Returning breathless from her day's training with Naruto, Sakura sighed and wiped the sweat from her brow as she slid the mint-condition handbook on chakra control exercises in its place on the newly-installed pink bookshelf in her room before heading off for a badly-needed shower.
Flinging a fluffy white towel around her shoulders, Sakura glanced back into her room over the pail of bath supplies she held. She now had two full shelves comprising all of the best training manuals available to anyone who wasn't already a ninja, all in brand-new condition, and one more shelf containing books that really ought to have been restricted to someone who had a genin rank already. But her mom, holding a roughly chuunin security clearance, had purchased those "for her own use" then "just happened" to "store" them on a convenient shelf in her daughter's room.
As the Once And Future Kage made her way to the bath she reflected that she might have been upset at how easily the intent of the security clearances on that information had been subverted, had access to those volumes not been priceless for helping her teach Naruto, who was starting to really devour them as he learned more how to read from her tutoring. Besides, anyone involved at all in the political machinations of town knew the clans got away with that sort of stuff all of the time, and she didn't want Naruto to be behind those who had and used the advantage.
Because, as Konoha recovered from the Uchiha Massacre and the accompanying disasters, security was tightening up like never before, and it was no longer advisable to just pull jutsu knowledge out of thin air. She'd gotten away with teaching Naruto Shadow Clones because, well, before the massacre there really were people, kunoichi among them, who'd been careless enough to chat about top secret information to friends while hanging out in the public baths.
Now? Well, reflecting on the matter while stripping down for a bath in her house and discarding her sweaty clothes into the hamper, it was obvious to her from what was going on around town that in the wake of Danzo's demise someone must have stumbled across the old traitor's notes and brought certain things to the Hokage's attention, and judging by the reaction Sarutobi was not amused by how deeply and thoroughly the security of Konoha had been compromised.
There was a civilian curfew in place, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. From what little Sakura could observe without drawing attention to herself, the ninja forces were getting chewed out, shaken up, and drilled in whole new security measures. And, she had to admit, in Sarutobi's place she would've done exactly the same thing. She'd tried even, but in her time the damage had already been done and it was far too late to save anything.
Sudsing up her hair in the shower, she concluded security had always been tight around town right after the Uchiha Massacre, but this was taking things to a new level. One of the more interesting, and innovative, changes had been the renovation of the former Uchiha compound. What was once a walled and fortified clan holding on a scale with the Forest of Death was now being refortified to an even higher standard, covered with seals to prevent chakra techniques from subverting those defenses, and honeycombed with internal walls to provide internal training grounds that could not be observed by anyone walking his dog. There was also, according to rumors, a new shinobi-only entertainment district getting set up in there. Civilians in town were already grumbling over the loss of ninja patronage. Sakura could only assume that, having been horrified from Danzo's notes over just how much had been observed and recorded by ROOT agents from ninja mentioning things in post-mission relaxation euphoria, Sarutobi was doing his best to stop the easy flow of information to anyone who wanted to disguise himself as a bar patron.
It was an unpopular choice among both civilians and shinobi. But if they wouldn't keep their mouths shut, then she could see the necessity of at least making sure ninja getting drunk only got chatty around others with security clearances, and so in theory at least a little more trustworthy than your usual bar dregs. While not perfect, it would cut down on the number of available moles to where hopefully counter-intelligence could do something about plugging the rest.
Not that she was terribly hopeful. Scrubbing her body with a washcloth, she privately admitted Konoha had been a relaxed town, a cheerful, upbeat and trusting place (provided you weren't talking about their treatment of Naruto), and Sakura was personally and painfully aware that probably as a result of that, they had been thoroughly penetrated by countless hostile parties. It would be a generation or more before even just the worst of them were weeded out.
But she had to give credit to Sarutobi for getting started. It had been his teammates, under his watch, that had started the decay in the first place, due mostly to a nasty case of overconfidence. Although Danzo had helped rot out their core, mostly due to his own megalomania. He'd deal with anyone if it gave him the least degree more power, and the coin he'd had to barter with was Konoha's security.
No, it was really good, from the town's perspective, that Sarutobi was getting serious about repairing that security. Although she did have to admit, it was equally awkward from a personal standpoint, as most of what she'd been doing on the sly had required circumventing their security.
So, stepping bright and sparkly clean out of the shower and sliding into the warm furo to soak, she admitted while in the laid-back Konoha of before it was vaguely possible that a person might start using Tsunade's famous strength techniques, or the Rasengan, and claim to have reinvented them, that just wasn't going to happen here. Sakura was aware that the whole village was already, or was about to, go under scrutiny, and showing techniques above her level, not just the famous stuff, just stuff she shouldn't already be knowing, was a good way to stand out for extra scrutiny as a possible mole.
