a moment before Sakura re-appears upon it, hands resting on her legs as she breathes deeply, eyes on Neji.

“It’s futile,” he says.

Pink flares spiral out from Sakura’s belly button, tracing all the way out to her fingers. Just doing one tenketsu at a time has apparently gotten too boring for her, so she does this now.

When she reaches her fingers, she restarts at her belly button again.

It’s his first time seeing it, so Neji looks mildly discomfited. It’s a totally reasonable reaction. Kakashi has seen her do it on several occasions, and he remains distinctly uncomfortable every time she does it.

Minato could do the “yellow trail”, as he activated all of his tenketsu in sequence. Kakashi never saw him do this, and he’s not convinced he was capable.

Finally, Sakura takes a deep breath and vanishes into a cloud of petals.

This time, he sees the moment when Neji loses track of her completely.

He staggers back, head jerking back and forth, like she’s somehow vanished into his blind spot, and Gamami grins a bloodthirsty toad grin from her position on the pond.

Neji blinks as chakra strings spray across the clearing, but Sakura must be making a proper web of them, because his focus doesn’t snap to a single petal.

When he looks right, Sakura appears behind him, and when he tries to turn to face her, he is too slow, and takes her fist straight to the face.

For the first time in five weeks, Neji goes down, and Sakura grins down at him.

“Stand up, Neji,” she says. “I’m not done with you yet.”

“It’s just a fluke,” Neji says under his breath, slowly pushing himself to his feet.

Sakura’s eyes dance, and she vanishes again into a cloud of petals.

Neji tries to center himself, but he doesn’t succeed, eyes anxiously roving the air around him, taking another fist to the face, sending him once again sprawling to the ground.

“What,” he says, slowly pushing himself back up only to get punched to the ground once again. “What’s happening?”

Sakura laughs, a mean, angry laugh from where she stands above him.

“What’s wrong, Neji?” she asks. “Is your precious Byakugan not as perfect as you thought?”

Neji’s nostrils flare and he surges up at her, drives his fist into the cloud of petals Sakura becomes. She appears behind him, but he doesn’t react.

Her clone pouts before dispersing itself.

She comforts herself by punching Neji in the face once again.

“I am a Hyuuga,” he says, taking to his feet again, the veins around his eyes deepening and lengthening as he pours altogether too much chakra into his Byakugan. “You’re just—”

“I’m just a civilian?” Sakura asks, standing over Neji once again. She smiles, closing her hand into a fist. “I didn’t know how fun punching someone in the face could be,” she says. “Maybe—”

Then she looks at Kakashi.

“This is taijutsu training! You’re trying to trick me into practicing my taijutsu!”

She vanishes as Neji tries and fails to take advantage of her distraction.

Kakashi would like to think that he’s succeeding into tricking her into practicing her taijutsu. But also, the actual training hasn’t started yet.

First, Neji was cheating. He knew where she’d be before she was even there. Now, Sakura is. Neji is taking constant psychic damage from his lack of perfect knowledge.

Kakashi waits and watches as Sakura does exactly what she promised she would do: she beats Neji into the ground, beats him bloody. She does not make him cry, because Neji is altogether too traumatized for that.

Finally, Neji falls, and he does not get back up.

“I—I can’t win,” he says, flat on his back.

Sakura smiles victoriously above him. She opens her mouth to pile on, but Kakashi cuts her off, tossing her into the pond.

“That’s enough,” he says, and she frowns at him from where she lays sprawled across the surface of the pond.

“I thought—” Neji says, sitting up, and grabbing his head. “I thought—how can she beat me? She’s just… she’s just a civilian.”

Kakashi crouches next to Neji, and places a hand on his shoulder. He’s not sure if it’s actually as comforting as he’s intending, but Neji doesn’t shrug it off.

“My father was a civilian-born ninja, Neji.” Neji flinches back, like he’s expecting… well, nothing good. “You might have heard of him. Hatake Sakumo. The White Fang.” Neji frowns faintly as he tries to go through his history, and then stiffens when he remembers who Kakashi’s father was.

“Blood isn’t everything, Neji. Being a Hyuuga doesn’t make you better.” Then, in a smaller voice. “And being a branch house member doesn’t make you worse.”

Neji turns his head away.

“Sakura didn’t beat you because of her parents, or her blood. She beat you because, right now, she’s stronger than you are. Every day for the last two weeks, when you’ve gone back to the Hyuuga compound, she’s stayed here, learning how to transform into a flower petal so perfectly you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

Sakura makes proud noises by the pond, and Neji doesn’t turn back to Kakashi, his gaze on the grass to his side.

“But nothing is set in stone, Neji. You want me to tell you how to beat her?”

Sakura squawks, and Neji slowly looks up to meet Kakashi’s eyes.

Kakashi gives him his best eye-smile. “It’s easy.”

Sakura squawks some more.

“Sensei! That’s cheating, you’re supposed to be—”

She falls silent when he turns his gaze on her, wilting back to the pond.

“Right now, you are my student as much as she is, Neji. You needed to learn to lose, but right now, Neji, I want to teach you how to win again.”

Slowly, Neji nods.

“Good. Stand up.”

Neji stands.

Kakashi leans down to Neji’s ear and whispers, low enough that Sakura can’t hear him. “Turn off your Byakugan.”

Neji looks at him in surprise, and Kakashi straightens.

“Do not look, Neji. See. Do not see, Neji—know. That’s the Hyuuga motto, right?”

Neji takes a deep breath, and the veins around his eyes fade away.

Sakura opens her mouth for a jab, then shuts it when Kakashi gives her a sharp look.

“Okay,” she says, as Neji settles into a low gentle fist stance. “Let’s go.”

She vanishes, and this time, Neji doesn’t go spinning looking for the petal, because he obviously would never find it.

Sakura appears directly behind him, but Neji is already spinning, slipping around her clumsy punch, and slamming both of his palms into her chest.

Sakura, mouth open in surprise, is physically lifted into the air and thrown several feet before she crashes into the ground.

Neji looks down at his hands and then up at Kakashi.

“Nothing is set in stone, Neji,” Kakashi says to him, and slowly, hesitantly, Neji nods. Then, looking down at Sakura, he just as slowly, just as hesitantly. extends his hand to her. She takes it, and he pulls her easily to her feet.

“Ouch,” she says, very eloquently, rubbing her chest, and Neji’s face twitches in the suppressed remnants of what might just be a smile.

“And Sakura,” Kakashi says from behind them. “Now, you’re practicing taijutsu.” He grins in the face of her shocked glare. “Have fun!”

It has been six weeks. Neji has been using Byakugan for five of those weeks. It does give him a decided advantage, when it doesn’t make him panic about the fact that he can’t see Sakura when she’s a petal. He is still leagues and leagues better than Sakura at taijutsu. In a straight up taijutsu fight, he will win every time.

That’s not the kind of fight Sakura has to fight, though. She can pick the direction and timing of their every interaction. She can attack whenever Neji is off balance, feint him one way and attack in another. She needs the knowledge of taijutsu to know when to pick her moment, the reflexes to retreat when she’s miscalculated, and sheer speed. She needs to be able to hit her opponents before they know she’s there.

She’s improving nicely. Every week, he can see her improve, just a little bit. She loses by a little less every week. Neji is good, but he was already extraordinary. He has less room to improve, while Sakura is taking taijutsu seriously for the first time in her life.

As he watches Sakura dance between his strikes, feinting in and out of petals to try and lure him into overbalancing himself, he can feel the tipping point coming. He is worried about what will happen when Sakura gets good enough to beat Neji every time they spar. It was good for Neji, to lose, and then win again. A good object lesson in Nothing is set in stone.

Sakura, however, will be stronger than him. Her rate of improvement outpaces his substantially, and for all that Kakashi has promised to teach Neji like he would his own student, Neji is already better than Kakashi at not only the gentle fist style in particular but also taijutsu in general, leaving him with very little knowledge to impart. To say nothing of Sakura’s three years as an actual ninja, which really does count for something.

Sakura reappears, just barely out Neji’s reach, and when he lunges for her on instinct, she swaps with a flower petal by his midsection and delivers a brutal kick to his stomach.

Neji goes down, wincing, hands on where she struck him.

“Sorry,” Sakura says, with a matching wince.

To say they’re friends would be… wrong. They’re no longer enemies, though. Sakura no longer wants to make him bleed and no longer wants to make him cry.

“This is what training is,” Neji says with a grunt, pushing himself to his feet. “It hurts.”

“Ninjutsu training doesn’t hurt,” Sakura says, dancing back from him a few steps, because Neji has definitely taken advantage of her hesitation after putting him on the ground to return the favor. “Taijutsu really does suck.”

Neji huffs out a laugh which sounds just—so much like his uncle’s. He lunges towards her, and then drives his palm solidly into her chest when she tries to take advantage of his apparent and quite false opening.

Sakura goes down.

“You’re predictable,” Neji says, as her chest flares pink.

“That’s cheating,” Sakura grumbles.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing.”

They clash, and Sakura goes down, then Neji, Neji, Sakura, Neji, Neji, Sakura, Neji, Sakura, Sakura, Sakura, Sakura.

Sakura lies on the ground, limbs splayed around her, and frowns at the sky.

“I got lucky,” Neji says. “Time before last. I fell for your feint, I just slipped, and couldn’t put my full weight into my strike.”

Sakura smiles. “I’m fine.”

“If you’re fine, get up. It’s barely noon.”

Sakura laughs, and flips to her feet. “I’m gonna get you.”

“Prove it,” he says, and it takes her another two tries, but then she gets Neji three times in a row.

Kakashi yawns. This has gotten a lot less interesting since they lost interest in killing each other.

Sakura creates ten clones, scattered around the clearing, and Neji smirks.

“Nice try,” he says. “Your chakra flow is still wrong.”

All of Sakura’s clones make faces and charge him. He ignores all but one, sending it to the ground with a juuken. She staggers back, and he follows up, but she slips into a petal before his blows can land. He spins, and Sakura blocks his strike with one hand while pushing in with the other.

No hands left to block her strike, Neji spins into a ball of white chakra, sending Sakura spinning into a petal high above the clearing.

Neji pulled that one out of his ass two weeks ago. Seeing a ten year old branch member perform the Eight Trigrams Revolving Heaven has not gotten any less egregious or outrageous with time. To think, this boy won’t be clan head because of Hyuuga’s clan bullshit. If he isn’t the most brilliant Hyuuga in a century, Kakashi’ll eat his damn forehead protector.

Neji gets a glancing blow on her shoulder when she reappears directly before him, spinning to cleanly slip under her strikes, but she breaks into nothing but a cloud of petals under the force of it. She reappears to take advantage of his open side, and he spins into her, driving his hand into her open side, and knocking her to the ground.

Pink flares over her body as her tenketsu re-open, but she doesn’t get up, staring at the sky. Neji looks down at her for a long moment, studying her face, and then takes a seat next to her.

“Neji,” she says once he’s sitting beside her. “What’s the thing on your forehead?”

Silence falls on the clearing.

Neji and Sakura aren’t friends, but they’ve fought every other day for three months now.

“It’s the Hyuuga curse seal,” he says.

“The one Hyuuga puts on the branch members?”

Neji nods.

“My parents call it the slave seal,” Sakura says. Neji flinches, and Sakura looks to him with a wince. “Sorry.”

With what looks like a physical effort, Neji pushes the feelings away.

“Yeah,” he says.

“I think it’s wrong,” she tells him.

“It—” Neji shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Sakura makes a fart noise to show what she thinks about that.

“It can’t be removed,” Neji says. “And even if it was, they would just—” His voice breaks. Sakura sits up, and puts a hand on his knee. “It’s illegal to take it off. Anyone who helps could get thrown in jail.”

Sakura raises her hand to the seal, and he flinches but doesn’t push her hand away. She reaches to her side and then sets Gamami on his head.

“You look like you could use Gamami sitting on your head,” she tells him.

Neji shakes his head, but Sakura grabs his face before he can toss Gamami off.

He stops and stares at her blankly.

“I feel better already.”

Sakura looks up at Gamami.

“No, she hasn’t done anything yet. You have to wait for it.”

Neji raises a brow. “I have to wait for it.”

She nods. “Also, you can’t move.” She looks at him meaningfully.

Neji subsides with a sigh. “Fine,” he says. “But then you have to get up.”

“Okay!” she says.

Five minutes later, she scoops Gamami from his head and jumps to her feet, tossing Gamami onto her own hair.

“Alright! Let’s go!”

Neji frowns up at her in confusion before pushing himself to his feet as well, spreading his stance, slow and wide.

Sakura wins more than she loses that day, and Kakashi can feel the balance start to tip.

The balance collapses completely three weeks after that.

Sakura enters the training ground late, as Kakashi approaches with Neji.

Kakashi raises his eyebrow at her, and she grins.

“You’re predictable,” she says.

Well. He’ll have to work on that.

Neji and Sakura bow to each other, and then ten Sakura clones pop into existence. Neji looks at them with a measured expression, and then settles lower into his stance, like he knew this was going to happen eventually.

All of Neji’s techniques for fighting Sakura depend on her having to be there to feint. On him knowing exactly when she vanishes back into a petal.

He doesn’t down Sakura a single time, and Sakura stops smiling the tenth time in a row she’s knocked him down.

“Um,” she says, standing over him, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“Again,” Neji says, in a concerningly flat tone.

“Okay.”

Sakura vanishes into a cloud of petals. To Neji’s right, a Sakura blooms from a petal, and takes a juuken strike to the chest, going down with an oof.

Neji glares at her, eyes ablaze.

“Don’t patronize me.”

Sakura flinches. “Sorry,” she says. “But—”

“No buts, Sakura,” he says, and she nods, disintegrating into a cloud of flower petals as two Sakuras appear behind him, and when he goes after one, the other’s fist connects, staggering him. He spins the follow up attack away, but as soon as he has stopped spinning, there are three Sakuras around him. He parries two, his hands going through them, and takes the fist from the last straight to the solar plexus, sending him down to the ground, gasping for air.

“Again,” Neji says, pushing himself back to his feet.

Four clones, leaving him with a glancing blow to the chin. He spins away the follow-up, catches the actual Sakura with a hit to the shoulder, but overextends into his own follow-up, taking a kick to the side, and he is on the ground again.

And around and around it goes. Hours in which Neji tries and fails to compensate for Sakura’s clones. He recovers admirably, but it isn’t enough.

As the sun starts to set, Neji falls to his knees, and bows his head.

“Neji—” Sakura starts.

“Don’t.”

“But, Neji—”

“You’re just stronger than me,” Neji says. “It’s—”

“No!” Sakura says, before he can intervene. She grabs Neji with both of her hands, and shakes him. “Nothing is set in stone, right?”

Neji looks up at her. “Some things are,” he says, and one of his hands goes to his seal.

Sakura flushes, chest heaving, and she turns to Kakashi.

“You can help him, right? You told him how to beat me before, come on!”

Kakashi puts his book away, and crosses the clearing towards them. He crouches beside them both.

He looks at Sakura’s pleading eyes, and Neji’s knowing ones.

“I can’t,” Kakashi says. “His taijutsu is already better than mine. I’m just seventeen years older than him. All I can tell him is to keep training.”

“Then keep training with me!”

“Neji is good training for you,” Kakashi says. “But you are bad training for him.”

“What?” Sakura says, her voice in a whisper.

“Neji needs to fight better taijutsu users.”

“I can just use taijutsu, then!”

“You’re too weak.”

“But—” Sakura’s face falls, and her hands droop on Neji’s shoulders.

Neji raises his hands to Sakura’s and then brushes them away. He stands, with some trouble.

“Thank you, Sakura,” Neji says flatly. “Training with you was very… illuminating.”

Sakura looks up at him despairingly. “We’re still friends, though, right?”

Neji inhales sharply. “Yes, fine.”

It’s not a ringing endorsement of friendship, but Sakura grabs onto it like it is. “I’ll see you tomorrow then!” Neji sighs. “I’ll bring Ino!” Then, in a smaller voice, “She’ll know what to do.”

Neji pushes past Sakura.

“Say it!” she shouts after his back. “Say you’ll see me tomorrow!”

Neji pauses, and then nods. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sakura.”

“Good,” then, so quiet Kakashi isn’t actually sure he hears it, “I’ll make sure you won’t regret it.”

Kakashi walks Neji home, through the bustling streets of Konoha, which are coming alive for the evening.

Before Kakashi can open his mouth, Neji interrupts.

“Nothing is set in stone?” he asks.

“Sakura isn’t invincible. Neither am I, neither is anyone. If you work hard, you can find a way out.”

He has some ideas on how to break his father’s techniques. Neji might even be able to use them. But Kakashi is not generous enough of a man to start handing out techniques that would let others kill his student to an outsider.

He promised to treat Neji as his own student, but that’s far from the first promise he’s broken, and it’s far from the last promise he’ll break.

“I believe you,” Neji says, to Kakashi’s surprise. “Not everything is set in stone. A civilian-born ninja can beat Hyuuga’s genius son.” Neji clenches his hands into fists. “But Kakashi-sensei, some things are. Can you take this seal from me, free me from my cage? Give me something to live for, other than choosing how I’ll die?”

Kakashi takes in a breath in, and then lets it out. The seal can be broken. Toumi is living proof. He even has some ideas on how she might have done it. Change might be coming—but the whispers of A’s words have faded with time, and this chance seems fated to die out, like all the others.

Maybe Kakashi could throw his weight behind it, and maybe that would make a difference, but it could also forever make him an enemy to the house of Hyuuga, which is a dangerous place to be. Hiashi’s words are grand, but three branch members have died in the last three months under suspicious circumstances, so they are also hollow.

The odds just aren’t in his favor.

It’s a bad call, and the Anbu put too much ice in Kakashi’s veins to let him make that call just because it looks like the right thing to do.

Kakashi’s face has slipped into an expressionless mask without realizing it, and Neji’s smile is brittle as he looks away.

“I guess that’s the wrong question. Even if you could, Kakashi-sensei, you wouldn’t. Just like everyone else.” They reach the gates of the Hyuuga compound, and Neji bows to him. “Thank you for everything,” Neji says, and his eyes are clearer than they were, three months ago. “But some things really are set in stone.”

Chapter Text

Kakashi has an A-rank mission to Earth. Leaf needs the Earth Daimyou’s first-born son (Ootomo) dead. He’s pushing for war with Fire to retake land taken in the Third Shinobi War, and is gathering strength as his father’s health wanes. They don’t want him killed, they want him to die.

(When dealing with Daimyous, it is a subtle but very important distinction.)

Ootomo will be traveling to a country villa in three days, under reduced guard. It is not a done deal, but it is the best shot they have. They need a ninja who can vanish from the complex without a trace. Conveniently, only Cloud know that the Hiraishin lives again, and they’ve never been big on sharing.

One of his kunai has already been left half a day’s run from the villa by an Anbu team who will be assassinating a critical merchant target in the capital. When you’re killing a Daimyou, it pays to be cautious. They are operating under the assumption those Anbu have already been made, and they need to be loudly somewhere else on the night of the Daimyou’s firstborn’s death.

For the first time since he left Anbu, Kakashi will be operating under transformation and a self-immolation seal, triggered off of the loss of that transformation. Even if Kakashi fails, he needs to have never been there. Knowing that your life rides on your ability to keep a jutsu up for five days straight is never a pleasant experience, but there are times when it is necessary.

This time, it is necessary.

Kakashi lived through the Third Shinobi War.

He has no interest in seeing the fourth.

He leaves tonight. Three days to case the villa, two days to kill the target, and then no days to get back. The Hiraishin is convenient like that.

He’s asked Guy to train Sakura in his absence, on the condition he’ll agree to three challenges upon his return. Don’t be fooled by Guy’s nice-guy smile.

When he knows he has leverage on you, he’ll milk it for all it’s worth.

So right now, he’s going to get Sakura to introduce her to Guy in person. When tagging in a sub, it’s fairly critical to be there yourself to make the handoff. It lets the student themself see the trust you have in the person you’re handing them off to.

...or at least that’s what Guy’s telling him, and considering he intends to lean on Guy more extensively to push Sakura’s taijutsu abilities now that she no longer balks at the concept, he’s doing as he’s told.

Sakura is at the Hyuuga compound, because apparently she has enough good will with Hiashi and the elder council from the Itachi and Tsukasa incidents that when she wants a playdate with a Hyuuga member, she’s allowed to have it in their precious compound.

Kakashi entered it for the first time to see Toumi. He has worked with twelve Hyuuga over the last decade. Gone drinking with them, saved some of them, fucked a couple, too. No dice. First time he entered it was to take Sakura to see Toumi.

Sakura, at ten, has already been inside the Hyuuga compound more times than he has. Considering Sakura’s newfound politics, however—this is not a good thing.

He can hear her yelling from the gate.

“He’s torturing Neji!” she is yelling. “And this isn’t the first time—he does it all the time! Every time Neji so much looks at a main house member, he tortures him!”

Kakashi does not body-flicker into the Hyuuga complex, because that is a very good way to get yourself killed. Kimiko’s ordinarily flat expression is a bit panicked.

He doesn’t think he’s ever had a Hyuuga that happy to see him.

“Kakashi-san,” she says, “please, come quickly.”

Kakashi arrives to find Sakura glaring at a main house member (Higura), her face twisted in hatred. The main house member, in comparison, is much more subtle in his hate. Nothing more than a burning in the eyes and the barest twitch of an eye.

The looks of the Hyuuga around the courtyard are uncomfortable, but he does not see the recrimination he would expect to see, if Sakura was lying out of her ass. Higura, on second look, does have the kind of face you’d expect to see on a child-torturer.

“You’re a shame upon this village!” She spits on the ground in front of him. Then, in a lower voice. “You’re a shame upon your clan.”

Kakashi catches Higura when his temper breaks and he surges forward, tossing Higura back to where he started from. Sakura looks completely unrepentant.

She looks furious beyond what Neji was able to drag out of her by mocking and belittling her. She looks furious beyond reason.

Angry enough to not realize that she is hurting Neji with every word out of her mouth. In the corner of his eyes, he can see Neji, kneeled on the ground, hands shaking.

Kakashi pushes the anger that sight raises in him into the ice bucket in the back of his mind, and takes ahold of Sakura by the shoulder.

“Sakura,” he says. She looks up at him, and some of the fury drains out of her face.

“Sensei,” she says.

“We need to go.”

Sakura’s face twitches, and then she smooths the fury from her face. She turns to Neji, and helps him to his feet.

Kakashi glances at the gathered Hyuuga who had stopped to watch the commotion out of the corners of his eyes. This is not the first time this has happened, although it is the first time Sakura has been this inflammatory. It says something about Higura’s status in the clan that Sakura keeps getting allowed back in the door.

In the last two months, all whispers of A’s speech have died away. Another InoShikaChou attempt on the Hyuuga curse seal, dead on the vine.

It is because he is looking at the lack of reaction in the Hyuuga around him that he does not see Sakura go for the kunai.

Higura takes it to the shoulder, and staggers.

“Neji is one hundred times the ninja than you will ever be,” she hisses, and there is no blind fury in her eyes, just cold hard hatred as Higura’s mask breaks, and his face twists with white hot fury.

Body-flickering into the Hyuuga compound is a death sentence, but body-flickering out of it is occasionally required. Neji is going to have a very long, no-good day, but there’s nothing he can do about that.

“What was that?” Kakashi says, setting Sakura down outside the walls of the Hyuuga compound.

Sakura takes a deep breath, and looks up at him. The cold hardness she had directed at Higura he finds now directed at him.

“Someone had to.”

“That doesn’t help anyone,” Kakashi says. “Do you know what Higura is going to do to Neji because of that?”

“Then what was I supposed to do?” she yells at him, the cold hardness breaking away into that same fury that had overtaken her in the Hyuuga compound. “Let them keep torturing him and treating him like trash?”

Kakashi resists the urge to take a step back.

“He told me about what you said,” she continues in a hiss, mask falling back into place. “That you could have helped him, but you didn’t.”

Kakashi opens his mouth, but finds no words. Sakura vanishes into a cloud of petals, Gamami tumbling to his feet, glaring full force up at him before vanishing with a poof of smoke when she is resummoned.

What.

What is he supposed to say to that?

Actually, Neji just assumed that, I never said it.

Or maybe.

Being angry about it isn’t going to fix it.

Or even.

Some things you just can’t fix. You have to wait, pick your moment. Let people get hurt, and let them die.

Somehow, he doesn’t think that will convince her. If only everyone underwent Anbu training, he can’t help but think.

That cold, hard calculus of how to weigh odds and risks when the balances were weighed in human lives and how to stand by and do nothing while people died when the odds didn’t justify the risk.

Don’t die to save one person when if you live, you could save fifty more.

On second thought, maybe the world would be better if less people went through Anbu training and not more.

Kakashi sighs and runs a hand through his hair. Maybe encouraging her friendship with Neji had been a bad idea. Maybe everyone’s got it right when they avoid the Hyuuga like the plague.

If you can’t compartmentalize properly, you can’t touch them too long before you either go evil or crazy.

With a second sigh, he teleports to his seal in the third training ground.

Sakura is already there, Gamami resummoned in her arms. She’s a little bigger now, longer than Sakura’s arms, overflowing a bit on both sides.

She is not a beautiful creature, and this is not her best look, front legs dangling, belly overflowing.

The death glare, admittedly, doesn’t help.

Sakura's green gaze snaps to him with a glare to match.

So this is still happening, then.

Joy.

Guy, who had probably been hiding in the bushes somewhere, comes crashing down beside Kakashi.

“Eternal Rival!” he crows, voice at the top of his lungs because he has no other volume, “I will of course care for your student while you were away on your very important—” he pauses, realizing that Kakashi’s mission is intensely secret “—Vacation!”

Sakura’s gaze snaps to Guy, and he can see a smile flicker at the edges of her mouth before she remembers she is still angry at him.

“I appreciate that, Guy,” Kakashi says, patting him on the shoulder. “Sakura—”

“Okay,” she says. “Bye.”

Kakashi lets his anbu mask fall.

“Well I’m not leaving yet, Sakura, so you’re going to have to suck it up. This is Guy, Sakura. He’s the best taijutsu master in the village.”

“You flatter me, Kakashi,” Guy bellows, his cheeks faintly pink.

“He’ll be working with you on the same exercises I’ve been working with you on,” Kakashi finishes.

Sakura glare breaks.

“Don’t you care, Kakashi?”

Kakashi takes in a deep breath, and then lets his face soften as he sighs.

“Um,” Guy says, standing kind of between them, looking intensely.

Kakashi ignores him with the long practice of having known him for his entire adult life.

“Yes,” he says. He crouches in front of Sakura. “But there’s nothing I can do.”

She frowns, and he sees something a lot more concerning than fury in her face.

Pity.

“The Hyuuga clan is powerful, and people have been trying to change their house system since the village’s inception, when they used the blanket respect for pre-existing traditions to hold on to that seal. All attempts since then have only earned their ire”—Sakura’s lips twist in something like a sneer before she pulls her face back under control, because she doesn’t know how easy it is to die when the Hyuuga want you dead—“and gotten branch house members killed.”

Her face softens, and she nods.

“Okay, Kakashi,” she says, and there is a moment in which the look in her face is not disappointment or fury, but simple disdain. The look he gives to rookie genin and chuunin, when he’s pressed into letting them on his team. Then it’s gone, and she nods.

Guy claps her on her shoulder. As they spoke, his face hardened briefly when he realized what they were talking about and now it’s softening once more.

“It’s hard, but we’re ninja,” Guy says, giving her a thumbs up and his nice-guy pose. “We don’t just barge in through the front door—we wait until the time is right and then we strike from the back.”

Sakura looks up at him, and slowly a smile crawls across her face.

“And when the time doesn’t come?”

“We’re ninja,” Guy says. “You set their house on fire.”

Guy has never been Anbu, and if Kakashi has his way, he never will be.

Guy backs away from Sakura, checks with Kakashi, and then spreads his arms.

“Let us begin your training, then, Sakura! We’ll never be this young again, and if we let this opportunity slip, we will never get it back!”

“O… kay?”

Guy evokes that reaction in people. Kakashi backs out of the clearing, and leans back against a conveniently placed tree. To his surprise, Gamami follows him, leaping up onto his chest, and then crawling up his chest to his shoulder.

She is not a light creature, but thankfully, Kakashi is a ninja.

“Come at me as you would your direst enemy! Imagine I am Itachi! Do not worry about injuring me!” Then, because under that bravado, he’s actually a bit of a dick (he and Kakashi get along for a reason), he says, grinning, “You will not.”

Rage flashes across Sakura’s face as she draws two kunai. She throws one at him while she vanishes into a cloud of flower petals.

“Wolf,” Gamami says (Kakashi’s not 100% sure she knows his name), as Guy easily dodges the kunai, then blocks Sakura’s kunai when she appears in its place and tries to drive her kunai deep into his right shoulder.

“Toad,” he says, because he’s petty like that, as Guy drives a fist into Sakura’s exposed side. She barely blocks it, and explodes backwards into a cloud of flower petals.

“You use non-lethal attacks, even when I have told you to treat me as your direst enemy!” he bellows, because she could have just as easily gone for his brain stem. “You truly embody the Spirit of Youth!”

One day, Kakashi will get Guy to tell him what, exactly, he thinks that word means.

“Could you have done something for Neji?” Gamami says, and, oh, he sees how it is. Neji gets his name remembered.

He turns to Gamami as three Sakuras appear before Guy, who, because he’s a truly unreasonable human being, does what the byakugan could not: he identifies the true Sakura in an instant. She takes the blow to the shoulder, sprawling across the ground, leaving a trail of flower petals in her wake. She’s gone before she comes to a stop, and Guy knows that, even though he doesn’t look away from where she lies on the ground.

“You must strike with more youth! I do not feel your heart and soul behind your attacks! If you do not believe you can strike me, you never will!”

“No,” Kakashi says with certainty and the benefit of hindsight.

Gamami glares at him. “You plead impotence,” then with a mean little smirk, she continues, parroting Guy behind them. “If you do not believe you can do anything, you never will.”

Guy and Kakashi will never see eye to eye on that particular topic.

Sakura commits fully to her next attack, raising a hand to block Guy’s counterattack, and putting her full weight behind the thrust of her kunai.

“Yes!” Guy crows, kicking her back across the clearing. “Just like that!”

“What is your investment in this, toad?” he asks.

“The seal that has been placed upon him, it reeks of corruption. Mount Myouboku does not tolerate such corruption.”

He looks down at her as once again three Sakuras appear around Guy. He dispels all three clones with a motion, blocks her kunai strike, but his counterattack blows Sakura into a cloud of flower petals instead of landing. He snatches a kunai out of the air, throws it over his shoulder at the kunai that is coming at him from behind, and kicks Sakura full in the chest when she appears from a petal behind his left shoulder.

“Mount Myouboku has never attempted to interfere in such matters before,” he says, thinking of Jiraiya, and of Minato, and of Shikato Naro, and of Dan Katou.

“Our summoners study under us, but they are not of us,” she says.

Kakashi wonders if Gamami is the toad who has spent the most time in Leaf in all of the village’s history. He’s pretty sure Sakura doesn’t even unsummon her to sleep. (He can’t imagine what it must have been like for Gamami, in that month that Sakura lay in a hospital bed, Gamami left alone in a land that she probably only barely knew.) Gamami has grown to maturity—and she is a fully grown toad now, despite her size—in Konoha.

A child of two worlds.

“Are you going to do something about it?” he asks.

“Yes,” Gamami says, no hesitation in her tone. “Will you?”

That’s a hard question. “If an opportunity presents itself.”

Gamami gives him that same look of disdain that he saw for an instant in Sakura’s gaze, but she has the subtlety of a flying brick to the skull and an attitude to match, so she gives it to him nice and long, so that he knows exactly what she thinks of him.

“So not unless you are forced to,” Gamami says, turning her face and belching a ball of oil two feet in diameter at Guy, giving Sakura a window when Guy has to scramble a bit at the unexpected attack from the galley to get close enough to cut a single line in his flak jacket.

Guy punches Sakura literally into the ground, while laughing and—

“Excellent job, Sakura! I can feel the strength of your Youth!”

Gamami looks back at him.

“You are strong, Kakashi, but your will is weak,” she says, leaping to the ground and drawing her knife.

Her words bite and not without cause. He thinks of Hiashi looking so nobly pained over suffering he has caused by his own hand, raising not a finger to solve the problem, because he is too weak willed, too scared, or simply too corrupt. Probably some combination of all three.

Gamami comes crashing back out of the clearing and into a tree not too far from him, but doesn’t dispel, which is really something considering the strength behind Guy’s kicks. She sticks to the tree and leaps up into the branches, vanishing into the leaves as Sakura draws Guy towards the edge of the clearing.

It is something to consider. Maybe Kakashi needs to evaluate the risks he’s willing to take, once again.

When he returns from his mission, he’ll meet with InoShikaChou. Their motives are far from pure, but they are better at this than he is. With him at their disposal, maybe they can bring about some change. He’s got at least two favors over the Hyuuga, and just because he doesn’t know how to use them doesn’t mean they won’t.

To be Anbu is to have ice in your blood, know when to let people die now to save people tomorrow. To be able to evaluate risks on the fly, change the mission as you deem it necessary. But it is also to know when to lean on those smarter than you, plans broader than you, and give yourself to them as the sharpest weapon you can be.

That fucking toad.

How the hell had Sakura ended up with a toad willing to stunt their own growth, just to stay by her side?

The caravan rumbles along the rocky road, two miles away from Ootomo’s country villa. It passes over a particularly rough bunch of rocks, and no one notices its new passenger, flashing into existence over an unremarkable rock, with a very particular seal carved onto its underside.

That rock will be gone by morning.

Kakashi, wrapped in a lightning veil—because when you’re killing an heir to a Daimyou, you can never be too careful—slips a seal from his pocket, two sealing sheets stuck together—one with Kakashi’s fang burned into it, covered by a second, an inch square of solid seals. Kakashi touches it to a wood slat on the underside of a caravan. He touches a finger to it, and the seal activates, the surface of seal rippling as it changes color and texture to match the wood around it. The caravan bounces on another pothole in the ground, ten more feet down the road, and Kakashi vanishes once more.

The two Rock jounin guarding the supply delivery that is two days ahead of Ootomo’s arrival never so much as twitch.

Kakashi re-appears, thirty miles inside of Fire territory, in Base 93. There is no tracking element to the seal he placed, because tracking seals can be detected.

If someone is looking at the underside of the caravan when he appears under it, the mission is burned. He goes home, and they come up with a new plan. He is not looking at the villa because no veil is strong enough to be invisible to all eyes.

Kakashi is plain, brown-haired and green-eyed. It is the most common phenotype in Rock, and ideally, they blame Ootomo’s political enemies if they find him. He checks his transformation, checks his self-immolation seal, and settles down to wait.

It will take an hour for the caravan to reach the villa, another two to unload it.

Kakashi waits two hours, and then he re-appears under the caravan, once again wrapped in a lightning veil. No one is looking at him, so the mission is still on. He stays completely still, Sharingan active and chakra in his nose and ears. They are inside the gates, not twenty feet from the main villa.

Bad operational security. They should have never let the caravan this close, just so the civilians could get the job done faster. Bad for them, good for him.

Kakashi, shins stuck to the bottom of the caravan, places another seal on the smooth earth beneath him. A touch, and it is invisible. Kakashi reaches up and removes the seal he had placed on the caravan.

He waits for a single full round of unloading from the caravan, then re-adjusts his expected unloading time down to an hour and a half.

He waits one more second, extending his limited senses as far as they can go. Three ninja on the walls close enough for him to sense, which means—he does the mental math on his sensing radius—eleven ninja on the walls around the “villa”. (Daimyou take their security very seriously and with good reason.)

He can sense three more ninja in the complex itself. He’s got a good half of it in his range, but they’re not placed at even intervals, so it could be anything from just those three to something like twelve.

Rock is a small village, so the last spy reports had them at thirty-four jounin, nine special jounin, fifty-something chuunin and over two hundred genin. Two jounin on the caravan is already a substantial portion of their jounin force. If he was running this operation, he wouldn’t put more than a third of his jounin out of the compound itself, and hoping for incompetence in your enemies is a good way to get killed, so Kakashi would put their jounin count between five and seven, with the commander still in the compound.

That’s Daimyou numbers, not heir numbers, which means the situation is worse than expected. The danger of an eminent coup is substantial.

Kakashi spends another moment evaluating the chakra signatures around him, looking for any he recognizes. He gets nothing—all the Rock jounin he’s fought are dead—and disappears once again. He appears on a tree half a kilometer from the road. He removes that seal, goes to the road and removes the seal he left on the underside of a rock, and returns to Base 93.

He re-applies the chakra suppressing gel. It burns like a mother-fucker, but lets him get almost all the benefits of full chakra suppression without entering full chakra suppression. To Konoha’s current knowledge, Rock has no ninja capable of sensing Kakashi’s presence through the gel, so long as he replaces it whenever his chakra usage burns through it he’ll be undetectable. The more jutsu he uses, the faster it burns.

Un-applied it glows like a fucking beacon under a chakra sense, but thankfully, the Hiraishin lets Kakashi keep it out of enemy territory, and in a chakra-sealed room.

He waits for three more hours, enough time for the caravan to clear out for sure.

He returns to the compound, once again wrapped in a lightning veil. Directly in front of him is a Rock chuunin, staring straight through him. Kakashi begins the Hiraishin and moves not an inch. The chuunin walks forward, and Kakashi teleports away the moment before the chuunin would have run straight into him.

He spends a moment in Base 93, going over the Sharingan’s perfect memory of the chuunin in his memory. Gaze unfocused, no surprise on his arrival, no hesitation as she stepped forward. He could have done that as a chuunin, but most can’t.

He’s in Fire and could return to the village, but this is the kind of mission that requires a singularity of vision, not decision by committee, not to mention Kakashi’s current face must never be seen anywhere near the Fire Country. He is the sole commander of this mission and with the knowledge that the heir has at least five loyal jounin, the about one in four chance he’s been made doesn’t justify burning the mission.

He flashes back, and is alone. As he chambers a Hiraishin, just in case, he looks over the walls, and finds all the ninja with their back to him. No one is watching the inside of the compound. The chuunin that walked through him is at the wall, replacing a jounin who had been there when he had hidden under the caravan.

Chakra gathered around his feet, Kakashi walks without sound and without raising dust over to the wall of the compound. He applies a seal to the wall, smooths it into brick with a touch. The inside of the compound is quiet.

He flashes back to the seal he has left in the open, removes it, and flashes back to base 93.

He re-applies the chakra-suppressing gel, wincing at the burn, and flashes back to the wall of the villa. No one is looking at him, and Kakashi circumnavigates the villa. He finds no open doors, but one window open on the second floor.

Chakra on his hands, Kakashi climbs the wall, stopping every step to check if he’s been made. He reaches the window, and finds the opening fuzzing with a protection field. From another pocket, Kakashi draws out a tiny envelope and slips his seal into it, then stops and extends his senses outward.

No ninja in the hall—closest ninja two rooms away. Kakashi waits. The ninja remains stationary, chakra flow steady and even. Possibly sleeping.

Best chance.

Kakashi places the envelope on the window sill, and slides it into the protection field. The envelope burns away, but the seal remains intact, and he can feel no ninja come alert as alarms blare.

He waits another moment, then teleports to the other side of the window, taking the seal from the sill, placing it quickly against the wall, and activating it. It patterns into the flowers of the wallpaper, and then he teleports away.

After a re-application of the chakra-suppressing gel, he returns to the hallway and creeps along the carpet to a door with no chakra signature behind it. Another glance up and down the hallway, and he opens it and slips inside.

Closet, perfect. Judging from the dust, not one that is in regular use.

Careful not to disturb the dust, Kakashi applies a seal to the corner of the closet beside the door.

They have no map of the villa, so he’ll have to map it out himself.

Joy.

Two trips back to Base 93 for more chakra suppressing gel later, and Kakashi has completed his map of the house. He has confirmed the ninja count, has counted out eight jounin that match faces in the Bingo Book, not including four chuunin that the Leaf ranks as jounin-equivalent. Five in the compound, including the two that were watching the caravan, three asleep and two awake, and then three on the walls.

The main hall is dressed out in suspicious levels of finery, five bedrooms unguarded but decorated very particularly, matching five of the most prominent noble houses in Earth.

They had been wondering why Ootomo would leave the capital. He’s known to be paranoid to the point of insanity, and Fire was trying to find ways to kill him in the bulletproof castle that the Earth Daimyou has before they received word of his upcoming trip here.

Now Kakashi knows.

The coup.

It’s happening here.

This was accounted for. Under ordinary circumstances, if he’s made, run. They can try again. If, however, he determines the coup is imminent, he’s under different orders.

Kill everyone.

Kakashi would like to avoid that. He could take out Ootomo, and he might—might—be able to take the five nobles, but he definitely couldn’t take out or even escape from eight jounin. His Hiraishin is faster, but he is not yet Minato.

It would be a suicide mission.

One, he finds, he would be willing to undertake, if it became necessary. He has left a letter to Sakura, Guy, his jounin comrades, and the Hokage. He has willed his father’s scrolls to Sakura, and Minato’s Hiraishin scroll to Jiraiya, to pass on to Sakura when she isn’t likely to kill herself with it. His affairs are in order.

It would be a good death.

He would, however, much rather live.

Kakashi has applied a seal under the bed and to the wall behind the door of every bedroom, on the off chance Ootomo’s protection detail manages to talk sense into him and gets him to not stay in the room that is obviously his. Kakashi has never had luck with that, though, so he’s not holding out hope.

The room that is clearly Ootomo’s is currently guarded by a jounin and one of those chuunin who should be a jounin. He suspects that the room itself is guarded by yet another protection field, of the kind the whole house is wrapped in. He’s watched a single shift change, and there is no moment when the room is not guarded by two jounin-class ninja.

