Cherry Blossoms and Chakra Strings: Should Have Read the Fine Print

It was good to be back in Konoha.

Even though she was tired from traveling, Sakura’s stride was full of cheer as she walked through the familiar streets of her neighborhood, and her wallet was fuller than ever before. Full of her hard-earned funds from her very first actual mission. She was clutching a box of mochi in her hands, the expensive variety pack that was made fresh just a few hours ago. After all, she could afford it, and she knew just how much Hanami loved any kind of sweet.

Humming to herself, Sakura walked up the steps to her home and walked inside, calling out for anyone present to hear as she shrugged her shoes off by the door, “I’m home!”

There was the bustle of movement from above her head, and Sakura smiled as she heard the tiny pitter-patter of childish footsteps approach her from the stairs. Hanami practically skidded around the corner, her eyes wide with excitement as a wide, happy smile slid across her face at the sight of Sakura.

“Nee-chan!” She ran towards Sakura like a rushing bull, and Sakura didn’t even flinch as she accepted the leaping hug with ease, wrapping one arm around her little sister and twirling her around while the other kept her present hidden just behind her back, “I missed you so much!”

Sakura laughed, “I was only gone for a week, Hanami.”

“That’s too long! You’re not allowed to leave again!” Hanami said petulant. Sakura patted her head, sighing lightly.

“I can’t do that, I need to go on missions if I want to keep being a ninja.” She said, before a sly smile slid across her face, “Tell you what. If you let me keep going on missions, I’ll give you a present.”

Hanami tilted her head, green eyes sparkling with curiosity, “What present? Is it a sword?”

Sakura gave her sister a weird look, “What? Why do you want a sword?”

“So I can beat up all the bad guys who try to mess with me when I become caravan master!” The eight-year-old declared, “When I’m the boss, I’m gonna have a big sword so people leave us alone! Nobody will steal from my caravan!”

“Well you have quite a ways to go if you want to become caravan master, honey.” Kizashi rounded the corner, smiling at both of his daughters, “You still need to learn the ledger if you want to be in charge, otherwise you’ll lose all our money!”

Hanami shook her head, dropping back down to the floor as Sakura let go of her, “No, that’s what you guys are here for! I just need to know how to tell people what to do and I’m really good at that.”

Kizashi bellowed a laugh, “Ha! Ain’t that the truth!”

Sakura shook her head, amused by her sister’s antics, “Well I’m afraid I didn’t bring you a sword, but I might have gotten you the next best thing.” Sakura pulled the box of mochi out from behind her back, showing it off to the two of them. Kizashi smiled eagerly as he saw the sweet treat, while Hanami had a much more visceral reaction.

“MOCHI!” Hanami’s eyes practically sparkled as she saw the box and she ran forward, trying to snatch it out of her hands. Sakura held a hand out, holding her sister back with a single arm as she giggled at her reaction. She had expected that Hanami would be excited but this took the cake. It must have been a while since she had something sweet.

“It’s not just for you, Hanami, it’s for everyone. You can’t just eat it all by yourself!”

Hanami wasn’t listening, still trying to get at the sweets with a determined and almost frenzied expression on her face. Sakura sighed fondly, before looking to her fad who was watching the sight with a small smile on his face, “Where’s Kaa-chan?” She asked, keeping her hungry sister at arms reach.

Taking pity on his daughter, Kizashi leaned down and grabbed Hanami from the floor, putting her on his shoulders. The eight-year-old kicked her legs, still staring at the mochi as he got her comfortable above him, “She’s in the kitchen with our guest. We should join them so you can tell us all about your mission!”

‘Guest?’ Sakura thought in confusion as she followed her dad and sister into the kitchen. Ignoring the little one’s constant chant of mochi, she wondered who it could be. And as she entered the room, she paused at who she saw sitting at the table beside her mother, “Ino? What are you doing here?”

The blonde was sitting in her usual seat, clutching a cup of steaming tea in her hands as she stared at Sakura with a similar amount of surprise. Had she not heard her come in? Beside her, Sakura’s mom had a small smirk on her face as she looked at her daughter, “Speak of the devil and she shall appear. Welcome home, honey.”