So, in a very realistic way, if she couldn't teach Naruto out of books, or their lessons at school, she didn't dare teach him at all. With ANBU watching over him, and by association her, anything she actually 'learned' from their study together was ok to use, as the ANBU would themselves update their files on how they'd learned it out of legitimate sources. Still, there was no more pulling jutsu out of her future knowledge and covering that with vague excuses. So his progress was dependent on her availability of good teaching resources, which, thankfully (for the moment at least) she had, and as a direct result, the orphan pariah been growing by leaps and bounds.
Sakura felt very fortunate to be growing right alongside him. The exercise she was getting was an obvious benefit, although it was clear she'd never be in his league when it came to fitness. The boy had boundless determination and insane stamina, and whenever he wasn't working on something else, it was always more fitness. He'd even gone against her advice and taken to doing the laps himself, leaving clones to do all the classwork. And, since what he wanted to do was use his new skill in wall walking to perform his laps on the inside surface of the wall around the academy, thus practicing that chakra exercise as well as get physical training, (and, with any type of practice, there was some falling off involved) she couldn't argue with him.
No, Naruto was going to be as fit as Lee in a few years. There was no doubting that. Nor, she reflected, was there any way she was keeping UP with that!
But the real benefit to her, so far, was the cheery goofball's insane take on the chakra exercises they were doing together. The chaos as he learned each technique was wonderfully insightful, as this Naruto had never felt discouraged about his ninja education, she'd been right there beside him encouraging him from the start, and so every time something went wrong with those control exercises he sought to learn from it, and brought her along with him for the ride.
From their mistakes with the leaf floating exercise he'd learned how to shoot a dart, senbon, or kunai three times as far as any of Konoha's genin could, with extra speed and force, just by taking the 'blasting off' effect of too much chakra and applying that to his throwing technique. And that promised to be a great advantage when he got some decent accuracy. Then, from the unfortunate mistakes of burning or blowing up the leaves he'd tried to float, he was already exploring how to add explosive bursts to his kicks and punches, and teaching her at the same time.
People with a narrower technique base than that had become chuunin, when she was Hokage. And, providing he built up those skills to usable levels, there was no reason Naruto couldn't get that rank just with the techniques he knew now. A taijutsu specialist with extra throwing range and explosive punches would not be something to sneer at even in the present climate of a relative wealth of ninja - especially given the boy could make hundreds of himself!
Of course, before they could make the Hokage believe that, they'd have to get the techniques working out right. But that too had been a bonus as it had also been a great segue into their shared medical studies, as neither yet had learned how not to harm themselves with those explosion assisted blows. Although thankfully the blasts were small so far, and thus so were their injuries. And that was a good thing, as their study of medical techniques was still a long way off from curing even a papercut. And with the ANBU watching over him, and the current political climate, she didn't dare use any technique they hadn't legitimately 'learned' together, despite having been a Kage rank medic-nin before.
The same 'blasting off' effect of tree climbing had already been tamed to assisting Naruto's leaps up to the level of a mature ninja, although landing was still a bit of a problem as his method was a completely different way of achieving the effect than what ordinary ninja used. They had the official method in her books, although Sakura was actually reluctant to teach it, as she was curious what he'd come up with exploring his own. The adorable goofball had already begun inventing two jutsu off his previous explorations, the kunai launching and blast assisted blows, and she felt certain at least one more would come through this one.
Actually, that would be his fourth new technique in this life alone if you wanted to count the odd accident he'd had today. Naruto had gotten tripped into a pile of garbage and come out covered in it. Then he'd gotten one of those mischievious grins that, she was learning, showcased when he was getting an absolutely brilliant idea, and suddenly all the garbage, banana peels and so forth, that had been hanging off him burst off in every direction, like he'd exploded.
Explaining it afterward, the boy showed her how the 'blasting off' effect of too much chakra could be applied to getting clean.
Standing up out of the furo, Sakura applied what he'd showed her, although with her own perfect control, and all of the water fell off her body in a clean sheet, leaving her instantly dry. Hmm, you know, applying the same principles, maybe this time she wouldn't have to cut her hair to spare the grooming time for extra ninja training? Hey, maybe she could even play a Naruto and invent a few personal grooming jutsu off of their chakra exercises! That way she'd get her nice looks and personal chakra training in at the same time!
Naruto, after all, deserved for her to look her best for him.
