3

 Chapter 3

This surprising turn of events...did not spark joy.

Now, normally, I was all for a change. For a difference, no matter how small and insignificant it might have been in the face of fate and prophecy. Small moments like those gave me life. They gave me the oddly euphoric feeling that I'd just spat in the eye of someone I disliked very much.

I'd never done anything of the sort, of course, but that was how I imagined it would feel.

Of course, when a change in the path led to a strong chance of personal harm and danger, I naturally-

"Bells?" Naruto loudly interrupted my internal turmoil with an almost yell. Or, in other words, with his normal tone and volume. "What bells?"

Damn it, Naruto, I'd been having a moment.

"I'm glad you asked, Naruto. I'm glad you asked." Kakashi, the corner of his single visible eye crinkling in an emoted smile that filled me with more than reasonable amounts of discomfort, gave the blond a pat on the shoulder. "And so is Yanyan-Kun."

How...sickeningly cutesy sounding. And worrying. As the unknown tended to be.

I didn't give him the satisfaction of audibly acknowledging what he'd just said. But it had affected me, even if slightly.

He probably knew it too, the bastard.

"Yanyan-Kun?" Sasuke did all of the acknowledging for me, clearly skeptical about what had just come out of his mouth. A good thing to be, I'd say.

Better him than I.

"Did none of you notice him? You were just looking at him a moment ago." Kakashi blinked sleepily at us as we all turned back to Naruto's trap, which we'd been ignoring for less than a minute in favor of...whatever this was turning out to be. "His day was already going terribly. Now you've just hurt his feelings."

We all finished turning...and we all took in the view. That view being a stuffed dog...an abnormally cute stuffed dog. Very high quality at a glance. Imported, maybe? One with soft, white fur and big, round eyes that just drew you in and...focus. Not the time for that.

Later.

A short look gave me what I was looking for. The bells were around its neck, swaying, and ringing lightly in an unseen breeze. The entire animal was wrapped up in strategically placed ninja wire, the anchor points disappearing into the unreadable labyrinth that Naruto had created from baling wire (Yes, baling wire, which was different from the ninja variety) and office supplies.

"He wasn't there before," I pointed out.

And I didn't squeak while doing it. Or squeal. Or any variation of either of those things. I was far too dignified for that. Really.

Not a peep.

Ino would think it was cute though. And she'd do all of that.

And not me.

It was a very nice toy and I wasn't made of stone.

"Nonsense. He's been there this whole time, Sakura-chan. It isn't his fault you didn't notice him."

"What?" Naruto actually yelled, outraged in that way only Naruto could be. "No, he wasn't! Where the hell did-"

"And now you're victim-blaming delinquents. I worry for Konoha's future. But, maybe, you will all turn it around. Maybe you aren't hopeless after all?" Kakashi hummed. "Can you three get Yanyan-Kun free of the trap you created?" He paused for a long while. "Can you keep yourselves from being sent to the academy for another year?"

"What do you mean, go back to the academy?" Naruto continued to yell. "We already passed!"

"Sure you did." Kakashi chuckled. "Sure you did."

"We don't pass till he says we pass." I clarified before this could drag on any longer, an eye on the trap once more to try and find some semblance of reason and sense. It having been made by Naruto though, that was a hard thing to ask for. "That's what he means."

"Has anyone told you that you're a killjoy, Sakura?"

I shrugged.

All the time. But he probably knew that already too.

Sasuke's fists clenched. His brow furrowed. The promise of Uchiha violence, which was a special kind of violence, was made imminent, carved out of the lines of his body. "What does any of that have to do with the bells?"

"You have a hostage in front of you and you're worried about bells. There is no bottom with you. But, fine. I'll humor you." He sighed. "Save the dog. Save your careers. Is that clear enough for you?"

And here it was. Solid ground. Something I knew how to work with. Work together. Get through together.

"But-" Naruto started loudly.

"Naruto," I ended flatly. "We can stand here and yell at our new sensei all day or we can get this over with. I'm hungry."

We'd passed lunch hours ago and I was starting to get irritable.

"Ah, damn it. Now you got me thinking about ramen. Okay. Guys. I'm going to be serious right now." Naruto grimaced, the dark whisker lines on his cheeks standing out starkly on his even paler skin as Sasuke and I got into position. "You're going to have to do everything as soon as I say it."

My heart fell an inch or so, closer to my stomach. "Why?"

"What did you do, dumbass?" Sasuke swore.

"Fuck you, asshole!" Naruto snapped before turning back to me, Kakashi having backed up minutes ago. Smart. "Each piece you disarm starts a three-to-five-second timer. It's random." He licked his lips. "If you don't disarm the next piece fast enough, in the right order, it all goes off."

