Cherry Blossoms and Chakra Strings: Reforged

Teashi stared at the ceiling with six glass eyes that saw everything and nothing, her robe-clad form slumped against the far wall of Tazuna’s guest room like a discarded marionette. Like this, one would struggle to believe what she was truly capable of. Or at least, what she should have been.

Sakura sat cross-legged on the floor, the space between her and her creation littered with scrolls, ink-stained rags, and a growing pile of discarded notes. She wasn't looking at the puppet, focused instead on her left hand which lay palm-up in her lap like.

The pinkette took a slow, measured breath, forcing the frantic buzzing in her mind to settle into a cold, clinical stillness, before flipping a mental switch.

The seals painted directly onto the skin of her forearm flared to life. The blue light of her chakra bled through the white bandages, tracing the jagged, ink-black lines of the seals she had used to bypass her ruined nerves. Immediately, the fingers of her left hand snapped inward with a grotesque sound that was accompanied by a shooting pain that Sakura managed to ignore.

The sensation was violent and entirely external. It felt like her muscles were being seized by the invisible teeth of a gear. Her fingers curled into a fist but there was no feedback – no sense of the skin pressing against skin, only the dull, phantom throb of the injury deep in the bone.

She extended five glowing chakra strings from those forced fingertips, latching them onto the anchor points on Teashi’s frame.

The puppet’s arm rose, but it was a stuttering, ugly thing. It snapped upward with a sharp, jerky motion, the wooden joints clicking like dry bone hitting stone. The limb overshot the mark by inches, listing slightly on the reversible shoulder joint before vibrating into a halt behind the puppet's head.

Sakura sighed, a sound of pure, exhausted frustration, and let the strings disperse. The wooden arm fell back to the floor with a hollow thud. She reached for the small notepad sitting beside her feet and scribbled with her right hand, her brow furrowed in concentration.

Test 52: Seal-Driven Input.

Lag: Roughly 1.04 seconds.

Fine motor control… Negligible.

"Inexcusable," she muttered to herself, the pencil lead snapping under the pressure of her grip. "An one-point-oh-four-second delay between the mental command and the physical execution. In a high-speed exchange with any ninja worth their salt, I’d be dead three times over before the first joint even locked into place."

No longer ravaged by the hot, blinding rage that had consumed her in the clearing, Sakura’s mind began to dissect the problem with the detachment of a surgeon. It was a failure of architecture at the end of the day. She was trying to operate through a secondary medium to control a primary medium to manipulate a tertiary medium. Every step of that chain added a layer of latency, and it was easily felt in the dissonance between what she used to be capable of and what she was limited to now.

“I'm fighting my own body as much as I'm fighting the lag. If I want to make this work, I need more time to learn how to 'think' ahead of the delay. That, or I just need to learn to pilot Teashi with just my right hand.”

Neither was a viable option. Time was a luxury Gato’s mercenaries weren't going to grant them, and Teashi was too complex, too heavy, to be played like a one-handed flute. The secondary arms, the hidden launchers, the poison dispensers – they all required the intricate, ten-finger dance that had been her pride.

The thoughts stirred something oily and dark in her chest, but she forced it down as she turned back to her notes. She studied the 1.06-second delay recorded on the page with a clinical eye. She couldn't change the damage to her nerves, nor the speed of the chakra-to-ink interface. Those were fixed variables.

Instead, she needed to change the input method entirely.

A soft, rhythmic clicking sounded from the ceiling rafters. Sakura didn't look up as a shadow detached itself from the darkness and rappelled down. Kii descended on a thread of violet silk, landing squarely on the notepad, his multiple eyes reflecting the flickering candlelight.

“You are stewing, summoner,” the spider chittered, his mandibles twitching oddly. “What darkens your thoughts and sours your mood?”

“Nothing you can help with, Kii.” Sakura said softly. “I'm trying to work around a problem that I never thought would actually be a problem.”

“Which is?”