They never enter the room, they just stand vigilant guard outside it.

Fuck Ootomo’s paranoia.

Fuck it to hell.

Kakashi returns to base 93. The Sharingan is good at getting one person under a genjutsu, but betting his life on the other ninja not noticing their partner is under a genjutsu in the time it takes for him to move on to them is not something he’s interested in doing. There’s a reason other villages’ counter-Uchiha tactic is “never be alone”.

However, tomorrow, Ootomo leaves the capital. It’s an eighteen hour trip when operating with a civilian. If Oomoto is paranoid enough to put two jounin on his supply caravan, he is paranoid to put at least that many around him in transit.

If he has other jounin in reserve, then, well, Kakashi is just going to have to risk it.

That’s his window.

And so Kakashi sits alone in a chakra-sealed room in Base 93 for just under a day, before the signaling paper under his hands flashes purple, informing him Ootomo has left the capital. He gets maybe four hours of sleep, which is more than enough. He re-applies the chakra-suppression gel and checks his chakra reserves—one hundred percent.

He teleport to the villa, and—jackpot—finds it light five jounin and three chuunin-who-should-be jounin. He creeps to Ootomo’s room, and finds a single jounin and the chuunin who looked straight through him when he first arrived.

Lucky break.

The jounin is Mako, of the Gentle Fist. No Byakugan, but no less deadly for it, according to the Bingo Book.

The chuunin isn’t in the bingo book—the only evidence of her rank is her flak jacket.

Kakashi runs over everything he knows about the two, checks his lightning veil, then checks the position of any nearby chakra signatures. He takes a deep, silent breath, then catches the jounin’s eye with his sharingan. She blinks, and the genjutsu is complete. She will see an empty corridor, the door closed behind her, for the next two hours. He turns to catch the chuunin’s gaze, and then he has them both.

He stands out of sight, waits to see if the genjutsu will hold—it does.

He steps out before them, and neither move. He slips a seal into a field-breaking envelope and steps up to them. He studies both faces, ensures that they see nothing, then steps past them to the door.

It is sealed closed, with no opening for the envelope to be slipped in.

He sets his hand on the handle, and it turns easily under his hand. He pauses, waits. No alarms go off. He releases the door, and it opens in, into the protection field crackling before him. He tosses the envelope into the room, and it burns away, leaving his seal to fall to the ground, untouched. He teleports in after it, sliding the door closed behind him as quietly as he can.

The clack breaks Mako’s genjutsu regardless. He breaks the genjutsu on the chuunin as well, places the seal against the wall beside the door, and then vanishes as Mako pushes the door open.

He waits in Base 93, heart pounding, and re-applies the chakra-suppression gel as he waits. He flashes back to the closet after five minutes, and stands, perfectly still, mapping out the villa as best he can.

It’s still. He hasn’t been made. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

He returns to Base 93 and then waits an hour, regardless.

At the end of the hour, he slips back into Ootomo’s room, places a new seal under his bed and then one on the wall behind his dresser, just in case someone thinks to replace the bed. He then goes through the villa, while the guard is reduced, and removes every seal he has placed except the ones in the closet and the bedrooms.

He needs to have never been here. Nothing can be left behind.

He returns to Base 93.

It takes sixteen intensely boring hours for Ootomo to arrive, and then another two for him to finish his dinner and retire to his chambers.

The bed is replaced. The wall is not.

Three jounin guard his room, but none enter it with him.

Kakashi collects all of the seals he has placed in all of the bedrooms, and then flashes back to his closet. He takes a deep breath and removes the seal from the closet door.

He teleports to Ootomo’s room, and Ootomo looks straight through him. Kakashi slips an earth privacy seal from his pocket, and places it across the doors.

He catches Ootomo the moment before he screams, hand clamped across his mouth, arm tight around his neck. After a moment of struggling, Ootomo slumps, unconscious but not dead. Kakashi places a hand against the back of Ootomo’s neck, and sends a jolt of an unconsciousness jutsu through him that will keep him unconscious for what Kakashi needs to set up.

Kakashi undresses Ootomo, carefully folding his clothes on the chest at the end of his bed, perfectly centered and perfectly straight. Ootomo is known for his fastidiousness in all things.

Then Kakashi jerry rigs a noose out of sheets, messy and imperfect. He ties it just as messily to the bed post, and then slips Ootomo’s head through the noose.

If you want someone dead and disgraced, accidental suicide through auto-erotic aspyhixation is a good one. Kakashi turns out the lights, scratches Ootomo’s neck with Ootomo’s own nails, has him bite the inside of his own cheeks, then pulls him firmly against the noose until his heart slows, and then stops.

He never wakes up.

Kakashi stands at the foot of the bed, evaluates the scene he has created, and nods. It is not beyond doubt, but it never could have been. There will be enough doubt to prevent martyrdom, and enough shame to weaken his allied noble houses.

Kakashi removes his last two seals, and vanishes.

He arrives at Base 93, carefully removes his self-immolation seal, and strips his clothes off. Then he gathers the mission scroll, all of his clothes, and every object he took with him to Earth in a pile and burns them. He seals them and all of the smoke he has created into a second storage seal and then burns it too.

Kakashi walks to the wall, and tears the seal from the wall that keeps the door closed, notifying the team of cleaner ninja outside the door, two chuunin and a genin, none of whom have been read into his mission, that his mission is complete. They do not know who he is, and they will not see him.

He has five minutes.

He goes to where his things are gathered, puts his clothes back on, and reties his forehead protector back onto his head again with a sigh.

It’s good to be a Leaf ninja again.

He looks around the room that has been his world for the last three days, and then vanishes.

Chapter Text

When Kakashi re-appears in his apartment, he is not alone. Against the wall stands Rooster, back straight.

Kakashi feels dread drip down his spine.

No one is supposed to be waiting for him.

Kakashi is supposed to give his debrief in the pits of T&I, in a sealed room with the Hokage—who would be transformed into Ibiki—and Shikaku—who would be transformed into Inoichi—while Ibiki and Inoichi themselves were hidden in safe rooms of their respective houses.

Rooster turns to face him.

“Kakashi-san,” Rooster says. “You are needed in the council room, post-haste. There was an incident with your student.”

Kakashi is in front of the Hokage building before Rooster finishes speaking. The guards at the door step aside to let him pass. The doors open, the silence jutsu breaks, and Kakashi is swarmed with noise that falls silent when all eyes in the room fall upon him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Sakura, standing, a little hunched, her posture frightened, her forehead protector tied vertically, like a hairband, instead of horizontally, like she always has before, tails hanging most of the way down her back. Across from her is Hiashi, who, when he meets Kakashi’s eyes, pales noticeably.

Sakura turns to him—

And there, on her forehead, is the Hyuuga curse seal.

Three members of the civilian guilds collapse when his killing intent descends upon the room.

Slowly, Kakashi turns to Hiashi. Shikaku, Inoichi and Chouza are all between them. He has no hiraishin seals in this room, so he’ll need to cross them, and two other jounin besides.

“Ah, Kakashi-kun,” the Hokage greets him, setting a hand on his shoulder that pins him forcefully in place. “I trust you had a restful vacation. I’ve always loved the land of Hot Water.”

Kakashi slowly reigns his killing intent back in.

“Very restful, although it does seem I’ve missed some very important things while I was gone.”

“Indeed,” the Hokage agrees, drawing Kakashi with him, away from Hiashi and the five jounin Kakashi was about three or four seconds from tearing through to get to him. The Hokage’s hand on his shoulder is like iron, completely immovable.

Kakashi comes to a stop beside Sakura, and she gives him a faint smile. “I guess I should have kept my mouth shut about the Hyuuga, like you said,” she says, and Kakashi feels fury rise in him again. He sees her words ripple through the assembled members of the council, turning further glares upon Hiashi.

Sakura, since she received her forehead protector, has never worn it vertically. She has always tied it like he does, like every branch member he’s ever met.l. Even the non-shinobi cover the foreheads with plain white linen.

Kakashi takes that thought, and pushes it deep, deep down.

Kakashi sets a hand on her shoulder in comfort, and turns back to the council. The Hokage retakes his position at the head of the table, but still very much in arm’s reach. Although really, it’s the other way around. The Hokage is still very loudly within arm’s reach of Kakashi.

“Now that we have everyone present,” the Hokage says. “Sakura, would you mind telling the council what happened?”

“Um,” Sakura says, shoulders hunched. Her eyes flicker fearfully at Hiashi, and then up at Kakashi. The tension in the room rises another notch, and Hiashi’s face tightens. Behind his shoulders, his second and his elder glare balefully back at the rest of the table, Hyuuga pride on full display. “Okay,” she says. “Um,” she starts again, her shoulders tensing. “Higura called me into his room, saying um, something about how if I really cared about Neji, there was something he wanted to show me?” Kakashi takes a deep breath. “And then he put one of those, those chakra suppression bracelets on me. I didn’t—I didn’t know what it was, and then he—” Sakura’s voice breaks.

Kakashi squeezes her shoulder, and Gamami squeezes her hand where she sits on the table before Sakura.

“He said if I like Neji so much, then the Hyuuga have something for that, and he started—” she touched her forehead. The seal is still enflamed. “I didn’t know they were allowed to do that.”

“They’re not,” Shikaku says, and his ordinarily airy voice is cold and hard. The elder behind Hiashi’s shoulder sneers.

“She’s lying,” he says.

“Let her finish,” the Hokage says.

“I have to sit here and listen to this—”

“I am your Hokage,” the Hokage says, and the room falls dead silent. Slowly the elder bows his head. “Sakura, please continue.”

“After he made it, he um, he used it. It hurt—a lot, and I screamed, but he said no one could hear me. He took off the bracelet, and he said if I ever looked at him wrong again, he would—” Sakura breaks off again, curling into herself, and Kakashi lets killing intent trickle out of him once again. “He didn’t stop using it, though. He just—he kept doing it, so I. I took my kunai, and when he stopped to tell me about how worthless I was, I drove it into his neck. I killed him, so he would stop.”

Silence weighs heavy over the table.

“Thank you, Sakura,” the Hokage says.

Sakura nods, still faintly shaking.

Hiashi’s face, across the table, is ashen.

This story, if true, is catastrophic for the Hyuuga. He is, as clan head, responsible for their members. The Hyuuga have built a stable coalition, through the Village elders, the civilians, and three of the major ninja clans, but no one will stand with them in this. And it isn’t just a matter of their council status, the legality of their seal. Who will let a Hyuuga have their back in a mission? Who will negotiate deals with them?

Clans have died for less.

“Hikomaro,” the Hokage says. “You may speak.”

Hikomaro’s lips twist. “She’s lying. We all knew how much she hated Higura for using his right, by the founding documents of this village, to discipline our own.”

This does not reduce the tension around the table at all. The fact the Hyuuga’s seal can be used to produce agony is, while not common knowledge, well known to everyone in the room. However, through strict discipline on their branch house members, they have kept the frequency with which it is used out of public knowledge.

“How do we even know that seal is real? The shape of our seal is common knowledge, and it would be trivial to copy it.” He makes a seal with a disdainful sneer, and Sakura crumples with a cry a moment before Kakashi drives his kunai through Hikomaro hand, and into the table. When he had entered the room, there had been five jounin between him and Hiashi. This time, however, Kakashi had been sitting across the open gap of the oval council table from Hikomaro and Hiashi. This time, there had been no one between them.

Hikomaro is screaming, hand partially crushed under the force, to say nothing of the kunai Kakashi drove through it, but behind Kakashi, Sakura stops screaming.

Everyone is suddenly on their feet, hands on their weapons.

Hiashi hasn’t moved, his eyes on Kakashi’s.

Kakashi has never been more within his rights to kill one of his fellow Leaf citizens in his entire life.

“Kakashi-kun,” the Hokage says. Kakashi looks back at his Hokage, at his student, and then the council members around him. He places his hand on Hikomaro’s, ignoring his cry of agony, and rips his kunai from the man’s hand.

Hikomaro crumbles to the ground, and Kakashi wipes his kunai off on his pants as he walks back to his place beside Sakura and helps her to her feet.

“That was a little extreme,” the Hokage says, quite falsely. “Hiashi, do you wish to take umbrage with Kakashi’s behavior before the council.”

Hiashi shakes his head.

“I would not.”

“Toushu-sama—”

“Be silent, Hikoya. Take my father, and return to the compound.”

There is silence as Hikoya helps carry his grandfather to the door.

He looks out across the table. His eyes stick on Kakashi and then again on Sakura.

As far as Kakashi can tell, Hiashi has two options.

Option one: He can recognize Sakura’s story in full. He can exile Higura from his clan posthumously for crimes against the village. Sakura will be within her rights to find a counter-seal to the Hyuuga curse seal, which she may distribute as she wishes, up to and including putting it up on the mission board, where every branch house member can see it. There is no guarantee that the physical evidence of the seal will be removed with whatever counter-seal she comes up with, which would lead to the Main House having no way to distinguish the Branch House members they could still control from the ones they couldn’t—which could very well lead to a civil war which he really can’t see the main house winning. The safest way around this is to officially outlaw the seal, and work with Sakura to develop and distribute the counter-seal. This could save his family’s life, at the very least, and some performative punishments on the more egregious members of the main house might just save their lives, too.

If Sakura is telling the truth, this is the right call. The more he fights it, the more likely the branch house revolts when they receive the counter-seal, and the main house is massacred.

It’ll cost him a dead clan member, the absolute subservience of the branch house, and quite a bit of his pride.

Option two: He can fight Sakura’s story for all he’s worth. If he wins, he gets to charge Sakura with murder on his land, and at least arrange her execution. Theoretically this means he can keep the reputation of Higura intact along with his damn slaves.

However, Sakura’s actions in Itachi’s attempted massacre and her pivotal role in Tsukasa’s return are not public knowledge, but they aren’t sealed. Kakashi has called in his favors, but Sakura hasn’t. If Sakura’s really lying, then that might damage her reputation enough no one cares, but it’s not a guarantee. Not only that, it will require him airing the Hyuuga’s dirty laundry in front of the whole damn village. By the time this is over, everyone will know Higura’s name. If Kakashi had to put money on it, odds are, Hiashi will lose every ally he has left, which will leave him wide open for the next time InoShikaChou decide to push for the elimination of his seal in the council room.

In both cases, Higura’s name will live in infamy, and the Branch House system will fall. The Main House will likely fall with it.

Very carefully not looking down at Sakura, and her brazenly bared curse seal, Kakashi thinks—it’s really almost as if someone was purposefully trying to free the Branch house members of the Hyuuga. Then Kakashi takes that thought, and he buries it nice and deep, where not even Inoichi could dig it out.

The only difference between the two options is that one of them costs Hiashi’s pride, and the other doesn’t.

Kakashi sees the moment Hiashi decides his pride is worth his whole damn clan.

“This is not proof that Sakura bears our seal,” Hiashi says, raising his hands before him, fingers spread to indicate he has no interest in testing this further. “I would like to request that a seal master confirm that her seal is truly our seal. Hyuuga, of course, has many seal masters who would be willing to verify.”

Sakura flinches beside him, and Kakashi sets his hand on her shoulder.

“Hah,” Chouza barks out without humor.

“I have already called Jiraiya, my student and Konoha’s pre-eminent seal master, to determine whether Sakura’s seal is truly your Hyuuga curse seal. I trust that will satisfy you?”

Hokage’s words might look like a question, but it is clear to everyone present that they are, in fact, not.

Hiashi makes a noncommittal shrug. “I will arrange for a branch house member to attend Jiraiya, to provide an example of a true seal.”

“That will be very useful,” the Hokage says.

“However,” Hiashi says, “even presuming that Sakura’s seal is truly our seal, there is no evidence that she did not apply it to herself, simply to distribute a counter-seal to the branch house. She has been very vocal in her opposition to it.”

Barely hidden sneers of disgust ripple through the civilian half of the room.

“I’m sorry,” Inoichi says, voice low and incredibly dangerous. “Are you suggesting a nine-year-old child branded herself with a curse seal as some kind of elaborate plot to get you to free your branch house members?”

Hiashi turns slowly to face him.

“No main house member has ever applied the curse seal to a non-Hyuuga member in our entire history. I find the idea that one of my own would do something so foolish to be far less likely,” Hiashi says, serene in the face of the growing contempt in the room around him. “Inoichi, of course, could not be used in this interrogation. His daughter is known to be close to Sakura. I would like to request she be interrogated by Morino Ibiki.”

Silence falls over the room, and Chouza shakes with fury as he takes a breath in, and then releases it.

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

“My clan is under attack,” Hiashi responds, just as calmly. “One of my kin is dead, murdered. I will do what I must in order to protect it.”

Aburame Shibi, for the first time since the beginning of the meeting, speaks from Hiashi’s left side.

“You dishonor your clan,” he says, voice quiet, uninflected in that weird, mildly inhuman way of Aburame. “There is still time, friend, to rescind your words. We can all forget this, still.”

The Aburame have been a core part of the Hyuuga coalition for the last fifty years. They keep insecticide for each member of their clan, so that their kikaichu are never turned against them. They have used it to suppress two coups in the last thirty years.

Hiashi turns to his ally and friend, and then to the council room as a whole, taking in the grimaces of the civilian coalition and even the faint ambivalence of the three elders. Even Danzou is wearing a stern face, but that is likely because he does not like having ninja under his command who are also under the control of another. Root’s continued existence is Konoha’s worst kept secret, and it has never contained a Hyuuga member.

Hiashi’s nostrils flare, and Kakashi sees a moment of indecision before he doubles down and signs his own death warrant.

“Hokage,” he says.

“It is your right,” Hokage says.

And so Hiashi’s fate is sealed.

“This is a farce,” Jiraiya says, squatting in the center of a massive seal in a large, once-pristine room. He claps a hand on Sakura’s shoulder, and she smiles faintly at him. “You know, the Hyuuga forbade Branch House members from allowing me to examine their seals. You really kicked the hornet’s nest with this one.”

Sakura touches her still-bared Hyuuga curse seal.

“This wasn’t quite what I expected to come out.”

“I’ll get it off of you, don’t worry. It’s a thousand years old, and people like to claim everyone was better and stronger back then, but let me tell you a secret,” he beckons Sakura closer and leans towards her. “They were shit at seals.”

Sakura coughs out a giggle.

“And who’s this?” Jiraiya asks, leaning forward and peeping at where Gamami is crouched by Sakura’s foot.

“Gamami,” Sakura says, moving her foot out of the way, so that Jiraiya can get a better look.

“Oh wow, you’re a little one, aren’t you?”

“I’ll kill you,” Gamami says, glaring at him, and Jiraiya blinks before bursting into laughter, leaning closer.

Gamami spits out her knife, and draws it.

Jiraiya just laughs.

“You can take him,” Sakura assures Gamami. “He’s not even a real ninja.”

Jiraiya stops, and looks up at Sakura.

“This is the second time I’ve had to leave beautiful naked women to come help you, and this is the thanks I get?”

Sakura shrugs.

“If you don’t like it, try wearing your forehead protector?” she offers.

Jiraiya barks out a laugh.

“You’re not going to try and steal it this time?”

“I’m biding my time,” Sakura says, and something like her ordinary smile peeks out from the corners of her mouth.

“Uh-huh.”

“When I steal it, I’m gonna throw it in a fire.”

“This is the symbol of Mount Myouboku, you know? I feel like you’re obligated to give it some respect.”

Sakura makes a face. She looks down at Gamami, who gives her a little shake of her head.

“Boo, nope.”

“Gamami-chan,” Jiraiya says, easily batting aside the spitball she spits at him.

“Gamami has taste,” Sakura says proudly. “Who would want to go around with ‘oil’ on their forehead.”

Jiraiya shakes his head.

“Kids these days. No respect.”

Hiashi enters the room, hand clasped on Neji’s shoulder, and Sakura’s smile drips off her face.

“Sakura,” Neji says, sounding heartbroken.

“It’s okay, Neji,” Sakura says, reaching out to take his hand. “Jiraiya will fix it—and then I’ll tell you what he did.”

A moment of irritation flashes across Hiashi’s face. Sakura raises her gaze from Neji, and glares at him defiantly.

“I trust, as Neji’s guardian, I will be allowed to observe?” Hiashi says, not even acknowledging Sakura.

Jiraiya’s face hardens, his buffoon mask falling away. He points at the corner. “Yeah, you can park your ass over there.”

Hiashi, making a face that says he is being treated just terribly unfairly, does so. When he reaches the corner he looks pointedly at Kakashi.

“I like Kakashi, so he can stand where he damn well pleases,” Jiraiya says, his smile an unpleasant slash across his face. Then he turns away from Hiashi’s moment of shock, and kneels before Neji.

“Hey, kid,” Jiraiya says.

“Jiraiya-sama,” Neji says.

“There’s no need to be that polite,” Sakura corrects him, and Jiraiya turns to glare at her. “If he keeps calling you kid, you can just call him old man, and he’ll stop.”

Jiraiya pushes her away, towards the corner opposite Hiashi, his massive body still solidly between them. Hiashi does not fail to notice this, and his lips twist.

“Jiraiya-sama,” Neji repeats.

Jiraiya laughs. “Wow, is that what interacting with a normal child feels like? Maybe I don’t hate kids after all.”

Sakura makes a farting noise at that, and Jiraiya ignores her, raising a hand to Neji’s seal and brushing his fingers against it.

Neji flinches, momentarily, before moving his head back in Jiraiya’s direction.

“Sorry,” Jiraiya says, and it doesn’t sound like he’s apologizing for making Neji flinch. Neji shrugs, like it’s nothing, and Jiraiya makes a bit of a face. He quickly gets over it and jerks his chin at one of the two loci in the massive seal array they’re all standing on. “Can I get you to lay down there for me, kid?”

Neji does as he is told, and Jiraiya moves over to squat beside him. “Yeah, just like that.” He produces an inkwell from the scroll on his back, and Neji flinches more visibly this time.

This time, though, Jiraiya is kind enough not to acknowledge it.

“I’ve just got to connect your—” Jiraiya’s face twists in disgust “—curse seal to this array so I can take a look at how it works.”

“You don’t need to know how it works,” Hiashi says, stepping out of his corner.

Jiraiya raises his gaze to Hiashi, and Hiashi’s steps falter at whatever expression he finds there. Then Jiraiya laughs, standing.

“Well, in that case!” he says. “The outward marks are clearly identical. That’s my considered impression as a seal master. They look the same, so they are the same. Are we done here?”

Hiashi’s face twists.

“Is that… not what you wanted, Hiashi? How, exactly, did you think I was going to verify the seals are the same, if not just by looking at them?”

“I didn’t agree to this.”

“Well, shit, Hiashi. Sucks to suck. You can go talk to the Hokage. I’ll stay here, keep your boy Neji here company.” He pats Neji’s shoulder.

Hiashi takes a deep breath, composes himself. “That seal is clan property. You cannot reveal anything you learn from Neji’s seal.”

Jiraiya smiles.

“Sure,” he says. Hiashi looks relieved, but Kakashi knows better. “Her seal on the other hand—” Jiraiya says, pointing to Sakura, “I can shout that from the rooftops. Write it down and nail it to the damn mission board. If they happen to be the same seal, well damn, you shouldn’t have gone off and started using it on people you don’t—” Jiraiya’s face twists “—well, own.”

Kakashi and Hiashi both flinch at that.

“If she stole it from us, then—”

“What I see with my eyes is my own, regardless of whether its stolen property or not. The Uchiha founded this damn village, Hiashi. Y’all managed to get an exemption for your curse seal on your people, but there’s no way anyone will let you claim Sakura as your own.”

Silence reigns.

When Hiashi doesn’t respond, Jiraiya continues, “Pick your poison, Hiashi. No one in this entire damn village is going to let you examine Sakura with your own seal masters.”

There is another long moment of silence from Hiashi.

Hiashi has taken it on faith Higura is innocent. In that case, either Sakura’s seal is fake, or someone else has already stolen his jutsu. To say nothing of—

There is no counter-seal

“Fine. But keep in mind that if their seals do not match, anything you say will be an s-class crime.”

Jiraiya hums, painting Neji’s seal into the seal array around them.

“It’s okay it’s okay,” he says, under his voice, humming all the while. When he’s done, he pats Neji’s chest. “Great job, kid. Just stay still a little longer.”

Jiraiya tromps over to the second locus of the seal array and sets himself down.

“Alright, everyone off the seal array! Hiashi, get back in that damn corner where you belong.”

Everyone gets off the seal array, and Hiashi moves back into the damn corner where he belongs, looking a bit like he’s sucked on a lemon, but lacking the political power in this particular arena to tell one of Konoha’s Sannin just where he can shove it.

Jiraiya looks at Hiashi out of the corner of his eye.

“One thing you seem to be forgetting, Hiashi,” he says with a smile, setting his hands down on the activation points, “is that some things—some things are worth dying for.”

Hiashi’s eyes widen, but before he can do anything, the seal array goes up in a blazing array of colors. Neji, at the second locus, tenses, eyes clenched shut. A moment passes, whatever pain he’s waiting for doesn’t come, and he slowly relaxes.

“Yeah, just like that,” Jiraiya says, eyes closed.

By his side, Sakura sucks in a gasp, and Kakashi glances down to her.

“He’s using natural energy, Sensei,” she says to him.

Kakashi briefly activates Obito's Sharingan, and finds the orange of Jiraiya’s natural energy, spreading from his hands, and out through the seal around him. Across the room, Hiashi has his Byakugan activated.

Gamami leaps from Sakura’s feet, over the whirling mass of the seal array, and crash-lands onto the top of Jiraiya’s head.

Jiraiya’s head bobs slightly under the impact, more cushioning Gamami’s fall than from the impact itself.

“You gonna help me out, Gamami?”

She digs her hands into his hair, and enters that bizarre state of stillness, raging orange energy flowing away from Jiraiya and then back into him again, smoother, stiller. The orange energy that was boiling from his hand cools a bit, spreading faster, more evenly through the array.

“Gran and Gramps always say you can’t do anything by yourself,” Gamami says.

“I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive,” Jiraiya says, features slowly shifting, warts blooming on his nose, teeth sharpening.

“And I’m still better at it than you.”

Jiraiya laughs, a low, motionless chuckle.

“Thanks, Gamami. This is a lot easier with your help.”

Gamami says nothing, just flickering her chakra in that way she does at Sakura when Gamami’s in Sage mode.

Kakashi watches as the orange energy in the array seems to draw in a rainbow of different colors of energy from the air, the energy flow between Jiraiya and Neji’s seal ebbing and pulsing through the array, drawing in different colors of the rainbow, until finally the energy all starts to walk back towards Jiraiya. The lines around Neji’s head go dark first, then in a wave around him, the colors and light vanishing, a line of darkness washing through the seal until the last of it vanishes back into Jiraiya, and he breathes in deeply, eyes closed.

And then Jiraiya begins to laugh.

“Oh, Hashirama,” he says, shaking his head. “You sick son of a bitch.”

He lifts his hands from the seal array with a sigh.

“I had always wondered,” he says, mostly to himself.

“Does Tsunade know what you think of her great-grandmother?” Kakashi says, unable to help himself.

Jiraiya checks Gamami’s place on his head, turns to Kakashi.

“Everything I know about the Senju I learned from Tsunade, Kakashi,” he says, smiling slyly, and—

Oh.

Kakashi carefully keeps his realization from his face, and drags his eyebrows up instead.

“So the next time I’m in—” where was she again, Cloud? “—Cloud, I can just tell her that you said her great-grandma is a bitch?”

“I remember you being less obnoxious,” Jiraiya says, moving to crouch beside Neji and removing the ink from his forehead in a sealless water jutsu. “You’ve been spending too much time with that student of yours.”

He helps Neji to his feet. “Great job, kid. Go play with Kakashi.” He pushes Neji in Kakashi’s direction and beckons to Sakura.

He’s smiling at her, and she’s grinning a bit back at him. Jiraiya is still a mildly revolting frog man, so his smile, full of sharp teeth, is really something.

Kakashi rests his hand on Neji’s shoulder as Jiraiya draws Sakura’s seal into the array around them. Sakura waves at Gamami, who sympathetically pulses her chakra back in return.

It’s faster the second time, either Gamami’s influence or Jiraiya’s experience. He pulls his hands from the seal array with a sigh.

“Damn, brat.”

“Sakura,” she corrects, sitting up and rubbing the ink off her forehead. The curse seal, of course, does not come away.

“I’m sorry,” Jiraiya says, and she shrugs, a little helplessly. He opens his mouth, to say something more, but something in Sakura’s expression stops him.

“Jiraiya, your verdict?” Hiashi asks, as he steps out of the corner.

“It’s the Hyuuga curse seal. The seals are identical. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume you’d sealed them together.”

Kakashi notes, and appreciates, the use of the word you.

Hiashi breathes in, clearly trying to find a politically appropriate way to tell Jiraiya he’s full of shit.

“You doubt my honor, Hiashi?” Jiraiya asks, pulling himself to his full height, and in Sage mode, his every word echoes through the fabric of the world, shaking the floor and the walls and the village itself. “I swear, upon my honor as a seal master. I swear, upon the sacred oil of Mount Myouboku. I swear, upon the First Tree.”

Kakashi can feel the truth of Jiraiya’s words in his soul, which is something he wasn’t even sure he still had.

Hiashi, clearly, feels the same. He turns to Sakura again. Another round of indecision plays over his face. Kakashi can see a moment of remorse on it before it hardens.

“Neji,” Hiashi says, and Neji brushes off Kakashi’s hand, still on his shoulder. He crosses the room to Hiashi, and his and Sakura’s fingers brush as they pass each other. Hiashi stops at the edge of the room, and bows stiffly to Jiraiya.

“Thank you for your service to the Hyuuga clan,” he says, like every word pains him.

“The Hyuuga clan,” Jiraiya says, “is a pillar of Konoha. I have not forgotten what the Hyuuga did for me, in my hour of need. I am forever in their debt.”

His words still pound with that heaviness of Sage mode, and there is no chance Hiashi missed Jiraiya’s use of the word their, and not your.

Hiashi rises stiffly and leaves the room, his hand on Neji’s shoulder.

Jiraiya looks down at Sakura and raises an eyebrow.

They are under surveillance. Nothing happens in the village that a Hyuuga cannot see. He has worked with many who could read not just lips but tongues, throats, lungs.

Nowhere outside of a blood room is safe.

Jiraiya plants one massive hand on Sakura’s hair and ruffles it, disturbing her forehead protector. He crouches beside her, as she tries to get her forehead protector back in place on the top of her head.

“Just a little longer, kid,” he says, and Sakura nods.

Sakura is jumpy, the morning she is to go to T&I. This makes sense.

She’s going to her own village’s Torture and Interrogation unit.

Fuck Hiashi through a thousand hells.

She’s jumping at shadows, her shoulders hunched, eyes darting. Her forehead protector, for once, is covering her forehead—hiding her seal.

Kakashi places his hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her, but she flinches away from his touch, and he snatches his hand back.

Fuck.

Kakashi can’t go in the room with Ibiki. He has to stay outside. T&I regulations, which Morino Ibiki will not bend for him.

He crouches beside her.

“You don’t have to do this—”

“No!” Sakura shouts. “I just want this to be over. I don’t want to have to be scared anymore! I see them everywhere, Sensei,” she says, and Kakashi takes a step back, shocked “It hurt,” she continues. “It hurt so much. If they win, then… then they’ll be able to do it whenever they want.”

Kakashi opens his mouth but finds no words to say.

Sakura turns away, still jumping at shadows.

“Let’s go,” she says quietly.

Slowly, Kakashi stands and follows her.

Hiashi is waiting for them at T&I, and when Sakura sees him, her body shakes with a full-body flinch.

Hiashi looks as surprised by this reaction as Kakashi, Kakashi’s hand on Sakura’s shoulder as she huddles against his legs.

“You have no right to be here,” Kakashi says, and his voice is hard.

He thought—

He thought.

He doesn’t let it show on his face.

“I—”

“Leave, or I’ll make you.”

Slowly, Hiashi turns and leaves. Kakashi holds Sakura against his legs until he’s out of sight.

“Sakura,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head.

Slowly, they move forward, into T&I, and then down, down, down.

Morino Ibiki is waiting for them, scarred head hidden from view. He looks at Kakashi, and then down, down, down, at Sakura.

Although his face remains passive and stoic, he takes a deep breath in, then out again.

He pushes the door behind him open.

“Come on in, Sakura. I just need to ask you a few questions. As long as you answer them truthfully, this can all be over quickly.”

Sakura looks briefly up at Kakashi, down at her feet, and then at Ibiki.

“Okay,” she says, voice small. She steps forward in small, slow, steps, like she’s waiting for someone to call her back.

No one does.

She steps over the threshold.

Ibiki looks down at her, over at Kakashi, and then closes the door.

It closes with a booming finality, leaving Kakashi alone in the corridor, surrounded by nothing but silence.

You’d expect T&I to be loud, but it’s not. Every room is soundproofed and chakra-sealed. This is probably one of the few places in the entire village the Byakugan can’t see.

Minutes tick by, slow and agonizing, and Kakashi can’t even find it in him to pretend to read. He has porn and pirate ninja manga in his pockets, but—

All he does is look at that damn steel door and listen to the ticking clock in his brain. The one that lets him perfectly time missions, say in thirty-two seconds, and actually do it in thirty-two seconds.

He worked hard on it.

It’s a tricky thing to get right.

He’s really wishing he hadn’t, right now.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Five minutes.

Eleven minutes.

Twenty-seven minutes and fifty-seven seconds.

The door opens, and with it comes a torrent of sound.

Sobbing.

He is standing before Ibiki in a moment, filling the door, right in Ibiki’s face.

Ibiki looks intensely unimpressed.

“This is why people aren’t allowed to wait outside during interrogations,” he says. “I didn’t do anything to her, except make her remember things she didn’t want to remember.” In one hand he has a file folder, clenched tightly closed in his gloved hand. “Move.” It takes Kakashi a moment to get his limbs to listen to him. Finally, he steps aside. Ibiki steps past him. “I’m done. When she gets herself together, she can leave.”

Kakashi does not ask Ibiki what the result of his interrogation was, because he knows Ibiki won’t answer him. He steps in, and the door closes with a settling, deafening finality.

“Why did I even think this was a good idea,” Sakura says, hands dug deep into her pink hair, tears streaming down her face. “All I’ve done is hurt. What good is being a ninja when all you can do is hurt.”

“Sakura—”

“Shut up!” she yells at him. “This is your fault! For letting me think I could be something!” She clutches her face in her hands. “I just wanted to help,” she says in a small voice. “I just—I just wanted to help.”

“I know.”

Sakura nods miserably. Slowly she raises her hand to her head, and drags her forehead protector from her face.

“I don’t even deserve—” The forehead protector comes loose, and her entire demeanor changes. Her tears stop, the grief and terror drain out of her face. For an instant, he sees the Sakura he knows, the Sakura who smiled conspiratorially with Jiraiya, the Sakura who would walk around with her forehead protector in her hair, baring her curse seal for all to see.

It’s only an instant, and then she has herself scrunched up and crying again, but—Kakashi knows Sakura. He knows that this time, it’s false. “I don’t even deserve this,” she says, voice hoarse from crying.

Kakashi restarts his heart. He does his best to show none of his emotion on his face, keeping it evenly on sympathetic.

What the fuck did Sakura do?

Kakashi knows of exactly one technique that does that—that can cause that kind of behavior, personality changing like flipping a switch—and it’s—

It’s a Yamanaka clan technique.

The Triggered Implanted Memory technique.

What the fuck did Sakura do?

Kakashi takes her forehead protector, and raises it to her head. She flinches for a moment, but the tenseness in her face subsides when he angles it to leave her forehead exposed.

“You do,” he says. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Slowly, she smiles, splitting her tear-stained, snot smeared face.

“You really think so? Did I—Did I do the right thing?”

Kakashi takes in a breath.

The Hyuuga can’t see them here, but T&I can, which is really just as bad, although they’re likely to have different enough pieces of the picture, he can—

“Some missions are worth dying for,” he says.

Sakura wipes the snot from her face with the back of her hand, and then, of course, wipes it on his shirt.

“That’s what I thought,” she says. “Some missions are worth dying for.”

This.

Fucking.

Student.

She gave herself the fucking Hyuuga curse seal, just to end it for good.

How many idiot fucking children put their lives at risk for this?

Why was it them, and not him? Why was it them, and not the adults?

A genin and who knows how many fucking academy students.

He—he and InoShikaChou—could have run Hiashi through the same damn farce, and they just—never did.

No one was willing to take the seal on themselves to remove it before.

He stands, and extends his hand to her. She takes it, and pulls herself to her feet, still sniffling, just a little, shoulders still hunched, because she’s got an image to uphold.

Somewhere, under all of his irritation and fury at Sakura risking her damn life on a something that could kill her in a dozen stupid-ass different ways, he’s proud of her.

He can never tell her.

There are some things too dangerous to ever say out loud.

But fuck—he’s so fucking proud of her.

One day later finds them in the council room again, on the left side of the Hokage. They are here to officially hear the results of Jiraiya’s tests and Ibiki’s interview.

It hasn’t started yet, and Hiashi is already ashen on the table across from them. But—ashen is perhaps not the right word. He was ashen last time—this is different. Today he is pale, worn, drawn. Today, at his shoulders are two jounin members of the branch house and not two members of the main house.

Kanna.

And Kenji.

“Jiraiya?” the Hokage asks, and Jiraiya unrolls himself from the lethargic sprawl he had been in by the Hokage’s right side into a mountain of a ninja that is all hard planes and fury.

“I used the Sixteen-Circle and Five-lines seal, a common diagnostic tool, infused with natural energy to get a clearer picture. With it, I have been able to distinguish otherwise identical seals, such as the Nested Rat seal and the Five Ravens seal, to which the Hokage, as well as the Aburame clan head and the textile guild master, can attest.” Jiraiya gestures to them, and they each nod in turn. “Using this method, I found that the Hyuuga curse seal on Sakura and my Hyuuga curse seal exemplar, Neji, were literally identical. If I did not know better, I would assume they had been branded on the same day. Not only were their seals identical, but so was the damage done to the surrounding chakra pathways.” Jiraiya’s lips twist with disgust.

Hiashi swallows heavily.

“Thank you, Jiraiya,” the Hokage says.

Jiraiya doesn’t sit down so much as drop down, shaking the floor as his bulk crashes into the chair.

“Ibiki?”

Ibiki stands. “My full report is not available, due to the age and innocence of the interviewed individual. The Hokage, however, has seen it in full, and can attest to the veracity of my claims when I say that there are some inconsistencies between what was presented to this council and the information I obtained, but nothing that is out of the ordinary for a traumatized child.”

Branded.

Traumatized child.

Nobody is pulling punches today—

And nobody is at Hiashi’s side, to protest their language.

Slowly, Hiashi drops his head into his hands.

“Are you satisfied, Hiashi?” the Hokage asks, and his voice is hard.

Sakura, where she sits next to Kakashi, has her shoulders hunched, looking appropriately meek, despite the brazenness of her bared seal. On her folded hands sits Gamami, possessed of that disturbing stillness that Kakashi is sure would manifest as swirling orange if he had Obito's Sharingan activated.

Hiashi’s shoulders sag.

He knew.

From the moment Ibiki left T&I to deliver his results to the Hokage, he knew.

Ibiki could have hidden it, shared it in secret, but why bother? It would all be public, regardless.

“Yes,” Hiashi says, head bowed.

“You do not dispute that a member of your house tried to enslave another member of Konoha?”

Hiashi’s shoulders freeze, and he lifts his face to the Hokage.

There are many ways to phrase that.

Unauthorized clan jutsu use.

Inappropriate cursed seal application.

The use of the word enslave means that not only is the Hokage not on Hiashi’s side—he never was.

(Kakashi had wondered why he had asked A about the possibility of Tsukasa—)

(It was nothing but performative, they didn’t have any leverage over A to actually force him to do anything.)

(Well—now he knows.)

Hiashi looks around the room, but he has no friends in this room any longer.

“Yes.”

“This member of your house—Hyuuga Higura—do you recognize he has committed an S-class crime?”

A pause.

“Yes.”

“Do you exile him from the Hyuuga clan for that crime?”

Another, longer pause. Hiashi looks at the hard faces that surround him once more.

“Yes.”

“Let it be noted,” the Hokage said.

To his left, the notary repeats, “It is so noted.”

The Hokage isn’t done.

“The charter recognized your right to keep your clan traditions when you joined Konoha, up to and including using your traditional clan curse upon your kin as you see fit,” he says, and there is movement in the room at the Hokage classifying the Hyuuga curse seal as a clan curse, and not as a seal. “Up to and including classifying any investigation into the curse and how to remove it as theft. In the application of your curse to an outsider, you have forfeited that right. Do you recognize Sakura’s right to investigate the curse placed upon her, and what would be necessary to remove it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you recognize her right to disseminate that information as she sees fit?”

For the first time, Kakashi realizes that Hiashi looks a lot less like a clan leader, with his two seconds, and more like a prisoner, with two guards. Kanna and Kenji are the two most powerful members of the Hyuuga clan.

They do not wear their forehead protectors over their seals. They instead have their forehead protectors tied into their hair, their cursed seals on full display, just like Sakura across from them.

Hiashi looks at Kanna and Kenji out of the corners of his eyes.

“Yes,” he says.

“Let it be noted,” the Hokage intones.

“It is so noted.”

“Do you recognize that any act to activate the curse that has been illegally placed upon Haruno Sakura as a crime in and of itself, equal to Higura’s original crime in its application?”

“Yes,” Hiashi says, this time, and for the first time, without hesitation.

For a moment, silence reigns.

“Do you have anything you wish to add to the record on this matter?” the Hokage asks.

Slowly, Hiashi rises in his seat and turns to look at Sakura, for the first time since the meeting began.

He places his hands on the table, and bows deeply, head to its surface.