I gave him a blank, disbelieving stare.

He continued to look nervous and shifted on his feet.

"What the hell, Naruto?"

"You told me to bring my A-game!"

I took a deep breath. He was right. He wasn't the only one to blame here. Damn my curiosity. "I did."

"Damn it, Sakura," Sasuke muttered.

I ignored that. We had a job to do and pointing fingers would get us nowhere. "Where do we start, Naruto?"

"Uh… Do you see the widget? Right next to the doo-hickey?"

"The what and the what?"

"You know! The thing with the kunai!"

Sasuke closed his eyes, as resigned as I was quickly becoming. "Nice knowing you, Haruno."

I had run out of things to be happy about today.

Just as I'd expected.

==========

Prodigy.

How I loathed that word. Prodigy. I loathed everything about it. What it meant. The connotations. The expectations. The glorification of your empty future as a child soldier (With a title such as prodigy, that was the only future you had) and future mess as an adult.

I hated that it was so cheap. You couldn't walk down the street without stumbling on a loudly declared 'prodigy'. There was a new one every minute. Hyuuga, Uchiha, Kurama. From families you've never even heard of and families you have. We weren't running out of them any time soon.

All it was, was an excuse to throw more of these young ninja into the meat grinder. Couched in terms of praise, of honor… It was a trap. It was a lie that had led to my sensei's well-known participation in the third ninja war at the age of five years old. It was a fiction that had turned Sasuke's brother into a barely human, pacifistic, and almost definitely entirely insane, guilt-ridden murder machine.

It was a constant weight on my mood.

I wanted no part of it. I'd worked hard for what I had. I was still working hard for it.

"A new bloodline, you think?"

"She'll outrank her parents before she hits her next birthday."

"The Haruno child will be doing S-ranks before she's twenty at this rate."

"This chakra control is on another level…"

"She's a real genius."

…The idea that might have been the case, that nearly all my 'talent' was the result of hard work instead of inborn abilities wasn't one my peers could accept though. Because of course not. You were born special or you weren't. And that was that. That was how ninja worked. My blatant refusal of the title couldn't be allowed to happen, if only for their own egos. All for some false assumption that they mattered, out in the real world.

Just over a decade of training my relatively minuscule chakra pool to respond at a thought had led to it responding at a thought. Shocking. And nearly inconceivable.

If not for what was coming, I'd have stayed a civilian. Mom and Dad would have been cool with it. Maybe opened up a bakery. Done a reasonable approximation of a slice of life manga, but for real. I'd even have coffee. Hot chocolate. And a little veranda so that people could eat and drink outside. Something nice that wasn't selling my life for money I'd never get to see.

…Life wasn't all bad though. Don't get me wrong. I had parents that loved me, even if they were away a lot. A home to come back to at the end of the day. Hot food. I had good friends, some of them better than others. For obvious reasons.

"You're very pretty, you know? Those guys are just jerks!"

"Uh...thank you? But that wasn't why I was-"

"You should come play with us!"

"What. Who? Oh, no, that's oka- How are you so strong!?"

"Keep up! I've got just the right thing for that hair of yours!"

Or just around the longest...which might have been the same thing, really. Ino had been Ino even then. As only Ino could be.

Never change.

"And I'd been starting to think you'd forgotten how to smile." Ino took a peek at me from below the steaming hand towel she'd placed over her eyes. "Would you look at that?"

It was probably terrible to look at.

"I'd smile more if it hurt less," I groaned, my pleasant and highly distracting from the pain reminiscing cut off at the sound of Ino's real voice… Maybe she could change after all. Just a little? Just a thought as I ran a green-lit hand over my cheek again; I swore I could feel sandal treads. "Kakashi-sensei is a real hardass."

A roundhouse kick that I hadn't even seen coming had me skipping across the dirt like a stone across the surface of a pond, head spinning and ears ringing.

"He sure sounds like it. And looks like it too. I don't think I've ever seen you that messed up." Ino shrugged her way up against the stone platform we were both leaning against, higher out of the water. "But at least you passed, right?"

Naruto pinwheeled past me with a dumb expression of surprise on his face, rear-end thankfully unpoked as he vanished into the bushes.

"We passed alright," I grumbled. "He was so impressed with our teamwork, and how we didn't end up accidentally killing ourselves that he let his normal test go."

Sasuke found himself tossed into a tree by a punch, stunned, limbs askew and an empty fallen bird's nest in his hair.

"So then he decided to see what you could do the day after instead. The hard way." Ino nodded to me, her towel falling back across her face. Then sliding down it, into the water where it began to float away. "You told me."

An orange book laid in the dirt. Pages splayed out awkwardly, the spine slightly cracked.

