Chapter 100/101 - Arc 6/7 - Onward, To Suna!/We're Ready Kakashi, The Chunin Exams Start Now! - Clearing up Misunderstandings/Blowing Up with Children

So here are the chapters I owe. I only lost one Patron for this past week and honestly, I doubt it was even connected. It's nice to be able to have a mental health crisis and everyone's just relatively okay with it.

CH 101 is a little odd, it's almost all from Episode 20 of the anime. You'll recognize the events, but they're taken from such an incredibly different perspective because this Sakura isn't a fucking psycho that beats the absolute shit out of six year olds on a whim.

--------------------------------100-----------------------------

Two hours.

It takes two hours to calm Ino down enough that she can make coherent words. It’s somewhat awkward watching someone break down while she hasn’t the slightest clue how to help, but since it’s Ino she deals with it the best she can.

There’s blubbering, an awkward amount of time brushing her hair - Ino is very peculiar about it so the hope is she’ll snap at her and stop crying - and eventually Sakura abandons that entire entirely and pulls out her cooking skill instead. She makes soup, chicken and noodles and a thick creamy broth. It’s what her mom used to do when she was having a very bad no good day, and while it doesn't work here, she does her best.

Ino has comforted her dozens of times, and she can return the favor for her best friend. She hasn’t been a very good friend most of her life, so as out of place as she feels, she jumps at the chance to do something fo there.

When Ino does finally seem to come around, it’s while resting her head in Sakura’s lap. Sakura’s palm is rubbing Ino’s back in calming circles, and the weeping girl finds herself blinking up at Sakura with rosy cheeks and no small amount of meekness to her gaze. “You um… can we agree to forget about all that?”

“Forget about what?” Sakura asks, working in a slightly higher pressure into her hand’s circling now that Ino’s more awake. She gives Ino a gentle smile she’s pretty sure she couldn’t have managed two months ago. It’s nice, but it’s nicer to see Ino bury her face away from view without doing so to try and hide tears.

Sakura’s used to overwhelming anxiety and blistering embarrassment, it’s a massive improvement she’s glad to see, when compared to catatonia. “Do you want to tell me what this was?”

“I thought you just said we could forget.” Ino points out in a grumbly mumble directly into Sakura’s leg..

“Well yeah, the events but the reasoning is probably pretty important.” Sakura argues gently, prodding her cheek with a finger, “what’s wrong?”

“You think I kidnapped you and now you hate me.” Ino mumbles.

“Isn’t that something I’m supposed to cry about?” Sakura asks.

“You said you’d forget!”

--------------------------------------------------

“So the official paperwork that was supposed to be sent to me was this.” Sakura says, sitting in the Hokage’s office with a nice cup of tea and several forms which detail quite a bit of information. Like several other recommendations that say what Ino said, but with more details, and even guided notes for how she should best use her time at home. For instance, Anko - someone she met during her sessions with Ino - suggested she work on baking. She’s not sure why that would matter, but now she wishes she had worked on learning how to bake. “Why wasn’t this sent to me?” There’s even a recommendation directly from the Hokage in here, that she use the time to make friends with Chunin and learn about the exam coming up, as he very much wants her in the finals.

“It’s not unheard of for the clerks to make a mistake, but in this case I think someone deliberately swapped the forms to try and create a rift between you and Miss Yamanaka.” The Hokage says, lighting his pipe with a quick jutsu from his finger.

“Who would do that?” Sakura gasps, eyes widening immensely. First of all, that’s a cool application of fire chakra she hadn’t thought of. She doesn’t smoke, she doesn’t intend to smoke, and she doesn’t know a whole lot of people that do smoke, but the concept of using elemental chakra to make everyday tasks easier like that is rather perspective changing. It’s such a cool idea, and it fills her with inspiration. Crafting inspirations mostly. If she gets her fire chakra up she can cook and smith without the need of so many tools! She needs to grind that after the exams, it’s a need now. “They’d have to be stupidly bold since you have the original forms.”