“I’m sorry.”

He straightens up, shakes himself faintly, and then sits back down.

Nothing but two words, but Kakashi hasn’t heard Hiashi apologize in his entire life.

“Haruno Sakura,” the Hokage says. “do you have anything you wish to add to the record on this matter?”

“Yes,” Sakura says, standing. She crawls over the table, because she has no sense of decorum, and walks across the empty center to where Hiashi sits, almost directly across from them.

“Upon the first council meeting of Konoha,” Sakura says, her voice pitched to carry, “Hashirama objected to the Hyuuga curse seal. In the first vote of its legality, he was the lone dissenter. For every council for the rest of his life, he would bring it to the table, and he would be shut down.”

She draws a scroll from a seal beneath her dress, and holds it in her hands. It looks old and is sealed closed with Hashirama’s seal.

Where the hell had she gotten that scroll?

“He had hope that there would come a day when it could be removed,” she says, looking down upon the scroll in her hands. “This technique healed me when Itachi burned out all my tenketsu—” she looks back up at Hiashi. “But he made it to heal the Hyuuga. I can give this scroll to the Hyuuga, and if I do, they’ll kill you.”

Hiashi flinches.

She sets the scroll on the table before him. “But if you give it to them, maybe they won’t.”

Hiashi looks up at her, and Kakashi sees Hiashi realize that, in fact, he’d been right in the first place. Sakura played him, played Higura, played Ibiki. She lied—Higura never sealed her. She sealed herself.

For this.

To give him this.

To make him give his clan this.

“Can you activate your Byakugan for me?”

Slowly, Hiashi raises his hand, and his Byakugan activates.

Sakura raises her gaze to Kanna and Kenji behind him. “Kanna-san, Kenji-san,” she says. “Could you activate your Byakugan, too?”

Kanna smiles faintly, and they both activate their Byakugan signlessly.

Sakura draws an inkwell and a brush from a seal beneath her dress, and place the inkwell on the table before her.

She tilts her head back and carefully draws the Seal of False Chakra on her forehead with the ease of long practice. For the first time, Kakashi sees its true form. The seal had looked so bizarre, on Sakura’s unmarked forehead. Stretches of pale skin, where there could have been lines. On top of the Hyuuga curse, it makes perfect sense, every stroke of the Hyuuga curse seal filling what had been empty on her unmarked forehead. The seal flares and the Hyuuga curse seal flares with it. She re-seals her inkwell and brush.

Sakura closes her eyes, flinching faintly as she destroys and re-creates her chakra pathways. It takes two minutes, but with every second that passes, all three pairs of Byakugan eyes widen a little further. Finally, Sakura opens her eyes. “It’s really hard if you don’t have the Byakugan, because you have to see your chakra system from the inside. But, you can see it, so I think it would be easy for you—which makes sense, because he made it for you.” She reaches up, and wipes away the Seal of False Chakra, but not the Hyuuga curse seal.

“The mark doesn’t go away,” she says, a bit sheepishly. She looks back over her shoulder. “Um, Hokage-sama?”

“Yes, Sakura?”

“If I give someone permission to use one of the hand seals for the Hyuuga curse seal, would they get in trouble if they used one?”

The silence of everyone assembled is deafening.

“No.”

Sakura turns back to Hiashi.

“If you would?” she asks.

Slowly, he makes the seal for pain. On either side of him, Kanna and Kenji both tense.

Nothing happens.

Kanna slowly raises her hand to her lips.

“By the Sage,” she says. “We can be free.”

Sakura nods. “Yeah,” she says. “You can.”

Hiashi just looks down upon his hands, and at the scroll before him.

Sakura turns around, and then immediately turns back.

“Oh, and um,” Sakura looks awkward. “If you uhh, destroy it, I have the scroll memorized. Jiraiya, too. Don’t do that. Please.” She pauses. “The seal has already killed enough Hyuuga, I think.”

Behind Hiashi, Kanna speaks. “We’ll remember that, Sakura,” she says. “You have done the Hyuuga a great service.”

Sakura flashes a little smile, and turns back to Kakashi.

She smiles like she just won the whole world and does not pull her forehead protector back down to cover the now-empty curse seal on her forehead.

Chapter Text

“Kakashi, if you make me late, I’m gonna set your stupid books on fire! All of them! Including the weird orange ones!”

See.

Look at that killing intent.

Kakashi is a great teacher.

“I’m gonna get Gamami to spit on them, too! I’ll use them to light your apartment on fire!”

Kakashi wants to see another nine-year-old in the village capable of producing such strong, directed killing intent. There’s a civilian walking next to them, and he’s still conscious!

Like, not really happy about it.

But conscious!

If he were feeling what Kakashi was feeling, he’d have passed out—and also have probably shit himself on the way down.

“When do they ever start these things on time, anyways?”

“I dunno? Maybe when they’re Hyuuga!” Sakura shouts at the top of her lungs.

Oh, there he goes. Poor civilian.

Sakura is leaking flower petals as she’s leaking killing intent. Kakashi can see her itching to leave him behind, replace herself through the trees lining each side of the street.

“You just go on ahead,” he says. “I need to stop—smell the roses.”

“He wants you there, you stupid—”

Oh well, in that case.

A moment later he has arrived at the gates of the Hyuuga compound, Sakura tucked neatly under one arm. She escapes by use of his family's incredibly secret and powerful jutsu. It can kill jounin. She’s used it to kill jounin.

She uses it to get out of a glorified headlock.

Gamami only barely avoids face-planting on the ground after Sakura disappears.

“Sorry we’re late,” Kakashi says. “Sakura just couldn’t get out of bed this morning.”

Kakashi easily dodges her futile grabs at his forehead protector in her rage, and bats her away from his pockets.

She stops, standing between him and Kimiko, who is smiling benignly like this is just an everyday occurrence.

“It’s not my fault,” she hisses back at Kimiko.

“Of course not,” Kimiko says, face grave.

She now wears her forehead protector around her neck, her Hyuuga curse seal bared to the elements. How she feels about the little farce Sakura led her clan through, Kakashi has no idea.

He’s never known Kimiko to have an expression she didn’t want to have.

Sakura stalks up to him, and he watches her warily. She lunges for him, and when he blocks her easily, she smiles. “Kai,” she hisses, and then vanishes into a poof of flower petals as all of the seals on his person break open.

You know.

Kakashi’s pretty sure other jounin have normal, adorable genin. Genin who just try to steal their forehead protector, or stab them a little, or set them on fire.

Why did he have to get the genin who can break storage seals?

Gamami smirks viciously at him from where she sits at his feet as he stuffs all of his kunai, pornography, and all of his other ninja essentials back into his seals.

Kakashi resists the urge to kick her smug toad face.

“Also, you’re not late. You’re right on time.” Kimiko bows deeply to him, and then again to Gamami. “Welcome, Hatake-san, Gamami-chan. Neji will be very pleased you’ve come.”

She leans down and picks Gamami up, which Gamami inexplicably allows, looking quite smug as Kimiko carries her fat little toad body.

It’s been three weeks since Sakura led the whole damn village around by the nose. Because the Hyuuga are extraordinarily extra in all things, they have decided to make a grand little production of the removal of the branch seals. At this rate it’s going to take five years, he’s pretty sure.

For the most part, outsiders are not welcome, because, again, Hyuuga. He was there for Kanna’s, though. He suspects he’ll be there for Tsukasa’s as well.

But that’s probably not going to be any time soon—they say Tsukasa hasn’t activated his Byakugan since he returned, which means he’s learning his chakra system the old-fashioned way.

Not everyone can be Haruno Sakura.

Kimiko leads him through the complex to the Hyuuga grand courtyard. At the head of it sits Hyuuga Toumi, Hiashi on her left and Kanna on her right Kanna.

Toumi became clan head three days after Sakura handed Hiashi Hashirama’s scroll, as a compromise between Main House traditionalists and Branch House radicals.

She’s branch house, but she’s also Hiashi’s second cousin. Kakashi’s pretty sure they’re all like third cousins at the most, but people seemed very certain that she was much closer to the main house than most branch house members.

She also broke her seal fifty years ago, but kept it secret. That makes her somewhat problematic for both sides.

Like every good compromise, nobody is happy.

Least of all Toumi, he’s pretty sure.

She’s also conveniently ancient. Picking her dooms them to a decade of bad leadership, at worst.

Kimiko stops at the edge of the courtyard, sets Gamami on the ground and bows to Kakashi, Gamami, and then, most deeply, to Toumi.

Toumi acknowledges Kimiko with a curt nod, and Kimiko leaves. Kakashi watches her go.

He turns back to the assembled Hyuuga clan, and finds Neji at the center of it all, knelt in his full ceremonial finery before Toumi, and Sakura really not far enough to his right, crawled most of the way out of the first row of the assembled Hyuuga and whispering to Neji in a voice that really isn’t much of a whisper. The Hyuuga on both sides of her are starting to twitch.

Gamami crashes into Sakura’s head, and Sakura stream of hissed non-whispers don’t break of pause, despite ten pounds of frog crashing rather violently into her head.

Kakashi kneels in the outermost ring because he’s here for Neji, but really—he gets the feeling he isn’t here for support.

He’s here so that Neji can rub his face in it.

He pulls out a copy of Icha-Icha, relishing the scowls and glares of the Hyuuga around him. Really, Kakashi loves the Hyuuga.

As he pretends to read, he glances over the assembled clan members.

You can tell who’s unsealed themselves and who hasn’t by whether they cover their Hyuuga curse seal or bare it with pride. Well, pride, or, in one case, with fairly obvious irritation.

That case:

Hiashi.

He had sealed himself upon returning to the Hyuuga compound, and then unsealed himself the next day, in full view of the whole clan, as proof of the scroll’s legitimacy. Kakashi had been present, as witness.

Please, he had said, do not seal my children.

Hinata and Hanabi sit not too far from Sakura, unsealed.

A couple minutes and a couple more outsiders later, all of whom give Kakashi looks of bewilderment and mild disgust, Toumi clears her throat, and the courtyard goes silent.

“We gather here today to bear witness to the unsealing of our kin, Neji, only son of Hizashi, who gave his life for our clan,” she says, her old voice not much more than a whisper. “I still do not think these productions serve the clan or our kin, but I have been overruled. However, I’m still the clan head, so each time we do this, I get to say my piece.”

She leans forward, towards Neji, blind eyes pointing unerringly towards him in that way Toumi’s eyes are wont to do.

“Neji, I unsealed myself in private, where none could judge me for my failures, of which I had many. I am not alone—Kenji and Hikoyuki and Sue did the same. They are all pillars of our clan. If you do this in private, I will permit no judgement upon you. This is a private affair. Others cannot heal us, we must heal ourselves, and that is best done behind closed doors.”

Neji sits, back straight and defiant before her. She waits for a moment before sagging a bit.

“Stubborn boy,” she says, under her breath, but still clearly audible in the dead silence of the courtyard. “Come here, then.”

Neji moves forward until his knees touch the stone dais Toumi is perched upon.

Toumi unhunches as far as she is able, which is really not very far, and extends her claws to Neji. He bows his head into her hands, closing the last of the distance, and all over her body, the veins of the Byakugan stand up against her skin.

After a moment, the veins fade back away, and she picks up an inkwell from her side and slowly draws The Seal of False Chakra over Neji’s curse seal.

When she is finished, she sets the brush by her side, and, once again, the veins of the Byakugan stand up across her skin.

“The seal is complete. You may begin.”

Neji’s shoulders tense as he begins to melt away the chakra pathways branded by the Hyuuga curse seal. They tense again as he rebuilds them.

“Again,” she says.

Neji’s shoulder tense again.

“Again,” she repeats.

Sakura made this look easy, but it is important to remember, Kakashi thinks—Sakura’s bullshit. Sakura is just very intense bullshit.

“Again,” and “Again,” and “Again,” and—

“Yes, just like that. Good job, child. You are free.”

Toumi reaches forward, and wipes the Seal of False Chakra away.

Neji’s shoulders shake, and then he crumples right there before Toumi, his head falling to his knees as his shoulders are wracked with tears. Sakura is immediately at his side, her hand on his back as Gamami jumps onto his head.

Kakashi looks away, as do most of the adult Hyuuga assembled, but Toumi does not, her blind eyes boring down into Neji, her face neither comforting nor scolding.

“Are you okay?” Kakashi hears Sakura ask, because, as everyone knows, Sakura is physically incapable of whispering.

“Yes,” Neji says. Then, in a stronger voice. “Yes.” His sobs turn to laughter, and he lifts his head, forcing Gamami to reposition herself to the top of his head.

He turns to Sakura, face tear stained—

“I’m free.”

It takes Neji a minute to get himself back together, and then he is as pristine as he always is, his expression smooth and even.

Toumi clears her throat, and Sakura hurriedly scrambles back to where she had leapt from.

There is a long moment of awkward silence when everyone looks at Neji and Toumi, and then at the toad perched on the top of Neji’s head.

Again, Toumi clears her throat. Sakura looks around confusedly.

What could be wrong? her face says.

Everyone always walks around with toads on their head.

It’s Neji who actually does something about it, carefully lifting Gamami from his head, whispering “Thank you,” and then holding her out towards Sakura.

Gamami leaps the rest of the way but misses the top of Sakura’s head, hitting her full on the face instead.

Kakashi fails to suppress a snicker, and gets even more Hyuuga glares.

Good times, good times.

“Now that your seal has been removed, the Hyuuga curse seals of our kin will recognize your blood as a member of the Main House. Do you swear to never use the seals of your kin against them?”

“I swear it,” Neji says vehemently. “My kin need never fear me.”

“Although you did not need to unseal yourself before us, you did so. You give hope to the children of our clan who cannot yet unseal themselves, and who can look to you and see that it is possible for them to break their seals. You give strength to us all, in seeing one more of our kin freed from our seal. You honor us, Neji. Thank you.”

Neji bows, head to the stone.

“You honor me, Toumi-sama.”

“I look forward to serving the Hyuuga with you, cousin,” she says.

“And I you.”

Toumi nods once more to Neji before turning to the rest of her clan.

“It is not easy. Do not be deceived by the actions of Hiashi, Kanna, and Sakura, who broke their seal in minutes. You are not failures because it takes you weeks, or months. It took me five years. Remember that it does not matter how long it takes you to break it. Once it is broken, it stays broken. It is not impossible.” She surveys her clan with her blind eyes. “My door is always open to you. No matter how long it takes, I will be behind you.”

Toumi bows her head, and the Hyuuga assembled bow with her.

“I live to serve,” she says, and the Hyuuga echo her.

“I live to serve.”

Toumi straightens, and her clan straightens with her.

“Divided we are weak, but together we are unbreakable,” and her clan echoes her, their voice as one.

Toumi nods, and then pushes herself with a pained grunt to her feet.

“Thank you for your attendance today. You are dismissed.”

The adults clear out as Toumi leaves, but Sakura doesn’t. She drags Neji through the complex like she lives there, stepping around corners without looking, matching Neji step for step. Kakashi watches them go with half an eye, before following after them, faintly mystified.

As they walk, Sakura whispers to him, “So I’ve been thinking, I make these, right?” She spreads her fingers, like she’s spinning something between them, like she did when she was first learning to manually throw chakra strings. “You could try to cut them?”

“I tried that,” he says, as they duck into a courtyard.

“You’re really good at this—if you know where I’m going, then you could cut them right before I use them, and I’m like, thrown back, it’s really bad.”

Kakashi watches in mildly stunned silence, as Sakura tries to teach Neji how to break her most important technique.

They reach the sparring ground and spread out. Sakura notices him then and glares at him.

“Sensei, you can go,” she says, flicking her fingers at him.

He raises his eyebrows.

“You didn’t want to help Neji before, so—shoo.”

Neji fails to swallow a smirk.

“I just got to a really good part of my book,” Kakashi says, leaning up against the pillar beside him, holding his book a little closer to his face. Slowly, he slides to the ground. “And my legs seem to have… fallen asleep? I may never walk again, Sakura.”

She glares at him before apparently deciding that he’s not worth the trouble. She takes Gamami from her head, and tosses her in Kakashi’s direction with a “Get him,” before turning back to Neji.

Kakashi lies there, slapping away oil spitballs from his precious books, and watches.

Sakura vanishes into a poof of flower petals, and Neji spins, blowing the nearest petals away. Two clones appear behind him, and he dives between them instead of going for either. Sakura appears behind him, and when he spins to face her, he takes a punch to the kidney when she swaps through what are probably chakra strings around half the courtyard ground to get behind him.

He winces, and Sakura makes a low, keening noise.

“Again,” he says.

Again, Sakura vanishes into flower petals, and three clones appear around Neji. He dodges through them all, parrying attacks that aren’t there and driving his fist through empty chests. His hands occasionally lash out at nothing, but Sakura keeps finding her way back to his side, scoring glancing blow after glancing blow until he overextends, and takes her knee to the stomach.

He falls to his hands and knees, gasping.

“I believe you can do it,” she says, unhelpfully.

Neji smiles faintly. “I know,” he says. “I do, too.”

He pushes himself to his feet, spreads his hands into the low stance of the gentle fist.

Well shit.

Where’d that fatalistic Hyuuga Neji go?

Kakashi had liked him. Who the hell is this new kid?

“You ever try throwing that chakra of yours, Neji?” Kakashi asks, not looking up from his book. “I dunno, might be helpful.”

Neji is distracted for long enough that he takes a punch to the throat, and—

“Oh no oh no I’m sorry I just don’t even listen when he talks anymore, because he’s the worst.”

Neji gasps for breath in response, so Kakashi tacks on. “Don’t forget that I’m not a real ninja,” he adds, turning the page, and oh yes—Minoko-san.

Oh—yes.

Neji stands, with some difficulty, coughing and massaging his throat.

“Again,” he says.

They clash, and Neji takes a kick to the back of the knee, takes a punch to the side of the head, and then sends Sakura rocketing back into herself when he punches through the string about five inches past his fingers.

He tries to follow up, but doesn’t succeed, going down like a sack of bricks when he slides into Sakura’s guard, strikes nothing, and takes Sakura’s fist to the stomach.

He coughs blood on the ground, and smiles.

“Again,” he says.

Over the course of the next several months, Kakashi continues to have Sakura train with Guy.

Unfortunately, this also means that Kakashi has to do challenges with Guy three days a week, but he supposes it’s kind of worth it. Hard to say—it’s a lot. Guy is a lot.

Regardless, she improves.

However, no matter how much she improves, Guy’s a fucking monster. He fights evenly with Kakashi with his fists. Kakashi has “over a thousand jutsu” at his beck and call (actually two hundred and thirty-one, but no one else needs to know that), Obito’s Sharingan, and now, the Hiraishin.

Guy can still fight him to a standstill with his fists.

(How egregious this is cannot be overstated.)

Sakura never manages to touch Guy—never gets a clean hit. He hears the faint whoosh when she un-transforms, notices the lack of sound in the clothes of her clones, can feel the slightest change in her chakra. Kakashi has the hiraishin and it mostly doesn’t help because Guy is a shit sensor at one hundred feet but the best Kakashi’s ever known at ten or less.

He knows where Kakashi will be before he’s there—from the faint flash of chakra in the destination seal the moment before Kakashi arrives. The first time Kakashi thought he’d get Guy with it, Guy punched him clear into next week.

Although it sounds stupid to say it about a taijutsu idiot who only ever uses his fists, this a step beyond Sakura’s training against Neji.

Kakashi, if he’s honest, had not expected her to get good enough to fool Neji’s Byakugan. Sakumo didn’t fight Hyuuga, so Kakashi never knew that fooling a Byakugan like that was even possible.

She will fight sensors and people with eye jutsu and ultra hearing and all manner of bullshit. Eventually, Sakura will fight someone who can see her. Who knows where she is, the moment she’s there. His father did. His father beat them. The movement abilities of the Hidden in the Leaves technique are extraordinary, and useful even when the technique’s secret is broken.

Right now, she relies too much on the fact that she is invisible and that her opponents think she can be everywhere.

She won’t always have that luxury. She needs to be faster, stronger, smarter.

The one rule of fighting Guy is that you can’t trick him. Kakashi would know—Kakashi is the tricksiest ninja Kakashi has ever known, and Guy has never been fooled for one damn second.

But Sakura doesn’t believe it.

She thinks she can be invisible.

So each day, after Guy goes to do his own training, and when he’s off on his own missions, Kakashi teaches her a new kind of chakra-control exercise.

To take your chakra, and thread it through the air around you—wipe the sound from within it. It’s classically impossible—total fucking bullshit—hot garbage.

His father could do it.

Each day, he trains her to suppress her chakra signature. Fold it up into a single point, as if she’s just a petal, hanging in the air.

Each day, Sakura gets a little quieter.

Each day, her chakra presence gets a little smaller.

(But never both at once, because chakra suppression’s a bitch.)

He has her unseal all of her flower petals and even out the chakra signature so they’re all uniform.

It doesn’t work.

When Guy can’t hear her, he can feel her chakra. When he can’t feel her chakra, he can hear her.

When she goes slow enough, he can feel the wind on his back.

When she makes silent clones, with exactly the correct chakra signature, he can see the faint aura of darkness behind them where they’re sucking the light from the air.

When she’s far enough away, he’s memorized the shape of every damn petal she has, and he can track her through every swap.

Guy is not vulnerable to genjutsu not because he has perfect control over his chakra like Sakura does, and not because he notices every change in his own chakra flow, no matter how tiny—but simply because Kakashi has never known someone who could create an illusion perfect enough to fool him.

“Excellent job!” Guy says, because it is. In three years she did what took his father three decades. It just isn’t enough. “I can feel your youth from here! But it is not enough to defeat me! The beautiful Green Beast of Konoha!”

Day after day, quieter, smaller.

Never enough.

Never even close to enough.

Finally, three months in, and she is on her hands and knees, panting, faintly pale from low-level chakra exhaustion.

As she stares at the ground and as Kakashi worries that this was too much—that he should have told Guy to go easier on her—she says the words he had been hoping she’d say from the moment he brought Guy into this.

“I have to be stronger,” she says. “I have to be faster. Please, teach me.”

Meanwhile, Kakashi decides that it’s finally time to teach her ninjutsu. Not ninjutsu as other ninja will learn it. How he learned it.

No.

Sakura stared at his chest when he performed a signless jutsu, and replicated it. She has something—something truly extraordinary—but she will never be a ninjutsu master.

He is not teaching her so that she can use his ninjutsu—he’s teaching her ninjutsu so that no one can ever surprise her. Every ninjutsu he’s ever seen, so that she’ll know it if she sees it, so she can recognize it by the feel in the air and the signs of the user.

Kakashi has killed ninja beyond number by using ten techniques they had never seen before in a row, and killing them because of it—he will not let someone else pull that on Sakura.

He starts easy.

Water clone, earth clone, lightning clone.

She stares at his hands.

“Again,” she says. “Again,” she says. “Again.”

Then, a little harder.

Fireball, instant quicksand, lightning eye.

“Again,” she says. “Again,” she says. “Again.”

When she sees enough, he starts asking her, jutsu half completed.

“What is this?”

With each jutsu, she gets a little better.

Some days, they spar. He is no match for her without his jutsu anymore, so he starts using them.

Real jutsu.

Not, turn over the earth and blow away your petals.

Lightning clone and water dragon and fireball. His lightning kunai and the diving in the earth technique and a baby, mini, Chidori. The Sharingan and the Flying Thunder God technique. Not enough chakra to kill her, but enough to hurt her.

And he does, sometimes.

She goes down in a heap, smoking or bleeding or hacking up smoke.

Water prison, lightning web, wind blade.

“Again,” she says. “Again,” she says. “Again.”

Once, they end up in the hospital, and he sits next to her, and wonders if he’s doing the right thing. Better him than someone else, but wouldn’t it be better if it were no one at all?

Then, later, Chidori, Ransengan, earthquake.

“Again,” she says. “Again,” she says. “Again.”

They spar, and he is not Might Guy, but he is Hatake Kakashi. She knows more and more of his jutsu, but he’s faster than her, stronger than her, smarter than her. He knows every corner of her jutsu, and he’s seen her fight hundreds of times, so when she makes a clone in front of him and off to his right, he knows to hiraishin behind her, and zap her in the back with a tiny lightning release.

They spar, and when he’s going all out, she never touches him.

She never touches him.

She never touches him.

She spends three days faking jutsu she can’t use to spend half of her chakra blowing a fist sized fireball into massive oil spitball, and when he flashes to one of his kunai to escape, she is there, giving him a Guy special straight to the kidney, and he goes down.

She brings him to his knees—before she ever gets a clean shot on Guy.

Everyone seems to think he’s stronger than Guy.

Kakashi has no fucking idea where they got that impression.

Guy beat Itachi into a paste without getting hit once, while Itachi damn near put Kakashi in the ground.

As Guy trains her, properly now, she devotes herself to taijutsu with the same stupid, single-minded devotion that she gives to staring at his ninjutsu.

She watches Guy show her proper form, and repeats it and repeats it until she has it down.

She learns to wreathe her muscles in chakra, give her punches oomph her noodle arms can’t give them by themselves.

It’s not the sharp controlled explosions of Tsunade and Kanashii’s chakra-impulse strength technique, but it’s the start of it—what she will have to master first in order to get her hands on it.

(There are no scrolls on Tsunade’s technique because no one but her ever managed to do them. He doesn’t know how he’ll teach them to Sakura, so he kicks that can off down the road.)

She and Guy have play-spars in which all she uses is taijutsu, and he hobbles himself all the way down to genin levels.

He keeps himself just ahead of her, always just a little too strong for her, and she crawls up at him.

Just a little stronger, just a little faster.

Genin, chuunin.

On the off days, when they spar, she gets faster, stronger.

Her hits don’t touch him.

Don’t touch him.

Until, finally—

It’s early spring, a chill in the air. About five in the morning, because Guy is a psycho and when there’s something she wants, Sakura’s just as fucking psychotic.

She runs into the training ground, launching herself from the bridge and crashing into one of the three poles beside the pond. Kakashi does not have Obito's Sharingan active, but he can imagine the exacting, precise movement of her chakra as it wreathes her legs for only the moments she needs them, and then vanish back into her coils again (because every moment your chakra is in your muscles is a moment you’re losing chakra), before her chakra vanishes from his senses entirely, because Sakura doesn’t believe in doing anything halfway. The day he taught her the full chakra suppression technique was when she started using it every moment she wasn’t actively using chakra.

She’s breathing a little hard, a bit of sweat shining at her brow. She’s still wearing her red dress, bright red with a civilian circle on its shoulders and on its front, split up to the waist on either side revealing basic ninja shorts. Two months ago, he had to take her to get her clothes treated by a proper ninja tailor when she threatened to give up on taijutsu because of the pit stains.

Sakura, no matter how much of a ninja she is coming to look like, will always be Sakura.

And, right on cue, she touches at her hair, straightening her bangs and fluffing out the rest of it. She’s been growing it out, because Ino is growing out hers.

Sakura is grumbling to herself as she drops down from the post, and it sounds suspiciously like “No matter what he does, Neji’s hair never gets in his mouth. Stupid boys.”

There was a running pool in Anbu while he was there about whether the bullshit that is Hyuuga hair was part of their bloodline limit.

It is.

Kakashi won a lot of money that day. Sage bless Hyuuga Kitano. Man had hair down to his ass and the loosest lips of any Hyuuga Kakashi ever had the fortune of meeting.

He had died in front of Kakashi’s eyes exactly twelve days after the revelation of the Hyuuga hair, his face eternally frozen into a smile under his mask. Kakashi quit Anbu the next day.

Sakura walks across the pond like it’s not even there, summoning Gamami with a quick bite of her thumb.

“You’re never here before Guy,” she says a moment before her kai tears unpleasantly through him. She is kind enough not to put enough force behind it to break open his seals. She’s wearing them too, now, so that’s probably the only reason for her restraint.

She puts Gamami on her head, despite the fact that Gamami’s little toady fists immediately ruin all of the work she had put into making her hair perfect.

He can feel a wobbling of chakra from Gamami, and Sakura briefly breaks chakra suppression to wobble back at her.

Sakura has assured him that actually they’re talking in secret code but he refuses to believe it.

“I like to mix it up,” Kakashi says.

He closes his eyes against the follow-up kai.

It’s the truth. He likes to mix it up. Sometimes he comes early, sometimes he comes late.

Sometimes, he doesn’t come at all.

The next set of chuunin exams is in three months.

Rock.

The ones six months after that are in Mist.

Neither are great, but both of the sets of exams after that are in Cloud.

Sakura is better at internal motivation than she used to be, but it’s not perfect. The C’s and B’s are grinding on her. She’s good enough for A’s and she knows it, but genin can’t get assigned to them. She knows she’s strong enough for chuunin.

She trusts him, but that trust isn’t, and never has been, complete.

Why is he holding her back?

Is she still weak?

He can see those doubts growing in her mind.

She makes a half-hearted attempt for his forehead protector, but the fact she has to lift chakra suppression for it makes it trivially easy to dodge.

At five A.M. exactly, Guy appears in the center of the training ground.

“Dynamic entry!” he bellows, and Kakashi and Sakura flinch in unison.

Sakura breaks chakra suppression to wibble and wobble at Gamami, and then tosses Gamami over to the pond behind her.

“Guy-sensei,” she says, and bows.

Hurtful.

Kakashi’s never gotten a Kakashi-sensei.

Considering she’s smirking at the bottom of her bow, she’s aware.

“Adorable pseudo-student!” Guy bellows. “I see that you are overflowing with Youth for our spar today! I will endeavor to match your Youth, Youth to Youth!”

Sakura hesitates, halfway up from her bow.

“I’ve dealt with this for a decade,” Kakashi tells her. “He’s always been like this.”

Sakura gives a faint snort before she finishes her bow.

“Eternal rival, you make me so mad—” He blocks Sakura’s attack, and punches her in the shoulder hard enough to toss her into the air, just before she vanishes into a poof of flower petals “—why do you have to act so cool!”

He shakes his fist as he ducks under Sakura’s next attack, and slams a shoulder into her, scattering her into flower petals once more. He ignores a clone’s attack, and sighs dreamily. “I will one day be as cool as you, Kakashi. If I cannot then I will—” backstep, leg sweep, cross that Sakura tries to sidestep, but fails to, clipping her guard and spinning her to the ground “—climb the Hokage monument with only my chin!”

He steps back, whaps a nearby petal with a single finger, sending Sakura un-transforming and to the ground with a bloody cough.

“You have to give a time, Guy, or whenever I take you up on that, you’ll say—no, it’s for next year!”

“You doubt my honor, eternal rival?” Guy says from where he’s crouched on the ground beside Sakura, one hand on her back. She nods, and he stands. “In ten years, I swear it. When you ask random civilians who the coolest ninja is in Konoha—” he sweeps his hand through a Sakura clone, backsteps one of her punches, and kicks backwards without looking, catching Sakura full on the chest “—they will say ‘It is Might Guy—the glorious green beast of Konoha!’”

In case you’re wondering.

No one calls Guy that.

No one has ever called Guy that but Guy.

“Easy bet.”

Guy leaps over Sakura’s attack, blocks her attempted follow up while he is temporarily unable to dodge, and then crashes a fist into her guard hard enough she hits the ground before she can vanish into flower petals.

“You will see, Kakashi! I will show you!”

Sakura, meanwhile, hasn’t gotten up.

She’s still lying on the ground, staring up at the sky, breathing deeply. Gamami has hopped over to her head, and they’re wobbling their chakra at each other again.

“Adorable pseudo-student! Of course you should try it! How will you know if you never try!”

Sakura’s face temporarily blanks in surprise.

No way.

No.

No way.

“You can understand them?”

“As if you cannot, glorious rival! They are flickering their chakra in Morse code, as plain as day!”

(Behold, the best sensor Kakashi has ever known at ten feet or less.)

What the fuck?

However, there are more important things to think about.

“Secret code, huh?” he says to Sakura.

“Shut up! You couldn’t break it!” Sakura shouts as she flips to her feet. The moment her feet touch the grass, all of her summons vanish.

Including Gamami.

“Oh no, whoops!”

She bites her thumb, and slams it into the ground.

Gamami appears again, and she is frowning thunderously.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says, rubbing Gamami’s head. She still uses one finger to do it, even though Gamami is now large enough to overflow both of Sakura’s hands when Sakura tries to pick her up.

Gamami flutters out a flicker of chakra that manages to feel disdainful, and then hops away to the pond.

Sakura makes a face, before standing.

“I will pretend I did not hear you,” Guy bellows, because he’s really only got the one volume. “Come, my adorable pseudo-student!”

On Guy’s face is a grin that is… wrong. It is not his nice guy grin. It’s his actual fight grin. Guy is a nice guy, yes—but no one who has ever fought him in the field has ever come away with that impression.

In the field, Guy smiles like the fucking monster he is—lips parted too wide, showing too many teeth, all of them pressed together altogether too tightly.

“Do not hold back, I assure you that you cannot hurt me.”

He can feel Sakura’s chakra flare as she breaks chakra suppression, and raises her hands before her.

She does not start leaking flower petals.

“If you will not come to me, pseudo-student”—there’s that grin again—“I will go to you!”

Sakura dodges his first attack, slipping into his guard, and then takes the follow up cross, knocking her a solid three feet back. She lowers the hand she blocked with with a wince.

Guy laughs.

“Yes!” he shouts, charging forward again. She dodges his punch and his follow up kick, and then moves in, almost dodging his elbow, but not quite. She goes down, but only for a moment, and Guy’s grin only grows.

This—this is familiar.

Sakura dashes forward this time, following Guy as he dashes back, ducking under his counterattack and around his follow-up kick, only to take an elbow to the back—and drive her head full force into Guy’s stomach on her way down.

It pushes Guy back an inch, if that, and then Sakura is on her hands and knees on the ground.

Nothing more than an inch—but that is the first time Sakura ever struck him hard enough to move him at all. Guy hadn’t blocked that attack. He hadn’t dodged.

Slowly, Kakashi threads chakra through Obito’s eye, and the world spins into red and black.

“Excellent job,” Guy says, patting his stomach. “Fantastic job. I am so proud to have taught you so far, but you must not be satisfied with this! Stand up, my adorable pseudo-student, let us reach for the peak of Youth together!”

Sakura takes a deep breath, and pushes herself up to her feet.

With the world moving at an obliging like seventy percent speed, he can see clearly now—Sakura is not faster.

She is dodging Guy’s attacks before they begin.

This is how Kakashi fights Guy. However—and Kakashi cannot overstate how critical this is—Kakashi has Obito’s Sharingan.

He can see Guy’s every muscle twitch, and not only that, Obito’s eyes dutifully uses that totally nonsensical information to map out exactly where he will be, letting Kakashi not be there, because trying to match Guy speed for speed is not a fight Kakashi has ever known anyone to win.

Sakura mistimes a dodge, but a moment before Guy’s fist connects with her shoulder, she wreathes it in chakra. A blow that should have bruised her black and purple (Guy was pulling his punches, because he isn’t trying to kill her) just tosses her to the ground instead.

When Sakura comes sprawling down to rest in front of Kakashi, she looks up at him. She’s smiling, he realizes—grinning, from ear to ear.

Kakashi recalls, for the first time in a long time, that first day he saw Sakura—standing in her little civilian yard in her little civilian clothes, performing a jutsu perfectly with the wrong damn hand seals.

When he had thought of how to use her chakra control, how he could teach her to use her chakra control, he thought only of his father. On his more fanciful days, he had thought of Tsunade. Train with Guy, figure it all out later. Looking down at Sakura, now, he wonders if maybe—maybe he’d been wrong from the start.

“What did you say to Gamami?” Kakashi asks her.

“I said that if I didn’t have to maintain the five or six jutsus for the Hidden in the Leaves technique, I might be able to feel Guy-sensei’s chakra movements. It’s harder with him than it is with you, because he just moves all of his chakra around inside of his body. I was pretty sure I could use it to predict how he’s going to move.”

She flips to her feet and laughs, like it’s nothing.

Easier with him than it is with you.

Kakashi reviews the last two months. How, slowly but surely, Sakura had started dodging his jutsus, just a little before he started them. At first just a hair, but then more and more and more. Sometimes she knew what jutsu he was using, sometimes not—but she always knew when one was coming.

So slowly he hadn’t noticed, just thought she was getting faster.

When she downed him for the first time last week, she had been at his hiraishin target before he was there.

Just like Guy.

Son of a bitch.

Before him, Sakura dashes forward again, slipping under Guy’s counter attack, punching ten degrees off of his current position and exactly where he was dodging to, earning her a solid hit on his guard. She pushes her advantage, pushing further in as he tries to recover his balance, feinting up and punching low, but she takes a kick to the side of the face she clearly hadn’t seen coming and goes down hard.

“Oh, no, pseudo student!”

Sakura stands, falls. Stands again.

“I’m fine.”

She falls again.

She isn’t.

Guy transitions them to more kata exercises instead of continuing to spar.

“If you can read my chakra, then you can match it!” he bellows. “Reach for the stars! With the power of youth!”

He offers her his Green Leotard, guaranteed to increase her Youth tenfold, but, thank the Sage, she refuses.

Two months later, when Guy comes back from a mission, petals once again fill the air around them.

Guy’s monster grin returns.

“Oh, pseudo-student, your Youth staggers me!”

Two weeks later, Sakura forces Guy to a knee for the first time. She dashes towards him, ducks under a punch, jumps over his leg sweep, punches over his block, forcing Guy to shift his weight instead of taking advantage of her reduced mobility, blocks the counter-cross, pushes into his chest, swaps with a leaf behind him on his counter-attack, turns sideways to dodge his back kick, and drives her fist into the back of his knee.

He goes down. One knee and one hand, because Guy is a fucking monster.

He grins at the ground like the nine-tailed fucking demon fox.

“Excellent job, pseudo-student. Now,” he stands, turns back to her, his horrible grin mirrored on her face, “do it again.”

Do you want to know when I knew Minato was stronger than me?

After enough time passes that no one will think twice about it, he takes her to the Hatake blood room, at the center of the compound his father built.

A proper blood room—one that no eye can see into, one that no one can spy on (so long as he yet lives) because his father had big dreams for the Hatake clan.

He says it is for telling her about a secret jutsu.

In actuality, the moment he has sealed the room closed, he turns to her and he says.

“What happened, with the Hyuuga? What did you do?”

She tells him then about the first time she touched Neji’s seal when they fought, and how it had felt wrong, twisted up, burned like her chakra had been burned.

How she had set Gamami on his head (tricked him into putting Gamami on his head!), and Gamami had confirmed Sakura’s suspicions.

How she had thought that Jiraiya’s jutsu could work to heal him, but didn’t know how to get it to him.

How she had gone to Ino, because Ino knows everything, and Ino had gone to Shikamaru, who she said was super lazy and annoying but actually smart but don’t tell him I told you that.

How she had transformed into Ino and snuck into her clan jutsu room (Sage’s horns on a stick), and stolen the Triggered Implanted Memory technique.

How she had taunted and taunted and taunted Higura, the worst of the Main Branch, until he hated her, until everyone would believe he would do this.

How she didn’t tell Neji what they were doing, because everyone would think he was in on it, but how she had asked Neji to let her see his chakra pathways with her own chakra, map out exactly the shape of his seal.

How Neji let her, because part of him knew—part of him hoped.

How she challenged Higura to a duel, got him to let her into his room.

How she had knocked him out, then used the seal of false chakra to exactly recreate the pathways of Neji’s chakra in her own system, and then burned a copy of the Hyuuga curse seal into her skin.

How she had killed Higura—stabbed him in the back of the neck, without letting him even wake up.

How when they came for her, she cried not because he had tortured her, but because she killed him, in cold blood.

How he was mean and awful and horrible but she still killed him.

How she knew it was the right thing to do, but how it hurt.

How she still hurt.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks her.

“Because you would have stopped me,” she says without a moment of hesitation. “Because you told Neji you wouldn’t help him.”

The silence, after she says that, is long.

They go on missions together, and they are not C’s anymore.

They can’t get A’s, so instead they get the missions that would require a whole squad.

Teams of missing-nin, and networks of bandits.

A five wagon caravan with a hundred million ryou of fine silks.

He is Hatake Kakashi, and so he manages to convince the Hokage to not send them on any assassination missions.

They blow up ships in Lightning, destroy bridges in Earth, protect the daimyou’s daughter as she courts a foreign noble.

The missions get more dangerous—she gets injured, and he gets hit by chakra exhaustion more than once.

Once she saves his life by taking a kunai to the gut, and falling to her knees before him.

They fight bandits and missing-nin and all manner of people they have no choice but to kill, and slowly but surely, Sakura’s hands get bloodier and bloodier and bloodier.

She’s ten and then she’s eleven.

Her hands are not as bloody as his had been, but they are bloody because of him.

She can’t lead missions because she’s still a genin, but she has the ability.

The Hokage looks up from his paperwork as Kakashi steps through his door.

He knows what Kakashi is here to say.

“Out with it.”

“I wish to enter Sakura into the Chuunin Exams in Mist.”

The Hokage nods, as if he’s considering this for the first time, because he is possibly the most obnoxious human being to ever live. He looks down at the folder before him, stamps it, sets it aside, leans back.

“She’s eleven.”

“And a half,” Kakashi cannot quite stop himself from saying.

“That’s awfully young, Kakashi. She’s doing fine at your side. Explain yourself.”

Kakashi takes a deep breath.

“I can say nothing I did not say when I stood before you four years ago.”

“She has been of chuunin ability for years,” the Hokage says.

It’s an iffy thing to judge—the variance of the Chuunin Exam is high. He’d give her 40% odds (which are very good odds—he’d only put his odds on his first attempt at 45%) once she was able to regularly beat Neji. She’s had an outside 10% shot since she became a genin.