A terrible, awkward silence.

Kakashi blinked a single eye in surprise, an elbow cradled in the palm of his hand while he rotated the wrist of the other. "That wasn't in your file."

"It started like that," was my hollow reply. "It sure started like that."

"My second impression of you all is… I don't like you."

Kakashi hadn't appreciated the feeling of his funny bone being hit about twenty times in a row with a rock. A sharp rock. The feeling and its aftertaste.

He had not...and he really should have dodged instead of blocked.

That hadn't been my fault.

And, after the last couple of days, I wasn't sorry.

"Hm. That's ominous. And you didn't tell me about that." Ino slid closer to me. Not quite touching, but closer. Her milky breasts bobbed gently in the water, soothing my spirit with their presence… I could sleep on them all day, I swear. And I had. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I didn't want to think about this anymore. Or the last day in general.

It could have been better.

Time to pretend like it never happened.

"...Not really." I'd never been schooled so badly in my life. Sure, Kakashi was a jounin but I had my pride, even if it was a small thing that I'd throw away in a second if it meant staying alive... And besides. Ino would probably just laugh at me again. "How was your time with your sensei?"

Better than mine, clearly. She didn't have a limp.

"Nothing like yours," Ino told me what I'd already known. "Asuma-sensei is a lot more laid back. Maybe too laid back." Ino gave me a light pat on the back, making me flinch a little and move away from the wall. Then she slid into the gap, hands flipping smoothly through the hand signs for the mystic palm as she did so; she was an absolute angel. "He had us demonstrate the jutsu we knew, gave us a pat on the back, and challenged Shika to a game of shogi."

I couldn't help the wince and the moan when Ino's hands started roaming over my back. And at what she'd just said. This wince was multi-tiered. "You're kidding me."

"Shikamaru kicked his butt. It wasn't even a contest. Also, your back looks like it took on night camouflage."

"Purple, blue, and that weird sort of gray?" My back arched, and not in a good way as she pressed down between my shoulder blades… Lesson learned. Don't touch the book. "Gentle!"

"There's some yellow too. To break up your shape. How thoughtful," Ino proceeded to not agree to be gentle. But, seeing as the general level of pain was starting to drop, I found it within myself to forgive her. "This jutsu is actually pretty useful, isn't it?"

I blew out a breath. "I'd think so, yes. That's why I taught it to you."

Why this wasn't part of the basic curriculum for people with decent control, I had no idea. Sure, it wasn't going to fix organ damage or a broken bone but, sometimes, all you needed was to keep the blood in.

Or fix a sudden case of third-degree burns.

I heard that the last one happened a lot.

"Right. Someone has to patch you up when you do something dumb. Like, antagonize a jounin." Ouch, Ino. "It would be a shame if skin as nice as yours got all scarred up and gross just because you were acting too much like yourself."

I huffed out a laugh, a puff of steam off the water wafting into my face. "I don't think that's something I'd be all that concerned about when I'm bleeding to death, Ino. But, sure. That's why I taught you that."

"Kunoichi of the year," Ino sang into my ear, the hard points of her nipples grazing me as she leaned in to clear up some of the scratches on my collarbone. "Always two steps ahead of everyone else."

She'd be throwing that 'accomplishment' at me until the day I died, wouldn't she? Ah, well. There were worse things to be teased about. Like tactical considerations. "Always looking underneath the underneath."

"I see you've been talking to a fortune teller. That's cryptic. I do like the sound of it though. That's good advice if you look at it the right way." Ino chuckled, her fingers suddenly tickling my lower stomach and making me sit upright. "I wouldn't mind if you looked at my underneath while I looked at yours."

Sometimes, letting Ino set the pace of whatever we were was...difficult. And confusing.

Ino could afford to change. Just a little.

"No, that's something my sensei said about ninja life while working us over. I wasn't trying to seduce-" I coughed, knees slowly coming together so as not to make any noticeable splashes while Ino suggestively tangled her digits up in the dark pink curls of my pubic hair and gave them a tug. "Not in public, Ino. That's rude."

And illegal. Pretty sure it was that too. Public indecency tended to be that.

"Of course not in public. What do you take me for? I'm a lady." Ino let go, sounding positively scandalized at the idea. "That was just something to remember me by."

Of course it had been.

"Because my memory is just that bad." I leaned back and into her, pretending that no one could see us. Which was a lie, even if there was no one else in the springs with us. As Kakashi had reminded me, I was good, but there were better. Not seeing anyone didn't mean anything. "Also, Ino?"

Ino answered me with a questioning hum as she got back to making my back a single color once more.

"Do you think I'd be a good baker?"