“I have a pretty good idea.” The Hokage grunts, looking away from her as if at a ghost. In this particular case, she’s pretty sure he’s looking at an Anbu. This is likely him signaling them to go check up on his hunch.

What his hunch is, well, they know but she doesn’t and she’s getting the intention that… “You don’t intend to tell me?” She asks, furrowing her brow, twitching her nose, and falling into a pout that quickly overtakes her face. “I thought I was trusted.”

“It’s not that I don’t think you deserve the information.” He assures her quickly, using one hand to show her his palm, to stall her, signify peace, or maybe just buy himself a second to think. “I just value you, and I think you’d get yourself killed with it.”

“Ah…” She has to readjust her thoughts at that. He values her? He’s said stuff like that before but, being honest with her like this is trust too. So it’s not that she’s lowly, or useless or, maybe it is but he’s not framing it that way. “Just a couple of months ago you had me interrogated. When did our standing change that much?”

“Sakura, you will know when you’ve been interrogated.” The old man has the gall to laugh at her, “you can consider that a check-up.”

“A check-up where I got kidnapped, chained to a wall, and then the diagnosis from that check-up was extended house arrest.” She points out, poking the very papers he just handed her.

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration, it was village arrest at worst.” Hiruzen jokes with a little bit of a flippant tone, but the mood chart beside his head tells her he’s feeling rather tense so the joke is most likely meant to mislead her, “it was determined that you could use the downtime. Most Ninjas go years without seeing the kind of violence you did in a very short period of time, and at your age, with the nature of the memories you made with that violence, we wanted to ensure you were safe and weren’t about to do anything rash. A couple of months is nothing, you have a very long future ahead of you.”

“Do anything rash?” She asks, “sir, I don’t understand what you mean… Aside from the glass - which was very much with a goal - I’ve never harmed myself.”

“There’s an old phrase that’s survived quite well into the modern age. I do not want to die, but I do not want to live either.” He huffs his pipe, the tobacco glowing a bright red. “There is not a lot of difference between turning a kunai on yourself, and not moving out of the way of one flying towards your neck. We had reason to believe that if we continued to push you without a pause, you would reach a point where you might not move out of danger. If you recall your own mind didn’t move out of the way and stabbed you. Two months to ensure you live and serve for tens of years, that’s not even a trade, it’s a steal. I would make that decision every time.”

“But…” She doesn’t have a lot to say to that. She wants to, she has so much to scream, but so little to say.

“You didn’t lose those two months either. You took classes, trained your abilities, made friends, you even made allies with the Inuzuka and summoned an incarnation of their dead. You achieved more in those two months than most do in years, and that again, brings us back to one of the very reasons I signed off on making you stay in Konoha. You’re experiencing an accelerated frame of time, every day is huge for you. I want you to have as many of those massive days at home as you can.”

“I’m a ninja, not a kid.” She points out with an indignantly pouty puff of her cheeks.

“We’re not at war, Sakura, not today. If that ever does come to pass, I would like someone as strong and loyal as you to have fond memories of home to look back on. I do not need your forefront memories to be about killing vampires, going blind, or hurting yourself in your own head. I stand by the decision. You matter.”

“But if you stand by it… it can happen again.” She holds back a soft sniffle. “I can’t… I can’t accept that.”

“You don’t have to. Continue to take care of yourself, maintain your friendships, keep a healthy mind, and I’ll never order such a thing again. Not for that reason at least. Besides, once you hit Jonin you’re allowed to go crazy, so if it worries you that much you just have to advance. Your sensei once did multiple years of consecutive suicide missions for fun.”

“You mean because he didn’t want to live.” Sakura points out.

“You’re paying attention! Good.” He claps for her. “Go home, make-up with miss Yamanka, and let me take care of this security breach for now. Someone has hell to pay.”

He’s such a nice old man.

He does scare the absolute fucking shit out of her though.

