(Tim Seltzer, seltzer@seltzerbooks.com) Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do not own Wedding Peach.
I do not own any great quantity of money or property. I'm a STUDENT; that's
why I'm poor, okay?
"I wasn't scratched by them!" Sakura complained. She warily eyed the
needle going towards her shoulder.
"We don't know that for sure," the nurse said. "You have cuts everywhere.
Now hold out your arm."
"I hate needles," Sakura grumbled. The nurse injected a small amount
of antidote in Sakura. True, she probably had not been poisoned by the
shuriken, but it was a safety precaution.
The nurse pulled out the needle, and held some cotton to the tiny wound.
"I heard from Angel Salvia that you were the first to notice the toxin,"
the nurse complimented. "Good thing you did; that stuff was black-market
material, that was. The poison is unique, in that it does not give the
victim pain yet within days, they would mysteriously die in their sleep.
That's why I'm giving you antidote, as well as the boys who touched the
weapons."
Sakura was shocked. She first thought that the poison was some sort
of malicious prank. Who would hate her so much that they wanted her dead?
The Ninja Mansion? Maybe. But perhaps it was someone else someone else
stealthy enough to get past it.
The nurse smiled. "You must be a brave girl to handle this well."
"I'm not brave..." Sakura mumbled. "I'm only sick and tired of being
frightened without doing something about it." A hint of bitterness was
in her voice.
"That's already something," the nurse said as she took out a band-aid.
Sakura took a little catnap on her desk. It was a nice break from kendo-
and iaido-practice. She also needed to clear out her mind before she went
to her scroll-reading.
For weeks on end, Sakura read the scrolls, looked up new kanji, wrote
notes, re-read the scrolls, and re-read the notes to check for accuracy.
If she could do it, she would make entire copies of the scrolls as well.
She did not know why, but she had some inkling that this information was
vital for her being.
She had to work fast; the extended due-date was in a month. If Sakura
increased the work-load a little bit more, she would have all the information
about hand-seals at her fingertips. She did not need to copy every word
just every important word.
There was a knock at the door. "Come in," Sakura said.
The door creaked open, with Umi peeking into the room.
"Sakura-oneechan? We need help with our math homework..."
'We?' Sakura thought. Although there were many kids in the house, Umi
was the only child who came to Sakura for help in homework.
Umi and two other girls stepped in. One was a short blonde with sparkling
blue eyes. The other had pitch-black hair in a long braid. Both looked
up to Sakura with hesitancy, and a little awe. Kids their age were not
allowed to see the tournament, but there were plenty of stories churning
in the class rumor-mill. A few, naturally, revolved around Umi's adopted
sister.
"These are my best friends, Hikari and Yami," Umi introduced.
Sakura gave them a gentle smile. "It's good to meet you, Hikari-chan,
Yami-chan." She felt a warm sadness as she looked at Umi's friends. With
a little change of dress colors, it would have been easy to believe that
they were female versions of Naruto and Sasuke.
"Math homework, huh?" Sakura asked. Math had been her favorite subject
in school before the Ninja Academy drilled her more into fighting rather
than academics. "Did you at least try the problems before?"
"Of course I did!" Umi said, a little insulted. She pointed at her friends.
"I told them, too, that you wouldn't help unless we went through the ENTIRE
assignment first."
"Sakura-oneechan, did you really sell your soul to get magical powers?!"
Hikari burst out.
Yami was silent, but her brown eyes were inquiring the same thing.
"Hikari-chan!" Umi scolded her friend.
Sakura turned to blue-haired sprite. "Umi-chan... did you say a few
things at school that were a little... EXAGGERATED about me?"
Umi blushed. "I only said that you're a human, and that you're really
cool with the sword. But the bullies in class are saying bad things about
you, and I hate it!"
"WE don't believe them!" Hikari burst out, in a highly unconvincing
manner. "Mama always says that we should never give in to rumors!!"
'I am not going to laugh,' Sakura thought. 'I will not baby them with
stories. I'll just explain to them a few things LIKE THAT I AM AN OKAY-FIGHTING
HUMAN!! and nudge them towards their homework.'
Sakura obtained a collection of ninja weapons from the Ninja Mansion,
through Scarlett's assistance. Of course, Scarlett got them checked for
poison and curses before she passed them to her student.
The set had no exploding items, to Sakura's disappointment. Yet when
it came to weapons, it was more than enough: shuriken, kunai, senbon (even
though Sakura had no idea how to throw them), and prickly maki-bishi were
all in.
Potamos and Sakura trained together for an hour a day deep in the forest.
Minoru came along to collect herbs, as well as to keep an eye out for them.
He had strict orders from Scarlett to watch over the pink-haired genin
whenever possible.