As Sakura was left befuddled by her odd words, Ino’s face bloomed bright red and she gave the matriarch of the house a fierce look, “Shh!” She hissed, seemingly flustered by something.

Sakura put the box of mochi on the counter, far enough out of reach that Hanami, who her dad had put down for the moment, couldn’t snatch it off of the counter and abscond with it, “Wait, were you guys talking about me while I was gone?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Sakura. It wasn’t anything important.” Ino scoffed, still slightly red in the face as she went to take a sip of her tea, “I was just visiting your parents and you happened to come up. I was wondering when you’d finally be back from that boring mission you went on.”

Sakura smirked at the jab, “Aww! So you missed me so much you came to my house to see if I was back yet? I didn’t know you cared so much, Ino. Do you want a hug too?”

“Hrk!” Ino choked on her tea, all of her practiced poise disappearing in an instant as she was caught off guard by Sakura’s comment. The kitchen was filled with laughter as the Yamanaka struggled to recover with hacking coughs. Sakura giggled as well, enjoying the sight of her friend so flustered as she unboxed the treats, “Well, since you’re here you may as well enjoy some mochi too.”

“MOCHI!”

As Ino got her breath back, her eyes caught the box and they went wide. She cleared her throat, rubbing her neck as she spoke, her voice slightly scratchy from her mistake, “That’s really high quality stuff, Sakura. I didn’t know C-Ranks paid enough to splurge like that.”

Sakura shrugged as her dad reached into the cabinet, pulling out a set of small plates for her to put the treats on, “They usually don’t but we got a little extra on top after we dealt with a bandit camp a few miles off the main road. There were a lot of them and their leader was freaking loaded! We had to split it up between us and still made half on top of what we were originally getting paid.”

As Ino stared at her jealousy, Kizashi made a noise of recognition at her description of the bandits, “I know of that group. They’ve been giving a few of our people quite a bit of trouble. You took care of them all?”

Sakura nodded, “Yep. we ran into the camp on the way to Rice and sensei said we should deal with them so we took care of them and split the loot.”

Loading up the plates with even amounts, Sakura and Kizashi brought them to the table, setting them in front of the seats as Mebuk gave her daughter a worried look, “Did you get hurt? Bandits may not be ninja but they can be sneaky and they fight dirty. You need to be careful with them.”

“Don’t worry, they didn’t even have a chance to fight back.” Sakura said as she took her seat beside Ino, “I used Teashi to coat the whole camp in a paralytic and they fell almost instantly. We went around and dealt with the ones that were left alive afterwards. They won’t hurt anyone ever again.”

Mebuki looked slightly conflicted to hear her daughter talk of killing so casually, but Kizashi just nodded firmly as he set some more cups on the table, filling them with tea, “Good riddance. We’ve lost some good people to low-lifes like those. I’m glad to see our ninja are doing something about it. Good job sweetie.”

Sakura smiled happily as the man ruffled her hair proudly, and there was a short lull in conversation as they all indulged in the treats sat before them. Hanami finished hers almost instantly, scarfing them down like she was starving, but luckily it seemed that mostly satisfied her hunger as she didn’t immediately demand more, staying mostly silent as she waited for everyone else to finish eating as well.

Wiping her mouth free of powder, Ino looked at Sakura with a raised brow, “Is that all that happened on the mission? No offence, but you look like you tried to take Choji’s last bag of BBQ potato chips.”

Sakura brought a hand up to her cheek, running two fingers along the bruise covering her jaw, “Oh, that wasn’t during the mission. That was when we were coming back.”

“What happened?” Ino asked.

“Well, it was a little bit after we left that village in Rice. We were heading back to Konoha, just Hikari, Tsu, and I because Iwabi had to stay back in the village for a little bit. We weren’t worried because we figured that he’d meet us along the way, he’s a lot faster than any of us so it wouldn’t take him long t cover the distance. But then she showed up…”

Sakura explained what happened next, easily recalling the events that were still fresh on her mind even days later. She spoke of the Kumo nin and how she had practically toyed with them the entire time, as well as the weird chakra and techniques she possessed. Ino’s face was at first disbelieving, but as her story went on, her face shifted from skeptical to concerned as she realized that Sakura wasn’t just embellishing.