I had to ask. That thought of mine hadn't been entirely serious. But neither had it been entirely not.

Ino's family ran a flower shop. Why couldn't I have something off to the side as well?

"What? ...Sakura." Ino took her time with that one, stretching out my name and pounding my mood into the ground at the same time. "You can barely toast bread. And you want to be a baker? Where did that come from?"

"I can toast bread," I said back, miffed. She was exaggerating. "It's just that I like the crunch. And I thought it sounded nice. Relaxing."

"Of charcoal? And, I guess?" Her hair tickled the back of my neck as she shook her head. "But that isn't really you, you know?"

Dark brown wasn't black. But I didn't expect her to understand the difference.

"You could have just said 'no, Sakura, I don't think you'd be a good baker'."

"No, Sakura, I don't think you'd be a good baker."

I'd walked into that one. Really. I should have known better than to say anything. "Well played."

"You make it easy, forehead...and we should go. We've got missions to do tomorrow! We'll be real ninja, doing things that real ninja do!" She gave me a cheerful pat on the shoulder and stood up. "And besides, I'm starting to prune and that's gross."

"Real ninja. Uh-huh. We are that now, aren't we?"I didn't have the heart to tell her that she'd be weeding someone's garden tomorrow. Or painting a fence. Or getting groceries. I just didn't… That or I was feeling vindictive again. More the latter. Some the former. "That'll be something alright."

The blonde sighed. "You're not even trying to be convincing. Do you even care?" Ino poked me playfully in the chest as I crawled out of the water, goosebumps popping up all over my skin. "Would it kill you to be excited about something for once?"

"I wouldn't want to risk it."

Ino wasn't the only one that had fences to paint tomorrow.

"Oh. Wait. I forgot to ask. And what was up with the bells?"

My shoulders fell. "Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"What do we get for getting all the bells while disarming Naruto's trap and saving the dog, anyway?"

"What do you get for getting the bells?"

"Yes."

"Oh, just something I like to call…"

"Nothing." That was my empty reply. I hadn't expected a party or anything, but I hadn't been through something so nervewracking since the first time I'd had sex with Ino. "He was just screwing with us."

"Wow."

"Yeah, wow."

Kakashi-sensei was sort of a dick. But that was okay.

"... Where's Yanyan-Kun?"

"Dunno."

I'd got mine.

==========

I was ambushed as soon as I walked through the door of my own home, relaxed from the warmth of the springs and the cessation of pain; Mercilessly assaulted in my moment of weakness I was reminded that nowhere was safe, no matter where or when I was. Arms like iron held me tight and I was defenseless to do anything about it.

It wasn't as if I could lash out, after all. Or that I wanted to.

Torturing family was more of an Uchiha thing.

"Mebuki! Our little girl! Our little girl is-" My dad fake-cried over my head after having picked me up off the ground and forcibly buried my face in his chest before he started twisting his torso, making my legs flop like a rag doll's. He smelled like dirt. And sweat. My childhood, in other words. "She's a genin now, just like her parents! We need to celebrate!"

"Hi, Dad," I muttered as I tried to return my dad's hug with debatable success, the tips of my feet repeatedly brushing over the floor the whole time. "Hi, Mom."

"Hello, Sakura," my mom said back, amusement clear in her voice while she did nothing to help. "Do you want barbecue tomorrow, or sushi?"

I thought about it. Barbecue sounded nice, but I'd had some just two days ago. And, again. Habits were the enemy. "Sushi, please. Tuna sounds good."

"Then we'll have tuna. And we picked something up for you while you were out." I felt a pull on my hair, my mother's deft fingers unweaving then reweaving my hair to add something to it. "A pin to go with that bow of yours."

"A sakura blossom pin, for our little Sakura."

"Dad. Come on." I squirmed, my face suddenly uncomfortably warm. Dad could be - mushy - sometimes. "Is it - pointy?"

That might have sounded ungrateful, but it was an important consideration.

"We wouldn't have got it for you if it wasn't. And it's a father's job to embarrass their daughters. You'll just have to cope," Dad informed me kindly. Not for the first time. Not for the last. "Right, Mebuki?"

…This was great.

Mom gave my hair a tug to retighten my braid, the feeling of cold metal at the back of my head an oddly reassuring one. "As long as it isn't in front of her friends, Kizashi."

Dad shook me some more. I continued to play the part of a ragdoll. "But that's when fathers truly shine!"

I reached a hand back behind my head to feel out the pin… The petals. The senbon sharp point... It felt useful. Beautiful. "I wouldn't know what to do without that mortified feeling in my life."

Even if my life really didn't matter in the greater scheme of things...at least it mattered to someone.

Three someones.

Naruto might have had a point.

Precious people were pretty nice to have.