But even when she had above-average odds to win, he still pegged the chance of death at 10%. She doesn’t have a team to watch her back—any team she’ll join will either be weak enough to drag her down, or old enough they’d never trust her. The Chuunin Exam is a nasty thing, and it’s nastier when you don’t have a good team.

“She only realized it recently. She has… changed, over the last six months. I can tell that my decision not to nominate her for the exams in Rock weighs heavily on her.”

“You are her jounin instructor.”

Kakashi shakes his head.

“She has never forgotten I wanted her more than she wanted me. She trusts me, but she does not…” he thinks of Minato, so larger than life, so big and strong and invincible, “have faith in me.”

The Hokage’s brow twitches.

“No,” he says. “Try again.”

Kakashi takes a deep breath, and tries his best lying—me? expression.

“Yeah, I taught Jiraiya that, and he taught Minato, who taught you. Try again.”

“I don’t want her in these exams,” Kakashi says shortly. “I want her by my side. She doesn’t have a trustworthy team, which makes these exams a nightmare—doubling or tripling their chance of killing her. But her trust with me is nearing its end. My relationship with Sakura can bear another six months’ wait, but not one and a half years, and the next two exams are in Cloud.”

“Is she strong enough for this?”

“I believe the odds are strongly in her favor.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

Kakashi bows his head.

This time, he doesn’t bring up Itachi because he is exactly why this shouldn’t be done. Too much pressure, too much responsibility, too soon. That wasn’t the only reason, but it was a hell of a complicating factor.

He and Kakashi are relics of a bygone era.

Maybe someday, they would look at a 12-year-old genin, and balk. Now, it’s an 11-year-old chuunin.

Time marches on.

“What do you need?” Kakashi asks.

“I want to see it. I’ll test her myself.”

Kakashi’s heart freezes in his chest.

“Sir?”

“I have an opening three days from now, at 11 A.M. An hour. Will that work for you?”

“Yes… sir.”

“Good,” the Hokage says. “Don’t tell her, I’d like to see her reaction myself. You’re dismissed.”

Kakashi arrives early. This would normally be Guy’s day, but he’s out on a mission, has been for the last two weeks. S-class, so damn secret not even Kakashi has been told anything about it.

It’s convenient, because it means he doesn’t have to make an excuse for why he’d be taking Guy’s day. Sakura’s a smart kid, she’d know something’s up.

As Kakashi stands alone in the center of the third training ground, he throws a kunai to the opposite side, teleports to catch it before it hits the tree, then turns and throws it back across the training ground. He teleports across the training ground once more to catch it, but his hand closes on air.

Sakura, eleven years old and inexplicably smug about it, spins his kunai on a finger. Gamami squats on her head, now so large she only barely fits. Sakura still wears her forehead protector on the top of her head, her caged-bird seal bared proudly. Cherry blossom petals slowly fill the air between them, dancing and spinning and never falling.

“You’re only ever early when you’re going to give me one of your stupid tests,” she says, quite accurately.

He teleports over to her to retrieve his kunai, and as his hand closes around the kunai his forehead gets noticeably lighter. He uses the fang she still has hung around her neck as an anchor, and slips his forehead protector from her hands before she can vanish into a flower petal.

“Boo, cheater,” she complains, as he parries Gamami’s sword strike with the back of his shoe, redirecting it into the ground. He keeps standing on it, much to Gamami’s frustration. She spits oil at his leg, and he decides discretion is the better part of valor and teleports across the clearing. He has to duck to stop Sakura from getting her hands on his forehead protector and his elbow just bursts her into flower petals.

She appears to his right, clearly a clone, and then another copy of Sakura appears a moment after that to his left. He ignores the Sakura to his right, attacks the one to his left, so of course she is the Sakura to his right, hands closing over his forehead protector and then vanishing in a flower petal.

“So,” a Sakura clone fingerspells with Anbu hand signs, “did I do it? What do I have to do this time?”

“Let’s take a seat,” Kakashi says instead of answering that.

It’s a little before nine A.M.

Sakura hesitates, and then poofs out of a petal. He takes the opportunity to retrieve his forehead protector, and she squeals an objection. He doesn’t let her take it back this time. Instead, he sits down at the edge of the pond.

Slowy, suspiciously, Sakura makes her way over to him and then sits next to him.

“Did Guy die?” she asks.

Kakashi momentarily can see nothing but Guy, buried under an avalanche of rock, just one eye visible—Guy, hanging off his hand, smiling at him, thanking him—Guy, dead on the ground in front of Naruto, on his knees and faceplanted into the ground because he’d died standing in an instant and fallen like a puppet with its strings cut.

Kakashi opens his mouth, and no words come out. He takes a deep breath.

“No,” he finally finds the breath to say.

Sakura makes a relieved noise.

Kakashi looks at the pond before him, and takes a moment.

It’s not long enough, so he takes another.

“It’s about the Chuunin Exams.”

Sakura perks up. “You’re going to let me participate?”

“Sakura, do you know what percentage of participants to the Chuunin Exams die?”

Sakura makes a confused noise.

“I dunno? Like, five?”

Pretty close.

“Seven.” Across the last five years.

“Come on, Sensei, I’m better than that! I’m strong enough, I can do this!”

“Do you know what percentage of participants who finish the first stage die?” Kakashi asks.

“Less? Three or four?”

“Eighteen.”

“What?”

Kakashi looks over to her. “The second stage is the killer,” he says.

She makes a face.

“And Sakura, you’re a lock for the second stage.”

He can’t tell her what the stages would be, because then all sorts of people would get mad at him, but maybe—maybe this would be fine. First stage is always some kind of basic skill test. Strength, intelligence, a bit of cunning. Sakura will pass it with ease.

But…

No one ever dies on the first stage.

“Can’t you wait?” Kakashi asks her.

“The next two are in Cloud!”

“I know.”

“Sensei, no! I want—” Sakura’s face breaks, just a little “I’m a good ninja.”

“I know.”

“No one else does,” she says. “They treat me like I’m just a kid! Just a civilian kid!”

Kakashi looks at those circles on her dress, looks back up at her face.

He looks back at the pond.

“I almost died in my chuunin exam.” Sakura falls silent. “My whole team did. We fought against a Rain team that used poisons, and we almost didn’t notice in time. My teammate, Rin, had to carry us, and then bury us in the mud to hide us while we were unconscious. I just barely woke up to save her when she was fighting against an entire team all by herself.”

He turns to Sakura.

“Do you still want to take it, Sakura?”

She nods, eyes shining with determination.

Kakashi sighs.

“The Hokage wants you to take a test, like I gave you when you made genin.”

“Oh, okay. What is it? I guess it’s not to just steal your forehead protector?”

“No, it’ll be a little harder this time.”

Sakura makes an irritated noise, and twists to shove her face at his.

“It starts at 11.”

She harrumphs, and falls back against the grass. Her head hits the pond, and her hair drops into the water while her head bounces off of it.

He waits for her to notice.

“Oh no my hair!”

It’s not the longest two hours Kakashi has ever spent.

He stops Sakura from using a fire jutsu to dry her hair because he’s pretty sure she’ll need all her chakra for whatever the Hokage has planned.

She eventually sits next to him and spins her chakra through her tenketsu. She can have several spirals going at once, giving her roughly the look of a blinking sign.

While they wait, Gamami sits in her lap, and they flicker their chakra at each other. Kakashi resists the urge to pull out Obito's Sharingan to see if he can read what they’re saying.

Just before eleven, off-duty jounin start to gather.

First is Kurenai.

“I was here for the first one,” she explains, leaning against one of the poles off to their left. “Seemed only right. Also—” she cuts herself off before she can reveal just who Sakura will be fighting with.

Then Shikaku, Hayate, Inoichi—

“You here to see me win again?”

Inoichi hesitates for just a moment before replying, “Of course.”

Sakura frowns.

Gamami flickers at her, and she flickers back.

—Kanna, Kioko, Asuma.

“I don’t remember inviting anyone to this.” Everyone spins as one, and finds the Hokage standing in the center of the training ground, eyes dancing with mirth.

Except—he’s not in his Hokage outfit. He’s in his shinobi outfit.

Fuuuck.

“Imagine, that seven Konoha jounin would fail to notice an old man walking into a training ground? I’m disappointed. In my day, we never would have let something like this happen.” He laughs to himself, and because he’s the Hokage, everyone laughs awkwardly with him.

Sakura has hidden behind Kakashi.

“That’s the Hokage!”

“Indeed it is,” the Hokage says. He appears before Kakashi, and extends a hand down to Sakura. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sakura-kun.”

Slowly, Sakura takes his hand, and then shakes it.

“I hear you want to be a chuunin, Sakura-kun.”

Sakura nods, still mostly hidden behind Kakashi.

“You’re awfully young for that, don’t you think?”

Sakura stiffens, and draws herself up to her full (but still rather pathetic) height.

“No!” She starts to leak flower petals.

“Another two, three years—what could be the harm?”

Sakura physically moves Kakashi out of her way, instead of going around him like a normal human being.

“I can be a chuunin now! I’m stronger than most of the chuunin, I know it!”

The Hokage hums, tapping his chin.

“It’s not that you’re weak, Sakura-kun. It’s just that Konoha is trying to let our children be children, just a little more. Don’t you want a chance at that?”

Sakura’s eyes harden.

“I want to be a ninja.”

The Hokage sighs. He cracks his back with a pained groan.

“Youth is wasted on the young,” he says, before settling back to face Sakura. “Well, for kids, we want to make sure they’re extra strong before we let them take the exam.”

“That’s stupid,” Sakura says, having apparently forgotten all of her awe at the fact that she is talking to the Hokage. The Hokage is pretty good at that—just look at Naruto.

The Hokage chuckles.

“Maybe. But I’m the Hokage, so I get to be stupid, sometimes.”

Sakura makes an irritated hmph.

“What do I have to do?”

“The same thing you did to make genin—except you have to take my forehead protector.” He taps it. Normally, his forehead protector is built into a helmet. For this, he has forgone the helmet to simply wearing an ordinary forehead protector tied at the back, his bald pate bared to the air.

Sakura frowns—and then the Hokage pops when Sakura rips his forehead protector off his head from behind him.

She looks down at where the Hokage used to be in stunned silence.

“Yes, just like that,” the Hokage says from behind her, and she whirls to face him.

“What was that?”

“A very forbidden, very dangerous technique.”

She narrows her eyes. “Kakashi didn’t use jutsu.”

He smiles. “You have an hour,” he says.

The jounin pull out of the clearing, leaning against the trees. On his left is Shikaku, suppressing a yawn with a hand, and on his right is Asuma.

“Kick his ass,” Asuma says, voice elevated but not really managing the emotional inflection to make it an actual shout.

Sakura frowns. “Isn’t he your dad?”

“Why do you think I want you to kick his ass?”

Sakura giggles a little.

She turns back to the Hokage. He smiles brightly at her.

“Anytime you’re ready, Sakura-kun.”

Sakura charges him, no subtlety at all.

Maybe—maybe having her train with Guy was a bad idea.

The Hokage dips and dodges through her jumps and swipes at his forehead, and on her third failed attempt, her body shifts—expanding up into the form of the pink-haired kunoichi who saved him in Lightning—her hand extending an extra foot. This time, when he dodges, she shifts before he does, forcing him back and back and back as he dips and dodges away from her before she feints left and then catches him as she goes right.

The Hokage, once again, vanishes in a poof of smoke, and Sakura finds herself staring down at her empty hand.

“What’s wrong,” the Hokage says, suddenly by Sakura’s shoulder. “Did you lose something?”

There is a moment of fury in her expression before she takes a deep breath. She throws herself backwards on chakra-enhanced legs, and he easily dodges her. She turns, and dashes after him. He spins as she appears behind him, but she gets into his guard anyways, and this time, instead of going for his forehead protector, she drives her fist straight into his stomach. He’s waiting for her, though, pushing the blow aside with his hand and spinning around her. She drives an elbow back to ten degrees off of where he dodges to, and she stops.

She turns to him.

He smiles at her.

She leaps back, and he continues to smile.

…

Is… is the Hokage feinting with his chakra?

It’s… theoretically possible. But like, no?

You can fully suppress your chakra—a-ok.

You can even, if required, send chakra to random places in your body—annoying, but fine.

But to, in a fight, scramble the chakra you send to your various body parts to confuse an enemy?

What Sakura does is insane, true.

But this is definitely more insane.

Fucking.

Kages.

“Okay,” Sakura says. “Okay.”

She takes a deep breath, and then vanishes into a cloud of flower petals.

“Very good,” the Hokage compliments. Three clones appear around him, and they are slow, not predicting the future, but the Hokage is not Guy, and can’t distinguish the clones from a silent version of the real thing. He does not tap them out of existence. He clearly could, but he doesn’t.

This says something about the rules the Hokage has made up to give Sakura a fighting chance against, you know—

A Kage.

He only dispels one when he brushes his hand through it to guide its punch away from his face.

Sakura stops, all of her clones backing off.

“So, will you tell me the rules?”

“I will not,” the Hokage says cheerfully.

Sakura grumbles with a scowl, and dashes towards him. The Hokage identifies two of her clones, and he lets them hit him, dispelling them, but there are five more, and however the Hokage is identifying the clones, it doesn’t work with them. He dips and dodges through them, dispelling three as he pushes their attacks aside, but Sakura can pour out clones all day, and eventually the numbers cause him to overbalance, and Sakura is there, kicking him right in the back.

He poofs out of existence, and then poofs back into existence behind Sakura, mouth open—

But before he can say anything she turns and dives into the pond, and the Hokage clone before them twitches, suddenly drenched, followed quickly by an equally drenched Sakura, who he dodges easily when she goes for his forehead protector.

Five Sakura clones appear around him… all of which are dripping wet, with none of the drops that fall from their elbows or hair hitting the ground.

Sakura stops, and sighs, while the Hokage laughs.

As she works through a basic drying jutsu, she says, “Academy three”—she shakes out her now-dry hair—“and no counter-attacks.”

“I’ve never been any good with normal clones,” the Hokage says, still dripping wet, “so I made a substitute.”

Sakura frowns mulishly. “With a very secret, very forbidden jutsu?”

“Yes,” he says brightly.

In the Hokage’s shit-eating grin, he can see himself.

It is… not a sight he is comforted by. Is that what interacting with him is like?

Oh, no.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because I don’t want you to go to the Chuunin Exams, but I’m not allowed to say no. The clan heads would have me replaced—they want to be able to choose which of their clan members get to go. So I have to give you some kind of ‘reasonable’ test.”

“This is reasonable?”

“I don’t give people tests they can’t pass.”

A smile twitches at the corners of her mouth.

“Oh.” The smile grows wider, and she lets out a little giggle. “You think I can pass this?”

“Of course,” he says.

Sakura’s giggle turns into a full-throated, joyous laugh.

“I believe in you, Sakura-kun, I’m sorry if this made you think I didn’t.”

Sakura starts jumping around the training ground excitedly. She turns to Kakashi, and then gestures emphatically at the Hokage with both hands.

“The Hokage believes in me!” she shouts, at the top of her lungs.

“The Hokage is known to have no taste,” Kakashi says, because he really just can’t help himself.

Sakura’s eyes harden, and killing intent comes crashing down on the clearing.

“Oh my, that really is quite something,” the Hokage says from behind her. “So, now that I’ve acknowledged you, you’ll agree to wait until you’re at least fourteen to take the exam, right?”

“Nope!” Sakura says, grinning back, and the ground around her feet cracks as she flings herself back in his direction.

“I thought you decided that this wouldn’t work,” the Hokage says as Sakura’s attempts at his forehead protector go wide.

“This is the coolest thing I can do!”

“Yes,” the Hokage says, sidestepping her next attempt, and—ducks when Sakura follows him, then brushes her hand away from his forehead protector and takes a step back from her attempted headbutt. She appears behind him and snatches left when he goes right. “But we’ve already established it doesn’t work on me,” he says, taking some more distance.

“No,” Sakura disagrees, chasing after him. He dodges right, but she is already moving right. He raises his hand to whap hers away, and she sees it coming, already pulling it back. He dodges right into a flower petal cloud and she goes left.

He says, “Sakura, it’s important to—”

His forehead protector disappears, re-appearing above the pond.

The Hokage dashes towards it, but Sakura is there in a split-second, his forehead protector clutched tightly in her hand.

“Gotcha,” she says, grinning from ear to ear.

The Hokage stops at the pond’s edge, and the clearing is silent. Sakura’s smile starts to slip, and she shifts on her feet a little, until—

Asuma bursts into laughter. Louding, booming laughs, bent over double, slapping his knees.

“Lost your forehead protector to a genin—” he pauses to gasp in a breath “—an eleven-year-old genin.”

Sakura immediately brightens. She vanishes, and re-appears next to Asuma.

“He’s your dad, so you can have it,” she says, handing it to him.

“Oh, well—”

It vanishes from his hand.

“Yes, Sakura,” the Hokage says, forehead protector already back on his head. “You got me. I was just a little surprised, is all. Good job.”

Sakura grins widely. The rest of the assembled jounin still appear to be in a state of mild shock. Which is, you know—fair.

The (third) God of Shinobi just got his forehead protector stolen by a child.

“It’s the same way I got Kakashi’s forehead protector!” The Hokage winces. “I swapped myself with your forehead protector while you were distracted trying to lecture me! You were so caught up you didn’t notice me attaching my own chakra to it!” The Hokage winces a little more.

Yeah, eat it.

Imagine training this little monster.

Make fun of Kakashi for getting his forehead protector stolen now, huh?

(It’s fine, Kakashi’s not bitter.)

“Congratulations, Sakura-kun,” he says. “You can take the Chuunin Exams.”

Sakura crows her victory to the sky, and all the assembled jounin wince.

“Last time, everyone congratulated me,” she says, looking suspiciously at the jounin around the clearing.

“I congratulated you,” Asuma says flatly, still leaned against his tree beside her, as the other jounin hurry to offer their very heartfelt and not what the fuck kind of monster are you congratulations.

“I feel like you just made fun of your dad?”

“That’s basically the same thing.”

Once Sakura has very graciously accepted the congratulations from all the jounin she runs to Gamami and flings her to the air in her excitement. With her new chakra-enhanced strength she manages to pitch Gamami… quite a ways. Gamami looks not at all okay with this, flickering and flaring her chakra loud enough Kakashi can feel it.

“Ugh, fine, you’re such a baby,” Sakura grumbles, and then replaces herself with Gamami, and screams with glee as she plummets to the ground.

She lands directly in front of him, and then beams up at him.

Once again, Kakashi drinks in the sight of her blinding happiness with Obito’s Sharingan, ensuring he can never forget it.

Chapter Text

It’s been an hour since Kakashi and Sakura entered Mist and split with the other two genin who were “tired of playing with a baby”, but—something’s wrong. There’s something sour in the air.

It’s not the hunched backs of the civilians, the dead eyes of the Mist nin. No, that’s old hat—it’s something else.

Sakura, at Kakashi’s side, can feel it too. She’s been tense from the moment they stepped through the gates, and with each step she just gets more tense.

“Sensei,” she says, and—that can’t mean anything good. She only ever calls him that on missions.

“Sakura,” he responds, in his cheery, we’re-just-normal-ninjas-here-for-the-Chuunin-Exams-definitely-not-going-to-cause-any-international-incidents voice.

Sakura pulls at his arm, lancing her chakra painfully into the tenketsu she finds there, which, first of all: Ow. And secondly: fine. He weaves a signless genjutsu around them, locking half of each of them away into a world with nothing but each other, not activating Obito's Sharingan.

“We’re in a genjutsu,” she says, the moment it closes. He assumes she’s not talking about the one he just made, and actively relaxes his spine, getting himself nice and deep into the slump he mastered from years working with Shikaku.

They’re in a foreign village. Not just a foreign village but what is probably the most corrupt foreign village in existence. (Although not the most personally dangerous to them—that honor goes to Cloud.) Applying genjutsu to everyone inside the borders of their own village seems totally in bounds for the kind of thing Mist would do.

Nothing to worry about. Just Mist being its awful, horrible self. Nothing to see here.

On Sakura’s head, Gamami’s chakra spikes and flickers in that way Sakura still assures him she can understand, and which he continues to maintain is total bullshit.

“It feels like the Tsukuyomi,” she says, and she very suddenly has his full attention.

“Explain,” Kakashi says, keeping his face in the real world nice and loose, slowly drawing Sakura over to the side of the street.

“It’s lots of little knots. They’re smaller and harder than the Tsukuyomi felt, but none of the genjutsu you or Kurenai made felt anything like this. Gamami says it’s coming from the mist.”

Kakashi, without looking away from the porn he has drawn from his pocket, focuses on the mist around them. There is chakra in it, which burns at his skin, his eyes, the inside of his throat, but that isn’t anything new. It’s always just been one of the more hellish aspects of being in Mist.

He can imagine a world in which a particularly powerful ninja could put genjutsu on an entire village through its own mist—but it’s not a particularly pleasant thought—he’s really hoping that world’s not the one he lives in.

“Can you tell what kind of jutsu it is?” he asks her. He can’t—but then again, no matter how much he’s trained, he’s never been able to get a handle on reading and understanding a genjutsu through the way it twists and knots at his chakra. It’s an advanced technique, one step past cancellation, which is itself one step past simply detecting a genjutsu from the way it knots your chakra.

Sakura has been learning. She’s… okay.

It’s hard.

“It’s a compulsion,” she says without hesitation, and—

That’s bad. Sensory genjutsu just lie to you. Compulsion genjutsu, though, they make you lie to yourself.

Kakashi resists the urge to kai. It didn’t help against Tsukuyomi, and he doubts it’ll help here. If it feels like the Tsukuyomi, then the risk that it’s coming from a Sharingan in some way, shape, or form is high enough he is almost definitely under surveillance. Best way to break a Sharingan genjutsu is another Sharingan.

He couldn’t break the Tsukuyomi, but that was put on him directly by Itachi’s eyes. It’s possible he could break this, applied indirectly from the mist. If it was him, he’d put anyone with a Sharingan under surveillance, and assuming your enemies are stupider than you is a really good way to get yourself dead.

“Tell me to stop dawdling,” he says to Sakura, and she obliging starts insulting at him in the half of his perception that isn’t warped by the genjutsu they’re speaking in.

“I’m trying to become a chuunin,” she hisses under her breath, glaring up at him.

“There’s no rush,” Kakashi says, leaning back on the mildly damp tree behind him. “We have all the time in the world.”

“We have twenty minutes because you make us late.”

“Good, keep it up,” Kakashi says in the genjutsu, as Sakura jerks futilely on his arm.

“I think—I’m not sure, I think it’s… mistrust?”

That’s a weird thing to try to compel someone to do. Most compulsion genjutsu are to do things like betray your village or kill your family. (It’s not a nice kind of genjutsu, to the extent any genjutsu can really be called nice.)

It could be the strongest compulsion someone could apply from reflections in the mist, which would explain why it’s so weak. But… why?

“Is it affecting Mist nin?”

Gamami flickers.

“Gamami says yes.”

In that case, the most likely reason is an attack on the village itself—mistrust is not too far removed from getting someone to betray their own village. But if you have control over Kirigakure’s mist, then you have the whole village in your pocket already.

Why?

More importantly, what do they do about it?

Does Leaf care about an attack on Mist? Or, a… something on Mist? Do they care if it’s most likely being directed by an Uchiha?

Most critical right now—

Do they run?

He’s only here because of the Chuunin Exams. If he leaves, he can’t come back. If they leave now, right after they arrived, then anyone watching them will know they noticed something.

With him and Sakura, that means they noticed the genjutsu. Kakashi has no interest in fighting someone who can put the entirety of a hidden village under a hostile genjutsu.

Kakashi’s reasonably confident that’s not a fight he has any chance of winning. He’s gotten pretty good with the Hiraishin—but not even Minato could have taken on a hidden village by himself.

Kakashi weighs that danger against the danger of staying in the mist. If someone’s done this, it could be in preparation for an attack. Being a foreign ninja in a hidden village under hostile attack is a really good recipe for dying horribly.

Bad options all around, Kakashi thinks. If he has to choose, then—

“Really? She’s a genin? Oh, that’s sad.”

Kakashi breaks the genjutsu he’s built for him and Sakura, and physically throws her to the wall behind him. Before him stands Kanashii. Tall, pale, built like a freight train, blue hair. Red eyes with enough hate to set a hidden village on fire.

She lunges at him, but he is faster, dodging the punch that topples the tree behind him, slipping into her guard, and then smiling at her like they’re old friends, pressing a kunai to the skin right above her heart. The angle’s right, all he has to do is push.

Behind him, Sakura coughs. He had not been gentle.

Gamami tumbles to the ground somewhere between them, and stares daggers at both Kakashi and Kanashii, which he supposes is fair.

“Is this really the best place for this conversation,” Kakashi asks, trying for a lilting teasing tone like they’re old friends, and not two enemies about to start a jounin-jounin fight in a foreign village.

Kanashii lunges forward, plunging his kunai into her chest and straight through her heart before Kakashi can move back. He leaves the kunai there when he backs away.

Kanashii smiles, and it is all wrong.

Kakashi really has bigger problems. He does not want to deal with a blood feud right now.

(Although, a cold, calculating part of him notes, this gives him the reason.)

(They can leave, now.)

(It’s too dangerous—who would blame them?)

Kakashi doesn’t let his eyes leave Kanashii’s, using this as a nice excuse to break out the Sharingan. The mist glows faintly, but he doesn’t feel that twinge of a genjutsu breaking. Great.

Kanashii pulls the kunai from her chest with a faint grunt, and then looks down at it with an irritated sort of scowl, like it’s just a mild inconvenience to her and not that something that should have killed her dead.

If Kakashi hadn’t activated Obito's Sharingan, he wouldn’t have seen the chakra surge up her arm, into her fingers—he wouldn’t have seen the chakra surge that lets her flick a kunai faster than Kakashi could throw it, the motion all foreign, nothing that would trigger his reflexes to dodge. It’s gone from her fingers and an inch from Kakashi’s face in the blink of an eye, but Kakashi is already in motion, snatching it out of the air.

It’s not the first time Obito’s Sharingan has saved his life, and it won’t be the last.

If she’s surprised he managed to catch it, she doesn’t show it.

“We’re in the Bloody Mist,” he says. “Do you really want to start this now?”

Sakura is gone from behind him, replaced with a clone. She can make her clones indistinguishable from herself to Obito's Sharingan, but when they’re on missions together, she doesn’t. He doesn’t know where she is, but everywhere is safer than behind him.

Kanashii’s gaze shifts from Kakashi to where Sakura’s clone is huddling against the wall behind him. Kakashi can see Sakura’s clone quail out of the corner of his eye.

Sakura has become quite a good actor. He’d like to take credit for that, but he’s not sure how much of it he deserves.

Kanashii crouches on the ground, at Sakura’s level, and Kakashi moves before her, as if Sakura is still behind him.

He considers the undefended stretch of Kanashii’s neck and back, but he’s not confident he could decapitate her with a single strike, and knows that if he doesn’t, the fight they’ll have has a solid chance of starting the next shinobi war. He looks at the most perfect opportunity to take her head he suspects he’ll ever have, and he lets it pass by.

“Hi, Sakura,” Kanashii says, ignoring him entirely. “You killed someone very dear to me, and I know in Konoha they don’t think much of that, but in Cloud we do. I have my Kage’s explicit permission to hunt down both you and your teacher and then kill the both of you. I’m allowed to do it in Fire, in Lightning, even here in Water. Doesn’t matter where I am, or what missions I fail to do it. My Kage has my back.”

She takes a deep breath.

“But I have genin here, and if I pick a fight with you, who knows what the Mizukage might do to them in retaliation. To say nothing of what you could,” she glances up at Kakashi with disgust, “with that Hiraishin of yours. We value our companions in Cloud.”

Kakashi loves interacting with Cloud ninja. He especially enjoys their self-righteous hypocrisy.

Below him, Kanashii smiles. It softens her face, but it does not soften the hate in her eyes.

“But Sakura, you don’t need to worry. I don’t like killing children. In Konoha, I hear you’re treated as adults as soon as you get your forehead protector.” She snorts in derision. “In Cloud, it’s sixteen, unless you’re a jounin.” She leans forward. “How old are you, again, Sakura?”

Kakashi takes a step forward at the threat, and Kanashii stands, hands lifted in surrender.

“Good luck on your Chuunin Exams, Sakura,” she says, past him. “I’d tell you to watch your back, but I’m not like you.” Some of the coldness slips from her gaze, revealing the raging fury behind her red eyes, and she turns to glance at the toppled tree Sakura is probably hiding in, and Kakashi shifts to block her path. “When I kill you, I’ll kill you from the front.”

“Sensei!” calls a dark-skinned boy of maybe thirteen or fourteen from behind her.

With one last glance at the two of them, Kanashii turns away. Now a bit off to his left, Sakura swaps with her clone, picks Gamami up off the ground, and sets Gamami on her head.

Before them, Kanashii greets the boy who called out to her by swinging him up onto her right shoulder with a whoop. He squawks in indignation.

“Why me!” he cries. “Isogashii is smaller than me!”

“She’s busy,” Kanashii says at the same time a girl at her feet, the boy’s age, but only barely larger than Sakura says “I’m busy.”

“You’re not even doing anything!”

“I’m practicing jutsu with my mind.”

Kaksahi turns away from them, back to Sakura, but finds Sakura not looking at them or at him, but over his shoulder, up up up at the tower of the Mizukage. Kakashi doesn’t look, because her looking is bad enough.

Gamami flickers at Sakura, and Sakura flickers back.

Sakura makes a deferential head bow, and when her head is hidden from the Mizukage, her face contorts for an instant in terror. She rises smoothly, and then frowns at him, grabbing his hand.

Her chakra lances into him as she drags him towards the training ground where the Chuunin Exams will start.

“Sensei, if you screw this up for me I swear on the first tree’s—”

He grumbles to himself, pulling back half-heartedly while grumbling, “They don’t even disqualify people for being late,” while weaving a genjutsu back around them, and—

“I think the Mizukage might be being mind-controlled.”

Despite himself, Kakashi staggers, and Sakura is kind enough to punch him in the stomach to make it look like that’s why he did it.

“Explain.”

“Gamami can see compulsion genjutsu, and she says it’s so thick on him she can barely see him, and—” her genjutsu self hesitates, even as her real world self drags his ass to the entry point for the Chuunin Exams “—and I can feel his chakra from here, he has so much of it and it’s—it’s so knotted up, Kakashi. There’s barely any flow to it at all outside of the knots. It’s like—it’s like those knots are moving his chakra for him.”

They stop, in sight of the Chuunin Exams application desk, and in the real world he says, “Look, plenty of time—we’ve got at least three minutes.” The genin they’ve brought with them, Aburame Shioko and Egawa Shinzou, are there already, glaring at them.

“And um,” she continues. “It feels—It feels like the Tsukuyomi. Just like the mist. It feels… Uchiha.”

Fuck.

“This is dangerous,” he says in the genjutsu. “We’re under a compulsion genjutsu we can’t afford to break, and if they know you know, they’ll try and take you out during the test.”

“I know that,” she says. “But we have to do something.”

We have to do something.

“I’ll contact the Hokage. I’m going to leave a shadow clone behind. When you finish the first two stages, split up with your team, and come back with my shadow clone to the hotel room we’ve reserved. Seal it, burn away the mist, and wait. Do not leave that sealed hotel room under any circumstances until I'm back. If the final exam comes and I’m not here, run.”

Sakura is silent for a long moment.

“Understood,” she says in the genjutsu, while, in the real world, she glares daggers at him and shouts “You’re the worst! You’re not even a real ninja!” Heads turn, but no Konoha heads do, and everyone loses interest.

He breaks the genjutsu, and responds with a cheery, “And you’re just a genin—that’s hardly even a real ninja.”

All of the genin turn and glare at him, and Kakashi gives out a genuine laugh. Nothing like pissing off some children to get his spirits up.

He settles back against the wall, and pulls out an Icha-Icha, making sure to giggle every once in a while. He watches Sakura vanish into the building where the exams will begin, and then begins the jutsu he created for exactly this purpose.

Clone - Hiraishin - Delayed Shadow Clone.

With a blink of an eye, he vanishes.

He is in front of the Hokage within ten minutes of returning to Konoha. It’s amazing the red tape that gets cut when you have things to say like “I think a Kage might be being mind controlled”.

Granted, he didn’t actually say that outside of the Hokage room because it is the most dangerous piece of information he knows—and he was active duty Anbu for almost a decade—but his eyes said it.

By the time he finishes his report, the Hokage has taken off his hat, and his head in his hands.

Kakashi has to say, this is not the What total bullshit he was hoping for.

“Do you think Itachi could have done this?” the Hokage asks.

Kakashi shakes his head. When he left, Itachi was strong, yes, but he was Kakashi strong. Normal human strong.

This—this is something different.

“I do not.”

The Hokage sighs. Slowly, he raises his head, runs his hand along his now-bald scalp, like he’s looking for hair there. Finally he sighs, takes his hat and places it back on his head.

“Do you believe her?” the Hokage asks.

“Yes,” Kakashi says, without hesitation.

The Hokage looks at him ponderingly.

“Do you, sir?”

“I’m afraid that I simply cannot afford to.”

Kakashi lets out a breath. He knew this would be the response. He’s not disappointed. It’s what he would have done.

But—but he remembers the hunched shoulders of the civilians he passed, the blank gazes of the ninja.

If they could do something, shouldn’t they?

If he could do something, shouldn’t he?

“She’s currently taking the exam?”

Kakashi blinks at the question. “Yes, sir.”

“How long do you have?”

The rest of today for the first two stages, then a day of rest before the final stage—because Mist is insane, so—

“Two days.”

The Hokage raises his hand to his lips, taps at them as he thinks for a moment. “I see.” He shuffles the papers on his desk. “I will relay the information you’ve given me on the Mizukage to Information. It will affect our actions in Water in the future. We won’t interfere in Mist’s domestic affairs, of course—I mean, we couldn’t even get a jounin through the gates without, well, a Chuunin Exam, even if we wanted to.”

The Hokage meets Kakashi’s eyes.

“Shouko has been looking for you. Since you have so much time, you should go see her, before you return to Mist.”

Kakashi slows the pounding of his heart, and bows his head, expression neutral.

“You’re dismissed.”

Kakashi bows, and the Hokage must have sent message ahead, because when he reaches the Uchiha clan headquarters, it is none other than Uchiha Shouko waiting for him.

“I’ve been wanting to see you,” she lies smoothly, beckoning for him to follow her.

They make their way through the uncomfortably labyrinthine tunnels beneath the Uchiha clan headquarters before they find her office. She lets him in, and then turns back to the door, digging a canine deep into her thumb before placing it against a seal on the wall beside the door.

He feels the weight of a true clan’s blood room settle over him. When Shouko turns back to him, her Sharingan is active.

She takes a seat behind her desk, and gestures him to the chair opposite her, notably less ornate, because the Uchiha are known for being truly and incredibly petty.

“The Hokage said you needed to speak to me,” she says.

Is that what the Hokage said? Well, in that case—he tells her everything, down to the fact that the Mizukage might be being controlled by an Uchiha. When he’s done, she is resting her chin on her hands, her slowly spinning Sharingan boring into him.

“Do you know what you ask of me, Kakashi?” she asks.

“I do.”

Shouko inhales deeply and leans back into the chair behind her. “I don’t think you do, Kakashi.”

Her Sharingan continue to bore into him.

Kakashi is pretty sure Fugaku didn’t have meetings with his Sharingan active as a way to show dominance. Why does the Uchiha clan head he has to meet with have to be like this?

“Every noble house in Konoha has a way to keep their blood in line. A way to stop renegades, end civil wars. The Hyuuga had their seal, the Aburame have their insecticide, and the Nara have their deer. Kakashi, what you are asking me for is ours. The Uchiha’s. Do you understand that?”

“I do.”

“With this knowledge, you could destroy us. Do you understand that?”

“I do.”

“You may wear one of our eyes, Kakashi, but you are not one of us, what gives you the right to ask this of us?”

“I have no such right,” Kakashi says, because it is true.

The corners of Shouko’s lips twitch.

“I wanted my reforms because of you, Kakashi,” she says. “I saw what you could do, how the village valued you. That eye of yours that belongs to us—but in your head, it was something good, something valuable. When I saw you as a jounin, at the right hand of the Hokage, I thought—that could be us.”

Kakashi bows his head. “You honor me. It is what Obito would have wanted.”

Shouko smiles, faintly. “I owe you personally, Kakashi. You made me head, and don’t think I have forgotten that debt. My people now stand at the Hokage’s side. Our eyes are looked at not with fear but with gratitude. Hyuuga and Inuzuka and Aburame all freely trust their backs to us. You played a part in that. You even fought Itachi on our behalf, although I rather think we owe your student for noticing him more than to you for fighting him.” She pauses. “However. This thing you ask of me is too much. No debt we have to you, real or imagined, is of equal value. You still ask this of me? Of the Uchiha clan?”

“I do.”

Shouko looks at him ponderingly. “Tell me, Kakashi, what will you give me for this?”

Kakashi swallows.

He thinks of Sakura, with the Hyuuga curse seal on her forehead.

He thinks of the village of the Bloody Mist, its civilians hunched and its ninja broken.

“Tell me, Kakashi, would you give me that eye of yours for this?”

Kakashi’s blood runs cold, and he raises his gaze to meet Shouko’s. There is no warmth there. It is the gaze of a clan head—one who wants to take back what is hers.

“There are those among us who wonder if Obito truly gave that eye to you of his own free will—who wonder if you killed him for it and plucked it from his face. There are those among us,” she says, “that want our eye returned.”

There had been a council meeting on his eye upon his return. Fugaku had brought case against him, and the council had voted overwhelmingly in favor of Kakashi.

Fugaku had abstained to vote, because his vote would not have swung it.

Kakashi never knew if Fugaku wanted it back, or wanted him to have the legal authority to keep it. He had never had the heart to ask.

“So tell me, Kakashi,” Shouko says, “would you give me that eye for this?”

There is no pity in her eyes.

Kakashi looks down at his hands. He thinks of Obito.

Obito wanted him to have it.

Obito wanted him to have it, so that he could change the world with it.

“Yes,” Kakashi says, his voice quiet. Then, his voice stronger—“Yes.”

A smile spreads across Shouko’s face. She leans forward, eyes spinning, dizzying.

“Prove it.”

She stands, and walks to the door, leaving Kakashi staring blankly at her desk, everything sorted and orderly, not a single paper out of place, before he sees her beckoning to him out of the corner of his eye. He stands, as she breaks the blood seal on her office, and follows her on heavy feet as she winds through the labyrinthine corridors of the Uchiha clan headquarters.

They arrive at a white room, its door open, a single seal array painted on the floor. There is a man waiting for them, grizzled and scarred and half of his hair burned off.

He is wearing a surgical mask and scrubs. He is standing beside a bed of instruments that make Kakashi mildly ill to look at. They had planned this.

They had wanted this.

Shouko turns to him.

“Last chance,” she says.

Slowly, Kakashi steps across the threshold. He lies down, and the last thing he sees is the swirling of Shouko’s Sharingan before he slips away.

Kakashi wakes to Shouko’s office—he knows it by the smell of the chakra of the blood room. He is sitting in the guest chair, and his eyes are bound in gauze. They are numb, but not so numb he would not notice if his eyes were missing.

He still has eyes—both of them—although whose they are is still up for debate.

Kakashi flashes through the seals for a lightning eye, and one crackles into existence on his shoulder, giving him something approaching sight once again.

Shouko raises her gaze from the paperwork before her. She looks up at him, and smiles. Her irises are black for a moment before she blinks. When her eyes open again, her Sharingan is active.

“Welcome back, Kakashi,” she says, closing the folder before her and setting it carefully off to her side.

“How long was I out?”

Not What the hell did you do to my eyes, because he’s being cordial.

“Eleven hours.”

So Sakura’s exam is over, and his shadow clone has expired. He has no idea if she passed.

He has no idea if she’s still alive.

He puts it out of his mind.

“There are things I need to tell you, Kakashi,” she says. “Clan secrets, kept for centuries. Other clans talk about giving and taking blood, even our forefathers, the Hyuuga, but we do not. We Uchiha talk about eyes. A gruesome business, but it is what it is. Long ago you received an Uchiha eye, freely given, and you have now given an eye of your own. By our laws, Kakashi, that makes you our kin. Do you acknowledge us as your kin, Kakashi?”

That is—that is a hell of a question.

He would like to see someone who would refuse an offer of kin from the single most powerful clan in Konoha. Still.

Kakashi has a clan.

Kakashi is a Hatake. A clan of one—a clan which has only ever had three members.

But Kakashi still has a clan.

“I have a clan,” he says.

“The Uchiha are not stingy. You can be kin to us and clan to another.”

Yeah, that—that doesn’t sound right.

Kakashi doesn’t think he’s ever heard the Uchiha clan described as ‘not stingy’.

Beyond that, it’s dangerous.

Kin has power over kin.

But then again, that’s why he’s here.

He wants that power.

“I do,” he says, and he can feel power in his words—truth.

He suppresses a shiver.

Shouko’s smile broadens, and she places a hand contemplatively on her lips.

“Where to start,” she says. “Where to start.”

She considers it for a long moment and then begins to speak.

“Long ago, it was tradition, among the ancient Uchiha, to take the eyes of those who came before us, so they could continue to live through us. It was said that doing so would allow them to layer their strength upon our own. We abandoned the practice as unnecessarily gruesome and primitive long ago, before we joined the village, before the war with the Senju, but it still lived on in our records, where I found it, after I became clan head, after the attack. As I grieved my brother’s death—I revived that old tradition. I was the first, taking his eyes, taking the eyes of my brother who died so I could live—so he could live on in me.” She looks at Kakashi, and then blinks. When she opens them again, they are different. A complex kaleidoscope of red and black stare back at him. “Others followed me, and eventually, all the eyes of our kin that died that day came to live again in the eye sockets of those of us left behind. Brothers, sisters, lovers, cousins. We walk with our kin’s eyes in our sockets so they might yet live. No one who died in the attack is yet truly dead.”