“Honestly, if sensei didn’t show up when he did, I’m pretty sure I’d have a lot more than just a couple bruises.” Sakura scratched her jaw, “Tsu got the worst of it. Even a day later, she was still having trouble seeing clearly.”

“That’s horrible!” Mebuki cried, holding a hand to her mouth, “Is she alright?” The rest of the table looked similarly distressed after hearing her tale, none of them able to believe that she had come across such a formidable opponent.

Sakura laughed lightly, waving off her concern, “Yeah, she’s fine. Hikari healed her up on the way back and she’s way too resilient to let a little blindness get to her. Her vision came back eventually, but her griping about not being able to see for a few days made the trip back pretty fun. We didn’t run into any more trouble after that.”

“Still, what kind of ninja does that!?” Ino was outraged, her blue eyes blazing with anger, “Attacking people out of the blue like that is just crazy!”

She seemed more heated about it than Sakura was, but Sakura could sort of understand. She’d had a few days to come to terms with what had happened, but Ino was only just now hearing about it. It was only understandable that she’d be angry after hearing that her friend could have died on a simple C-Rank.

Holding up a hand, Sakura gave her friend a reassuring smile, “It wasn’t all bad. Apart from that, the entire mission went smoothly. I got all of that loot from the bandit camp, plus this.”

She held up the scroll with the blue ribbon up for everyone to see, drawing attention to it and away from her tale. Ino stared at it in confusion, not understanding what she was supposed to be looking at. “What is it?”

Sakura smirked, “It’s a summoning contract. Though I’m not sure what animal it’s bound to.”

Ino’s eyes bulged like balloons and her hands slammed down on the table hard enough to rattle the china, “WHAT!? How the hell did those bandits have something like that!?

“Language, young lady!” Mebuki rebuked, and Ino’s anger immediately lost its heat at the woman’s glare. She shrunk back, averting her eyes, “Sorry. But seriously, how did they get something like that? You can’t even buy one for the price of a small village. Stealing one would bring so much heat on you that you wouldn’t be able to hide anywhere!”

Sakura shrugged, “No clue. But there isn’t a name on the contract so my team thinks it’s either brand new, or nobody had it before. Either way, I’m the one who found it so I get to keep it. I was actually gonna head to the training ground after I finished my report and sign it there.”

One thing that Sakura wasn’t very happy to find out about was the amount of paperwork you had to do. From the actual mission report to the incident report she had to file thanks to the bandit camp, as well as the one involving the Kumo nin (which had to be extremely extensive and detailed by nature), she was going to be at her desk for a couple hours at least just writing things down.

Ino perked up slightly at her words, “You’re gonna sign it? Can I watch?”

“I don’t see why not.” Sakura said, clipping the scroll back to her hip, “I was planning on doing it alone but I would appreciate the company.”

“Signing a contact alone probably isn't a good idea. What if a giant centipede or something came crawling out of that thing?”

Sakura gasped in exaggerated excitement, “Oh I hope it’s a centipede. Do you know how powerful their poisons usually are? A giant one could probably kill a full grown human with a drop! Not to mention their exoskeletons are some of the strongest in the insect kingdom. I bet one the size of a dog could probably shrug off a kunai like it wasn’t even there!”

“I’m not so sure about this anymore.” Ino groaned and Sakura giggled.

“Just kidding, Ino. It’s probably something normal like a badger or a fox or something.” She stood, moving to get her sister more mochi since she had been waiting so patiently and looked about ready to pop, “Really, what are the chances that I get a poisonous insect?”