--------------------------------------------------

“So, I wanna play a prank on the boss.” Konohamaru approaches her during one of her rare times at the dinner table where she’s not there explicitly for eating food. Admittedly it has gotten less rare as of late. Sometimes she just likes to hang around, especially with her house being as crowded as it is on the regular now. She doesn’t actually talk to anyone, but she feels like being around so many people is probably grinding her charm and why not grind charm while reading a book?

She’s very quickly learned that while the exp requirements for increasing a stat do go up with each level, the actual ease with which you grind a stat also goes up as the stat does. She can do a lot more exercise now than she could when she started, so she’s getting a lot more experience a lot faster, so her actual effort to reward ratios aren’t actually completely separated. It’s like how in most games stronger enemies give greater experience but the experience to next level increases too. The higher costs are largely there just to stop you from grinding to max level on low difficulty enemies. Challenge is reward, and while that challenge is framed differently as you get stronger, and it normally doesn’t perfectly even out…

Well, there’s just no way she could have done this with her starting charm, and she’s warming up to people being around her. She’s pretty sure she’ll always be more comfortable in her room, in the dark, curled up with a book or a handheld or something, but this isn’t so bad either.

In fact… “That’s stupid.” The girl at the other end of the table doesn’t bother her at all. “Why would you prank him? I thought he was your friend.” Hanabi has become somewhat of a fixture in her life. She’s under the impression this might be forced. If the Hyuga want her favor that much, and Neji screwed it up enough in their opinion that they sent him to her house with expedited shipping - or slapping as the case may be - then why not send the spare heir to hang around her? The worst she can do is teach her uncultured things, and she’s sure they have classes to fix that. There’s no way the Hyuga don’t have training to be as stuck up as they are.

“Because pranks are fun! The boss loves pranks!” Konohamaru fist pumps in the air, and Sakura can’t help but nod along.

“So what were you thinking and how can I help?” Sakura asks.

“I was thinking we’d make a fake rock and follow him around.” The boy explains, “and you seem smart, I figured maybe you could help me with the rock.”

“... Yes.” Time to learn carpentry or stone working or craftsmanship or something! Crafting time, crafting time, everybody gather for crafting time! She’s already doing a Haruno wiggle, she can feel it without looking down. The mortified stares the kids are giving her only further confirm it.

---------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------101-------------------------------

“Hehe~” Konohamaru can’t help but titter as they approach Naruto. It’s a little odd crawling on the ground while working around the smaller bodies of three kids, but she worked that into the design of their construct so it’s very workable. The first thing that came into play was making the rock believable. It’s not a normal texture, she had to get a chisel and get working on making it rough and uneven. She had to use real rock for the outer layer, it just wasn’t going to function at her crafting levels if she didn’t. It took two days to make this, and in that time she leveled up [Carpentry] and [Stone Masonry] to level 2. Is stone masonry necessarily what she would have called that skill? Probably not, but she’s not here to judge the system, she’s here to craft a believable rock.

If she was going to question the system, the name of a skill would not be her start. There’s been a lot of nonsense when this started, almost like it was making things from scratch and didn’t truly understand the very interface it was trying to create.

There’s wheels on the inside which help handle some of the weight, and platforms to make it so most of their movements are on a bar which helps steer it. It was mostly designed that way so that their movements don’t ever have to be too drastic, because stomping on Moegi’s feet was a real concern and she has no intentions of risking crippling a little girl for a more efficient design for a prank. The whole thing did have to be bigger than she wanted it to be, to accommodate her, but she wasn’t spending two days on a moving art project and not getting into it. Well, that’s not explicitly true. She had originally planned for Hanabi to take the center spot and use her Byakugan to see outside of the construct so they didn’t have to have eye holes but the little Hyuga told her to eat grass. She’s assuming ‘eat grass’ is a polite way of telling her to go away. It didn’t feel very polite. Haku laughed though.