Kakashi cannot drag the gaze of his lightning eye from from Shouko’s eyes, so like Itachi’s and yet so different. Unlike his curved, graceful pinwheels, hers are sharp and angular, piercing two separate concentric circles, three solid radial bars filling the empty space not taken by the pinwheels.

She smiles.

“Do you know why you were able to keep Obito’s eye, Kakashi?”

Kakashi gets the feeling Because the council told me I could is the wrong answer.

“No.”

“Because an Uchiha eye, stolen, is poison. If you had stolen that eye from Obito, it would have rotted in your skull and killed you from the inside out. There is power in our eyes, Kakashi. The fact you still lived was evidence of Obito’s devotion to you. There are those in our clan who had wanted it back, but they were ignorant—we had no right to it.”

You just stole it from me, Kakashi doesn’t say, but Shouko must see it in his expression.

“Show me your eyes, Kakashi,” she says.

Kakashi dispels his lightning eye, and then slowly unwinds the bandages from around his head. He opens his eyes and flinches against the light.

Once he’s recovered, Shouko looks at him expectantly, so he slowly, tenderly threads chakra through his left eye.

The world spins into black and red.

She is still looking at him expectantly, so he repeats the process with his right.

For the first time, he sees in binocular Sharingan vision. The world is sharp like it has never been before. The headache that has always built behind his temples whenever he had Obito’s Sharingan active is nowhere to be found.

“Tell me, Kakashi, did you see Obito die before you?”

Kakashi swallows his flicker of fury. He doesn’t care if Shouko is showy about this, so long as she gives him what he needs in the end.

“Yes.”

Her face softens at that, the faintly predatory grin she has been sporting for the majority of their conversation fading into a sad smile as she asks him the next question—

“Did you love him?”

Kakashi swallows.

“Yes,” he says, and his voice breaks.

The world breaks with it. When it comes back together again, it is just a little different.

Shouko leans back, draws a mirror from her desk, and pushes it across the table towards him.

Kakashi lifts it, and he sees a pair of kaleidoscopes staring back at him. Each a pinwheel, piercing two consecutive circles. They look—

They look like Shouko’s eyes. His gaze snaps back to Shouko.

“Those eyes are mine, freely given. I’ll explain the why of this little farce I put you through in a moment.”

She takes the mirror back, as he memorizes this new feel of chakra in his eye. He changes the chakra flow to match how it had always felt before, and feels the world shift. He turns off both Sharingans, and the world goes back to normal.

Shouko, finished with putting the mirror away, does not turn her kaleidoscope Sharingan off. From a separate drawer, she draws out two scrolls.

She sets them before her, and then absently straightens them before looking back up at him.

She takes one, and pushes it towards him.

“Those eyes of yours are called the Mangekyou Sharingan. It is the evolution of the Sharingan past three tomoe. They emerge from witnessing the loss of someone you love dearly.”

He takes it, opens it—and finds incomprehensible gibberish.

He looks up, and Shouko taps the skin beneath her brother’s Mangekyou Sharingan.

Right.

Duh.

Obviously.

He activates Shouko’s Sharingan. The gibberish becomes only a little more comprehensible, so he activates her Mangekyou Sharingan, and the words snap into focus, and then proceed to burn themselves into his brain.

The Mangekyou Sharingan—usage of which will eventually cause blindness.

The Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan—a transplanted Mangekyou Sharingan, which will live forever.

Susanoo, a jutsu of staggering protective and destructive power, usable only to those with two Mangekyou.

The different jutsu that could be housed in each eye—

Tsukuyomi, the ultimate genjutsu, which is housed in Itachi’s left eye.

Amaterasu, the all-consuming flame, which is housed in Itachi’s right.

Omoikane, the true-sight, in Shouta’s left.

Ookuninushi, the law-maker, in Shouta’s right.

A dozen more, with names of long dead Uchiha.

There are no more jutsu assigned to the living.

Only Itachi the traitor—

And the eyes currently borne by Shouko, the clan head.

Shouko’s Mangekyou Sharingan absorbs it all in a moment.

Before he slides the scroll closed, he notes the hand—one he’s seen before. On the documents before him, on the letter he received from the house of the clan head upon Shouko’s coronation.

The scroll is written in Shouko’s hand.

Why did she re-write this? Were there no ancient scrolls on the Mangekyou Sharingan?

Or—

He slides the scroll closed, and hands it back to Shouko.

She takes it, returns it to its partner before her and says, “Such a delicious irony, don’t you think? In trying to kill us all, Itachi gave us nine users of our most powerful technique.”

Despite himself, and despite the situation they’re in, Kakashi finds himself grinning back at her.

Their gazes hold for a moment, and then Shouko looks back down at the two scrolls before her with a sigh. She straightens them until they are perfectly parallel, and then she takes the right, and turns it over in her hands.

She hesitates, and then sets it before him.

He takes it.

“There are jutsu that are not in the main scroll. Jutsu that can be used in all Mangekyou—” she pauses, hesitates, “—at the cost of the eye itself. The blinding techniques.”

He looks down at the scroll in his hand.

“I threatened to take Obito’s eye from you to test your resolve. I will not give my clan’s secrets to someone who is not willing to give an eye for them. I gave you my eyes so that you would not lose the eye of your beloved friend to use that jutsu.”

Kakashi is momentarily struck dumb. The weight of her eyes now feels much heavier, knowing she gave them to him for him to seal them away.

“Also, you would have needed an extra anyways,” she says, with a faint little smile.

He opens the scroll in his hands, and her eyes drink it all in in a moment.

“Ame-no-Minakanushi,” she says. “The Uchiha blood-jutsu. You hold in your hands our destruction, Kakashi.”

It is a trivially simple jutsu. Three signs, and the will to bind.

Blood for my blood.

Eye for my eye.

The effect: a perfect seal of another Sharingan, erasing all remaining traces of every jutsu that Sharingan has ever cast.

Every character on the scroll before him burns itself deeply into Shouko’s Mangekyou, and he will never forget them.

Slowly, he closes the scroll, and hands it back to Shouko.

Their gazes hold, Mangekyou on Mangekyou, in the moment after she grabs it and before he releases it.

“I trust you will keep this jutsu to yourself, Kakashi,” she says.

“I swear it.”

She sets the scroll beside its brother and straightens them. “There’s one more thing,” she says. She straightens the scrolls a little more. She swallows, then finally looks up at him. “Uchiha Madara lives.”

Kakashi’s blood goes to ice in his veins.

“We have seen him, since his death. He has come in many forms, often claiming to be a lost member of our clan, but he destroys everything he touches. Our histories are wrong—the old scrolls we have on our techniques filled with lies—and I only have him to blame. Sousuke was seen with a man in black before his aborted rebellion, Itachi with him before his attack. He blames us for rejecting him, wishes to weaken us, break us, kill us for that sin. It was him who saved Itachi the night of the attack, and it is him in Mist, I’m sure of it.”

Kakashi’s heart pounds futilely in an attempt to beat the icy sludge in his veins.

“Kakashi, I say this to you, as a clan head to her kin. Uchiha Madara is a high criminal against our people, guilty of unspeakable crimes beyond number. I renounce him here and now unequivocally and without reservation.” She breathes in sharply, and her eyes rage. “As a renegade, he has lost the right to use his eyes, so, as the clan head of the Uchiha, I authorize you to use our most forbidden jutsu against him, and, as one Uchiha to another, I ask you to use my eyes to steal his from him. He does not deserve them.”

Kakashi takes a deep breath.

He is going to challenge Uchiha Madara—a man who fought evenly with Hashirama—a man who (helped) carved The Valley of the End—the second strongest ninja Konoha has ever seen.

“I swear it,” Kakashi says.

“Thank you,” Shouko says, and the Sharingans in her eyes finally fade away. She takes a deep breath, then lets it out. She takes the folder from the side of her desk, and then looks up at him.

“You’re dismissed, Kakashi. I believe your student is waiting for you?”

A moment later, and Kakashi is in a room he doesn’t recognize, and he experiences a single moment of fear before he sees Sakura to his right. Her eyes are red.

“Oh, thank the Sage,” she says, wiping her eyes. “When your clone dispelled, I thought—” She coughs, sniffles. “Never mind. I passed. What do we do now?”

“I have a way to free the Mizukage, if he is truly being enslaved by an Uchiha.”

“He is,” Sakura says, without an ounce of hesitation. “He greeted us at the end of the second stage. I know that chakra, Sensei.”

And here Kakashi had been hoping he would have to go back to Shouko with his tail between his legs and give her back her eyes.

“We don’t have official backing from Konoha,” he says. “This is an unofficial mission. Do you still want to go through with it?”

Sakura’s eyes widen, and then she smiles.

“But sensei, Uchiha-sama gave you the way to free the Mizukage, didn’t she? We’re not alone.”

Kakashi smiles, faintly.

“Okay. We strike during the final exams. We want him surrounded by Mist ninja, so it’s as hard as possible for Madara to get back to him.” Also, because going and looking for the Mizukage seemed like a really good way to get killed. “If I can see him, I can break the jutsu. I might be able to break it from the mist, but I don’t want to risk the two jutsu being cast by different Uchiha.”

Sakura nods.

“Alright. Here’s the plan—”

The final exam arrives, but Yagura doesn’t come. He’s late.

Sakura is already standing in the center of the stadium ground with the eight other participants, her temporary teammates Aburame Shioko and Egawa Shinzou on either side. The bad attitude from their trip here is gone, and now he can see them deferring to her, tilting just a little away from her, as if they’re her left and right hands.

Before them is Mei Terumii, Mist jounin, marked as possible Boil and Lava release user in the Konoha Bingo Book, which is, if true, total fucking bullshit.

The crowd has started to stir.

Fuck.

He had trusted that a Kage wouldn’t miss their village’s own Chuunin Exams. Not a guarantee—the Kage can do whatever the hell they want. They’re the fucking Kage.

Kakashi takes a steadying breath.

There is still a genjutsu in the mist, Sakura assured him this morning.

If Madara knew the jutsu he was going to use against him, he would have canceled it. He doesn’t know.

If the Mizukage doesn’t come, then, well—Kakashi can still use the jutsu, and hope that wherever the Mizukage is, he’s far away from Madara.

Mei looks awkwardly at the Kage’s empty chair. It’s been fifteen minutes.

After another two minutes, she raises her hand above her.

The result is instantaneous, and the resulting silence is deafening in its suddenness.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” she says, voice booming before sweeping her hand across him and Kanashii and the civilians whose lavish clothes indicate their status as nobles, “esteemed guests, welcome to the Chuunin Selection Exam! We will begin the matches of the final round, between the nine candidates who advanced in the preliminaries.” She turns back to the candidates. “These nine candidates have proven themselves extraordinary and capable genin. They bring honor and pride upon their villages—” she smiles particularly at the single Mist team, standing at the end, then turns her eyes to Kanashii’s team, and then his. “Today, they will demonstrate if they have the capacity to become chuunin.” She lowers her voice, now, speaking directly to the candidates. “This is the last, and most dangerous stage of the exam. You will fight until one of you dies, falls unconscious, or admits defeat. If I see a clear winner, I will intervene myself. I don’t want to see any dead bodies today.” She looks down the line of genin. “You already know your pairings. Any questions?”

None of the genin say anything.

“Alright then. Biwa Shira of Mist and Urusai of Cloud, you are our first match. Everyone else, please go to your seats.”

She gestures to the empty seats, not twenty feet below the Mizukage’s throne.

Fuck.

He does not want Sakura within striking distance of Yagura when he does this.

The candidates drain out of the stage, leaving the small pale Cloud girl, nervously humming as she dances from foot to foot and the large Mist woman.

Mei raises her hand, and once again silence spills through the arena.

She drops it.

“Begin!”

“Look kid,” Shira, the mist ninja, says, hands spinning through hand seals. “This is nothing personal.”

Urusai’s humming increases in pitch and severity as a water dragon crashes into where she had just been standing. Urusai snaps her fingers anxiously with one hand as she dances back from the kunai Shira throws in her wake, keens as she ducks and her own kunai go wide.

Shira dashes across the distance between them, and Urusai dashes to the side, spinning through hands seals, but she’s forced to break off when she has to leap away from Shira’s hand when it emerges from the ground beneath her. The earth clone that had been chasing her leaps after her and scores a long slash across her arm.

Reasonable competence with two elemental affinities.

That’s a hell of a genin the Mist have there.

No surprise, though. Villages like to keep their best genin for the chuunin exams in their village. The fact only one genin team got through the first two stages says either bad things about Mist or really good things about Kakashi and Kanashii’s team.

A smile momentarily twitches Urusai’s lips as she lands and dashes back, drumming her fingers loudly on a metal patch on her leg.

“You’re so loud, shut—”

Urusai slams her hands together in a clap that echoes throughout the arena, and Kakashi can feel the chakra in it. Shira staggers back, and her eyes rove wildly around her before she attacks… empty air.

Urusai opens her mouth and starts to sing, her mouth stretched into a wide grin, beating the rhythm into pant legs.

“Lightning in our veins—” she chants, drawing a kunai with one hand, the other still beating against her leg.

“And the clouds beneath us—” she dashes to Shira, every step in time with her song.

“Our people at our back—” she raises her kunai as Shira dashes directly back towards her.

“And our A before us—” she holds the kunai before Shira’s neck, whose eyes still rove over nothing.

“When we stand united—” her gaze bores into Mei, and she taps her kunai in rhythm against Shira’s skin, raising a faint red line with every strike.

“Winner, Urusai.”

“None can oppose us!” Urusai bellows, and throws her hands into the air as the stadium explodes into applause.

Shira, at Urusai’s side, blinks. She lifts her hand to her bloody neck, and then turns to Urusai, who grins fiercely at her, back to humming.

“It’s nothing personal,” she sing-songs, in time to the rhythm her fingers are making on the metal band on her shorts.

Kakashi slides his gaze to where Kanashii sits, a third of the way around the stadium from him, still on her feet and cheering her student. That was one hell of a genjutsu. A full illusion of Urusai herself, not only moving but hitting and being hit. Anchoring it in a song, every word and every beat applying another layer of genjutsu, so that no kai could break it for more than a moment.

What were they feeding the kids in Cloud these days?

He looks back to his student, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Yagura.

He raises his gaze to the Mizukage, whose pink eyes bore coolly into Kakashi’s. Kakashi hadn’t seen him come in.

Obviously.

Kakashi had forgotten, for a moment, that he was dealing with a Kage.

In the arena, Mei calls out the next match.

“Haruno Sakura of the Leaf and Isogashii of Cloud, please come down to the arena.”

Kakashi bows his head deferentially, and feels Yagura’s gaze slide off of him to Sakura beneath him, as she slips into the bowels of the complex. When Sakura slips away, the full force of Yagura’s gaze slams into him again. His expression is flat, but Kakashi can feel the threat there. Shouko’s Sharingans lie dormant in his skull, but he can still physically see a faint aura of the three-tails chakra around Yagura’s skin.

Fuuuck.

If he does anything right now, he’s a dead man. He needs Yagura looking somewhere else. He needs a distraction.

Sakura emerges into the arena and waves to him. He waves back, wiggling his fingers—their sign for go. She doesn’t nod, doesn’t even twitch, walks to the center of the arena.

Across from her Isogashii stands, three or four years her senior, but no bigger than her. She’s trying to keep her face expressionless, but he sees the smirk on her face.

According to Sakura, Isogashii has some of her teacher’s strength. She can use her precise chakra control to radically increase her strength, but she doesn’t have the human-splitting power of Kanashii, nor is she capable of using the technique to boost her speed.

Taken together, that means that Isogashii has to get real lucky to win. It’s not impossible, but she’ll need at least a couple clean hits. Kanashii has to know this—which means Isogashii’s smirk is bad news.

Sakura takes Gamami from her head, and sets her on the ground at her feet.

“Does she get to keep that?” Isogashii asks, breaking the skin of her thumb with a forefinger when Mei turns to glance at Gamami.

“Her,” Sakura corrects.

“Summons are allowed,” Mei says, turning back to Isogashii.

“Shouldn’t she have to resummon it, though?” she asks, and Kakashi is certain she’s gathering chakra, threading it through a signless jutsu.

“Her.”

“Like, she could have spent all of her chakra last night to summon it.”

“Her.”

“Doesn’t seem fair.”

“Yes, but neither is that jutsu you’re preparing right now. Anything you do to prepare for the fight beyond preemptively attacking your opponent is allowed.”

Isogashii raises her non bloody hand before her in surrender.

Sakura begins to leak flower petals at the news that she can.

Kakashi takes the opportunity to activate Shouko’s Sharingan, closing his right eye so he can activate both at once. When he does, he sees that Sakura has already replaced herself with a clone.

“Any more questions?” Mei asks, lips twitching when she sees that Sakura has already taken full advantage of her permission to do whatever she wants.

Both contestants shake their heads.

Mei raises her hand, lowers it.

“Begin!”

Isogashii immediately folds herself in half, and slams her palm on the ground before her. A seal races across the ground of the arena in an instant and then flares in a brilliant white.

Sakura’s clone droops, melting, and then poofs out of existence.

That—that’s a chakra absorption field.

That’s an assassination technique.

Set it up, tie someone down inside of it, and wait for it to suck every bit of chakra out of them. The more chakra it absorbs, the faster it goes. Rock used it, once, to kill the eight tails jinchuuriki.

Kakashi glances at Kanashii out of the corner of his eye, and she is grinning nastily at him.

“You’re lucky I haven’t decided to classify this as an attack on my person,” Mei says, chakra slowly leaking from her skin and vanishing into the air.

“You can always wait up there,” Isogashii offers, pointing at the railing above them. From her skin, Kakashi can’t see any chakra leaking, which means either she can fully stop the leakage, or is leaking so little the Sharingan can’t tell the difference. In practice, the difference is academic. Isogashii has more than enough chakra to take that level of chakra loss for an hour, maybe more. Her biggest concern is that the chakra absorption field sucks enough chakra from Mei that it starts to pull more chakra from her as well—which is predicated on supposing that she’s losing any chakra at all. Ninja with truly extraordinary chakra control can stop the flow entirely.

Sakura has that kind of control. But the question is if she’ll realize what’s happening before she loses the majority of her reserves.

“I’ll stay here, thanks.”

Sakura staggers out of her transformation, the flower petals around her going dark as the field sucks all of the chakra out of them. Sakura, he can see, is actively leaking chakra. The same rate as Mei—but Sakura isn’t Mei. She can’t take it.

She’s got minutes, maybe less.

She looks at Mei and then at Isogashii, and—

The chakra flow from her skin abruptly stops.

Kakashi breathes out a sigh of relief.

Isogashii hmphs.

“I had been hoping you’d just die,” she says, cracking her knuckles.

Sakura holds out one hand and spreads her fingers, like she did when she was first learning to manually throw chakra strings. She frowns.

And yes—that’s the second problem.

Chakra Absorption Fields suck chakra out of the air. The chakra for jutsu are always moulded externally. You can’t mould them inside your body. It’s one of the rules.

If you overload a jutsu with chakra, and do it real quick, you can get a jutsu off. Jiraiya could do it. Kakashi could do it maybe once. There’s no way Sakura can.

Isogashii leaps across the distance between them, and Sakura dodges out of the way a moment before Isogashii crashes into the ground behind her, earth shattering under her fist.

It’s less than what Kanashii could do, which is again less than what Tsunade could do—it is still more than Sakura can take more than two hits of.

Her training with Guy made her sturdier.

It didn’t make her that sturdy.

The field is not broken by Isogashii breaking a substantial portion of the arena.

There goes Kakashi’s next best hope for Sakura’s way out of this.

Sakura dances back from Isogashii as she straightens.

“What’s wrong, Sakura?” Isogashii asks, dashing towards her. “Where are those flower petals of yours?”

Sakura dodges again, getting a solid blow on Isogashii’s side that lands with a satisfying crack before being forced to retreat. Isogashii flinches, but only for a moment, her face relaxing.

So, in summary:

Sakura’s only option here is to get in a one-one-one taijutsu-only fight with a mini-Tsunade. She needs to beat her faster than she heals, and never get hit.

He sees Sakura come to the same conclusion, meeting Isogashii head on when Isogashii comes after her again. She is even with Isogashii, that bit of future sight she has keeping her ahead of Isogashii’s attacks, twisting around them and delivering her own counterattacks, but Isogashii is no slouch. It takes her three blows to realize Sakura’s reading her blocks and attacks before they happen, take that into account, and realize that Sakura can’t block—she can only dodge. Isogashii takes advantage, strikes at her center of mass, making Sakura really dance. Sakura closes in and punches, but Isogashii gets her guard up in time, and Sakura jerks back an instant before contact. A moment after, Isogashii jerks the arm she was about to block with forward with a heavy whoosh of displaced air.

That would have broken Sakura’s hand, no problem.

So.

Sakura can’t block—can’t be blocked.

She can only dodge and all of her hits have to land.

And—

One last thing.

Sakura is not a taijutsu master. She’s getting better, but even with foresight, she goes most days without laying a finger on Guy. He’s a freak of nature, but Kakashi isn’t, and he can beat Sakura more than he loses. Not only that, but all of her training was predicated on her having replacement and transformation jutsu available at all times.

Sakura overcommits to a strike.

To Sakura’s credit, she doesn’t try the replacement jutsu, but she does try the transformation jutsu, trying to shift into a petal over Isogashi’s fists.

The jutsu fails, and a crack echoes through the stadium as Sakura is thrown halfway across the arena. She crashes into the ground, and Isogashii doesn’t miss the opportunity, charging after her—

Only to be forced to duck under a sword strike straight through where her neck was a moment before.

Gamami is leaking chakra as bad as Mei, maybe worse, but she is still standing. She dodges Isogashii’s return blow, and forces her to retreat with a jab at her heart.

“Thanks Gamami,” Sakura says, staggering to her feet, testing her left arm with a wince, but she succeeds in straightening it. Her eyes bore into Isogashii, and she says, “Can you keep her occupied for me for a sec? Just a little while.”

Gamami nods sharply, unable to use their normal chakra-flashing bullshit in the chakra absorption field.

Sakura’s face pinches in concentration as she stares at Isogashii and snaps her fingers with both of her hands.

Chakra Absorption Fields are used infrequently in the field. And it’s not just because they kill you just as dead as they kill everyone else, break your jutsu just as damn broken as everyone else’s. It’s also because they’re stationary. Any jounin worth their salt can body-flicker, and if you don’t have them nailed down, they can get out of it in the blink of an eye. You can’t set up a barrier around it, because the field itself will tear the barrier apart.

However.

Sakura has something of an unbreakable barrier all around her—the walls of the arena.

She’s in a one-on-one taijutsu-only fight with a mini-Tsunade. No ninjutsu allowed.

She snaps her fingers some more, faster. With each snap, chakra flashes down her arms. She slips out a kunai and pitches it at the exact place Isogashii’s head will be if she goes for a deathblow on Gamami, forcing her to slow for a moment, and letting Gamami get away.

She returns to her snapping. Each snap is no louder than the last, but with each of them the chakra flash is a little more precise.

“Just a little more,” Sakura says, staying carefully just far enough away from Isogashii that Isogashii would have to open herself dangerously to Gamami if she goes after Sakura, but close enough that Sakura can interfere with a kunai if she needs to.

Gamami’s movements start to get slower, the flow of chakra out of her tenketsu faster. Mei has retreated to the wall, despite her protestations otherwise. Isogashii’s chakra is starting to visibly leak from her skin as the Chakra Absorption Field grows stronger. Hungrier.

Rock killed the eight tails with it by sacrificing ten ninja—five Cloud and five Rock—down upon it to turn it into a black hole which could kill a jounin in seconds.

It killed the eight-tails jinchuuriki in thirty.

A tailed beast worth of chakra, gone in thirty seconds.

The resulting seal was a circle of death that instantly kills any ninja that stepped upon it.

They could have broken it, but they didn’t.

It’s still there.

The Circle of Death.

Rock still uses it to kill enemy ninja.

It’s a horrible way to die.

Gamami’s movements slow, and Sakura’s kunai doesn’t make it in time.

Gamami vanishes.

Isogashii is actively losing chakra, but her movements haven’t slowed in the slightest.

She turns to Sakura, who is halfway across the arena from her, still snapping her fingers.

“Are you trying to imitate Urusai?” Isogashii asks with a faint sneer.

“It worked for her,” Sakura says, and her next snap is deafening. “Why not me?”

Isogashii frowns faintly, and lunges towards her. Sakura’s next snap is ordinary, and then two more deafening cracks. Sakura sidesteps Isogashii, drives an ordinary fist into her side which cracks ribs but nothing more, and then barely avoids Isogashii’s counterattack.

Two more clashes, and Sakura takes a blow to the stomach, leaving her coughing blood as she rolls away from Isogashii’s attacks, and then—

One two three four five deafening snaps in a row.

Fifteen minutes.

For Sakura to get a rudimentary grasp on Chakra-Impulse Strength—

It took fifteen minutes.

Some kids are just fucking monsters, straight down to the bone.

Isogashii descends upon her, and for the first time, Sakura does not dodge. She lifts her left arm to block it, chakra flashing through her arm to match Isogashii’s—

Chakra flashes into chakra, and Sakura’s arm doesn’t break. She steps into Isogashii’s guard, chakra flashing through her right arm, and drives her fist into Isogashii’s solar plexus.

It physically lifts Isogashii into the air, face twisted in pain, and her control breaks, chakra pouring out from her skin and into the air around her. Sakura twists, lifting her foot, and aims it straight for Isogashii’s head.

Kanashii is gone from her seat in a moment, the wards around the arena shattering, past Mei Terumii and down to her student, who is about to get her head blown off—

This is his moment.

Kakashi activates Shouko’s Mangekyou Sharingan and turns to Yagura, whose eyes are on Kanashii below them, shattering the chakra absorption field with a stomp of her foot, clutching her student’s head safely to her chest with one hand, and blocking Sakura’s kick with the other—

He meets Yagura’s eyes—

Blood for my blood.

Yagura lunges towards him, chakra boiling over his skin, halfway to Kakashi in the blink of an eye, as, below them, Sakura’s foot bounces harmlessly off of Kanashii’s hand, having never put chakra into it in the first place.

Eye for my eye.

Shouko’s eyes drift closed, world darkening, and the last thing Shouko’s eyes ever see is Yagura’s eyes clearing as his body tumbles to the arena floor.

Kakashi spins through the seals for lightning eye as he teleports to his student’s side, away from the swarm of Mist Anbu converging upon him.

His lightning eye winks into existence to see Yagura standing, pink eyes clear.

“Stop,” he commands, and every single person in the stadium stops.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Kanashii, Isogashii still held tight to her chest, looking from him to Yagura and then up to Mei, where her hands are locked together before her where she stands on the railing of the arena above them, lava already boiling through the seat he had just been in.

Looks like lava release, at least, had been true.

Great.

Sakura vanishes from his side, replaced by a clone. If she’s following the plan, she’s already on the walls of the stadium.

“I have been under a genjutsu,” Yagura says, young voice clear, easily carrying over the silence of the arena. “From which Kakashi appears to have freed me—” at the skeptical gaze of his jounin, his lips twitch faintly “—although I suppose that must seem hard to believe.”

Mist Anbu are gathering at the walls of the arena all around them, but they have not attacked yet.

“So, I hereby abdicate.” He vanishes, and appears at Mei’s side, where she still stands on the arena’s walls. “Mei Terumii,” Yagura says, taking his hat from his head, and holding it out to her. “You are the strongest jounin of our village, and have the confidence of our ninja. They will trust your judgement, whether you rule I am now clear of mind or under compulsion.”

Mei looks down at the hat before her, and then up at her Kage.

“If anyone has problems with this appointment,” Yagura says, his voice clear, calm, and deceptively quiet. “Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”

To Kakashi’s left, a soft voice says—

“I do.”

Kakashi teleports to Sakura’s side a moment before where he was standing is enveloped in flame.

“Everyone, eyes closed!” Yagura bellows.

“Those were my brother’s eyes,” Kakashi can hear Madara say from where he stands beside where Kakashi had been a moment before. He turns to Kakashi and—

Sakura puts her hand through his lightning eye a moment before Kakashi meets Madara’s eyes.

The eyes Kakashi was supposed to have sealed.

“I will make you pay for taking them from me.”

“You are not welcome here, Uchiha,” Yagura says. “And you will pay for what you have done to my village.”

Madara laughs a low, cruel laugh.

“Everyone always thinks that closing their eyes will protect them from me.” Kakashi re-conjures his lightning eye, and sees Madara’s eyes bloody and bruised, as if he had just—as if he had just replaced them. “I am Uchiha Madara—and so long as you have eyes, they belong to me.”

No.

Yagura stiffens, and the Mizukage’s hat slips from his fingers.

Mei dashes back from Yagura a moment before a chakra tail slams into the wall where she had just been standing. “Away from the Mizukage,” she orders, as the three tails chakra explodes from his skin, hunching him over, two more tails joining the first.

He opens his mouth, and lets out an earth-shattering roar. Mei spins to Madara, eyes still closed, and her hands spin. Lava crashes down upon him, but when it clears, Madara stands, untouched, a blue ribcage floating around him.

“Cover me,” Sakura says, and she is momentarily the Mizukage’s hat before she is gone.

No, fuck—

Kakashi teleports after her, drives a Rasengan into the tail crashing down upon her, dispelling it for long enough for her to grab Yagura’s head in both of her hands. She cries out in pain as Yagura’s cloak burns her skin.

There is a moment of unnatural stillness in the air, and two more tails lash towards her. Kakashi blocks one with an arm and puts a second Rasengan through the other. Yagura, however, still has hands, and he drives one into Sakura’s chest with a slick, wet sound that is so much worse than a crack.

Sakura’s kai shatters through the world around them a moment before she is thrown off of Yagura, and into the air. The fog in Yagura’s eyes clear as every seal in the damn stadium breaks. Kakashi’s pockets overflow, and, for the first time he has ever seen, the mist in Kirigakure clears.

Yagura crumbles, and Madara snarls. Kakashi wants to follow Sakura, catch her, make sure she’s okay, but—

If Madara gets Yagura again, they’re all dead.

He leaves a Hiraishin seal in the ground before him, throws a kunai at Madara, and teleports over to him, driving a chidori into the ribcage around him. It cracks, and he can feel Kanashii’s chakra flaring a moment before her fist crashes into the opposite side, breaking it entirely.

Madara, face gaunt and bloody, looking more than halfway dead, snarls at them, pinwheels spinning madly in his face. He dashes back from them, a tree surging around him to block Mei’s lava.

Kakashi feels Yagura stir behind him, and Madara smiles. His eyes snap towards Yagura’s crumpled form, but Kanashii puts herself in the path of his gaze at the same moment Kakashi re-appears before the Mizukage, hoping two bodies are enough to block Madara’s jutsu.

“Sir,” he says, clutching Yagura’s head to his chest, “you have to—

Yagura pushes him back with an effortless twist of his shoulders, and then drives two kunai into his own eyes.

Kakashi staggers backwards in shock, out of the path between Madara and Yagura. He hears Kanashii crash into the other wall of the arena, and in the corner of his eyes, he sees Madara’s face freeze at the sight of Yagura’s eyeless face.

Yagura pulls his kunais from his eyes and smiles a grisly, bloody smile. “I will not be your slave again,” he says. Madara spins and fixes his gaze on Mei. She instinctively conjures a wall of lava, but Hashirama’s trees split it and—

He takes one of Yagura’s tails straight to the face.

“Everyone, behind me,” Yagura says, and the ninja all scramble behind him, the civilians almost all already either gone or dead. Yagura makes a single seal, and the mist of Kirigakure returns in an unbelievable explosion of chakra, all of the mist now glowing faintly red with demonic chakra. The burn of this mist makes the old mist feel like nothing more than a tickle. “The mist of Kirigakure belongs to me,” Yagura says.

Madara’s eyes burn as he turns his gaze to all of them—but whatever jutsu he’s trying to use, it doesn’t work through one hundred feet of mist filled with tailed beast chakra. The second of Yagura’s tails, hidden behind his back, begins to glow with the eerie light of a tailed beast bomb.

Madara lunges towards Yagura, and Yagura goes down on all fours and slams the tailed beast ball into his chest, blowing him across the arena with a hole in it. Unbelievably, the hole in his chest starts to knit closed.

Yagura conjures three more beast balls on his tails and closes the distance. All three balls crash into Madara, but wood burns instead of flesh, leaving Yagura standing over a charred tree. He stays there for a moment, and then says, “He’s gone.”

He turns back to the ninja arrayed before him, but Kakashi is already teleporting to Sakura’s side, and—

Oh.

Oh, Sage.

Her arms are burned all the way up to the elbows, skin blackened, and the rest of her is burned bright red. All of that is nothing compared to the fucking hole in her chest, from where Yagura struck her.

She’s still breathing, but only barely.

“Sensei,” she says. She doesn’t open her eyes, and her hands flail weakly at her sides. “Did it work? Is the—” she coughs, and her face contorts in agony. “Is the Mizukage free?”

She does not ask if she is going to survive.

“Yes,” Yagura answers from Kakashi’s shoulder. Then, in a louder voice. “Medics, on me!”

Kakashi finds himself surrounded by Mist medics on all sides, but none of them move. Because—

This isn’t the kind of wound that people can be healed from.

It would take—

It would take a Tsunade.

Slowly, Kakashi raises his gaze from his student, and finds Kanashii standing over her.

“Please,” he says, and his voice breaks.

Kanashii takes in a deep breath.

“Consider it a personal request from the Fourth Mizukage,” Yagura adds.

Kanashii takes an off-blue charm from beneath her shirt, and touches it once.

“Oh, that’s just sad,” she says, under her breath. “I never did like killing kids.” She turns to the medic nin. “Keep her alive.” Then, to her only male student behind her. “Takai, get my ink.”

Takai looks from her, to Sakura, and then runs off.

“I need a flat surface, suitable for seals, at least twenty feet by thirty.”

Mei leaps down to the shattered arena, and slams her hands down upon it. The arena immediately reforms itself into a plain dirt field, and then the dirt compacts down upon itself, crunching down and down until it is white stone, from wall to wall.

Kanashii takes a concerningly small inkwell from Takai, and leaps down beside Mei. “And Mizukage-sama,” she calls, not turning to face him, digging her canine into her thumb, and dripping two drops of blood into the inkwell, “I will also need about a tailed beast’s worth of chakra.”

Yagura looks down at her and then down at Sakura, unconscious beside them, surrounded by medic nin working futilely to stabilize her.

“You have it,” he says.

Kanashii nods, and then sets to drawing. An enormous seal, from an inkwell no larger than his fist, which never seems to go empty. Every minute or two, she squeezes more blood into the inkwell. Sakura is relocated to the arena floor, which lets him stand beside her and still see the seal array Kanashii is building when he can’t watch Sakura struggle to breathe any longer.

Off to the side, at some point someone brings down the Mizukage’s hat from where Sakura left it on the top of the arena. They give it to Mei, who then turns and holds it out to Yagura.

“I believe this is yours,” she says.

He turns his blind face down upon it, and, after a moment of hesitation, he nods and takes it, setting it back upon his head. He has cleaned up his face, and covered his savaged eyes, so he looks a bit less like a nightmare and a bit more like a Kage.

The medic nin have brought hospital equipment to them, a bed, machines, all manner of other things Kakashi does not recognize and does not care about.

Kanashii builds an array of three circular seals connected in a line: one large seal, a small seal and one sort of in between.

Kanashii stands, hands ink-stained, and sets her brush and ink aside. She steps into the locus of the middle seal and points to the locus of the largest seal. “I need her here,” Kanashii says.

They lay her out on the stone. As soon as she’s disconnected from the machines, her condition worsens.

“Mizukage, I need you there,” she says, pointing at the locus of the final seal.

He steps forward, and kneels.

“I’m going to need you feed me your chakra,” she says. “No need to be gentle, the seal will keep you from burning me out.”

Yagura inclines his head and sets his hands on the activation points of the seal before him.

Slowly, Kanashii kneels. After one last moment of hesitation, she places her hands on the two points before her, and all of the seals light up as one. “Flesh to my flesh. Blood to my blood,” Kanashii intones, and… nothing happens. Sakura lies there, each breath an agony. He turns to Kanashii, and stumbles back when he finds her, teeth gritted, with all of Sakura’s wounds opened on her in full.

The same horrifying healing factor that had healed Kanashii from the hole he had put in her chest and her face glows around mirrors of Sakura’s wounds now. Slowly, so much more slowly than they had when Kanashii had been healing only herself, her wounds start to close. He turns back to Sakura, and finds the wounds in the same state—healing, ever so slowly. A millimeter at a time.

Sakura’s body is wracked with a cough that Kanashii mimics, and she grits her teeth.

“No,” she says, hands burned into claws clenched before her. “You don’t get to die today.”

The minutes tick by, and millimeter by agonizing millimeter, the hole in Sakura’s chest closes. Behind Kanashii, Yagura begins to flag and is forced to summon the three tails’ chakra around him.

It takes two hours, but when it is done, Sakura is whole again. Kanashii lifts her hands from the seal, and Kakashi is immediately at Sakura’s side.

She is breathing, her breaths deep, unpained. Her hands, where they had been burned into claws, are hands again. The black chakra burns are gone.

He looks up at Kanashii as she stands. She staggers for a moment, and then straightens to her full height.

She looks down at him with all of the hate and contempt in the whole damn world.

“Thank you,” he says to Kanashii and means it.

She sneers faintly. “Don’t thank me. Sage—I don’t ever want to hear you thank me.”

She turns back to the Mizukage.

“I trust the rest of the exam will be completed at a later date?” she asks, and Yagura’s lips twitch.

“Yes. I believe I will schedule it for tomorrow—none of the contestants who I need to see more of have been injured.”

Sakura, notably, is horrendously injured. Kakashi is comforted to see the Mizukage isn’t above a bit of nepotism. It’s an important quality in a Kage.

“And because my student’s opponent was inpacitated before a victor was called, I trust she will be allowed to continue?”

Mei’s mouth, from where she is standing against the wall, falls open at Kanashii’s rather stunning gall.

Even as Kakashi holds his student to his chest, alive due to Kanashii’s rather extraordinary bit of medical ninjutsu, he can’t help but think—

Fucking.

Cloud ninja.

“Of course,” Yagura says, not fazed in the slightest. “I have seen enough of Sakura’s skills to be certain of her worth as a chuunin.”

In Kakashi’s arms, Sakura stirs.

“So,” she says, voice weak. “Does that mean I pass?”

Kakashi coughs out a laugh, and Yagura actually smiles.

“Yes, Sakura. It means you pass.”

“Cooool,” Sakura says, before promptly passing back out.

Unbelievable.

Chapter Text

Two hours later, Kakashi is sitting at Sakura’s bedside, looking down upon her unconscious form. The medics tell him she won’t wake up today—tomorrow morning at the earliest—but he’s pretty sure that’s total bullshit, what with how she went and woke up just to confirm she’d made chuunin moments after getting just barely dragged back from the brink of death.

He’s here, waiting, hoping—they kicked a hell of a beehive with the shit they just pulled. Madara is not a forgiving man.

When Kakashi closes his lightning eye, he can see Madara standing over her, punching a hole back into her chest. It’s pretty graphic, as the nightmarish images that project themselves onto the backs of his eyelids always are. It doesn’t help that he already knows just what Sakura’s chest looks like with a hole in it.

Kakashi clenches his eyes closed in an attempt to banish the images, but he doesn’t succeed. He blows out his breath in a sigh, and bows his head into his hands.

Yagura’s mist still burns on his skin and in his lungs and under his fucking fingernails, still infused with demonic chakra. An early-warning system, in case Madara comes back, to give Yagura half a chance to get to Madara before he goes and kills Kakashi or Sakura, or blows a hole in the village.

The door opens, and Kakashi is immediately on his feet, an inch from the intruder, kunai clenched in one hand. He just barely manages to get himself under control before he accidentally commits suicide by kage, kunai half an inch from Yagura’s neck.

Yagura is kind enough to pretend not to notice, his face serene. His face is now clear of blood, but his eyes are still gone—the ravaged sockets hidden behind a blue cloth that matches the symbol for water on his hat.

Yagura steps forward, into Kakashi’s kunai, and Kakashi steps back, lowering his kunai to a pouch in his pants.

“I’ll watch her,” Yagura says, walking past him, to the foot of Sakura’s bed. “The Hokage deserves to know what happened, and, if I’m not mistaken, you deserve to get your eyes back.”

Kakashi hesitates, that vision of Madara playing once again before him.

“Thank you, sir, but—”

“If Madara was able to get through me, then you wouldn’t stand a chance against him.”

The air wooshes right out of Kakashi’s lungs, and he is not ignorant to the second implication in Yagura’s words, the if i meant her harm, you would not be able to stop me. Kakashi breathes out sharply through his nose.

After another moment’s consideration, he bows his head. “Thank you, Mizukage-sama.”

“Believe me when I tell you, Kakashi, that it is the least I can do.” He continues his path around Sakura’s bed to seat himself in all of his full Kage finery into the rickety chair on Sakura’s other side. “Oh, and before you leave,” Yagura says, the moment before Kakashi’s Hiraishin completes, making him scramble to stop it in time. “Please inform your Hokage that if you are willing to wait for the end of the exams tomorrow, I will send my two most trusted jounin with you—Terumii Mei and Kuwabara Jouto—as protection and a gesture of good faith. Konoha has done me and my village a great service, and I do not intend to forget it.”

Kakashi inclines his head, and conjures a shadow clone. He waits a moment, in case Yagura has anything else to say, but the Mizukage remains silent, and he teleports away.