"C'mon, Sacchan!!" Potamos yelled out. She had two kunai drawn. "It's
time to practice. Practice makes perfect! Now throw those shuriken, STRAIGHT
at my head."
"I will NOT!" Sakura insisted. "We don't even have the goggles! I'll
throw at other parts of your body, but I am not going to jump some levels
and risk your eye being put out."
The water-demon puffed out her cheeks like a spoiled child.
Sakura began to spin her kunai, with her finger sticking through the
ringed end. "Well, if you're that bored I guess we could try flicking
away weapons while running. Right, Minoru-san?"
Minoru plucked an herb from the forest ground. "Don't kill each other,
children," the elf called out.
Sakura frowned, and then turned back to the water-demon. "Potamos, you
can move anywhere you want. You can even throw your own weapons, or grab
any that I drop on the ground. Let's just make sure to stay within in a
small area."
'That doesn't sound right,' Sakura noted. Her kunai stopped whirling,
and she grasped its hilt. 'Oh, well.'
Potamos jumped away, barely missing the kunai.
Sakura was in the air. "Dodge if you need to, but you should push it
away! Try again!" she ordered. She threw another. The water-demon, in turn,
threw a kunai toward it, and the two weapons bounced off each other.
Sakura ran up the tree, and disappeared.
Three of Sakura's shuriken came out of the foliage above.
Potamos concentrated. In one, mighty swing, she deflected all of them
with a kunai.
'Hey, she really is getting better,' Sakura thought from the top of
the trees. 'Maybe I should push the standards a little higher. Bunshin
no Jutsu!' Sakura's hands moved quickly, and three clones appeared. They
went down the tree quietly, not bringing any shakes to the leaves mostly
because they were not real.
Sakura was waiting for Potamos to get off-guard. That was when she felt
something.
A gentle breeze wafted above the kunoichi. She noticed a flowery perfume
in the wind. Not only that, but there seemed to be a slight hint of a melody
in the air.
The girl suddenly forgot that she was supposed to be concentrating on
Potamos. She was curious, and went higher into canopy.
She climbed until she grasped the highest branch that could support
her. She turned her head in one direction. Through an opening, a beautiful
landscape of the forest was visible, with the city of Minerva cradled in
the valley.
The wind grew slightly stronger. The humming grew louder. Sakura first
thought the sounds were out of tune, but they fused together into a choir
of voices. The kunoichi had never heard exotic chords like these in her
life. She was mesmerized by the beauty and strength of the song.
A whisp of flower petals brushed her cheeks.
The kunoichi jerked out of her trance. Was there someone else within
this forest, intending to hypnotize her? This situation could possibly
be an illusion. After all, Sakura used petals for some of her genjutsu
at home, just like Kakashi used leaves, and other ninja used feathers and
whatnot.
Sakura put her hands together for the canceling-technique. 'Kai!' Yet
the flowers were not repelled. In fact, they seemed to dance around her
body. The breeze seemed to beckon her, whisper to her.
This was too occult for Sakura's tastes. Even if every part of her soul
just wanted to sit there and enjoy the moment, this was something dangerous.
With great mental effort, she carefully slid down through the branches.
The wind seemed to get stronger. Sakura growled. "What do you want?"
The kunoichi struggled to get down. She met Potamos at the bottom.
"Sacchan!! What's the big idea of leaving me to find your clones, and
then not even attacking me?!" the purple-haired girl wailed.
"I'm sorry, Potamos," the kunoichi apologized. She then turned to Minoru.
He was not crouched down, picking herbs anymore. Neither was he in his
normal garb did he change clothing while she was gone?
Sakura stared. "Minoru-san, what is THAT?"
The elf was dressed in what looked like hunter's regalia. A quiver of
arrows and a bow were slung over his back. A green mantle draped his shoulders.
He looked HOT. Masculine, HOT.
"This is my battle-uniform, Sakura-san. I just transformed into it when
you failed to come down. I was about to go up to look for you but you
seemed to have handled yourself." He looked at Sakura questioningly. "But
more importantly: did you see anything unusual?" he inquired.
Sakura was hesitant to give an outrageous explanation plus, she could
not help but look at the elf. 'Why doesn't he wear this more often?'
She had no idea that Minoru had a separate battle-uniform. It also did
not fit his nature he did not strike her as the fighting type.
Sakura turned away quickly, realizing she was treating Minoru like eye-candy.
'Which he is!' "I felt a breeze..." she mumbled. "And flower petals.
It was weird, as if..."
Sakura's green eyes widened. Yousuke was a wind-demon. And Momoko was
a love-angel.
"I'll be right back," Sakura quickly said, before running back up the
tree.
A long silence ensued on the ground.
"Alright, I've concluded by a democratic vote of 1-0, that Sacchan lost
her marbles," Potamos stated. "We should go after her."
