Zaman

Chapter 18

Kakashi gave Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto two days of rest following the end of the second round, deciding to throw them into preparation for the final round after they fully replenished their chakra.

For the first time since Sakura arrived in the past, she allowed herself a moment of respite. She held onto the days of rest greedily, sleeping in nearly until noon and taking time to fully nourish her growing body. She felt her chakra reserves replenish, only then realizing that they had not been full since she arrived. She had pushed herself so hard every day, throwing herself into training regimens that far exceeded her body's skill level, and insisting that she perform constantly at her peak. She had been running herself dry and she had barely even noticed.

When she took time to glance at herself in the mirror, she saw how the child-like innocence she had noticed on her first day in the past had begun to fade away. She had been in this body barely a month, but the muscles of her upper-arms were already more defined, her hands harder. Of course Kakashi had caught onto her situation. She held herself with the confidence of a jonin, her back straight and shoulders square. As her eyes met her own in the mirror, she saw the eyes of someone who had held a body as its heart stopped, either by her hands, or in a failed attempt at healing. There was not a trace of childhood left in them.

If there was one thing that Konoha excelled at, it was choking the child out of their shinobi. From Kakashi to Itachi, Konoha constantly churned out child-assassins, their ledgers dripping with blood before their thirteenth birthday. Even in peacetime, shinobi barely had time to be children, their years at the Academy haunted by the promise of violence and murder as soon as they graduated. And Sakura knew well that there was no escaping the horrors of the shinobi world. She did not take her role as a shinobi seriously while she was in the Academy, and the apathy came back to bite her tenfold as soon as she was forced to face the realities of life as a kunoichi.

Itachi's fall, emerging suspicions notwithstanding, was ultimately unsurprising. How could someone, thrust in the world of assassins and politics and blood while still a child, hold onto any modicum of sanity? During the Fourth Ninja War, Sakura often felt herself slipping, her mind giving into despair, and she was sixteen then. Regardless, her days of rest were coming to a close, and she would have to begin focusing both on her own training and her plan for the future in earnest shortly.

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Kakashi gathered team seven at their typical training ground, arriving only fifteen minutes late. He leaned his weight heavily on a training pole, fiddling with a kunai as he waited for the genin to get settled.

"Well, congratulations to the three of you for advancing to the finals," he said finally, his visible eye crinkling in a smile. "I have to say I'm surprised."

Sasuke frowned, offended that Kakashi expected any less of him and his team.

"Since you are all progressing to the finals, we need to start a strict training regimen now. Usually, I would assign each of you someone to work under, but since the entire team is progressing and you are all on a similar level, the majority of the training will be done in a group."

"So it's only you training us, Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto interrupted, a whine bleeding into his voice.

"I'm hurt by your tone, Naruto, but no. I'm bringing in one other shinobi to give me a hand with you unruly bunch."

"Who?!" Naruto's eyes lit up. "The Hokage? The best ninja ever? Hashirama Senju?"

Kakashi paused for a minute and Sakura imagined his lips quirking upwards in a smile. "Hashirama Senju? He's long dead, Naruto."