The hokage’s latest secretary, an old retired jounin named Akihiro looks up at Kakashi’s arrival, his right eye milky and unfocused, and his left eye permanently kind of bored. He doesn’t even blink, which is just a really horrible sign for how often Kakashi has had to use this particular seal.

“He’s available,” Akihiro says in a voice that’s just a little brighter and less gravelly than you’d expect from his ravaged face. He smiles, too, a genuine one which shows all of his teeth, straight and white and incredibly fake.

Great. Awesome.

Kakashi loves having to meet directly with the Hokage.

It’s his favorite pastime.

Getting over himself, Kakashi turns away from Akihiro and strides through the open door to the Hokage’s office. He really, really wants to start seeing this room less.

At Kakashi’s closed eyes and hollowed eyelids, the Hokage’s quirks an eyebrow, gaze flickering momentarily between the eye on Kakashi’s shoulder and his face, trying to determine the appropriate way to make eye contact before settling on the eye.

“Mission was a success,” Kakashi says as he closes the door behind him. At the soft click of the latch closing, a privacy seal washes through the room.

“Hmmm,” the Hokage says, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t seem to recall giving you a mission, Kakashi-kun.”

Kakashi crosses the rest of the room and stands before him, hands folded behind his back. “Uchiha Madara had, indeed, been controlling the fourth Mizukage. With Sakura’s assistance, I was able to break the jutsu. He has expressed his deepest gratitudes for Konoha’s involvement.”

“Ah, yes, I remember now,” the Hokage says. “That mission. Tell me everything.”

Kakashi does.

After he finishes, the Hokage sags back into his chair and blows out a gusty sigh. “The Mokuton?” he asks. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

Another sigh, and the Hokage pulls his hat from his head so he can stare up at the ceiling.

“We only know of one natural Mokuton user,” he says to it, “which means either Madara stole some of Hashirama’s cells or we missed someone.” He glances down at Kakashi. “Can’t say I’m a fan of either option.”

Yeah, Kakashi isn’t either.

The Hokage turns his gaze back up to the ceiling for one last moment of consideration before turning his gaze back to Kakashi.

“There might be hope for us, yet,” he says. “Although the idea of Madara with Mokuton chills me to my bones, at his prime he could have easily defeated Yagura, even without the help of Hashirama’s cells—which I suppose explains why he has not come against in broad daylight, only attacking in the shadows.”

Kakashi inclines his head as the Hokage’s gaze slips off to his side. After a moment’s consideration, the Hokage pales.

Kakashi frowns, and then turns to follow the Hokage’s gaze over to Minato’s portrait resting on a small shrine in the corner.

Kakashi’s blood goes cold as he puts together the pieces the Hokage did.

There’s no way Kushina’s seal could have failed with Minato by her side. No fucking way—Kakashi always knew it. Everyone knew it. But in all of history, only two ninjas have ever been known to be able to control the nine-tailed demon fox. At the time of the attack, everyone had thought them both dead.

That mother fucker.

Kakashi’s vision goes red as internally all he can hear is—

Madara killed Minato.

Madara killed Minato.

That son of a bitch.

Kakashi will tear him apart.

The Hokage clears his throat, and gives Kakashi a meaningful glance.

Kakashi closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and pushes that fury down into the ice bucket in the back of his mind.

“Anything else to report?” the Hokage asks.

One day, Kakashi tells himself.

One day.

“If we are willing to stay until after the Chuunin Exams have ended,” Kakashi says, “he has offered to send two of his most trusted jounin back with us, as protection and as a gesture of good faith.”

“Their names?”

“Terumii Mei and Kuwabara Jouto.”

The Hokage nods. “I don’t believe they’ve done anything too objectionable, but tell me, Kakashi—if Madara attacks, do you think they will be able to stop him?”

Kakashi feels ice drip down his spine. “I do not.”

The Hokage hums. “Better than nothing, I suppose, and I would like to strike while the iron is hot, as it were. An alliance with Mist is a remarkable opportunity. I don’t want to let it go to waste.”

Kakashi inclines his head.

“Good job, Kakashi. You’ve done a great service to Konoha today.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’re dismissed. Thank Shouko for me. The Uchiha once again demonstrate what an asset they are to this village.”

Kakashi bows and teleports away.

Uchiha Miko greets him at the doors to the Uchiha clan headquarters. She looks at his closed eyes and the lightning eye hovering on his shoulder but says nothing.

She walks him through the labyrinthine corridors of this nightmare of a building and stops before a door whose magnificence he had not fully appreciated before. Thick wood made of the First’s trees, its entire front surface carved into a single unbroken seal.

Miko knocks, and Shouko calls them in. Miko pushes the doors open, and Shouko looks up from the papers before her. She blinks, and when she opens her eyes again, pinwheels are spinning in her eyes, because she’s just really extra like that.

The door closes behind him, and Shouko rises from her desk to seal it closed with her blood. She gestures for him to take a seat as she passes him.

After re-taking her seat, she looks at his closed eyes, his hollowed eyelids. Her expression is conflicted.

“It was him?” she asks.

“Yes.”

Shouko sighs. “I’d been hoping you would come back to me with my eyes intact and we would all laugh about what fools we were.”

Yeah. Kakashi had been hoping for that, too. “He claimed I stole his brother’s eyes, but he had transplanted new ones in minutes,” Kakashi says, and Shouko presses her lips together in silent fury.

She pulls a single sheet of paper from her desk, and pushes it across the desk. “Draw them for me.”

He does so. Three linked tomoe, each link pierced with an inverse pinwheel, spiking in from the edge of his eye.

He pushes it back across the desk, and her gaze falls to it. Some of the tenseness in her body subsides. “Thank the sage,” she says under her breath. “I don’t recognize them.”

He gives her a moment.

“Does he still live?” she asks after storing the paper in one of the drawers of her desk.

“He does.”

Kakashi tells her the full story, and then tells her of the Hokage’s personal thanks.

A smile touches her lips for a moment before she smooths her lips together in an unreadable line. “I was afraid, Kakashi, for what would become of us when Madara’s crimes came to light.”

Yeah, Kakashi imagines he would have been, too.

He wonders if she also knows of his involvement in the nine-tails attack.

“You’ve done us a great service. Once again, we Uchiha find ourselves in your debt, Kakashi.”

He inclines his head. “Kin for kin,” he says.

She smiles, and echoes him. “Kin for kin.”

After a long moment of silence, she sighs and speaks. “Now that we’ll be giving you eyes your body already knows, I believe we can perform the transplant in just under six hours. Do you have the time?”

“I’m not sure,” Kakashi says honestly. “Would you mind if I checked?” He draws one of his kunais from loops at his waist and holds it out to her.

She takes it, looks briefly down upon his Hiraishin seal, and then sets it on the table between them.

She nods to him, and he teleports away.

Yagura turns his face up at Kakashi’s arrival.

“Welcome back, Kakashi-san,” Yagura says.

“Thank you, Mizukage-sama.”

Kakashi turns to Sakura and finds her exactly as he left her.

“She has not changed,” Yagura says.

“I may be as many as six or seven more hours,” Kakashi says to him, without turning away from Sakura’s unconscious face.

“I expected you to take far longer than that already. Go, Kakashi-san, I will watch your student while you are gone.”

Kakashi, after one more moment of staring down at Sakura’s face, returns to Shouko’s office in a flash of white light.

Shouko turns her gaze up to him when he arrives, and her Mangekyou Sharingan spin back into her eyes.

He takes his kunai back from her desk.

“I don’t like that that can be used to slip inside of our blood room,” she comments.

“I thought you might not,” Kakashi says, honestly, slipping the kunai into his belt.

“Thank you,” she says.

Kakashi inclines his head.

“Are you ready?” she asks him.

He nods.

“Let’s get your eyes back into you, then,” and her eyes take him then, the world fading out around him.

He hadn’t known she could do that.

He’s not terribly sure he likes it.

It feels like only a moment has passed before he is awake again. And when he wakes, his eyes are not wrapped in gauze. His eyes are not numb.

Shouko is sitting across from him, Mangekyou Sharingan lazily spinning in her eyes.

“Would you show me?” she asks him, pushing a mirror across the table towards him. “Obito’s Mangekyou Sharingan.”

His heart pounds in his chest, but he picks up the mirror anyways. He threads chakra through Obito’s eye, and feels the familiar dizzying feeling of having only one Sharingan.

He takes a breath and then pushes that last little bit.

An eye of hooked pinwheels stares back at him from the mirror, and fuck if that doesn’t make him break down and cry, right there in front of her.

“It should have been his,” Kakashi says through his tears. “My own idiocy got him killed—this should have been his.”

“He would have wanted you to have it,” she says, tears leaking from the corners of her brother’s eyes. “And as long as we carry their eyes with us, they are never truly dead.”

They weep at each other like that for a whole minute before they both wipe their faces clear of tears they never should have cried. He de-activates Obito's Sharingan and bows his head.

“Thank you for your assistance, Uchiha-sama.”

“Thank you, Kakashi,” she says, and gestures that he is free to go.

He returns to Sakura’s side.

Yagura turns his face up once again.

“Welcome back, Kakashi-san,” he repeats.

“Thank you, Mizukage-sama.”

“Was the Hokage amenable to my offer of protection?”

“We are very grateful to accept it.”

“Fantastic,” Yagura says, his voice not quite managing the inflection to match the word.

Kakashi dispels the shadow clone he left behind, which pours seven hours of staring at linoleum into his brain, and sits down on the chair on the other side of Sakura’s bed from the Mizukage.

The Mizukage does not get up to leave, and Kakashi does not ask him to.

It’s another three hours before Sakura wakes up, just after midnight, at least seven hours before the medic told him she would wake. She opens her eyes, and her eyes find him.

She smiles at him, no pain in her face.

“I’m a chuunin,” she says, like she’s daring him to deny it.

So, of course, he does. “Not yet you’re not.”

Ah, there it is. Kakashi had been worried she’d forgotten how to making killing intent. It’s an important ninja skill, you know. He’s teaching. Kakashi’s her teacher, after all.

“Actually,” Yagura says from her other side. Sakura jumps, like she hadn’t noticed he was there, flinching towards Kakashi, fear in her eyes. “I happen to have the authority to grant the chuunin rank.”

Sakura’s fear goes right out the window, and she grins eagerly.

She grabs the bar on her hospital bed, and hauls herself up with it.

“Now, in Mist, we give these to our chuunin.” He somehow draws a tiny flak jacket from within his Mizukage robes, asymmetrical where Konoha’s is symmetrical, two scroll pouches on the bottom left, one pocket on the right chest, and a pouch in the lower back. “Ordinarily, we don’t give them to foreign ninja, but I think in this case, I can make an exception.” He folds it in his hands, and kneels beside Sakura’s bed. “You saved me, Sakura. Your teacher did as well, but he did it from half a stadium away, waited for the moment I’d be least likely to kill him. You took my hand through your chest to save me.” He sets the flak jacket on the railing between them. “Please, take this as an expression of my thanks.”

Slowly, Sakura takes it, and then pulls it on over her hospital gown. She grins. “I’m glad you’re free now.”

Yagura chuckles softly. “Yes,” he says. “Me too.”

He stands and bows to them both. “Sakura-san, Kakashi-san. Thank you both very much. I hope to see you in the stands of the final stage of the Chuunin Exams tomorrow.”

He body-flickers away from right there, the middle of the damn room, and Kakashi didn’t even see him move.

Fucking Kages.

He turns back to Sakura, and she’s looking at him expectantly.

Say it, her eyes say. Say it.

“You know, they say you’re not really a chuunin until you lead your first mission.”

It’s possible, Kakashi thinks, dodging a punch from Sakura which blasts the door of her hospital room from its hinges from five feet away, that taunting your student into murderous rages might not be the best idea when they’re now capable of punching trees in half.

There are no attacks from Madara. Not on the day of the exam, when Urusai sweeps the tournament, and Isogashii and Takai get knocked out in their next rounds. Not on the two days thereafter, when Yagura asks them to wait for him to get his village in order so he can send Mei and Jouto with them.

They stand at the gate, now, him and Sakura and Mei and Jouto (and Gamami on Sakura’s head), and Madara has still not attacked the village. A man who tried to wipe out his own clan for rejecting him has not attacked Mist for throwing off their shackles. A man who tried to wipe out his own clan for rejecting him has not attacked Kakashi for sealing his brother’s eyes away from him.

You’d think that every day that passes without an attack would make Kakashi less tense.

You’d be wrong.

He’s gotten tenser with each day, and he’s now wound tighter than a tripwire mine, and about as ready to explode.

Yagura stands beside them, green scarf around his neck, forehead protector around his waist. Around his eyes is now a strip of pink fabric, which Sakura is very vocally appreciating.

“I got the color of my eyes from my mother, who died in giving me life,” he says. “The risk of having a medic grow my eyes back is too great, but I don’t want to forget her entirely.”

Sakura squeals in approval, and Yagura gives that same faint almost-smile.

“I wish I could go with you, but I am still the Mizukage—my first priority must always be my village.”

“We will keep them safe, Mizukage-sama,” Jouto says.

“Don’t forget to keep yourselves safe as well. I need you both.”

There is a moment of silence as surprise ripples across the faces of both Mei and Jouto, like their Mizukage never gave a shit about their well-being before.

“If I ever find Madara, I’ll rip him into pieces, and let Isobu eat him,” Yagura says into the silence, and Mei and Jouto make noises of affirmation.

Yagura turns to Kakashi, holding Kakashi’s kunai in his hand for a moment before tucking it away. “Thank you for this,” he says. “I trust you will inform me when you reach Konoha.”

Kakashi bows his head.

“Of course, Mizukage-sama.”

The trip will be seven days long, two of those days over the sea. With three jounin and Sakura, they’ll just be running over the waves. They have inflatable rafts in case they are forced to make camp for the night, but they’re running with Mist ninja, who know the archipelago and seas around the water country like no one else, so they should be able to find dry land every night (or, well, land. Dry land is a tall order, here in Water Country). Still, Kakashi’s not looking forward to the countless hours he’ll spend running on the water. If there is anything more boring than running on land, it is running on water. Literal featureless nothingness as far as the eye can see.

They are leaving Aburame Shioko and Egawa Shinzou behind (Shioko made chuunin while Shinzou did not), because it is more dangerous for them to come with them than to travel with the rest of the Leaf genin. They’ll be leaving tomorrow and taking a boat. They’ll arrive a week after Sakura and Kakashi do.

Yagura steps aside.

On the first day, Kakashi jumps at every shadow, every broken twig, every wave crash, but there’s nothing—nothing appears out of nowhere to attack them. They make camp half a day from the coast, in a marshy sort of swamp which seems to be most of what the islands of Water are made up of. It takes them half a day to get out of Yagura’s mist.

Half a day.

At full speed.

Kages may be bullshit—but Jinchuuriki Kages appear to be even more bullshit.

The mist doesn’t burn with the fury of the three tails anymore, but it still burns, and he knows the instant he leaves it. By the end, it’d almost become a comforting presence. If something happened, Yagura would know and come to their aid. Now, they’re alone. The four of them, against whatever Madara decides to throw at them.

In all likelihood, if Madara comes for them, they’re all dead.

Well, everyone—everyone except for Kakashi.

He can always be somewhere else.

(This does not make Kakashi feel better.)

(Why can’t the hiraishin teleport other people, again?)

That first night, Kakashi and Sakura take the first night shift, Mei and Jouto the second.

They wake, not at all rested, and run some more, up onto the waves and over them. However boring he remembered it being, he finds, doing it again, that it’s worse. Every crash of the waves and every movement of the sea beneath his feet has Kakashi going for a kunai.

It’s nothing.

Nothing happens.

They stay their second night on an island no larger than the Uchiha Compound. Kakashi and Sakura take the first watch, while Jouto and Mei take the second.

The third day is their second and final day over water. It is no more interesting than the last. Perhaps less so, even, because he has gotten used to the rolling of the sea beneath his feet, and has learned which wave sounds are safe, and which are not.

So he spends all day jumping at fishes.

Everyone is kind enough not to notice.

Once again, nothing happens.

They arrive safely on the shore of Silver country, and get two hours in before the sun starts to set. Silver Country has no ninja and therefore has opened its borders to all ninja. If they can’t stop them, their policy is to then let them all run on through, with a side dish of don’t kill us, please.

It mostly works—but only because Silver Country has nothing worth stealing. Fire and Water both want it as a buffer between them, so it stays independent. There’s constant talk of chopping it in half, but that would give Fire and Water a border they both really don’t want, so now they have what is effectively two full days’ run of no man’s land.

They camp. They post watch.

Nothing happens.

The fourth day, Kakashi starts to relax. Not on purpose, no. Just—

It’s been four days now. He can’t stay vigilant for that long.

Part of him is expecting that to be the moment.

It isn’t.

Nothing happens.

They make camp halfway through the Silver Country, not too far from the capital. Kakashi and Sakura take the first watch, Mei and Jouto the second.

Fifth day: they cross the rest of the way through Silver, make it barely thirty minutes from the border with Fire. He can almost taste it.

Sixth day: they enter Fire. The sounds become familiar. They are almost close enough that Fire could send help if needed.

Kakashi is on point, Sakura behind him, Mei and Jouto at the back. They form a triangle, with Sakura in the middle. She doesn’t appreciate it, but she can suck it up. They’re jounin, and she’s a chuunin.

Also, they’ve had to tolerate her snapping.

For five days.

Well.

The snapping stopped after the first day when Jouto asked if they were allowed to kill the person they’re supposed to protect.

The next four days were spent with Sakura simply whipping her fingers out on either side of her. The force was enough to make her fingers audible. Fwip fwip fwip fwip fwip.

It was better than CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK.

It was not that much better, but it was better.

Kakashi misses the times when Sakura’s obsessive practice was with things that just made light, and not sound. He could feel Sakura and Gamami chatting, the whole way. Little flickers of chakra, back and forth, back and forth.

He didn’t know what they’re talking about, and he didn’t ask.

Mostly, none of them talk. This is a mission, their eyes are out.

Just the occasional, hey—

What’s this thing?

It’s a Silver Fig Leaf, or a Grand Nation Fire Beetle, or, or, or.

They’re not friends, aside from Gamami and Sakura.

It’s on the sixth day that it happens. Two hours into Fire, still one and a half days out.

Orochimaru, in a red and black cloak, standing in their way.

He stands before them as they all come crashing to a halt, like it’s nothing—like they’re nothing.

“I want the girl,” he says, casually, like he’s asking them to maybe pass the soy sauce. “I’ve always dreamed of the jutsu I could do, if I had Tsunade’s chakra control. It’s wasted on idiots like her. If you leave her, I’ll let you live. Madara only cares about Kakashi, anyways, and I can lie and say he slipped away from me. The girl, though. I want her.”

Kakashi takes a deep breath and activates Obito's Sharingan, dragging the world down to a crawl.

Orochimaru, candidate for the Fourth Hokage, who lost to Minato not because he was weak but because he was evil. The last, lost member of the Sannin, strong enough to have fought both his teammates as he left, burning Jiraiya’s chakra system to a crisp and leaving Tsunade in two pieces. If Tsunade wasn’t a better medic nin than every other medic nin on earth put together, he would have killed them both. He hasn’t shown himself since, current abilities unknown.

A missing nin with the power of a Kage. Kakashi is strong, but he has never deluded himself into thinking he could compete with that. It is, however, four on one—and Mei is a woman who could be a Kage, particularly if the two rumors of her bloodline limits are true.

He knows less about Jouto—water release, known as the water dragon of the Mist.

It’s four on one.

They have a shot.

“No,” he hears from behind Orochimaru, and a hunchback figure appears beside him. “No you will not. Why are you doing this, Orochimaru? We don’t need to ask.”

Four on two.

Bad news.

That shot—it’s getting pretty long.

A tail flashes towards them, and dissolves as it hits a block of lava.

“That’s enough of that,” Mei says, dashing forward as lava crashes down upon both of the men before them. Orochimaru gets away, but the hunchback does not, melting under the lava, a young man with red hair emerging from within it before it melts.

A face from bingo books of Kakashi’s childhood—bingo books twenty years old. Sasori, of the Red Sand.

Fuck.

What the fuck?

Fuck fuck.

Mei follows them, her feet stepping on her still burning lava without hesitation, and Kakashi and Jouto surge forward after her as she inhales and blows steam between their two foes.

Orochimaru goes left, Sasori goes right.

They’ve been together for five days. If you’re a ninja, that means you come up with secret signs, for directing your team in an emergency. Now that he has seen Mei in action, the fact he is the commander of this team is increasingly outrageous (he revises his estimates of their strength from three jounin and one special jounin to one small-village Kage, two jounin, and one special jounin), but he signals all the same.

Fake left, go right.

Don’t split.

Focus all four of them on the weaker of the two enemies.

If they can wipe one of them out before the other can react, they can get back to more winnable four on one odds.

He can only hope that Sasori is weaker than Orochimaru, because otherwise they are incredibly and intensely fucked.

Kakashi throws five kunai before him, one between Sasori and Orochimaru, one at each of them, and then two more on the dorsal sides of their enemies, then turns to Orochimaru with the rest of his team. Behind him, Sakura is leaking flower petals, and Gamami is gone, leapt into the leaves around them. Jouto spins his hands through seal and Orochimaru smirks, his hands spinning faster than all of theirs, and—

Sakura appears behind Sasori at the same moment Kakashi appears before him, Kakashi driving a chidori through his heart at the same moment Sakura drives her fist into the base of his skull. In the instant he has to react, Sasori twists enough that Kakashi’s hand goes through the right half of his chest instead of the left, and Sakura’s fist just clips the side of his neck.

His chest does not feel like a human chest, Kakashi’s hand driving through a Sage-damned mess of mechanical garbage, and Sakura’s fist blowing away half his neck and a bit of his face, leaving mangled clockwork bared in its wake. He dodges away from them, and directly into the path of Mei’s steam release, melting away his skin and his clothes, revealing an uncannily smooth body—

The body of a puppet.

Sasori produces a scroll, and a puppet cloaked in black bursts into existence beside him just in time to get hit by a water dragon that tears its head from its shoulders. Iron sand rises around it, but lava crashes down upon it before it can shake out the water.

Without the cloak, Sasori’s body is clearly inhuman, and in the left side of his chest, Kakashi can see one piece that is different from the others, the source of all of his chakra, and—what can Kakashi say?—he has a lot of damn practice with x marks the spot.

Kakashi meets Sasori’s eyes and charges, throwing a kunai he erases from Sasori’s sight with Obito's Sharingan as dozens of shapes fill the air around them. Fifteen descend upon Kakashi, but Sakura is on his right, punching them into bits, and there is lava on his left, burning his skin even as it saves his life. Kakashi ducks the five puppets that make it to him, dashes forward into a horde of twenty as his kunai sails over Sasori’s shoulder, unseen—and then Kakashi is behind Sasori, plunging his chidori straight through the thing that is where Sasori’s heart is supposed to be.

Sasori falls limp in his hands, like a puppet with its strings cut, and every puppet he just summoned tumbles from the air with him. Kakashi has to teleport away before Orochimaru crashes into where he had just been.

“I must say,” Orochimaru hisses, standing on the broken tree he just destroyed, Sasori’s empty puppet at his feet, long tongue licking his lips as they regroup before him, “I do not like being ignored.”

To their left is the Rashoumon itself, alone and unabused. Kakashi draws two more kunai and readies himself. His limit is ten active seals. More than that, and he can’t identify them fast enough to be of use in a fight. When the fight started, he disabled every seal he has except the one on the Hokage tower floor. That puts him at eight. He very intensely does not want to throw these kunai.

“I will make this offer one more time,” Orochimaru says, turning to keep them all in his sights, which coincidentally, puts one of Kakashi’s kunai at his back. It’s hidden in the wreckage of the tree, one of his original five kunai, but it’s still a little too purposeful. Kakashi spins through the signs for Jouto’s water dragon, teleports to a kunai to his right, and lets the water dragon loose at Orochimaru’s back when he spins to rip Kakashi’s spine out.

Orochimaru dodges, moving his body in a horrifying boneless wiggle, twisting and surging at Kakashi only to meet Mei’s lava, but he hardens it into rock with a blast of water and goes straight over it. His hands are spinning through a jutsu Kakashi has never seen before, doesn’t recognize, and—

“Lightning!” Sakura shouts from off to his left.

Kakashi teleports away a moment before a bolt of lightning tears through where he had just been.

Run, full speed, Kakashi signs in the moment before Orochimaru has turned.

Kakashi can’t beat Orochimaru, but he might just be able to stall him long enough for everyone to get away.

And as long as Kakashi can still breathe, he can follow them.

There is no hesitation, Mei and Jouto both send two last harassing attacks at Orochimaru before turning tail and booking it in the moment Orochimaru spends dealing with their attacks.

Sakura meets his eyes for a split second before she vanishes after them, replacing herself at full speed, and—

“No,” Orochimaru says, bent double, hand into the ground, and Mei and Jouto are forced to a stop that shatters the trees they land upon when a massive orange wall erupts before them. Kakashi throws a couple flaming shuriken and hides a wind-blade under them and ten degrees off on either side. Orochimaru sidesteps the shuriken and slaps away the wind blade.

The orange walls before Mei have erupted all around them, a massive cube of orange. Kakashi cannot name the jutsu because he has never seen it before. He is not The Professor. There has to be a way to break it—seals, on the outside, set by shadow clones? But Sakura could have sensed those—held by summons? Bound to Orochimaru himself?

“You had your chance. I’m very much looking forward to finding out how those bloodline limits of yours work, Mei.”

“I’ve always been curious myself,” Mei says, taking a step back from the wall. She breathes in sharply, a single ram seal held before her, and when Orochimaru lifts a water wall to block her lava, the earth comes closed around him in a massive bear trap instead.

They all know that won’t be enough, so they take the chance to close in on him. I’ll feint left, he signs, take his back.

But—

“Below you!”

Orochimaru still damn near rips his foot off before Kakashi can teleport away. He looks back at Orochimaru to find him licking Kakashi’s blood off his hand with lazy strokes of his tongue as he kicks Jouto’s water dragon straight back at him, and then has to leap back from the poisonous steam Mei belches in his direction.

“Now, I think we’ve done enough playing,” he says, body-flickering straight towards Jouto, hand glowing with Kakashi’s fucking chidori, and there’s no Hiraishin seal anywhere near him, Kakashi won’t—

Mei is there to meet Orochimaru, catching the wrist of his chidori hand with a hand burning with steam so hot the air wavers above it and breathing lava directly into Orochimaru’s face.

Orochimaru breathes water back into it, but Mei doesn’t stop, and it is Orochimaru who blinks, shedding the skin of his wrist to slip out of her grip. Kakashi throws wind blades into the path of his retreat and is there when he dodges, Rasengan in his palm, grinding it straight into the wind wall Orochimaru has blown before him. It would have blocked the Chidori, but the Rasengan isn’t the Chidori—it blows right through the wall, connecting heavily with Orochimaru’s chest, ripping flesh and twisting bone.

Kakashi is forced to dash back before Orochimaru’s lengthened neck lets his gaping jaws close on Kakashi face. Orochimaru is not smiling anymore. There is a horrible bloody wound in his chest, and his wrist is an off-white, the hand beyond it limp.

But even as he dodges under Mei’s follow up attack, he is smearing blood along the snake scroll on his forearm, and—

“Enough, I have a feast for you, Manda.”

A massive snake appears around them, his coils the size of tree trunks. Beside his eye is a flower petal, waiting there like it had known exactly where Manda’s head would be.

Manda screams as Sakura drives her fist into his eye the moment he finishes being summoned, thrashing and damn near flattening all of them—and Orochimaru most of all. Manda throws his head up, and Sakura is there, bloody and covered in a thicker-than-blood substance. She drives her fist forward again, and Manda screams once more, flailing and trying to bash Sakura into the barrier beside him, but succeeding only in bashing his own face into it, his flesh burning as the barrier sears his skin.

Orochimaru roars in fury as Manda unsummons himself.

“That is quite enough out of you,” he says. The air is suddenly thick with a miasma, thick and corrosive and fucking toxic. Kakashi can feel the chakra attacking him, trying to wear away at him.

It’s annoying, but not enough to hurt a ninja, or even really distract them.

Best it could do is burn a civilian, or kill… or kill a clone—eat a chakra string.

Sakura tumbles from the air, and Kakashi teleports to her a moment before Orochimaru’s mouth reaches her. He tries to drive a kunai through the side of Orochimaru’s face, but that face is gone in a moment, retracted all the way back to Orochimaru’s body as a literal fucking wall of magma comes into existence between Orochimaru’s body and Sakura.

Stay back, Mei signs to Jouto, and Kakashi has to agree. He follows Sakura to the ground, and signs for her to transform into a leaf and stay hidden, before following the explosions.

He finds Mei being pushed back, but nowhere near enough to be anywhere close to reasonable. The ground closes around Orochimaru’s feet as his teeth close around her arm. Before he can retreat, he takes the full force of her steam to the face, and grunts in pain as he comes back to himself. Kakashi teleports to the kunai closest to Orochimaru, and serves him up with a Rasengan to the face. Orochimaru dodges back, and is forced into the air when the ground melts beneath his feet, and then into a ridiculous contortion to avoid a wave of lava above him, and then he is forced to summon a Rashoumon to block Kakashi’s three wind blades.

When the Rashoumon vanishes, Orochimaru stands, all of his wounds healed over a shriveled, dried version of himself.

Okay.

Rip his head off, then. No guarantee a chidori would kill him, but there’s a chance it’ll stun him.

No hesitation—that’s what he wants. He’s breathing hard—he’s not immortal.

A lightning bolt tears through the air where Orochimaru just was, and Kakashi signs that he’ll be attacking to the right. The fact he is the commander of this mission is now literal fucking comedy, but switching commanders mid-mission is a real good way to die, so continue this farce they will.

He teleports to a kunai on the opposite side of Orochimaru, dodges Orochimaru’s fireball, and sends a windblade that Orochimaru deflects easily. It puts him in striking range, and the ground gives under Orochimaru’s feet, giving Kakashi a window to drive his chidori through Orochimaru’s chest. It’s Kakashi’s last chidori if he’s not planning on going into chakra exhaustion, and he misses, taking out most of Orochimaru’s left shoulder instead. Orochimaru goes up, and then has to use a one-handed wind jutsu to move himself out of Mei’s lava, and the smell of cooked flesh fills the air when he hits Mei’s steam. His mouth is opening, too wide, as a Rashoumon appears between him and Mei.

A new Orochimaru tries to crawl itself out of Orochimaru’s mouth, and Kakashi tries to close the distance between them, but the earth gives beneath his injured leg, and there’s no kunai close enough.

Orochimaru emerges from himself, fully healed, eyes on Kakashi and only on Kakashi, not seeing Sakura blasting off of a tree behind him, her every step perfectly silent. She drives her hand into and through the left side of his chest, and because she is there, so is Kakashi, driving a Rasengan straight into Orochimaru’s face as Orochimaru’s left leg lashes out at Sakura before she can dodge, throwing her brutally into the ground with a crack.

Kakashi’s Rasengan connects, twisting and destroying Orochimaru’s face, and Mei is through the Rashoumon behind him, her lava consuming the bottom half of Orochimaru’s body, leaving him nothing but half of a torso and the twisted mess of a face.

Not enough—

A white snake bursts from the hole Kakashi made in Orochimaru’s face, and Kakashi’s surprise makes him just too slow to catch it, too slow to see where it is going—

So that when he teleports to Sakura and crams two Rasengan into Orochimaru’s waiting snake-face, one of the snakes he is made up of flies over his shoulder and down onto where Sakura lies, still conscious but in great pain behind him, mouth open and gasping for breath. The snake goes down, and Mei’s lava crashes down upon it, obliterating it entirely.

Kakashi spins back to Sakura, and sees the moment the tiny snake vanishes between her parted lips. Chakra boils up from within her, more chakra than Sakura has ever had, and her face twists as she smiles at him.

No.

“Tell me, Kakashi,” Orochimaru says in Sakura’s voice. “Can you kill your own student?”

Joke’s on him.

When it comes to putting your hand through the chest of someone you love—first time’s the hardest.

A fourth chidori flares in Kakashi’s hand. The fourth chidori that promises a week of recovery.

Kakashi is looking forward to it.

If it could last a year, a decade, he’d take it.

He has no interest in waking back up to a world without Sakura in it.

There is fear in Orochimaru’s gaze. He can’t move yet, and there’s a massive wall of lava all around them, regardless.

Kakashi takes a deep breath, and—

“No,” Sakura says.

The chakra that had boiled up from within Sakura gets sucked right back into her again.

“No, no, no,” Sakura says. She screams, and she heaves herself up onto her knees, dry heaving onto the ground. “Get out get out get out!”

Her chakra flutters, flares—falters.

“You are not welcome here,” she says, and there is chakra in her words, power in her words, but her chakra is vanishing like water through a sieve.

It won’t be enough.

Kakashi remembers the seal he learned, a decade ago, after Rin had hung off his hand. There had to be another way, he had told himself. Another way, a better way. Six months, to learn—

Kakashi sucks the chakra from his chidori back into his body, and closes the distance between them.

Sakura’s chakra is fading fast, but it’s not gone. He flips her onto her back, the Five Elements Seal already flaring around his fingers.

Sakura’s entire body goes taut, the last of her chakra dribbling away, and Kakashi crashes his right hand into her stomach.

He tries to turn it, lock the seal in place, but he can’t, something is fighting him—Orochimaru is fighting him.

The last of Sakura chakra dribbles away, and she goes still.

So, so still. Kakashi’s skin is burning from the lava so close to it, but he can’t move.

She’s out of chakra, he should—he should—

He was too late.

Again.

He was—

Gamami leaps over him and crash-lands on Sakura, both of her hands on Sakura’s face.

He can feel her chakra flare from here, pouring into Sakura, and then pouring away. More and more chakra, he can see Gamami’s body start to twist and harden—too much natural energy, too quickly, but whatever she’s doing to herself is not infecting Sakura—the chakra Sakura is getting is clean.

A minute, and then Gamami hardens completely, a little frog statue, tumbling to the ground beside Sakura with a crack before being unsummoned with a poof. He could never—

Gamami had just spent his entire reserves’ worth, and it hadn’t been enough, there’s nothing—

Kakashi slams his left hand onto her chest (the hand that is not occupied with trying and failing to close the Five Elements Seal on her stomach). He infuses chakra into her but she is a fucking black hole, sucking up not just that but everything inside of him.

Your chakra control is quite good, Kakashi remembers—You can make it to 3.8%.

Kakashi can feel his body shutting down, the world darkening, but he refuses to let it go. He shifts, putting his knee on Sakura’s chest, infusing her with that as he scrambles with his pack, pulls a rations pill from its confines.

He swallows it, and his body sears with pain, his muscles going limp, but he is still awake, Sakura still greedily taking every drop of chakra he has to give.

90.

80.

70.

50.

20.

Kakashi’s hands shake as he pulls a second rations pill from his pack.

10.

A second rations pill will kill him.

5.

He hesitates.

4.

His vision starts going black around the edges.

3.7.

Just—

3.5.

He has to—

3.4.

The chakra he is giving Sakura stops being sucked away into nothingness.

The seal catches.

The chakra he infuses into her start to fill her tiny reserves.

The rations pill slips from his grasp, falls to the hard-baked earth beneath him.

3.35.

Kakashi’s world goes black.

The last thing he sees is Mei’s lava walls vanishing from around them.

Chapter Text

My name is Haruno Sakura.

My name is Haruno Sakura.

My name—

Just think of what you could do.

If you had my chakra reserves, and your control.

Just think of what we could do together.

My name is Haruno Sakura.

Sakura is trapped in a hospital bed. If she gets off of it, her chakra reserves will start to fall.

If she doesn’t get back into it, she’ll eventually die.

Kakashi is still asleep.

She’s been awake for two hours, sealed into a white room. There are no doors, no windows.

There is someone inside of Sakura.

He whispers to her.

Sakura.

Haruno Sakura.

When she closes her eyes, she can see him.

A nasty, horrible world of flesh, like the inside of someone’s stomach, three polyps that are horribly people shaped, and Orochimaru, standing at the gate, leaning against the bars.

It’s her mindscape. The place she goes when she meditates. It used to be a grassy knoll, flowers blooming—it used to be her safe space. It’s not, anymore. All the grass is dead. Sakura can look out from the hill and the grass is dead almost as far as she can see—and because it’s her world, she can see all the way to the end of it. Only in the distance can Sakura see the faint green of live growth.

If it’s regrowing back into this vast expanse of death, it’s so slow she can’t see it. If she looks up, she can see her whole chakra system, laid out above her. Sakura used to be able to see her chakra regenerate.

She doesn’t see that anymore.

And now, at the top of the hill, in the center of all that death, there is a gate. Not connected to anything. Its opening is guarded by bars, and on the centermost bar is a lock in the shape of a five-pointed seal.

On the other side of it is another world—Orochimaru’s world.

Around the gate, his green-black chakra seeps out into the grass of her hill. Sakura knows from experience it would kill the grass on her knoll.

It’s not doing that right now, on account of the fact that there’s… just nothing left to kill.

Sakura can feel every slimy inch, slowly expanding. Sakura can push his chakra back with her own, but it’s not free.

Whatever chakra she uses won’t regenerate.

Because—

Sakura remembers Gamami on her chest, screaming at Sakura with her chakra.

WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP

YOU CAN FIGHT THIS

PLEASE

DON’T LEAVE ME

Sakura had heard her. When she was in here. Fighting Orochimaru, and his horrible expanse of gross fleshy nightmares. Pushing him back, back.

Through the gate.

He—

He almost pushed Sakura through.

Gamami killed herself to suck enough natural energy from the air to feed Sakura.

When Gamami fell, that was when he almost got her. Almost closed the gates on her.

But then Kakashi came for her—gave her his own chakra. He took a rations pill, and then—and then he almost took another. Sakura could feel it—the bright, burning star of a rations pill, in his hand.

But you can’t take two ration pills in a row, they’ll kill you.

Sakura—when Gamami died, Sakura didn’t feel anything, because Gamami wasn’t really dead. Gamami—Gamami could come back.

Kakashi couldn’t.

Taking a second pill would have killed him—but Sakura just wasn’t strong enough. Sakura wasn’t, but—

LET ME AT HIM.

I CAN TAKE HIM.

Sakura remembers Inner Sakura being a lot more… metaphorical.

There was someone else—something else—under her skin when she threw Orochimaru back beyond the gate and slammed the doors in his face.

Inner Sakura.

Right now, Orochimaru is reaching through the gates, scrabbling at the seal.

It burns his fingers, but his chakra regenerates regardless—regenerates just like hers doesn’t.

So he keeps trying—keeps talking.

Sakura wishes she couldn’t hear him.

Just imagine what we could do together.

And then, between the words, the sound of burning flesh.

Don’t you want to be strong?

The sound of the scrabbling of his fingers on the bars.

You’ll never be able to use chakra again.

The sound of the slam of his hands against the bars.

You need me.

The wall of the white room opens.

“Hi, Sakura,” Inoichi says.

He’s saying Sakura’s name, and he’s smiling, but Sakura can see in his eyes a hard coldness she remembers from Ibiki and not from Inoichi.

“Hi, Oji-san,” Sakura says.

A bit of the coldness drips from his eyes before he re-affirms it—before he hardens his heart against the person inside of her that he thinks might be controlling her.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” he says, coming over to her, kneeling beside her.

Sakura’s hands are heavy with wooden cuffs.

Separate, as a concession to Sakura’s dignity, maybe? Even if Sakura had chakra, she couldn’t use it.

Instead, she can feel it—like she never could before. Something about what she did with Orochimaru, something not having any left—her chakra sense is different than it was before.

These walls, they’re lined with seals to block the chakra sense of the people inside.

They don’t block her chakra sense even a little anymore.

So she knows that Inoichi has been outside since her doctor left, two hours ago. Waiting, watching. His chakra bubbling with alternating bouts of rage and terror.

The moment he stepped through the door, the terror won—all run away run away run away.

You know, in case Sakura attacks him.

Sakura can feel in his chakra how much he hates being this close to her.

“Use it,” Sakura says to him, because she’s tired, and she wants her Inoichi back, and not the head of T&I. “Stop looking at me like that, and use your Mind Walk jutsu.”

His chakra tenses.

“Sakura doesn’t know about that.”

“It wasn’t Ino you caught,” Sakura tells him. “It was me.” His eyes are confused for a moment before understanding snaps through them. “It took me a couple tries to find the jutsu I needed in your jutsu room,” she explains. “Do it.”

He takes a deep breath, and his mouth pinches with irritation.

That’s a bit more like it.

He takes a single wood cuff from his pocket. He tosses it into the air, and then makes the single seal needed for the Yamanaka clan techniques. Sakura feels the moment his soul leaves his body, a moment before the wood cuff falls onto his wrist, and he collapses.

Sakura follows that soul into her mind and then down to the scorched, barren hill that was once her pristine, beautiful mindscape.

Inoichi stumbles upon entering Sakura’s mind, coughing and choking on the smoke and ash that’s still thick in the air around them.

It’s unpleasant—probably actually impossible to breathe. Thankfully, though, this is Sakura’s world. She beat a Sannin here. He used all of his jutsu, and she still won. Pushed him down and through that gate, slammed it closed on him.

(Or, well…)

(Inner Sakura did.)

So—she doesn’t need to breathe.

Before all of this—she had all the power in the world. The power to reshape this world into whatever shape she pleases—she made this hill herself, after all, out of the endless sewers and water and nothingness that was there before. It took her three months. She was so proud of it—it was a perfect recreation of the little knoll where Ino and Sakura first met—where Ino told Sakura she was worth something. She told Sakura that—right where Orochimaru’s gate now stands.

But Sakura doesn’t have the chakra for anything like that anymore. All she can do—all she can do is not breathe.

Inoichi recovers himself, realizing that he, too, does not need to breathe.

