Boulders

Eclogite

"Shizune," Tsunade said slowly, quietly. The young woman looked up from where she was tidying up some of the mess around the doorway.

"Yes, Lady Tsunade?"

Tsunade flipped over the first page and found a little note in a familiar crabbed handwriting. She ran her eyes over it and knew exactly what she wanted.

"Make me an appointment with the heads of clans Nara, Akimichi, and Yamanaka. They have some information I want."

She didn't care much for the girl; as she had thought earlier, Bei Fong was probably dead, or nearly there. At best, she was an inhuman experiment by now, and with all her medical prowess, Tsunade wasn't sure she could change her back.

No. It was her teammate she was concerned with. Orochimaru was too powerful to leave alone, especially now that he'd offed their teacher. If the girl had been hiding any other information, Yamanaka should have gleaned it from her during the mind walk.

Orochimaru would die.

And after him, it would be Danzo's head on the chopping block.

She sat back, closing the file without reading on. "As soon as possible, Shizune."

The girl bowed slightly and left, off to set both her appointment and likely to gather up another stack of paperwork.

Tsunade tossed the file into a drawer and shut it away, never even looking past the second page, never seeing Kakashi Hatake's words on her.

Never even noticing a very redacted mission report from a four man squad on an ANBU massacre.

If she had, she might have wondered who connected the massacre to Toph. How on earth could a blind civilian child kill elite ANBU in so many numbers?

Who would have the authority to actually redact her information? She was the Hokage, for Kami's sake.

But the file lay in the drawer, nothing read beyond the first page and Shikaku's tiny note on the back.

▪▪▪

When Sakura awoke, it was to the quiet rattle of her fan and the calming white of her ceiling. She sat bolt upright, shoving aside her blanket as the memories of that afternoon washed over her.

The old man had been teaching her to shunshin, and she had passed out on the training field. Her legs ached and her chakra was depressingly low, so that had obviously not ended very well.

She rose to her feet, wobbling slightly as she left her room and headed downstairs.

The man was seated at the table, a pink china teacup in his hands, cane slung over his arm. Her mother sat opposite, her own drink sitting on the table. She had a small, nervous smile on her face, and it became more real the second she spotted her daughter.

Sakura stopped on the stairs, several steps from the bottom. She looked the man over, from his silvery hair to his steely grey eyes and his scar. There was this intimidating aura about him; even though he was so old and had been so obviously hurt once.

"Hi," Sakura managed.

He nodded, taking another sip.

She hesitated a moment before descending the rest of the stairs and coming around the table to hover behind her mother. She tucked a hank of hair behind her ear and ducked down further behind her collar.

He was quiet for a long moment, watching her. She fidgeted nervously until he finished off his tea and set the empty cup back down onto the saucer.

"My name is Hotakata Takeda." He shot her an evaluating stare. "A shinobi of the village for over five decades."

"Oh," Sakura took a step to the side and pulled out a chair. She slipped down onto it, tucking her chin into her chest and hunching her shoulders.