“He seems to have missed us.” Sakura explains to them what she sees, “he’s turning a corner, let’s go right.” Coordinating them is a little fun, and she’s happy it worked out this way. They have tiny eye holes but it’s not super clear, the only person with any real visibility is her, with a center spyglass worked into an uneven part of the top. It’s complicated, and upside down, and she needs to learn more about mirrors so she can do it better next time, but it works and because it’s make-shift as all hell it did completely fall to her to do it. Originally when she realized Hanabi wasn’t going to do it, she wanted to figure out a way to make the kids a more central part of the prank, but with her current skills that just wasn’t very possible.

Pushing on the bar and tilting their bodies, they slowly turn the corner. Her heart beats hard in her chest, and she’s ready to spot him. She takes a deep breath as they turn the corner, and opens her eye wide to see-

Nothing.

“Uh… Sakura?” Konohamaru asks.

“Did he poof away?” Sakura asks, “oop!” She finds her body lurching forward with a sudden momentum from behind. She barely manages to catch herself so she doesn’t completely crush the girl to her side, even if she still does manage to end up tangled in a mess of smaller limbs. She needs to figure out a fix for sudden movements from behind next time, got it.

“Rocks don’t move!” She hears shouted from behind them, “that’s so obvious! Who would make a photo-realistic vehicle and then forget that rocks don’t move!? Why did I ask, Sakura’s definitely behind this!”

"Crap, he got us, I'd expect that from my rival. Activate the bombs." Konohamaru says.

"That’s so rude, what’s that supposed to mean - wait, the bombs?" Sakura barely has time to process Konohamaru’s words before her world is shaken by a loud bang that whites out her vision. A flash captures her, then another, and another. The ringing that takes her over is painful and abrupt, but the fear that grips her heart is so much more so.

“Ugh-ack-” Her hearing slowly comes back to the sound of her own coughing. A single hand reaches up to wipe the blackness from her eyes, only for her first blinks to make out that above her is a wall of smoke and flames. Her construct is on fire, that’s fine but… “What the…”

That’s all she has time for before it hits her that she was stuck in that box with actual children. “Shit.” Rolling over, she’s scooped them all into one pile and is checking them all over before she can even see. Her palms move quickly, activating First-Aid to assess conditions the best she can and maneuver over them. Naruto stops coughing, and then the smoke dissipates, in that order.

"We way overdid the gunpowder." Konohamaru gasps from beneath her palms. "We shouldn't have altered it for the new rock formation."

"You think? Why was there gunpowder?" Sakura allows her breaths to go towards words now that she’s got confirmation no one was mulched. Their bodies seem very intact, just covered in thick soot, much like herself. Blinking away teary eyes and wiping some more black dust out of her gaze so she can see, she sighs in raspy relief. It seems superficial, some burnt clothes, a little singed hair, no one’s even unconscious. The kids seem to find it funny, nevermind her panic and chilled blood. She should have checked Konohamaru’s pockets for dumb stuff like that, this was on her. Maybe, she’s not sure. It’s not on Naruto, she’s sure of that.

"Why are you involved in this?!" Naruto points at her, "Sakuraaaa! Rocks don't move!"

"But they were so cute, and this idea was so adorable..." Sakura points out, coughing again, and using her First-Aid skill again to make one final check on Konohamaru. The boy most certainly took most of the blast. He seems fine, it's just scary and she’s not ready to calm down yet.

"They blew themselves up, Sakura, explosives and kids aren't cute!" Naruto seems legitimately mad at her. At least they agree on this, kids shouldn’t explode.

"In my defense, I didn't know." She rasps, patting Konohamaru’s chest and then rolling him over to make sure he’s not hiding horrific burns.

"How would you not know!?" It's a good question, one she'd appreciate if he'd ask quieter. They already set off a bomb, half of Konoha is probably watching her manhandle the Hokage’s grandson.