His face, as he looks around him, is horrified. His back is to Orochimaru, so he sees Sakura first. Then, slowly, he turns to face Orochimaru, still leaned against the bars, scratching at the seal.

“That trick with the cuff, very cute,” Orochimaru says, burning his fingers on the seal. “If I got my hands on your body, it wouldn’t matter, I promise you.”

Killing intent swamps the air around the two of them.

Inoichi doesn’t react, because he’s a jounin. Sakura doesn’t react, because this is her world. Sakura can feel Inoichi’s fear, though. She can still feel his chakra, here, inside of her—if something happens to his mind here, he’ll die for real.

The body in the real world right now—it’s just a husk. Not a single wisp of chakra left, all of his chakra beside her. Which is funny—because Sakura thought that would kill you. Apparently not? (The scroll she read on the technique didn’t detail what happened to the original body.)

Maybe that’s why Yamanakas can do it, and no one else. Maybe that’s their bloodline limit. The scroll did say not to use it if you’re not of “pure Yamanaka blood”. Sakura had kind of thought that was just standard ninja bluster.

“Orochimaru,” Inoichi says, and he tries not to sound scared even though fear is screaming all through him.

Orochimaru smiles a slimy, horrible smile at Inoichi.

“Inoichi. Tell me, how’s little Inoka doing?”

His tongue flicks out of his mouth.

Inoichi’s fear is replaced by blinding fury, and Sakura grabs one of his hands in both of hers before he goes and does something stupid like try and attack Orochimaru. Orochimaru is bound, but he is not powerless. She can feel his horrible, sticky chakra from here, and his arm, where it hangs out of the bars, burns with that chakra.

Inoichi may have all of his chakra here, but this is not Inoichi’s mind.

It’s Sakura’s. Sakura’s… and Orochimaru’s.

She—she doesn’t like it, but she can feel it.

He is bound into that cage, but this world recognizes him as its master as much as it recognizes her.

Even with the chakra she has left, she is sure she could bind Inoichi here, or throw him out.

She had to spend her entire chakra reserves four times over to bind Orochimaru. (Four times her chakra reserves, multiplied a hundred times by the inefficiency of chakra infusion to kill Gamami and almost kill Kakashi.)

“Oh no,” Orochimaru says, his head leaned against the bars, his skin sizzling from the contact, “did she not make it?” He pinches his eyes into something approximating grief. ”What a tragedy.”

His bereaved visage cracks, and he smiles, ear to ear, all of his teeth bared.

“Tell me, Inoichi, do you want to know how your pretty little bloodline limit works?”

Slowly, the fury drips out of Inoichi. Or… maybe it would be more correct to say it gets suppressed deep down inside of him, until Sakura can’t feel it anymore.

“It’s alright, Sakura,” Inoichi says, shifting his hand out of her grasp to plant it on the top of her head. He smiles down at her. “I knew I would find him here—I’m so glad I found you, too.” He ruffles her hair, annoying on purpose, and Sakura squirms out of his grip.

“But can you really know?” Orochimaru whispers from the gate. “I could—”

“No, Orochimaru. You could not.”

Orochimaru’s face twists, his smile dripping away. He looks—he looks like he did when Sakura killed that big snake of his. Whatever it was called.

Manda, a part of her which is not a part of her says.

Sakura represses a shiver.

She’s gotta say, she much prefers no-longer-metaphorical Inner Sakura to some weird twisted kind of Inner Orochimaru.

“You think you understand our bloodline limit better than we do, Orochimaru?” There his fury is again. He takes a step forward. “You think you could fool my eyes?”

Sakura grabs for his hand, but he is gone, immediately in front of the gates in the blink of an eye. Maybe… maybe Sakura couldn’t bind him. She didn’t even see him move.

Orochimaru reaches for him, grabs him, pulls him inside. He’s too big, but his body twists and warps and then he’s on the other side, his shoulder still clutched in Orochimaru’s hand.

“No!” Sakura lurches towards them, but—there is no fear in Inoichi’s chakra. And the anger there—

It’s cold.

It’s—

It feels like Kanashii’s, when she was squatted down before Sakura’s clone, and saying—

How old are you again, Sakura?

Hate.

“Just because you stole and tortured one of our children, how you underestimate us, Orochimaru.”

Inoichi lifts his hand and brushes Orochimaru’s hand from his shoulder, like it’s nothing.

This wakes Orochimaru from the shock of actually being able to pull someone through the bars. The horrible red goop that his world is made up of surges around Inoichi, immediately blackens, and then dies.

“We are the Yamanaka, Orochimaru. We walk the minds of others, we stand up against them in their own mind, where they are all but Gods.” He leans forward. “You think you scare me, Orochimaru?”

Orochimaru lunges at Inoichi, but his hands burn where they touch Inoichi’s skin. He backs away, and Inoichi catches him by the throat, his hand all but invisible with speed.

Orochimaru’s neck burns around Inoichi’s hand. He struggles to free himself from Inoichi’s grip, but he fails. His hands burn where they touch Inoichi’s skin, and his strikes do not make Inoichi so much as twitch.

It is impressive—if you can’t feel Inoichi spending his chakra like water.

Half gone, already.

“You are nothing but a caged dog, Orochimaru,” Inoichi says, tossing Orochimaru to the ground. “Do not think you’re anything more.” He snaps his fingers, and a circle of black fire erupts from around him, burning through the red goop of Orochimaru’s mind, leaving charred blackness in its wake. When it reaches Orochimaru, he screams.

Inoichi turns back to Sakura, and steps through the gates, like they’re not even there.

Sakura watches—

Forty percent, thirty percent.

Orochimaru is still screaming.

“Good job, Sakura,” he says with a smile—

Twenty-five percent.

“Being able to retake your mind from him is quite extraordinary.”

Twenty percent.

He crouches in front of her, like he has all the time in the world, and, because Sakura is a ninja, she doesn’t let her worry show on his face.

This is a show.

It’s fine.

Ino’s dad is big and strong and a jounin and he does this for a living.

It’s fine.

He won’t run out of chakra and die.

He won’t.

“I’m proud of you,” he says, ruffling her hair again, knocking her forehead protector down into her eyes.

Fifteen percent.

He turns back to Orochimaru, still on fire and screaming in the realm of his own mind. He’s at the gates, burning hands clawing out at Inoichi with fury.

“I’ll see you again, Orochimaru.”

Ten percent.

“I’m not finished with you yet.”

He vanishes, and the black flames vanish with him, leaving Orochimaru a horrible smoking husk on the floor of his own mind.

Sakura blinks back to the real world, and finds Inoichi smiling at her, like he isn’t a single percent from chakra exhaustion.

“I’m sorry, Sakura. This is going to take a while.”

Sakura nods.

“But I know who you are. I know you’re still Haruno Sakura.”

Within her, Orochimaru lets out a pained, hissing laugh.

But for how much longer.

Just you wait.

“We’ll get you through this.”

I’ll start with him.

Scratch scratch.

Scrabble scrabble.

(Kill him rip him apart leave nothing left of him, Inner Sakura says to her, and Sakura sure hopes the antecedent of there is Orichimaru, and not Inoichi.)

(We can go into his mind and rip it apart from inside.)

“Ino wants to see you.”

Sakura’s gaze, which had wandered down to her hands, snaps to Inoichi. He grins at her.

“Ever since you got back—she’s been so mad at me. I had to—” he smiles a pained smile. “I’m so glad it’s still you.”

“Not for long,” Sakura says, in a whisper. “I can feel him. I can’t push him back. My chakra isn’t regenerating, Inoichi.”

“If I have to, I’ll give you the infusions myself.”

“I know things I don’t remember learning.”

Inoichi takes her into his arms, crushing her face against his familiar chest. It’s… not as hard as it should be, given he’s not an Akimichi. He’s gone to seed a bit, with his desk job in T&I.

Sakura wraps both of her hands around him.

“Jiraiya is coming—he says he can even bring back Tsunade. They’ll find something.” He’s trying to sound confident, but he just sounds like he tries to convince himself. “If there’s anyone who can figure this out, it’s them.”

Do you know what I did to them, the last time I saw them?

And Sakura suddenly, and very viscerally, does. She pushes it away.

“What about my parents?”

“They don’t know you’re back yet.”

“Don’t tell them. Please, don’t tell them. If you have to kill me, tell them I died in Mist.”

“We won’t—”

“Promise me. I don’t want him to see them.”

Inoichi stiffens, and then slowly lets her go, letting her fall back against the bed. “I can’t promise you that,” he says.

“Then lie.”

Inoichi’s fake smile breaks, just a little. “Fuck,” he says. He holds a hand up in front of his face. “Fuck, why did it have to be you.”

“Please.”

“I promise.”

Sakura sniffles, Inoichi’s tears bringing out her own. But she can’t cry.

Not yet.

Not while Orochimaru can still feel it.

Not while he can—

You’ll never be a ninja again, Sakura-chan.

Not while he can capitalize on it.

“Do you want to see Ino?” Inoichi says, voice rough, pulling his hand away from his eyes. “If you don’t let her see you, she’ll kill me, you know.”

Sakura nods. “You have to protect her, from me. When I—”

“You won’t.”

“He’ll look for her. Her and Kakashi and Neji and my parents and—”

“Don’t worry.”

This time, Inoichi’s voice is sure. “This is where we put you, when we weren’t sure if you were him. Not even he could get out.”

Sakura is in a room that looks like a hospital room, with a hospital bed and beeping machines, and the walls that are just that right kind of hospital off-white.

But outside—outside there’s no one. She can feel twists of chakra she doesn’t recognize for as far as her chakra sense extends.

Seals.

She doesn’t say it.

Orochimaru has access to some of her senses, but because he didn’t seem to notice that Inoichi was pretending, she doesn’t think he has access to her chakra senses or her mind.

Maybe he won’t notice.

“Will she be safe when she’s with me?”

“Yes.”

Sakra looks at him, and through her chakra sense, she can sense the complicated twists of chakra on the floor, like it’s a massive seal. “Okay.”

Inoich smiles. He ruffles her hair again, intentionally being messy about it, knocking her forehead protector into her eyes again—for real, this time. She doesn’t push him away.

“I’ll send her in. Kakashi will be fine, too, don’t worry. He’s just a bit chakra exhausted.”

And because Kakashi has a chance of regenerating his chakra ever again, they don’t want to give him an infusion.

With her—

Well.

Sakura knows what chakra regeneration feels like. She felt it, before, when she had been recovering. At 8%, right after she woke up. She could feel it every moment, her chakra growing—little by little.

Right now, she can’t feel a single thing.

Sakura will never naturally regenerate chakra again.

Within Sakura, Orochimaru laughs.

“Wait,” she says, a moment before the wall opens before him.

Inoichi turns back to her, and raises his eyebrows in question.

“I want to summon Gamami,” Sakura says, and she hates that she has to ask.

Inoichi’s face pinches. He tries and fails to not glance down at the wood cuffs on her wrists, which are really the least of Sakura’s problems.

“I’ll look into it.”

Ino bursts through the wall with an Anbu member Sakura’s never seen before. Cat.

His chakra—his chakra feels like her cuffs.

“Sakura,” Ino says, and her voice is rough.

“Hey, Ino.”

“You—” she crosses the distance between them, and then starts to lightly punch Sakura in the arm.

Orochimaru starts to speak, and Sakura mentally sings the Konoha anthem to not hear a single word he says.

“They wouldn’t let me see you,” Ino says and sniffles.

Her eyes are red, and her face is blotchy. Her hair is messy. The shirt she’s wearing is wrinkled.

The last time Sakura saw Ino cry was four years ago, when the Tsukuyomi had fried Sakura’s brain, and she couldn’t barely finish a sentence.

But still—she’s never seen Ino so messy.

“I’m sorry,” Sakura says, and she finds herself sniffling, too.

Crap.

Aw—

Inner Sakura interrupts Orochimaru with a thousand mouths—a horrible, gut-wrenching scream that makes her head feel like it’s about to split—

But it’s better than hearing Orochimaru speak.

Better than hearing him talk about Ino.

“You can’t cry,” Ino says, starting to cry. “Ninjas aren’t supposed to cry!”

“What about you?” Sakura says, wiping ineffectually at her face. She wasn’t supposed to cry—she didn’t want to give Orochimaru the ammunition, but neither was Ino!

“I’m just an academy student, I can do what I want!”

Sakura makes a farting noise at that, and Ino’s face scrunches up, even as tears still spill messily down her cheeks.

“That’s stupid.”

“Yeah, well!” Ino gasps in a messy breath and punches Sakura in the arm again. “So is getting a stupid Sannin sealed inside of you!”

Sakura bursts into tears at that.

“I’m sorry,” Ino says, wrapping her strong arms around Sakura and pulling her against her chest.

“I’m gonna make your shirt all gross,” Sakura says, doing the opposite of anything about that, reaching her arms around Ino’s back and digging her fingers into Ino’s shirt.

“Gross,” Ino comments, but doesn’t let Sakura go even a little.

Once they’ve cried themselves out a little, Ino starts pushing at Sakura.

“Scooch.”

“Ino—”

“You shut up!” Ino says, crawling into Sakura’s bed, and pushing Sakura bodily out of the way when she doesn’t move, pointing at the Cat Anbu in the corner. “I didn’t even want you here! Just look at the wall.”

“He’s here to protect you,” Sakura says, but she doesn’t resist, letting Ino push her off to the side of the bed so Ino can settle down beside her.

“Fuck that.”

Sakura blinks in surprise. Ino doesn’t curse. Her mom gets really mad about it.

“Ino—”

“No. I know you, Sakura—you kicked me out of your mind, you’re not gonna let him take you. I’m a Yamanaka, he’s just a stupid, slimy, nobody.”

Sakura does not point out that Orochimaru is of literal Kage power level, and the literally the opposite of nobody.

“His jutsu is different from yours.”

Ino shakes her head. “No. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”

Sakura’s heart melts a little.

Cute, Orochimaru says, because Inner Sakura is no longer keeping up her horrible screeching. How about I—

Sakura gives into Inner Sakura’s ever-present desire for blood and violence, drops herself into her mindscape, directly in front of the cage, and then drives her fist through the bars and into Orochimaru’s face.

She has ten percent of her chakra right now.

She can spend one percent.

Who will yell at her for that?

Orochimaru’s head literally vaporizes, most of the upper part of his torso with it.

Sakura pulls her hand back through the bars, chastising herself a bit for letting him get to her—for letting herself listen to Inner Sakura. She takes a step back before Orochimaru crashes back into the bars, still headless, arms out and grasping for her.

This was a stupid risk, a waste of chakra—but in here everything is chakra, and Sakura knows chakra. In this world Sakura beat Orochimaru of the Sannin. She’s scared of the poison that’s leaking out under the gate she can’t seem to stop, but she’s not scared of Orochimaru.

Sakura slips out of her own mind before Orochimaru can remake his head to find Ino’s fists balled up in the front of her hospital gown.

“I’m fine, Ino.”

Ino shakes her head in response, which is… fair, Sakura supposes. “Don’t just do that.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ino shakes her head one more time before twisting her body just a little, so that Cat, where he stands in the corner, can’t see Sakura’s torso at all.

“I won’t let him out, Ino. I promise.”

Big promises, Orochimaru says.

“I’ll kill myself first.”

She knows how to do it, too. It’s… not hard.

Kakashi didn’t want to teach her, but she insisted.

She’s a ninja, and some things are worse than death.

She had almost killed herself, in that moment before Gamami crashed into her chest, when all but a single drop of her chakra was gone, and the horrible fleshy redness of Orochimaru’s mind was curling up around her ankle—before Inner Sakura stopped being so metaphorical.

Orochimaru goes silent at that.

Ino makes a face.

“It won’t come to that.”

Then, in the space between them, hidden from Cat, she makes the Yamanaka clan symbol.

“Ino—” Sakura says, reaching between them to break Ino’s seal, but she is a moment too slow.

A blink of the eye later, and she is staring down at her own face, but there is something in the hold of her eyebrows, her chin, that lets Sakura see Ino in her skin.

Of course Ino is prettier in Sakura’s face than she is.

Stupid Ino.

“What—”

Ino covers her mouth with both hands. Straight into Sakura’s soul, Sakura can hear Ino whisper—

Dad says they’ll never let you summon Gamami, use me.

Sakura blanches.

Sakura opens her mouth under Ino’s hands, and—

I won’t release this jutsu until you do it.

Ino’s eyes are hard in Sakura’s face.

Sakura swallows back a sob.

“Why are you so perfect?” she says into Ino’s hands.

Ino grins, and then flinches, probably because Orochimaru is saying horrible things at her.

Is this—Sakura, has he been like this since you woke up?

Sakura’s silence is all the answer Ino needs.

Sakura looks sadly down at Ino’s pretty hands, and then breaks the skin of Ino’s right thumb with Ino’s left index finger’s nail.

Forming her chakra is harder when she’s doing it through Ino’s chakra system, but it’s not impossible. She goes slowly, gets it all right, and then presses Ino’s bloody thumb against her own body’s chest.

Seals spread from the site of her thumb and she is suddenly and very violently thrown against the wall, Cat’s arm against her neck.

Sakura coughs as pain spreads through Ino’s body—

Before she is very suddenly back in her own.

“Let me go,” Ino demands across the room, scowling thunderously at Cat.

Meanwhile, on Sakura’s chest is—Gamami.

“Hi,” she says.

Cat looks over his shoulder, ignoring Ino’s punches to his face and kicks at his crotch.

You’re alive, Gamami says. She raises her webbed hand hesitantly, and sets it on Sakura’s face. You’re still you?

Sakura nods as Cat sighs deeply.

“Sage, do I hate children,” he says.

And then his body flinches, and Ino goes limp in his grasp.

Ino, in Cat’s body, sets her own body on the ground.

She turns back to Sakura, probably grinning under the Anbu mask.

“I’m a stupid, gross idiot. Nobody likes me.”

Thank the first toad, Gamami says, I thought—

Sakura hugs Gamami tightly to her chest and giggles.

“Look at me,” Ino says, and starts flapping her hands wildly. “I’m such a bad ninja I let an academy student—”

Ino jerks up from the floor as Cat sighs deeply, leaning back against the wall.

“Go, get yourself killed,” he says. “See if I care.”

Ino smiles victoriously and pushes herself up from the floor. Sakura does not miss the wince, the hand that twitches towards her throat, the pained twitch of her shoulder from a bruised shoulder blade.

Inner Sakura is all the way up her throat, behind her eyes, and Sakura has never wanted to kill someone more in her entire life. Cat twitches when Sakura’s killing intent crashes into him, and Sakura is half off of the bed when—

“It’s okay, I’m okay,” Ino says, crawling up onto the bed from its foot, putting herself directly between Sakura and Cat.

Sakura, with great effort, pushes Inner Sakura back down inside of her where she belongs.

“You’re a mess,” Sakura says instead of addressing how willing she was to kill Cat (never mind the fact she has no chakra, and is chakra-suppressed to boot), holding Gamami tight to her chest, because it’s true.

“Shut up!” Ino says, wiping self-consciously at her face, and trying and failing to brush her hair into some semblance of order.

Sakura sits up, setting Gamami in her lap.

How long has it been out here? Gamami asks.

“Three days,” Sakura says. Ino looks at her curiously, and Sakura nods down at Gamami in her lap while motioning for Ino to turn around.

“Gamami, talk so I can hear you,” Ino complains, turning obediently (to the extent Ino could ever be considered obedient) so that Sakura can get to her hair.

“Fine,” Gamami grumbles from Sakura’s lap. She pokes at Sakura’s cuffs. “This is stupid, what could this really do against Orochimaru?”

Sakura pulls Ino’s hair out of its ponytail, and takes a moment to relish how ridiculously soft it is.

“Stop playing with my hair, Sakura,” Ino says. “I don’t want to have to look at this stupid Anbu more than I have to.”

Cat sighs again, but Sakura has to say—yeah, she wouldn’t want to either.

She flips Ino’s bang forward into her face and collects the rest of it, smoothing it out as best as she can without a brush.

Don’t react, Gamami says, turning to face Sakura’s belly button, and placing her hands on the fabric she finds there.

The cuffs prevent Sakura from responding in kind so she focuses on Ino’s hair instead.

“Sakuraaa,” Ino complains.

A warmth spreads into Sakura from the center of her coils—Gamami’s chakra.

She hopes Gamami’s not going to do something stupid like turn herself into a statue again.

So far, Gamami’s fine. No more natural energy than she can handle.

“Fine, fine,” Sakura complains, finishing with Ino’s hair, and trailing her hand down the ponytail before Ino turns back to her. “Why is pretty hair always so wasted on people who don’t appreciate it?”

“I like your hair,” Ino says, reaching past Sakura’s forehead protector to run her fingers through it.

It feels nice. Sometimes, they brush each other’s hair, which Sakura likes a lot and Ino barely tolerates. She much prefers to train, because she’s not just beautiful, she’s also hard-working and incredibly talented.

She’s the top student in her year, didn’t you know?

Sakura rests her hands on Gamami’s head as Ino continues to card her fingers through Sakura’s hair. Which, by the way, is stringy and awful. Ino’s a liar.

“So,” Ino says, stopping, because she’s also, you know, pretty mean. She settles next to Sakura, though, shoulders brushing. “I could hear him, when I was you.”

Now that she’s reminded, she can hear Orochimaru scrabbling at the gate again.

“Is he—is he always like that?”

It’s only been a couple hours.

It’s—

“Let’s—” Sakura shakes her head, scritching at the dry, scratchy top of Gamami’s head.

Ino bumps into her in response, a nice, sure weight against her side.

Just wait, Orochimaru says.

You think—

Sakura has a bit of chakra now. It makes it easier to have the air around Orochimaru swallow up his words. Gamami isn’t giving her a lot of chakra, but she’s giving her enough. Sakura can afford this tiny cost.

“In that case,” Ino says, pulling her legs up before her, and resting her head on her knees to look at Sakura, “yesterday, I beat Sasuke-kun in a taijutsu spar.”

Sakura claps appreciatively.

“He looked so mad,” she says, and then sighs dreamily. She scrunches up her face, and then laughs.

Ino—Ino is a little weird. Ever since she scored better than Sasuke on a clone exercise a year ago and got him to glare at her, she’s been like this.

“He’s so pretty when he’s mad, Sakura.”

Sasuke is pretty all the time. Sakura does not intentionally antagonize him to produce his mad face, but she is not surprised he is also pretty when he’s mad.

“And he’s so cool,” Ino continues, eyes distant.

Sakura makes an affirmative noise, as Gamami starts to take in natural energy.

Ino narrows her eyes at Sakura.

“What?” Sakura asks, bumping against Ino’s shoulder.

“You don’t think he’s cool,” she says.

“He’s cool,” Sakura says, and she’s not lying… per-se.

He is cool! He’s just… a lot weaker than her? It’s hard to really get that excited about a boy who’s so… weak.

She thinks about Yagura, who kind of put a fist through her chest, but he was really sorry about that and he gave her a chuunin jacket and told her how great she was and the color of his blindfold was so pretty and he smiled at her like she was just the best and also he had been so strong not even Madara could fight him and—

Ino narrows her eyes further.

“You can’t lie to me, Sakura,” she says.

“If I did like him, you’d be mad at me for that!” Sakura protests.

“I would,” she admits, and Sakura laughs. Ino’s voice is suddenly very serious. “He’s mine, don’t take him.”

“You would ditch me for a boy?” Sakura asks, a little hurt, and Ino makes a face. She bumps irritably at Sakura’s side.

“No,” she lies.

It’s okay, Sakura says to herself. It’s okay.

She definitely isn’t tempted to listen to Inner Sakura, and find Sasuke and beat him up in front of Ino… so that Ino will like her best again.

(It’s okay, a dark, sad part of her that has nothing to do with Inner Sakura says—)

(You couldn’t.)

(You won’t be able to, ever again.)

“Sakura, no,” Ino says, shaking her gently.

“I’m fine.”

“You—” Ino hesitates, because she’s bad at feelings. “You don’t have to be.”

Sakura smiles, and tries not to cry.

“No crying,” Ino says, tearing up.

“I’m not crying, you’re crying.”

“I got the best scores in the academy on ninjutsu on Monday, you can’t cry, you have to congratulate me.”

“Congratulations,” Sakura says, crying.

“No, stupid—” Ino says. “You’re not supposed to do that.”

“You should just graduate,” Sakura coughs out a sob, “be a ninja. You’re way too good to be a genin.”

“Dad won’t let me—” Ino pauses to gasp for a messy, sticky breath, “—I have to remake his stupid InoShikaChou team.”

“That’s stupid!” Sakura says, throwing her arms around Ino and rocking them both.

“I know, Shikamaru’s so lazy and Chouji is so spineless and they’re the worst I want to be on—” wet, messy gasp “—Sasuke’s team.”

“Would you have been on—” gasp “—my team, if I had stayed?”

“Of course, you, me—” cough “—and Sasuke, we’d be the strongest genin team ever.”

Ino’s fingers dig deeply into Sakura’s back.

“You should set your dad’s desk on fire,” Sakura says, her head tucked into Ino’s shoulder.

“I already did that when he didn’t let me see”—cough, wail—“youu.”

Sakura sobs against Ino’s shoulder.

“You can’t die, Sakura,” Ino says, strong enough her embrace makes Sakura’s ribs groan. “Please.”

“I’m trying—”

“You have to promise.”

“Inoo—”

Sakura feels Gamami’s hand on her stomach, crumpling the hospital gown under her tiny toad fist.

“Sakura won’t die,” Gamami says, and her voice is clear. (Gamami never cries, not even when she was killing herself to give Sakura enough chakra to fight off Orochimaru.)

Ino pulls back from Sakura enough to look down at Gamami, then she looks back at Sakura.

“It’s two against one,” she says, and her face is so gross. So messy, blotchy and red and snotty and teary. Sakura loves her stupid gross face so much. “You have to survive, that’s how it works. This is the council of Sakura, majority wins.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Gamami says, definitively, and Ino nods.

“Yeah,” she says.

Across the room, Cat sighs.

“Nobody asked you!” Ino says, voice cracking and rough. She turns back to Sakura. “So, promise. That’s what they make you do in the council of Sakura.”

“Since when are those the rules?”

“Now. I just decided them. Promise.”

Sakura sniffles, and looks between Gamami’s yellow toad eyes, and then to Ino’s earnest pupil-less ones.

“Okay,” she says. “I promise.”

Ino crushes Sakura back against her and definitely starts crying again.

“And you have to be a ninja again, too! You have to be jounin by the time I graduate.”

“Ino—”

“No! Shut up! You only get to say ‘yes’ and ‘I promise’.”

She pushes Sakura away again, mushes their foreheads together.

“Well?” she says, trying to make her face imperious despite the tears and the snot and the redness. Her light blue eyes bore into Sakura’s. “Don’t think I won’t use my mind switch technique on you to make you say it,” she says.

“Yes,” Sakura says, even as her chakra continues to refuse to regenerate, and Gamami’s infusion slows to an agonizing pace because chakra infusion is 100:1 on a good day—even as she can’t stand from this bed without signing her death warrant. “I promise.”

Ino takes in a messy breath, and nods. “Good.” She wipes at her face, and then makes a horrified face at her hand. She takes Sakura’s sheet and wipes her hand off on it, and then wipes her face off with that.

“Did I miss anything, Gamami?”

Gamami considers this for a moment, not moving because she’s gathering natural energy.

“She also has to lock Orochimaru out of her mind, so she never hears him again.”

“Yes!” Ino immediately agrees, grabbing Sakura’s face again. Then, after making a grossed out face, she picks up Sakura’s sheet and wipes Sakura’s face clean with a clean stretch of it. She looks down at the sheet with that same grossed out face, and tosses the whole sheet on the ground. She grabs Sakura’s face in both hands and conks their foreheads together again.

There is no doubt in her face, still pretty despite the red blotchiness.

Her faith rests heavy against Sakura.

“I promise,” she says, as Orochimaru laughs, long and cruel.

Ino looks into her eyes, and then nods. She sniffles one last time.

“No more crying,” she says. “I’ve decided, no more crying. Not because of the stupid ninja code”—Cat twitches—“but because everything’s going to be fine.”

Sakura laughs, a little brokenly.

“No, that’s a bad laugh,” Ino corrects her. She forces out a laugh, high and reedy and not much better. “We’ll work on the laughs.”

Sakura giggles.

“Yeah, like that. Now—to more important topics.”

She looks very seriously at Sakura.

Sakura looks back at her, a little confused.

“What is this?”

She points at Sakura’s mostly bare legs.

Sakura looks at them.

They’re fine. She broke the left one pretty bad when Orochimaru kicked her into the ground, but it’s been healed.

She looks back up at Ino, who is now pointing at her chest.

“Also, this! What is this?”

Sakura looks at the mess they’ve made of her hospital gown.

“I’m in the hospital,” Sakura says.

Ino almost contradicts her before she remembers that actually that’s what they’re supposed to be pretending.

“It doesn’t matter! This is stupid! Is this your fault?” She turns to Cat, who sighs heavily. “You look like the kind of pervert who would want to look at half-naked eleven-year-old girls.”

Cat flinches.

“What are you, fifty?”

“Twenty-two.”

Ino pinches her face in suspicion before shaking her head. “No, that can’t be right.”

Cat makes a great presentation of creating two wooden ear plugs, and then inserting them into his ears.

Ino sighs, turning back to Sakura.

“Gross.”

Cat twitches, because he obviously didn’t actually put in earplugs. He is here as Ino’s bodyguard, after all.

“I’m going to get you some real clothes,” she says. “I’ll be right back—” she scrambles off of the bed, and then hesitates. “Are you—are you gonna be okay?”

Sakura nods, even though she really won’t.

“And you!” Ino points at Cat, having also noticed that there’s no way he actually put in the earplugs, because she’s brilliant and incredible and amazing in every way. “I don’t trust you to be alone with Sakura, you have to leave first.”

Cat, with a great dramatic show of distaste, pushes himself off of the wall, and then, slowly, so slowly, makes his way to Ino. Ino tires of his production, and walks around and starts pushing him towards the weird spooky wall-opening. “Out, out, out.”

She looks back at Sakura, and her scowl breaks with a smile filled with fondness and relief that really shoots Sakura right in the heart.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t do anything stupid or interesting while I’m gone!”

And then she’s gone, the wall closing behind her.

After Ino and Cat have left for the second time, Sakura back in her normal red dress and ninja shorts (even if they took all the weapons out of her shorts), Gamami speaks.

Tell me what happened, she says.

Sakura does, to the best of her ability, staring up at the off-white ceiling. Gamami is hooked directly into her chakra system, so she speaks through that, little ripples in the chakra beneath her hands.

Sakura can’t flicker her chakra out of her body because of the cuffs, but the chakra inside of her coils is unbound.

She’s all the way back up to 15%. When Gamami isn’t killing herself, it’s a slow process.

My chakra, it isn’t regenerating, she says, after she’s done telling Gamami what happened.

I can regenerate it for you, she says.

We know that’ll never work.

Gamami makes an unconvinced noise.

I can spend all my reserves, like I did before, and then you can just resummon me.

Sakura imagines what Gamami is describing, and feels sick.

You’re asking me to kill you. Use you up, like you’re just a battery.

There is a moment of silence. It’s okay, Sakura.

It’s not. It’s not. I won’t.

Even if it means you can never be a ninja again?

Sakura grabs Gamami in both of her hands, and lifts her tiny little bright-blue body up before her.

I could feel you die, Gamami. I could feel how much it hurt.

She can still remember feeling Gamami’s chakra coils coming apart, just so she could push chakra into Sakura, just that little bit faster. Her entire body coming apart, natural energy flooding through her and warping her, twisting her, turning her to stone.

That long moment in which Gamami was still there, trapped in the stone, before she died, and vanished back to Mount Myouboku.

Then she remembers that she has broken the connection between them, and she pushes her face towards Gamami until Gamami sets her hands on Sakura’s face, links their chakra systems, and repeats herself.

Gamami’s little sideways pupils slide away. I can take it.

You shouldn’t have to.

So you’re willing to never be a ninja again?

Now it’s Sakura’s turn to look away. She sets Gamami back on her lap. She waits for Gamami to reconnect their chakra systems with a tiny little toad hand.

If that’s what it takes, then I’ll stay a civilian. You—she looks down at Gamami—you’ll stay with me, even if I’m just a civilian, right?

Of course I will, she says, closing her tiny little toad fist in Sakura’s dress. You humans have such short lifespans, compared to us toads, it’s—

Her chakra flutters out of her control, and her gaze dances away.

After a long moment of silence, she says—It’s nothing but a blink of an eye>

Sakura grabs Gamami with both of her hands and clutches her tightly to her chest.

I love you, Gamami.

Gamami’s chakra fluctuates uncomfortably.

I—Gamami gives out the chakra equivalent of a cough, pushing herself out of Sakura’s arms to settle back into Sakura’s lap. She sets her hands on Sakura’s stomach. The technique I used to regenerate my chakra. You might be able to use it.

Sakura stares down at Gamami, open-mouthed.

Why didn’t you just say that? Why—

It uses natural energy. I—Gamami shakes her head. We have a field in Mount Myouboku, of all the toads and all our summoners who tried to use natural energy, and failed. There’s hundreds of statues there, Sakura, and I—I don’t want you to be one of them.

Sakura swallows. She remembers her face twisting, even as the natural energy sang to her that it was fine. It was as she was meant to be.

She remembers believing it.

And all the toad techniques are for people with large chakra reserves. If your reserves are small, then the natural energy can swallow you in a moment. Sakura, it’s so dangerous, I don’t—I’m scared of what it could do to you.

Sakura looks down at Gamami.

Maybe Jiraiya knows what to do, she says. He’s coming, he can help, right?

Gamami makes a face at being forced to rely on Jiraiya.

Even if it’s dangerous, you still want to use it, don’t you? Gamami asks.

Sakura presses her lips together.

Yeah. I really, really do. I want to be able to summon you whenever I want, I want to be able to punch Orochimaru in his stupid face, I want to be able to remake my mindscape—

And you want to be a ninja again.

Sakura swallows. I want to be the strongest kunoichi the world has ever seen.

Gamami bumps her head against Sakura’s stomach.

She gives out a cute little toad sigh.

Of course you do. Stupid human. Why couldn’t you have gone and summoned one of my siblings?

Sakura runs her fingers over Gamami’s head, over her eye ridges, lined with pink.

I’m glad I got you, Sakura says.

Gamami gives a cute little toad grumble.

I love you, Gamami, Sakura repeats.

Yeah, yeah, Gamami says, but Sakura can feel the warmth in Gamami’s chakra.

Sakura wonders, sometimes, if she would be able to sense chakra anywhere near this well if she didn’t have a tiny little grumpy toad who was fundamentally incapable of expressing affection. If she didn’t have to get her I love you’s from warm little twists of chakra.

Before she goes to bed that night, her doctor returns, sliding into the room, his chakra flow a soothing, calming balm. Perfectly under control, how she likes to imagine Tsunade’s chakra might feel.

“Hey,” he says, waving to her as he comes into the room. “How are you doing?”

Sakura shrugs. She’s not sure how to answer that.

He nods understandingly, grey hair falling briefly over his round glasses. He brushes it off.

“How’s that leg of yours?”

Sakura kneads it with one hand.

“It’s totally healed, I think?”

“Have you tried walking on it?”

She has not. You know, on account of him telling her the only thing keeping her alive is the bed beneath her, feeding chakra to her body’s essential systems.

She must reveal some of this in her expression, because he laughs.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he says. “They’re keeping this room totally sealed off from the rest of the hospital, so I was worried I’d come back and find you dead on the floor.” He comes to a stop beside her bed, and holds out his hand with a kind smile. “As long as I’m here, you don’t need to worry about that. I’ll give you a chakra infusion after we’re done—” his gaze slides to where Gamami is sitting in Sakura’s lap, and gives her a matching smile “—although it looks like Gamami-chan there might have beat me to it.”

Kabuto is really just… unfairly nice.

Look at him, remembering Gamami’s name and everything.

Sakura can tell Gamami is pleased, even if she’s frowning. (Or well, not frowning—that’s just her face. She has a resting frowning face.)

Before Sakura can move her, Gamami leaps from Sakura’s lap to Kabuto’s head.

He catches her flawlessly, barely even staggering back.

Sakura is pretty sure this means he’s a pretty strong ninja, even if he’s not wearing a forehead protector. She doesn’t approve of that (she hopes Jiraiya’s nonsense isn’t contagious), but it does make sense.

You know, because she’s buried at the bottom of T&I.

Sakura takes Kabuto’s hand, and he pulls her gently to her feet.

She can immediately feel her reserves start to fall. It’s not fast, but it is not ignorable.

Every moment, she can feel more of her chakra drip away.

Drip drip.

Drip drip.

He could be working for me, Orochimaru whispers in her mind.

Let all of that chakra of yours drip away, until I’m the only thing that’s left.

Sakura does her best to ignore him, and releases Kabuto’s hand.

“Can you walk a little for me?” Kabuto asks.

Sakura does, and for the first couple of steps, she can’t help but limp, her body convinced her leg is still broken, but it quickly gets over itself. She jumps, and can feel her chakra stagger downwards in response.

It is a thoroughly unpleasant experience. She does not like it.

She closes her eyes to take a deep breath, and is surprised to find Kabuto kneeling before her when her eyes open.

“Um?”

“Sorry, bad habit,” he says, smiling a little sheepishly. “You know how it is—I just wanted to take a look at this leg of yours while you’re putting weight on it.”

Sakura nods, and ignores the butterflies in her stomach when his hands, wreathed in green, run over her leg, not quite touching her.

“When you came in, I was really worried about the state of your leg—Orochimaru really did a number on it—but I’m happy to see it’s healed almost completely.” He stands, and offers her a hand she doesn’t need to lead her back to the bed. She takes it.

She sits back on the bed, and that feeling of chakra constantly draining from her system eases.

“Now, I’m just going to do a quick checkup,” he says, lifting his glowing hands before him. “Okay?”

Sakura nods.

Kabuto runs his hand down the air before her, head, chest, and then, for a long, uncomfortable moment, on her stomach, over her new seal. She has to say—she prefers the old one. She could have removed that one whenever she wanted.

This one—

Kabuto is frowning in frustration before he realizes what he’s doing.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’ve never had a patient with this kind of seal before, I got distracted.”

Sakura shrugs, a little lost in his earnest black eyes.

He finishes his scan, running his hand down over her legs, and then standing again to run them over her arms. Never touching, always at least an inch or two away, but she can feel his chakra anyways. That green glow is like a physical thing, sweeping through her, doing, well… probably reporting back information, considering what Kabuto’s here to do?

He straightens with a smile, clapping his hands together, dispelling the green glow that had surrounded them.

“Well, as far as my scans appear to show, you’re in perfect health.” His smile turns a little rueful. “I’m sorry I can’t actually help you with any of your real problems. How are your reserves?”

Sakura shrugs. “I’m up to about a fifth,” she says. “Gamami’s been helping.”

At the mention of her name, Gamami jumps from Kabuto’s head back to Sakura’s.

“Normally, I’d tell you to be careful about that sort of thing, but I’ve never seen a case like this. You still can’t feel your chakra regenerating naturally?”

Sakura shakes her head. “Not even a little, and I’m pretty good at sensing that kind of thing.”

“I’ve never heard of a case of Chakra Infusion Syndrome so bad that chakra regeneration stopped completely,” he says, shaking his head. “We’re officially out of my pay grade.”

He places a comforting hand on her shoulder, and his hand is warm.

“Hang in there. I don’t have much of a choice but to give you a clean bill of health, which means they’re not going to let me back in here, but Jiraiya-sama and Tsunade-sama should be here soon—and I hear even Toumi-sama is going to come in and take a look. Don’t lose hope, Sakura-chan.”

Nobody calls Sakura Sakura-chan. She’s not sure she likes it.

But, then again, if it’s Kabuto, then maybe…

“Alright. If you have any concerns, just like, yell it at the walls? I’m sure whoever’s guarding this room will be able to come and find me if you need me.”

Sakura nods.

Kabuto releases her, and walks back to the portion of the wall everyone seems to enter and exit through.

He stops there and turns back.

“I’m rooting for you, Sakura-chan. I’m also civilian-born—even if I’m just a genin. You mean a lot to us.”

Sakura nods.

“Good-bye, Sakura-chan.”

“Good-bye, Kabuto-sensei.”

The door closes, and Orochimaru, once again, starts to laugh.

Maybe I should go after him first.

Show him whaat a civilian-born ninja can really do.

People come to see her, over the next couple days.

Ino, Inoichi, Ino, Neji, Ino, The Third Hokage, Guy.

Ino.

(Ino comes a lot, okay.)

Toumi, once.

She does her weird her-whole-body-is-an-eye thing that makes her everything glow with chakra, and then sighs, long and tired and old.

Five years at least, she says, before Sakura’s body regenerates chakra even a little.

Damage not to her chakra pathways but to her chakra itself from being attacked by Orochimaru, and then refilled and immediately emptied for ten, fifteen minutes on end.

It’s nice to have confirmation—but Sakura would really have rather been wrong.

Kakashi doesn’t come. He’s still unconscious.

Yet more evidence that rations pills are only marginally better than getting killed because you run out of chakra.

Every night, she has nightmares. Or maybe—maybe nightmares is the wrong word for them.

Every night, she has memories.

His memories.

Some of them are fine. Missions, training, drinking.

Some of them are even nice. There are memories of a tiny Jiraiya, a tiny Tsunade, and a bizarrely young-looking Third Hokage she (Orochimaru) calls Hiruzen-sensei.

Hiruzen-sensei, who she (Orochimaru) idolized and loved with all of her heart.

Like him, she (Orochimaru) had thought. I want to be a ninja just like him.

But some of them are horrible. People in jars, people in pieces, people screaming for mercy and her (Orochimaru) laughing with disdain.