Skipping out, happy over her success, she grabbed a shirt, and, looking down at the depressingly flat landscape before her, Sakura reflected that she might even grow a pair of breasts this time, once she'd worked up to a decent level of fitness and chakra reserves; because she wasn't *much* flatter now at six than she'd been at twenty, and that had always personally irked her, sliding in falsies to appear normal when other kunoichi her age actually had breasts.
She'd blamed her depressing results on a combination of bad diets and poor chakra reserves. But there were still times she would've killed for the True Hyuuga Bloodline.
Rozu Haruno was a complex woman. Few people understood her, and that was actually how she liked it. Although, the one person she actually wanted to understand her, her daughter Sakura, didn't. And she personally found that very annoying.
Rozu considered herself the last survivor of a clan. Her grandmother had come to Konoha because a medic-nin from Leaf had observed her pink hair, done some testing, and concluded she may well have an emerging bloodline. So grandmother had left her home and made the move, finding a husband here and having four beautiful pink-haired children: Rozu's mother, an aunt, and two uncles who tests all agreed as showing further signs of bloodline maturation.
Konoha was very generous to its bloodline clans, and though no properties of any Haruno-specific abilities had been identified as yet, aside from the rather obvious pink hair, still funds and lands had been made available for them to be comfortable as her grandmother's children all married and began families of their own. Life had been sweet with Konoha content to help them build up their numbers until the powers of their bloodline could be discovered.
There had been fourteen grandchildren from late teens to mid twenties, nine newly arrived great-grandchildren, four parents, and one grandparent holding the as-yet-unidentified Haruno bloodline on the day the Kyuubi attacked, and of them all Rozu alone survived. Their home and properties and everything had been destroyed, leaving behind only one more anonymous demon-fox footprint out in the woods.
As the youngest grandchild of what had begun to be a very large family, even if none of them had been ninja as yet, Rozu took the loss of everything she'd known up until that point rather hard - especially considering the reason she'd survived was that she'd taken that day to spend with the man she'd been about to marry, a handsome young ninja of chuunin rank, who had been called off to join in the fighting and never returned.
In the wake of the kyuubi disaster, Konoha had been in chaos, their economy severely wrecked with so many ninja dead and so much infrastructure lost they did not have the luxury of funding the support of as-yet-unproven bloodlines, leaving Rozu pregnant, alone, and penniless in the aftermath of the demon attack.
Rozu sorrowed that her daughter Sakura had never known her father, or the great Haruno family that had formed. She truly mourned for her grandparents, parents, brother and sisters, nieces and nephews, aunt and uncles and cousins - all people that Sakura would never know. She didn't even have the ashes of Sakura's father to remember him by.
All gone because of the demon fox.
In a different timeline, Rozu would have identified rather strongly with Sasuke as the Uchiha Survivor, as another one who had lost everything, and done everything in her power to aid him, including encouraging her only daughter to pursue him so she might eventually get better opportunity to be a mother for the poor orphan. And there was something of a feeling of inferiority over her own untested bloodline in there as well, wanting to unite with the strongest so hers could be proven valuable.
In this timeline, Rozu felt mounting horror that her only daughter, her pure and precious Sakura, was pursuing a friendship with the demon beast itself! When Danzo had taken her in, supported and sustained her, he'd made it plain about what that animal was, and she fully supported her late sponsor in his views. With the certainty that she had her dead family united in this opinion behind her, she felt nothing was good enough but to get rid of that monster forever!
It did not help her opinions concerning the beast change one iota that her social circle, first among the civilian council, now among the faculty of the ninja academy, held the same opinions as her about it. Although that had taken a little discrete convincing in the faculty's case. Poor Iruka had, during their lovemaking, even confessed his gratitude for her support of his feelings regarding the loss of his family to that monster.
It felt good to be building a unit of allies and friends again. And, speaking of Iruka, something even a little bit more.
Sakura was making her way out of the bathroom, fresh and clean and feeling happy, when her mom caught her and made the announcement.
"Honey, I have some news!"
"Oh?" Sakura stopped to regard her mom, who was bursting with excitement, and only a bit surprised to see Iruka there beside the woman, standing with his arm comfortably wrapped around her mother's waist. They'd been that way for two months now, practically ever since she'd started the academy, although the former Kage had to admit her focus had been on other things than her mother's dating habits.
Mostly she'd been assuming the whole thing would blow over.
Rozu Haruno clutched the man beside her lovingly. "Honey, I'm proud to announce you're going to have a new father!"
Sakura reeled, but her mom wasn't finished announcing, as she placed a hand on her tummy, declaring proudly, "And, in another seven months, a new brother or sister!"
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(Posted Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:51)
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