“With my luck, it's almost a guarantee.” Ino grumbled.

~~~

Sakura stared at the scroll she had unfurled on the ground, reading over it intently. Ino was standing several feet away, keeping her distance under the prospect of not wanting to be touched by whatever freaky thing was going to come crawling out of that scroll. Sakura didn't mind, her presence was appreciated either way.

From what she was seeing, the scroll seemed to be a standard blood-activated summoning scroll, with the actual activation part being keyed into the line down below where she was supposed to write her name. Once again, there wasn’t any indication on what contract this was exactly, so this was going to be luck of the draw.

“Here we go…” Sakura said aloud as she reached into her tool pouch and pulled out one of her non-poisoned blades. She slid it along the pad of her index finger just deep enough to get a good and consistent stream of blood, before placing her finger on the line.

“I guess I should do my full name? First and last name at least.” She muttered, signing the scroll with a flourish like she was writing with a pen. Putting her finger in her mouth to suck off the remaining blood she glanced down at the instructions on the scroll, reading the sequence of seals that she had to perform. She frowned lightly at what she saw, “Huh…”

“Something wrong, Sakura?” Ino asked, not stepping an inch closer as she watched her friend squint at the scroll.

Sakura shook her head, “No, nothing’s wrong. The sequence is just a bit easier than I thought it would be. It’s like the length of a C-rank jutsu. I thought it would be harder.”

The instructions said she needed to perform the sequence and then channel chakra directly into the seal to activate the summoning technique. Seemed simple enough. Sakura placed the scroll on the ground and began to run through the sequence at a painstaking pace, making sure that she didn’t mess up a single hand sign.

“Uh, maybe you should back up a bit.” Ino called, “There’s no telling how big that animal is gonna be. I know that some of those summons can be the size of houses and I don’t want to have to scrape you off the grass.”

“Good point.” Sakura admitted, stepping back several feet but still keeping the instructions in view. She ran through the seals again, coming to a stop on the Snake seal. She glanced at Ino who looked at her expectantly, “Think of something awesome, alright? I want a cool summon.”

She held out a hand, extending a chakra string towards the scroll to use as a bridge for her chakra. The moment the string touched the paper, the entire array glowed brightly, an odd sensation overcoming Sakura in an instant and making her gasp. Her entire body tingled, an intense feeling of weightlessness filling her limbs, as if she had just jumped from the top of the Hokage Monument but had yet to fall to the hard earth below. And it was only growing stronger by the moment.

Wondering what was going on, Sakura glanced down at the scroll one last time, and her eyes instantly locked onto a crucial detail that she had missed in the inner ring of the matrix, packed tightly among the other seals and glowing brighter than all the rest. Her mind lagged for a moment, before recognizing what it was. It was an inverted summoning seal.

That was why there wasn’t a location specified in the linking matrix. It was somewhere else! She wasn’t bringing something here, she was being sent somewhere!

“Crap!” Sakura said, trying to cut off the flow of chakra, but it was too late. The seal had already activated and she had supplied just enough chakra for it to follow through on its purpose. With one final bright pulse of blue chakra, the seal did its work and Sakura disappeared, leaving behind a thick cloud of smoke and nothing else.

A few feet away, Ino coughed loudly, waving her hand in front of her face as she stepped away from the giant plume of smoke that had engulfed her friend, “Jeez, Sakura! How much chakra did you put in that thing?” She called, squinting her eyes as she tried to look through the thick cloud of chakra smoke. Guess her hopes of the animal being something small and cute like a lemur or an otter hadn’t worked at all. Nothing that small would make this much smoke.

“So what did you get?” Ino called into the clearing smoke. She couldn’t see the shadow of anything big, nor could she hear the voices of a summon or even Sakura responding to her. Her brow furrowed, “Sakura?” She called again, walking closer. Again no response. She was beginning to get worried, “Sakura? What’s going on? I can’t see shit through this smoke.”

Again nothing. Ino furrowed her brow, squinting into the smoke as it slowly began to disappear. And once it cleared fully enough for her to actually see the grass underneath her feet, Ino froze at what she saw. Or more accurately, didn’t see.

Sakura was nowhere to be found and neither was the scroll. Ino had gone from watching her best friend prepare to summon some monstrosity or other, to standing in an empty field. It didn’t take a genius to make the connection.

Ino stared blankly at the place that Sakura had once been standing. Her best friend was gone, disappeared to who knows where, and yet only a single thought filled her mind.

“Her mom’s gonna kill me.”