When she wakes up, she has to spend five, ten minutes remembering who she is.

My name is Haruno Sakura.

My name is Haruno Sakura.

From inside of her, Orochimaru laughs.

Not too much longer now, and sometimes things like—

So that’s how the White Fang’s jutsu worked.

Whatever pathway is open between them, it runs both ways.

With Gamami’s help, she covers his gate with rocks, sinks it deep into the earth, but it doesn’t matter.

Sound is not real in her mindspace. It doesn’t matter how deep she buries him, his voice comes through, all the same. His memories come through, all the same.

Everyone seems to be watching her, asking her questions only she could answer.

How does she say that if Orochimaru consumes her, he’ll be able to answer those questions as well?

She doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want to get locked away in a hole from which she can never escape—but she knows from the memories that seep across that gate just what Orochimaru would do if he got out.

Who he would kill, if he got out.

Every morning, she clears out the slimy horribleness of his chakra, pushes it back into his horrible little flesh cave.

He’s not as cruel as he was, on that first day—not as desperate.

He doesn’t need to drive her crazy with his words, because he knows eventually, he’ll supplant her.

He sits deep in his flesh cave, and he meditates, pushing more and more of his chakra out from the base of the gate.

When she stands outside of his gate, he opens his eyes, and he just smiles.

Every morning, there is more and more of his chakra to push back into the gate. Gamami can keep up, but by less and less every day.

Sakura realizes that she is not going to get the choice between torturing Gamami for chakra or becoming a civilian.

Her choices are torturing Gamami for chakra, or killing herself to keep Orochimaru locked away inside her.

Inoichi comes every day, walks into her mind, threatens and tortures Orochimaru, then leaves.

“How much longer?” she asks, because she—

She just can’t say it.

Can’t say—

“When I sleep, I get his memories, and he gets mine. Every day, he can push more of his chakra from under the gate.”

Or is that Orochimaru, growing inside of her?

Does she have to do something now—because if she waits until there’s too much of him, she won’t want to say anything, any more.

“Tomorrow. Jiraiya and Tsunade will come tomorrow.” Inoichi ruffles her hair. “Just hang in there. Just a little longer.”

One more night.

She can handle that, right?

Before she goes to sleep, she says to Gamami—

Would you tell me, if I stop being me?

Of course.

Sakura pauses, staring up into the darkness. Would you kill me, if I didn’t care?

Gamami hesitates. You’re still you, she finally says.

For how much longer?

You’re still you.

Sakura is woken by Jiraiya stomping his way into the room.

“Wakey-wakey, beautiful!” he bellows, and—

“Shut up, Jiraiya, would it kill you to let me sleep in one Sage-damned day of your life.”

Sakura opens her eyes all the way, still in the mist of Orochimaru’s memories, having not yet recited her “My name is Haruno Sakura”’s—and then she processes the words that just came out of her mouth.

“Well, shit,” Jiraiya says.

“Oh no,” Sakura says.

Tsunade steps past Jiraiya, glances briefly at the wood cuffs, and peers down at Sakura’s eyes.

There’s not a trace of fear in her or Jiraiya.

“Personality seepage? Memory seepage? What’s your name, kid.”

“Sakura.”

Her hand glows green, and she sets it on Sakura’s chest.

“Repeat that for me?”

With Tsunade’s hand on her chest, Sakura feels it—a transformation jutsu.

Her heart pounds.

She looks at Jiraiya.

Is that Jiraiya?

Is this Tsunade?

Who are these people?

Why are they—

Sakura raises her hand to fake-Tsunade’s, dips her fingers into the transformation jutsu, and pulls.

When the smoke clears from around fake-Tsunade, she finds…

A middle-aged woman?

Smile lines around her eyes and frown lines around her mouth.

Who looks… almost the same as Tsunade?

Possbily-Tsunade sighs as possibly-Jiraiya erupts in laughter.

“What’s happening?”

“You really shouldn’t be able to do that, kid.”

“Tsunade likes to use a transformation to hide—” he twists forward to look at Tsunade, and frowns, “—how… old she is? I gotta say, Tsunade, I was expecting worse.”

Jiraiya takes a fist to the face, and goes flying into the wall hard enough to leave a dent.

“I also think you look fine? Assuming you’re really Tsunade—if you’re not you look hideous.”

“That’s kind of you to say, kid, but—” her wrinkles vanish and her skin smooths as her transformation reweaves itself over her skin, “—I ain’t doing it for you.” She puts a painful pressure on Sakura’s chest. “Now, tell me your name.”

Sakura opens her mouth, and the look in Tsunade’s eyes makes her swallow it back again.

“You’re scaring the kid, Tsunade.”

“She might be Orochimaru.”

“She has a Mount Myouboku toad sage sitting next to her head.” Said toad is currently glaring bloody murder at Tsunade. “No way she’d stay at Orochimaru’s side if he took Sakura’s body.”

Tsunade looks at Gamami, and then twitches her eyebrow in challenge.

“Do not taunt the toad, Tsunade.”

“She taunted me first—” she says, because apparently being a legendary ninja does not stop you from being super petty, and her gaze crashes back down on Sakura.

“Haruno Sakura,” Sakura blurts out.

“Good,” she says, and smiles at Sakura. She pats Sakura’s cheek condescendingly, and sweeps her body with a glowing green hand, just like Kabuto did.

Now that she’s awake, she finally pays attention to Tsunade’s chakra.

It is… wow.

To compare Kabuto’s chakra to Tsunade’s is an insult. All of her chakra moves perfectly in sync with her motions, not a single ounce lost, flowing in and out of her pathways with perfect precision.

Sakura had always thought her control was good.

She—she realizes now, feeling Tsunade’s chakra move, that, in fact, she didn’t know what good chakra control actually looked like.

Not to mention the fact that every motion of her body is sure and precise and unhesitating, like the world belongs to her, and she’s just been loaning it out for a while.

“I have to admit, I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve been checked out by an eleven-year-old girl.”

“Yeah, no way in hell. You’ve just never noticed.”

Jiraiya ducks under Tsunade’s punch, vanishing and appearing on Sakura’s other side. He pats her head, just to be obnoxious.

“Tsunade brings that out in a lot of kids. You think you’re not attracted to women, and bam—” his gaze wanders over to Tsunade’s rather prominent cleavage. “And there’s uhh. Hoo, wow.” He shakes his head, still staring. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he continues, after a really long moment. “Happens to uh,” he blinks, doesn’t look away. “What was I saying?”

“Your last will and testament,” Tsunade says, cracking her knuckles.

Jiraiya’s gaze snaps away from Tsunade’s chest when Tsunade’s killing intent covers the room.

Sakura kinda wants to laugh. But—

“I—What I said. Is no one worried about that?”

“Nah, kid,” Jiraiya says, once again patting her head because the last like two years, have not made him any less obnoxious. “Even the Shinigami’s seal is a little leaky, and this is just a Five Elements seal, not to mention that Orochimaru is a damn sight smarter than the nine-tailed demon fox. To be honest, we were expecting you to be mostly Orochimaru by now. Great job, kid.”

Sakura looks up at Jiraiya, and his gaze is genuine. The thumbs-up, however, feels sarcastic.

“Thanks—”

Sakura jumps when Tsunade’s hand falls on her stomach. She plucks at Sakura’s dress.

“Why are you wearing this? You should be wearing a hospital gown, who the hell lets patients change back into their street clothes while they’re still in a hospital bed?”

“Ino?”

“Am I supposed to know who that is? Jiraiya, who the hell is Ino?”

“Inoichi’s kid?” He double checks with Sakura and Sakura nods.

“What? She’s like, two, what the fuck does her opinion matter?”

“Give the kid a break, Tsunade.”

“I’m trying, but she’s got this stupid dress on.” She points at Jiraiya. “Turn around.”

Jiraiya turns around.

“I’m gonna have to be in this hospital bed forever, so Ino figured that I should at least be able to wear my own clothes,” Sakura says.

“Oh, don’t be melodramatic.” Sakura feels a spark of hope. “You regrew all of your tenketsu, you can deal with this.”

That.

What?

Sakura feels a smile twitching at the corner of her lips.

“You’re cute,” Tsunade says, and then turns back to Sakura’s dress. “I’m gonna lift your dress up a bit, okay? Just high enough to see this seal.”

“Um!”

“Oh, you’re wearing shorts, fantastic, not enough kunoichi wear things under their dresses. Jiraiya, take a look at this seal.”

Jiraiya does not turn around.

“Tsunade, I’ve been like, working my way through the kinks of the world, but I gotta say I don’t have any interest in—”

“Do you want to help the kid or not,” Tsunade says, and there is a cool fury under her words.

Jiraiya turns.

“That’s what I thought.”

Sakura covers her face with her hands and tries not to let her face combust under her blush.

“You don’t have anything to be ashamed of, kid. You must have done a lot of taijutsu, very good muscle structure.”

“You’re not helping, Tsunade.”

She indeed, really wasn’t.

(Although part of Sakura was, internally, all but dancing about the fact that Tsunade, aka the strongest kunoichi alive, was complimenting her.)

“Not enough kunoichi do taijutsu, look at this muscle definition, especially at this age? That’s a lot of hard work.”

“Tsunade-sama,” Sakura whimpers.

“Fine.” She pats Sakura’s stomach in a way she probably thinks is comforting, but really isn’t. “Look at the seal. You’re the one who read all the Senju and Uzumaki sealing scrolls.”

Jiraiya leans down with a “Sorry, kid.”

He gives Sakura a good minute of contemplating how preferable death would be to this before he flips Sakura’s dress back down over her stomach, and speaks again.

“Yeah, standard Five Elements seal. Exactly like I taught Kakashi after that mess with his teammate. Flawless sealwork, of course, kid’s a prodigy.”

Sakura lowers her hands with a sigh of relief only to find Tsunade looking reproachfully at her.

“I once fought a team of Rock ninja totally naked,” she says. “You’re gonna have to get over this eventually.”

Sakura cringes.

“That was a good day,” Jiraiya says, and does not duck in time, going flying into the wall.

“Ow,” he whimpers from the floor.

“But I guess you’re still young,” Tsunade says. She pats Sakura’s thankfully-no-longer-bare stomach. Then, to Jiraiya—“Get up, you big baby.”

“I’d like to see you get punched across the room and then stand up like it’s nothing,” Jiraiya grumbles.

“What was that?” Tsunade asks him, voice hard.

“Nothing.”

Tsunade flips Sakura’s dress back up to reveal her stomach. “Are you sure you don’t need to take a look with your Sage Mode? You’re better at—”

Sakura push her dress back down, and then holds it there, glaring at Tsunade.

Punch her in her stupid face, Inner Sakura suggests, and Sakura is incredibly tempted.

Tsunade gives her a single dubious look before turning back to Jiraiya.

“Nothing we couldn’t see better from her mindscape,” Jiraiya answers. He turns to where Gamami sits beside Sakura’s head, glaring at Tsunade with Sakura. “Hey Gamami, how are you doing? Still tiny, I see.”

The glare moves to him.

“You seem great, glad to hear it. You see anything unusual with the seal? You’ve been in Sage mode pretty much continuously, right?”

“She says no,” Sakura reports. “But umm,” both of the Sannin’s heads turn to her, and her words get stuck in her throat.

“You’re scaring her with your ugly mug, Jiraiya,” Tsunade says.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s that cleavage of yours, you saw how she was—”

Jiraiya successfully dodges Tsunade’s punch this time.

“I wasn’t staring at her cleavage,” Sakura finally defends herself.

Although, looking at it now, it is.

Impressive?

Vast?

“No judgement here, kid. This is a judgement-free space.”

“I was looking—well not looking-looking—at her chakra,” Sakura says. “It’s… it’s nice. Very controlled and smooth, and umm, stuff.”

A genuine smile crosses Tsunade’s lips. “Aw, she’s sweet. You spent the two days we spent running here talking about what a hellion she was.”

“That’s just because you don’t have a forehead protector to steal.”

Tsunade snorts. “Good thing I threw that damn thing away a decade ago, then.”

“You what?”

Tsunade turns to her, one eyebrow raised. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

That’s stupid-Kakashi code for I’ll tell you never.

“Tsunade ran away because she got scared of blood,” Jiraiya whispers.

Tsunade’s expression freezes at Jiraiya’s words.

Not the hot rage or cold fury from before, but—

Is that.

Grief?

“I’m sorry, Tsunade. That was over the line.” Jiraiya has set a hand on Tsunade’s shoulder, which definitely opens him up to take a punch, if Tsunade goes for it.

She doesn’t.

Tsunade’s chakra shivers with a faint kai that ripples through the room. She rubs the diamond on her forehead and shrugs Jiraiya’s hand off.

“What did you want to say, kid?”

“I’m getting his memories and stuff when I sleep, and when I wake up, I have to spend like ten minutes sorting me from him.”

“We know,” Tsunade says.

“And, umm, he’s able to push more of his chakra from the seal every day.”

Tsunade’s eyebrows raise, and she looks up at Jiraiya.

“Is that normal?” Tsunade asks him.

“I don’t know of any records of sealing a person with the five elements seal. It isn’t showing any signs of wear and tear, although I’ll need to take a look at the inner seal to make sure. It’s probably just Orochimaru getting better at pushing his chakra through the seal, but that’s definitely worse than the seal going bad. I can fix the seal.”

“How much is more, Sakura?” Tsunade says, turning her gaze to Sakura.

“It costs me five percent of my reserves yesterday to push it back,” Sakura says.

“And the day before that?”

“Two?”

“And she’s the one infusing you with chakra?” Tsunade says.

Sakura nods.

“Right. Well—” Tsunade drops her hand on Sakura’s stomach, and Sakura’s coils are suddenly full. Tsunade used barely a tenth of her reserves. She remembers what Kakashi said under his breath whenever Jiraiya did something ridiculous.

Sannin are bullshit.

She’s starting to understand why, now.

“I can give you several full infusions a day, so we have time. Don’t let yourself go below ten percent, and it shouldn’t aggravate your Chakra Infusion Syndrome. Your case of Chakra Infusion Syndrome may be so bad it’s just a matter of how many decades from now you’ll recover, but that’s no reason to be sloppy.”

Sakura is still staring, open-mouthed, at Tsunade.

Tsunade’s lips twitch with a hint of a smirk.

“Showoff,” Jiraiya coughs, and Tsunade doesn’t deny it.

Tsunade taps Sakura’s mouth closed when she leaves it hanging open. “Close your mouth, you’ll catch flies.”

Tsunade turns back to Jiraiya with a raised brow.

“Right.” Jiraiya turns to Sakura. “Sakura, we’ll want to take a look at your mindscape, to see the internal state of your seal. I know that’s a really personal thing, but we really do need to see it.”

She nods, but—Sakura thought only Yamanaka could do that? Like, they certainly seemed to think so.

(Sannin are bullshit.)

“Alright, I’m going to need to put my hand here,” he shows her. “Don’t worry, I can do it over your dress, because—”

“Cloth is nothing to chakra.”

Jiraiya grins.

“And then I’ll move me and Tsunade into your mindscape. Okay?”

Sakura nods.

He sets his hand on her stomach, and Tsunade places hers on his with a roll of her eyes.

They go still. Unlike Inoichi, their chakra are still in their bodies.

She follows them down, and finds their consciousnesses standing on her burned knoll.

“You’re a real rank son of a bitch, you know that?” Tsunade is saying, looking out on the blackened expanse of Sakura’s mindscape.

“What? She’s the one who made this so difficult. I assure you, the minds of the other people I absorbed are untouched.”

Fury buzzes through Sakura, and Sakura pushes it all off on Inner Sakura, and then shoves it down and away. Being angry doesn’t help anyone.

“Is that what’s in those nasty flesh orbs behind you? What the fuck happened to you, Orochimaru?” Jiraiya says, standing just out of reach of the bars.

Orochimaru ignores him.

“Tsunade,” he says, his voice a purr, “I’ve been working on jutsu I think you would like.”

Tsunade breathes in deeply.

“Is it about how to put yourself back together when one of your most trusted personal friend rips you in half?” she asks. “Oh wait, I already know that one.” She turns away from Orochimaru and back to Sakura. “Can you clean up this leakage of his for me, I want to see if you’re doing anything obviously inefficient.”

“I figured out how to raise the dead, Tsunade,” Orochimaru says from behind her, and Tsunade goes still.

“Fuck. Tsunade—”

“Nawaki and Dan, Tsunade—I can bring them back.”

Tsunade takes a deep breath, her whole body shaking.

“He’s telling the truth,” Sakura says.

“Sakura—” Jiraiya hisses at her.

“And I can tell you how to do the jutsu.”

Orochimaru’s face twists.

“You little worm,” he hisses, slamming his hands against the bars, ignoring the burn of the steel on his skin. “I’ll eat you alive you jutsu-stealing—”

Tsunade appears before him, reaching through the bars, and grabs a hold of both of his arms by the bicep. Chakra flares through her, flowing from her body into Sakura, and then into Tsunade’s consciousness. Then she pulls, and there’s a horrible sucking noise, and Orochimaru screams.

Tsunade staggers back, one of Orochimaru’s bloody arms in each hand. She looks down at them and freezes.

Orochimaru laughs a pained, hissing laugh.

“You never got over that little fear of yours, Tsunade?” he asks, and suddenly his chakra isn’t like rot but like blood, pooled all around the gate, all around Tsunade’s feet. “You should have really—”

The gates shake when Tsunade kicks them, knocking Orochimaru onto his butt.

His arms still aren’t regrowing.

Slowly, Tsunade turns to Sakura. Her face is deathly pale. She’s shaking.

She walks towards Sakura, one step at a time.

“Sa—” she stops, coughs, “Sakura. If you could—” she heaves her breath in a gasp, falls to her knees. She blinks, tries to stand up, fails.

Sakura goes to her, kneels in the pool of blood, and hesitantly places her hands on Tsunade’s shoulders.

“Start with these,” she finishes, her voice small, her eyes unfocused. She’s covered in blood. Orochimaru’s blood.

Jiraiya is beside her, one hand on her back, his head twisted back to glare at Orochimaru, still smirking at them from beyond the bars.

His arms still haven’t grown back.

There is fear in his eyes.

Sakura takes the arms from Tsunade’s grasp, and erases them the same way she has all of the traces of Orochimaru in this mindscape of hers. She closes her eyes and imagines that they’re gone.

She can feel the kick in the chakra, but it’s—nothing more than erasing the rot from her little grassy knoll.

Orochimaru screams the moment they vanish, falling to his knees, forehead to the ground.

Before Sakura, Tsunade tries to smile, but doesn’t quite manage it.

“Thank you—” cough, shiver, “—Sakura. That was—” she looks down at her bloody hands, and her eyes go distant. “Very therapeutic,” she finally finishes.

She turns, in fits and starts, back to the gate, where Orochimaru lies crumpled on the ground, his arms slowly regrowing.

She staggers forward one step, and then another. She stumbles into the gate, slamming her hand onto the bars. It burns, but she doesn’t flinch. She reaches forward, catches Orochimaru’s foot, and he vanishes, back into the depths of his horrible flesh world.

“What a shame,” she says, and then falls to her knees in the blood as her entire body begins to shake.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” Jiraiya says, catching her the moment before she faceplants into Orochimaru’s new blood chakra. “I’ll be right back,” Jiraiya says, and they both vanish, leaving Sakura standing alone in the blood slowly spreading from the gate.

Sakura closes her eyes and when she opens them, the blood is gone from her dead knoll. It is hers, after all.

Sakura checks her chakra and finds herself about eight percent lighter.

Then she walks to the gate and looks out on the horrible flesh-world of Orochimaru’s mind. She looks at the three vaguely human-shaped polyps in the mess beyond the gate. She’d noticed them before, but she hadn’t known what they were.

Is that what she was almost turned into?

Is there—

Is there a way to free them?

Sakura is vaguely aware of Tsunade and Jiraiya off to one side of her physical body, Jiraiya’s arms around Tsunade’s shoulders as she shakes. Her hands are fisted up on his chest, like she’s trying to push him away. But considering that she punched him into the wall hard enough to dent it, she must not be trying very hard.

With one last glance at the three polyps of Orochimaru’s previous victims, Sakura rises back into consciousness.

“I don’t need your damn help,” Tsunade says.

“I’m starting to think maybe you do.”

“Fuck you.”

“You helped me put myself back together when he burned me out, Tsunade. Can’t you let me help you with this?”

“What is there to help,” she says. “I killed the two people I loved most, this is—”

“That’s bullshit and we both know it.” Jiraiya pushes her away, lowers his face to meet Tsunade’s gaze. “You didn’t let me think I owed Orochimaru when I came back stronger, after he burned a hole in me. Fuck if I’m gonna let you think those deaths were your fault.”

“Fuck off—”

“No. I—I’ve waited too long already. You never left me hanging for this long. That was wrong, and I’m sorry. Tsunade—we’re all we’ve got. We can’t just let each other be alone.”

Tsunade’s face crumples, and she pushes Jiraiya away. For real this time, sending him head over heels into the wall and leaving a vaguely Jiraiya-shaped dent.

“Enjoying the show, kid?”

Tsunade’s hands are still shaking.

“Not… really?” Sakura says, honestly.

Tsunade laughs a little broken laugh.

“I’m forty-nine fucking years old,” she says, like that’s relevant. Sometimes, adults just announce their age, for no reason.

She clenches her hand into a fist as Jiraiya heaves himself back up into a sitting position. The shaking in Tsunade’s shoulders finally subsides.

“So tell me, Sakura. How twisted would my brother and lover be, if Orochimaru brought them back?”

“They’d be your slaves.”

Tsunade closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath in.

“And you’d need to kill two people to bring them back, and then again every month or two for as long as you keep them alive.”

Tsunade lets the breath out.

Jiraiya comes up behind her, and sets his hand over the symbol for bet on the back of her haori.

“Fucking Orochimaru,” she says.

“Fucking Orochimaru,” Jiraiya agrees.

Sakura would also like to join in, but people always yell at her when she curses.

“I knew it sounded too good to be true,” Tsunade says.

“Doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

“I just want to see their faces one more time.”

Jiraiya doesn’t say anything to that.

Tsunade sighs.

“I imagine you didn’t get a good enough look at the seal?”

“No,” Jiraiya says, smiling just a little.

Tsunade gives out an irritated sigh.

“Stupid adult bullshit,” Tsunade says to Sakura, stepping back up to her bed to place her hand on Sakura’s stomach. “Turn into a better adult than us, alright, Sakura?”

“I already wanted to be the strongest kunoichi in history,” Sakura says. “So I was already shooting for that.”

Tsunade laughs.

“I guess we have to get you fixed up, then.”

She and Jiraiya go still, and Sakura follows them down into her mindscape one more time.

Tsunade swallows heavily at the sight of the blood welling around the base of the gate, and Sakura erases it with a blink.

Tsunade turns back to Sakura with surprise.

“Go, look at the seal, do whatever you have to do,” she says after a moment.

Jiraiya tromps over to the gate with heavy steps, and Tsunade approaches Sakura, crouching down before her.

“It took eight percent of my chakra this time.”

“That’s not a growth curve I like,” Tsunade responds. “It’s not unworkable, though.”

“You know of a way to… make it stop? Can you make him go away?”

Tsunade makes a wishy-washy sort of head wiggle.

“The seal’s fine,” Jiraiya says, crouching down at Tsuande’s side. “If Orochimaru’s getting through the seal more, it’s not because of any damage on the seal itself. He’s just one obnoxiously smart son of a bitch.”

Tsunade nods.

“Alright, let’s go back to the real world. Jiraiya?”

They vanish, and Sakura follows them out of her mindscape.

Tsunade lifts her hand from Sakura’s stomach. She draws a small seal from her pack, and then sets it on the ground. Sakura leans forward to see her bite her thumb, place her bloody thumb on the seal—

And then vanish.

Or.

No.

It’s—

What’s happening?

“And I permit Haruno Sakura.”

Sakura blinks as Jiraiya and Tsunade come back into view.

“My great-uncle’s portable blood seal,” Tsunade explains without explaining anything. “It’s conveniently able to exclude people within its range, which will ideally include Orochimaru, presuming it recognizes you and him as different people.”

What.

“It’s an invisibility seal?”

That seems… incredibly strong.

“It’s easily broken,” she says, waving it away. “Now—Sakura, you said you have some of his knowledge.”

Sakura has to take a moment to recover from the knowledge of this incredibly nonsense seal. What?

Why?

How?

“Sakura, focus.”

Hurriedly, Sakura nods.

“Do you know anything about the jutsu he used on you?”

Sakura shakes her head.

“It was only luck I knew about Edo Tensei—the reincarnation jutsu.”

Tsunade shrugs. “That’s a shame, but we didn’t really expect you to.”

“Here’s the deal, kid,” Jiraiya says. “We think Orochimaru hit you with some kind of possession jutsu. They’re real nasty. They take control of someone by slipping poisoned chakra into the victim’s chakra stream. Most people don’t even notice before all of their chakra has been poisoned, which leaves them at the mercy of the jutsu user. Now, we’re not totally sure, but it looks like Orochimaru went and turned his whole damn self into a possession jutsu.”

“How do you normally deal with a possession jutsu?”

“You just remove the poisoned chakra. You could have done that, easily, I’m sure, however—in this case, it looks like Orochimaru is the poisoned chakra. There was way too damn much of it, so you didn’t have the chakra to remove it all. It’s not your fault, no one could have—except maybe Tsunade, but rule number one of not going crazy is never comparing yourself to Tsunade—you did good to survive the way you did. When Kakashi used the Five Elements seal on you, you were able to take the poisoned chakra and seal it away. Just like you would a tailed beast, because that’s all Orochimaru is, now—chakra.”

Sakura feels a but coming.

“But the Five Elements seal isn’t total. No seal can be—a perfect seal would erase chakra from existence, which is categorically impossible. With tailed beasts, this means you get some extra tailed beast chakra, which doesn’t do much except make you go crazy and want to eat everyone.” That’s a pretty big ‘doesn’t do much except’! “However, with Orochimaru, his chakra is the possession jutsu. Too much exposure to it will eventually possess you.”

Sakura swallows, and Jiraiya pats her knee.

“Now, we’d love to seal Orochimaru tight enough you never have to think about him ever again. The Five Elements seal is pretty leaky—a tighter seal like the Ten Point Star Seal would be better. Unfortunately for us all, double-seals are dangerous—sometimes they strengthen the seal, but sometimes they cancel it out or blow it entirely—and removing the seal you’ve got would rip all the pathways around your chakra reserves to kingdom come. I’ll be looking into what we can do to remove Orochimaru from you permanently, but it’ll be a long process. Too long. Thankfully, Tsunade is a freak of nature.”

Jiraiya ducks under Tsunade’s punch.

“It’s my grandfather’s technique,” she says, from Sakura’s other side. “He made it to combat the Uchiha, but it was too challenging—only he and my great-uncle could ever use it.”

“Also you,” Jiraiya interjects.

Tsunade shrugs. “You’re familiar with genjutsu cancellation?”

Sakura nods.

“That was a common technique among the Senju during our war on the Uchiha. The serious Sharingan genjutsu couldn’t be broken by ordinary kai, so that was the only way to break them. But the problem was that the Sharingan allows for passive continuous re-application of the same genjutsu, and each genjutsu cancellation takes time and effort. So Hashirama felt that a better way to deal with the genjutsu is to simply never be caught in it at all.”

Sakura frowns.

“It is easier to show than it is to explain. Watch.”

Sakura nods, and the beauty of Tsunade’s chakra flow breaks. No longer one even flow—it’s now choppy, uneven. More… human.

“Jiraiya?”

Jiraiya snaps his finger, and Sakura can feel the genjutsu in the sound. It tangles up her chakra as it passes, and Sakura can feel it tangle up Tsunade’s chakra flow in turn.

Balancing on Jiraiya’s knuckles, Sakura sees a tiny dancing monkey.

“Give me a Tsu! Give me a Na! Give me a De!”

Tsunade huffs out a small laugh, and out of the corner of her eye, Sakura feels Tsunade’s chakra flow shift, from the choppy human flow to that unbroken beautiful flow, and the tangle of chakra that is the genjutsu within her just… unravels.

Sakura stares at Tsunade, open-mouthed.

Jiraiya stops the genjutsu, and Sakura feels her own chakra untangle, but.

What—

What was that?

That wasn’t genjutsu cancellation or a kai.

It was too… smooth, too elegant for that.

“You felt it then?” Tsunade asks.

Sakura nods.

“It’s not impressive if I use the technique while under genjutsu.” Sakura would really like to disagree. Just so, so strongly. “Might as well kai or cancel it, but. Jiraiya, again?”

Once again, Jiraiya snaps, and his genjutsu washes through the room, tangling Sakura’s chakra and reforming that same monkey.

But it washes over Tsunade without effect, her chakra refusing to bend or warp to Jiraiya’s will. Perfectly carving out a loop within her own body, going only to the place it is going and nowhere else, refusing to allow itself to be moved by forces other than Tsunade’s will.

Like Tsunade’s chakra is hers and hers alone to control.

“Give me a Sa! Give me a Ku! Give me a Ra!”

Sakua is staring, open-mouthed.

Jiraiya cancels his genjutsu.

“Grandpa was really bad at naming things, so he called this one The Perfect Flow technique, which I have to say—sounds like it’s about controlling menstrual flow, which I could have really used while that was still a problem for me, but noooo. Grandpa was too good for dealing with that problem.”

Jiraiya shifts uncomfortably, and Tsunade kicks him.

“You’re a forty-nine-year-old man, you should be able to hear about periods without squirming like a child.”

Sakura looks between them awkwardly.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you some scrolls for techniques that are actually useful.”

Jiraiya shifts awkwardly again, gets kicked again.

“Now, about—look, I call it the Closed Loop technique—because it requires you to fold your chakra into a closed loop. I’m gonna call it that, because Grandpa’s name is just horrible. It makes you immune to genjutsu, as you can tell, which is very useful. However, it also makes you immune to possession jutsus, because the initial injection of poisoned chakra won’t take. All of your chakra is completely under your control, and the poisoned chakra can’t get in.”

“Hashirama never noticed that, though! That was all Tsunade, because Hashirama wasn’t good enough to use it all the time.”

Tsunade’s lips twitch. “Shut up, Jiraiya.”

“I’m just saying, everyone talks about Hashirama and Tobirama like they’re the only Senju that matter and it’s bullshit.”

Tsunade continues to fight down her smile. “It has other benefits, like, say, it makes you immune to chakra poisons, saves you if you get a hole blasted in your chakra system, and just generally makes your jutsus faster with less wasted chakra.”

Jiraiya leans towards Sakura, and faux-whispers. “Hashirama didn’t know about those either.”

“Are you done?”

“I just want to put up a sign that says Tsunade is cooler than Hashirama was and hang it over the Hokage monument.”

Tsunade hides her smile with her hand.

“Why is it all the jutsu I need were created by Hashirama?” Sakura asks.

“Because Hashirama was bullshit,” Jiraiya responds immediately.

Sakura looks to Tsunade, and she just shrugs.

“And while you’re doing that,” Jiraiya says, “I’m going to be making some diagnostic seals to confirm that what Orochimaru used on you really was a possession jutsu, and we’re not just wasting our time.”

“What about—what about my chakra not regenerating?” Sakura knows this is more important, because Orochimaru is apparently still trying to possess her, and if she doesn’t do anything, he’ll succeed, but.

Sakura really wants to be a ninja again.

“It’s not anything you need to worry about right now. First, get Orochimaru out of your head. Then, we can worry about how to regenerate your chakra the old fashioned way.”

Sakura blinks.

“What?” Sakura asks.

“Chakra regeneration uses natural energy. That’s how you make new chakra—you suck the natural energy out of the air, and combine it with your chakra to make more. One chakracule—”

“Don’t call it that.”

“It is a term of art—”

“You made it up—”

“That’s everyone else’s problem. One chakracule and two natural energycules—”

“Oh that’s definitely worse.”

“Do you want to see my research that proved that natural energy and chakra are not infinitely divisible? I figured it out, I get to name it.”

Tsunade glares at Jiraiya, and Jiraiya subsides.

“Combine to create two chakracules. It appears to be a process in the chakracule itself. I’ve looked into what causes Chakra Infusion syndrome before, because it is clearly a deficiency of the chakracules itself, but it persists through infusions of chakracules which should be healthy—”

“I’m pretty sure you can’t complain about Hashirama’s inability to name anything.”

“Don’t you have seals you should be drawing?”

Jiraiya produces an inkwell and a brush, and kneels on the ground.

“That’s what I thought.”

Tsunade turns properly to Sakura.

“There’s a scroll for this, but it’s bad. I’ll walk you through it—” then, in a smaller voice, she grumbles, “—because that damn old geezer made it an S-class crime to let me gamble, so I don’t have anything better to do. And he wonders why I left this damn village.”

Sakura spends a moment hypnotized by the perfect, flawless flow of Tsunade’s chakra. Knowing it isn’t like this naturally, but because Tsunade has decided this is what her chakra flow should look like only makes it more beautiful.

A smile twists at the corners of Tsunade’s lips, and the flow of her chakra changes, spinning and twisting as it moves through her chakra pathways. Then it slows, speeds up, and even breaks into what feel like rapids, rough and rugged and turning into whirlpools and eddies, and all of it in a single unbroken flow, not a single bit of chakra out of place.

Sakura finally pulls herself away from the hypnotic way in which chakra flows through Tsunade’s coils.

“Sorry.”

“No, I put a lot of work into this technique. It’s nice to be appreciated. Now—”

Chapter Text

So.

Let’s start with basics. Sakura didn’t know them, and, you know—she’s not sure if everyone’s aware of this—but Sakura is super smart, so if she didn’t know this, she’s pretty sure most people don’t know it either.

(It’s okay for her to admit that she’s smart. She’s humble about other things. You just have to be, like, net humble.)

No matter how much Tsunade says it’s totally obvious and isn’t it being taught at the academy these days? It’s not.

Sakura reads Ino’s textbooks. You know—for fun. (Shut up.)

And it’s definitely, definitely not.

Anyways.

The human chakra system has three parts:

The reservoir, where most of a person’s chakra (aka their reserves) are located. It’s about the size of, and Sakura is quoting Tsunade here, “a particularly aggressive grapefruit”. (Yeah, Sakura doesn’t know why Tsunade thought that meant anything, either.) Most ninja have no control over the chakra in their reservoir beyond a generic “pull”.

The coils, which are the actual pathways that deliver chakra from the reservoir to the (three hundred and sixty-one) tenketsu. There are either six of them or twenty of them depending on how you count. There’s six root coils that begin at the reservoir, but they split and divide as they spread through the body out into twenty—one root coil for each arm and leg, one for the crotch, and only one for both the trunk and the head. Most ninja have more coarse control here—directing their body to send more chakra to a particular limb or body in part.

The capillaries, which are the teeny tiny little tubes that direct chakra from the tenketsu that last little bit to the cells themselves—the teeny tiny little tubes Jiraiya insisted she needed to align her tenketsu with, when she was remaking them. There are, according to Tsunade, at least as many chakra capillaries as there are human cells. Sometimes more, never less. Meaning, oh, about thirty-seven trillion. Obviously, considering the numbers involved, this is an entirely autonomous process. There exists exactly one ninja who has control over the chakra in their capillaries.

That ninja is, of course, Tsunade.

Don’t worry, she says to Sakura when Sakura makes what she thinks is fairly understandable face at the number thirty seven trillion, you don’t have to worry about your capillaries.

(Then why are you telling me about them? Sakura only barely keeps herself from asking.)

But I had to entertain myself somehow while I got destroyed at mahjong.

Which, um—sure. Let’s set that aside. Sakura will deal with when she isn’t in eminent danger of being taken over by a stupid snake ninja.

Genjutsu functions by disturbing the chakra flow in one particular part of the victim’s coils, and you might be thinking—

Chakra only goes one way, right?

Out, from the reservoir, and then to the tenketsu, and then out to the capillaries and into the cells—so a genjutsu should only be able to affect parts of the body downstream from the disturbance.

Right?

No.

Second option—

There’s a system of veins. Arteries out, veins in.

Also no.

The correct answer, of course, is that when chakra reaches the end of a chakra coil, it just…

Teleports back into the reservoir.

Because sure.

Why not.

It’s cool.

Did you never wonder where the chakra you were tracking went?

Sakura had not. Sakura had thought it just kind burned away.

You’d lose way too much chakra, if that were true.

(She’s obviously right, but Sakura doesn't want to admit it.)

So, of course, teleportation is the obvious answer. It’s cool. Sakura’s life depends on her understanding this. It’s cool. She’s fine.

The closed-system nature of the chakra coils means that any genjutsu anywhere in someone’s chakra coils affects all the chakra flow throughout the body, and, considering every cell in a (non-Yamanaka) body requires chakra to survive, that means that it can affect everything.

Genjutsu, that is—and possession jutsus.

There is no half-measure that can protect her. Any uncontrolled chakra can be poisoned, and that poison can affect all of her.

Ninety-nine percent is no better than zero.

It has to be perfect.

It’s cool.

It’s cool.

Sakura can do this.

Sakura breathes in.

Sakura breathes out.

(I can do it, Inner Sakura asserts, because Inner Sakura thinks she can do anything.)

Sakura blinks, and before her is a little boy, chest carved open but not yet dead, crying.

“Please,” he says to her, and she laughs, and laughs and laughs.

She blinks again, and he’s gone.

She’s back in a sterile white room that likes to pretend it’s a hospital room.

My name is Haruno Sakura, Sakura reminds herself.

At its most basic level, the closed loop technique is simple. You can talk about it in fancy, mystical terms like being in control of your chakra or whatever, but, when it comes down to it what your body requires of your chakra coils is a certain amount of chakra delivered to three hundred and sixty-one different places. If you don’t care about chakra infusion syndrome because you’re already just suffocatingly deep in it, then you can just go overboard. No need to give every tenketsu exactly the chakra it needs—ust pile it on.

Three hundred and sixty-one simultaneous streams of chakra, each held tight against interference.

Kind of like performing three hundred sixty-one jutsus at once.

Easy.

Easy.

Don’t forget to wrap your reserves into a weird little twisting rotating donut.

Easy.

(I can do it, Inner Sakura asserts once again.)

She doesn’t blink this time, because her eyes are closed. Instead, a new world grows out of the darkness.

She sees Tsunade, crumbling to her knees, skin pale as death, and she is there, holding Tsunade in her arms, feeling the unnatural of her skin, the cool dampness of the almost or recently dead.

Sakura’s hearing is good, perfect, so she can hear Tsunade’s heart not beating in her chest.

“No!” Sakura screams. “No, you can’t die, I won’t let you!”

She slams her hand against Tsunade’s chest, pushes as much chakra as she can into Tsunade, but it’s not enough. Even if she gave Tsunade everything she had, until she was a corpse right next to Tsunade, it wouldn’t be enough.

Sakura raises her gaze to the dead and dying shinobi Tsunade had been holding off all around them.

A hiss pulls itself from Sakura’s throat, and she licks her lips with her too-long tongue.

Well, if they didn’t want Sakura to rip all of their chakra from their coils, then they shouldn’t have fucking been here in the first place.

The darkness, swirling over the image of a half-dead man screaming as his chakra is unbound from his body.

My name is Haruno Sakura.

So, complaining aside—it’s not as impossible as it sounds.

She can do this.

With her life on the line, she can do this.

She directs a single stream to a single tenketsu, and then another, and another, and another, and soon enough, she has nine.

“Fucking Sage, kid.”

Sakura’s chakra shatters out of her control from an inexplicable earthquake of chakra, and she looks up at Tsunade.

Tsunade looks a bit sheepish, and just shakes her head.

Well, well, well.

What’s this?

Sakura can feel Orochimaru at the gates again. She can see him, just a little, see the pale off-white of his regrown hands.

Sakura had been hoping they’d stay gone.

So Tsunade’s teaching you that little chakra loop jutsu of Hashirama’s, then?

He leans against the bars, smiling at her, the skin of his face smoking.

It would work, but Sakura-chan—just how long do you think you have?

Ask Tsunade how long it took her to master that jutsu.

“Sakura?” Tsunade asks, pulling Sakura back to the present.

“It’s Orochimaru.”

Tsunade makes a face.

“He said—”

“Don’t listen to what he says. First rule of interacting with Orochimaru.”

“How long did it take you to master this jutsu?”

“About two weeks?” Tsunade says, not even hesitating a little.

She blinks, and Tsunade’s sixteen again, on her back in the grass before Sakura, frowning thunderously at the sky.

“Come on,” a teenage Jiraiaya says. “It took your grandpa like two years, right? Six months is nothing.”

“Except I don’t have it, yet,” Tsunade responds with a frown.

“Have you considered that maybe trying to beat the First Hokage is a fool’s errand?” Sakura offers.

“Shut up, Orochimaru.”

“Just saying, three years would still be plenty impressive,” she says, white-grey hands raised in defense.

She blinks again, and Tsunade is an adult once more, her face schooled into a liar’s mildly bemused neutrality.

My name is Haruno Sakura.

What did she say, Sakura? A month? Two weeks?

He laughs, loud and long.

Good luck, Sakura.

Ten is her limit.

Up to nine, it was easy. An hour, and she had it.

But ten—ten feels like it’s impossible.

She thinks of Neji, getting up time and time and time again—the way he never gave in to despair and still hasn’t—the way his lilac eyes still shine with the determination that he will still beat her, someday, even though he’s nowhere close, and hasn’t been in years.

If he can do that, then she can do this.

She gets it.

Control over the chakra going to ten of her tenketsu.

She wants to die.

Her brain feels like it’s going to split in two in her head.

Tsunade places her hand on Sakura’s shoulder, soft and large and just a little too warm, her amber eyes meeting Sakura’s.

“You’re doing great.”

Sakura loses control of her chakra, and Tsunade smiles comfortingly.