"For once, I agree with you," Minoru said. The elf willed a rope of
vines to emerge out of his left sleeve. He pulled himself up onto a thick
branch, and started to jump and climb. Meanwhile, the water-demon planted
her feet on a nearby tree and ran up.
Sakura sat in a branch with her eyes closed. She put her hands together
in a hand-seal, praying that the power would reach her.
Something disturbed her meditation.
"Sakura-san, the first time was dangerous," Minoru said in a low voice
behind her. "But the second time without a guide is suicidal. At least
ask for some help in case you fall."
Her face burned. How dare he insult her tree-climbing skills? "Where's
Potamos?" she asked without facing Minoru. "You didn't leave her "
"BOO!!" Potamos exclaimed right in Sakura's face. The pink-haired
genin shrieked. The water-demon giggled as Sakura put her hand over her
pounding heart.
"Don't DO that!!" Sakura yelled. "If you sneak up on me, I want WARNING!"
Minoru snorted. "That would take away the whole point, Sakura-san."
Sakura was about to retort something, when she felt a gentle breeze
lift up a few strands of her pink hair. It was the same wind as before,
with the same pink petals.
Minoru's eyes turned hard. Potamos slowly backed away from Sakura, going
to a different branch.
Sakura concentrated. If she fell, she trusted that Minoru would catch
her. She fold her hands into an In, molding chakra.
'Do what you love and learn, so that you may understand it more.'
Sakura's eyes shot open. Was that a complete sentence from the wind?
"Saccha" Minoru clamped a hand over Potamos' mouth. He gave her a do-not-interrupt-this-ceremony-look,
and turned back to Sakura.
Sakura calmly thought about it. What she loved and learned, yet did
not understand. It sounded like some sort of discipline. 'Math... physics...
kendo and iaido...'
It clicked in her mind. That was it. The Eureka moment.
Sakura made a sequence of three hand-seals. It looked simple enough,
and she did it slowly. Yet what made it unusual was that it was never done
before not in this dimension, nor in the one she left four months ago.
The kunoichi's palms were sweating. If her calculations were wrong,
something terrible could happen, even death. Yet the molding of the chakra
felt right and the equation seemed to work in her mind.
Sakura's fingers curled into the final In.
'This feeling...' the girl thought. 'It's so strong...'
Sakura pulled Tennyo out. She released the power built up in her body
and the blade started to glow.
The aura of the weapon swirled off an equal amount of blue and green.
The kunoichi had difficulty believing it. She NEVER saw so much green aura
come out of Tennyo before. "Wow..." she breathed. "I don't even feel like
killing someone."
"SACCHAN!!!" Potamos exclaimed as she pulled down Minoru's hand. It
took all of his might for the elf not to yell out in pain; the water-demon's
fingers had suddenly turned ice-cold.
The wind stopped.
Now he could yell. Minoru gave a powerful elbow-hit on the side of Potamos'
head. "Demon, you have no feeling for ceremony!!" the elf exclaimed. "No
feeling at all! Sakura-san didn't even get the other half!"
"OWIE!! And what are you talking about? She already got something going!
Wham, bam, thank you ma'am, as they say." Minoru elbowed her again, this
time much harder.
Tennyo stopped glowing. Minoru was sure that Sakura's temper was going
to flare up; that always was a side-effect of an Awakening.
Instead, Sakura put away her sword. Then her face lifted to reveal a
smiling face. "It's okay, Minoru-san. I'll get the other half soon."
The elf was flabbergasted. Sakura had perfect control of her aura, even
after getting THAT treatment from nature.
"Sacchan! That was so awesome!" Potamos hugged Sakura. "I had no idea
you were a wind-demon!"
"Potamos, you're squeezing too hard," Sakura croaked out.
"Oh, sorry!" Potamos loosened herself.
She then froze. She sensed another power in Sakura's body. It was as
powerful like the demon energy she felt from Tennyo but it was of a completely
different. It was sapping Potamos of her demonic strength. 'It's as if...
OH GODS!!'
Potamos pushed away Sakura, as if she were a rotting corpse. "Sacchan
you have but I just saw a minute ago "
"Be quiet," Minoru ordered harshly.
Potamos jumped, a little frightened. She hugged the trunk of the tree.
She glanced nervously between Sakura and Minoru.
"Sa...Sacchan..." Potamos sputtered. "I... I don't believe it."
"Potamos, BE QUIET," Minoru thundered.
Sakura covered her face in her hands. She wanted to cry. 'I guess I
put my hopes up too high.'
Notes:
"maki-bishi" - caltrop. A spiky, metal ball, which gives you the same
pain as a sea-urchin. They can hurt an enemy, and help for getaways. (Kakashi
used these in his first battle with Zabuza.)
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please tell me! If
I suck, by all means tell me. In an intelligent manner.
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