"Clearly, I was blindsided by three kids asking me for help." If Hanabi had been included, her day would have been made... Nah, that's a lie, her day was already made. But then Hanabi would probably have warned her about the gunpowder! Darn stick in the mud!

"They wanna play Ninja, you're invited.” Sakura coughs again, exhaling black smoke directly. Her vision is still pretty hazy, she hopes she didn’t suffer lung damage. Then again, what’s it matter, it’ll be fine tomorrow. She changes that thought to ‘hope they didn’t suffer lung damage’.

“Hospital first.” Naruto growls under his breath, and she can’t help but agree with him.

It’s a sad day when Naruto’s the voice of reason. At least it’s not Sasuke again.

----------------------------------------------

"Woosh!" The hospital is very understanding, probably because the person who blew everyone up is the Hokage’s grandson and she imagines you get a lot of leeway in your shenanigans when you have that kind of credibility. She wouldn’t call Konohamaru a spoiled brat, especially not when he’s around Naruto, but the difference in treatment is night and day. She walked into a hospital with a bunch of six year olds with burns, covered in soot, and all he had to do was say ‘I did it’ to get her out of trouble.

Though, maybe she’s thinking about it too positively. The Hokage will probably have plenty to say to her during their next meeting, maybe this is just everyone taking pity on her? She has definitively decided this wasn’t her fault, how was she supposed to know he had gunpowder!? Tenten has limited access to the stuff and she works at an official forge!

Maybe she can use Konohamaru’s connections to get Tenten better materials, it’d help her a lot in the long run. Whatever the case, once they’re out of the hospital, playing ninja with the kids is fun. Watching Naruto be himself is also fun. She gets to forget about her woes and concerns and just run, jump, and chase after a bunch of kids like she’s not a paid killer. Also, unlike when running and jumping and chasing after Lee, she’s not sweating ryo and passing out in the dirt half the time.

Her favorite part is something Konohamaru added to the game of ‘Ninja’ where you occasionally break from the fun and do some old lady favors, because ‘that’s what ninja do.’ It’s so cute and sweet and gives her a lot of time to recover between rounds. The fact that they’re supposed to do it stealthily and as dramatically as possible only serves to add many more reasons to laugh during their downtime.

Three hours of playing Ninja and there’s not a single regrettable incident, just a lot of fixed stuff and happy ladies, that is until Konohamaru manages to run face first into a dark and broody figure. Her legs take her towards the conflict as fast as she can, but she still only manages to arrive just as Konohamaru is lifted into the air by a strong fist, the man he managed to anger holding him up by his shirt. It’s a harrowing scene, one about to become very violent if she has anything to say about it. She’ll kill them for touching the boy during a friendly game, or she would, if she didn’t happen to notice something about the figure. "Oh hey, how are you two doing?" She waves her left arm high, her right stopping halfway through drawing her sword.

It’s the boy with the ears built into his hood, him and Temari! The guy takes one look at her, before dropping Konohamaru and walking away. "Nope, not today."

"What are you - oh, it's Sakura." Temari's nose twitches, and Sakura's not really sure what she did to deserve an attitude, she thought they bonded.

"Where's Gaara?" Sakura asks, "I haven't seen him the last couple of days."

"He's been given orders to lay low until the exams, you'll see him then." Temari says, one of her hands flopping to the side, her fingers outstretched at an angle. Sakura is pretty sure she’s supposed to interpret the motion as sass. "I'm sure he'll be in your business plenty."

"You make it sound bad," Sakura pouts at her, maybe she’s wrong and they don’t see him as their brother after-all, "come along Konohamaru, Ninjas go this way!" And before long she's leading them through the streets in a totally different direction.

The best part about playing Ninja is all the smiles, there’s no reason to worry about all this now. So Gaara’s siblings have an attitude today, whatever. Konohamaru and his two friends Udon and Moegi are more important… Is that their name? Uhhh…

She still sucks at that. She knows his name sounds like food. Udon? Oopon? Ramen? It’s not Ramen.