“Simply put?” Sakura sighed, turning a page. “Teashi is too complicated. I was proud of what I accomplished before but now that I only have one hand, I'm really starting to see it. I can't manage the strings anymore or perform all the little tricks I designed into her. It's impossible to control her like I used to.”

Kii tilted his chitinous head, observing the slumped puppet across from them. “You humans are strange. You possess many limbs, yet you obsess over the movement of a single digit. You speak of micromanaging as if it is a virtue.”

Sakura frowned. “In puppetry, it is a virtue. Being able to control every facet of your puppet is the difference between a master and a hack.”

“Then perhaps your 'mastery' is a tether,” the spider rasped, “Consider the Broodmother. Does she tell the hatchling which leg to lift when the prey hits the silk? Does she command the drone to flex its fangs to pierce the shell? No. That would be a waste of her will.”

Kii skittered closer to the edge of the notepad, looking down at the complex Fuinjutsu diagrams Sakura had been sketching with a gaze that suggested he understood more than he let on.

“A colony does not function because the Mother is the brain for every body,” Kii continued, tapping the outer edges of the seal matrix Sakura had drawn up. “The colony functions because she provides the intent. She sets the task, and the drones possess the instinct to execute it. They are dedicated tools, one for the hunt, one for the web, one for the nursery.”

Sakura sat very still. The clinical part of her brain, the part that had memorized every seal in Chiyo’s scrolls and every possible toxic combination in her kit, began to spin.

“You are working through a medium,” Kii finished. “Why must that medium be a mirror of your own hand when the art you've managed to create is capable of so much more.”

The realization hit Sakura like a physical blow. “Automation,” she whispered, her emerald eyes suddenly blazing with a new, dangerous light. “I don't need to control everything, I just need to set the stage so she can do the rest on her own.”

She looked at Teashi’s open chest cavity. In Suna, this was considered the "lazy" way – building mechanisms that functioned independently of the strings – but for Sakura, it was the only way forward. She couldn't reach her usual speed under her own power, so she'd have to enable Teashi to do what she couldn't.

A set of executable commands that she could activate with a single pulse of chakra. It would be hard, probably the hardest thing she had ever done, but it was possible. She knew it was.

The frustration didn't vanish, but it was finally channeled. She flipped to a fresh page in her notepad, her right hand moving with a feverish intensity as she began to draw the beginnings of a seal. The first of many.

“I won't be able to do everything that I could before; there's just too many variables to account for and not nearly enough time to do so.” she murmured, a slow, predatory grin spreading across her face as she looked at her mechanical-feeling fist. “But we know where they're attacking. That's a huge advantage.”

She looked at the spider, who seemed satisfied with the shift in her aura. "I'm going to need help, Kii. I know the Broodmother knows sealing techniques, but do you? I could really use the help.”

“I possess a limited knowledge of sealing,” Kii chattered, climbing up her sleeve. “Enough to check your work, as your kind would say, but not much else.”

“That's fine. More than fine, even,” Sakura stood up, her movements decisive and full of purpose. She had a graveyard to build, and not a lot of time to do it.

“Let's go find Hikari,” Sakura said, sealing her kit away as well as her puppet. “I'm going to need a set of hands that are steadier than mine to get this done. Naruto too. His clones will come in handy.”

~~~

The next morning found Sakura in the small shed behind the house, a place which Tazuna used to keep extra lumber out of the elements. The air was thick with the scent of pine shavings and the sharp, metallic tang of the poisons she was distilling.

”You've been busy,” a voice said from the doorway.

Sakura didn't look up from the vial she was carefully capping. “We don't have much time, sensei.”

The jonin leaned against the doorframe, taking in the chaos of the shed with a cool gaze. There were scrolls everywhere, and Teashi was hanging from a crossbeam, her chest cavity open and glowing with half-active seal matrices that he couldn't make heads or tails of.

“Have you been sleeping?” He asked, noting the deep bags under her eyes. Sakura paused for a moment before turning back to her work.

“The bare minimum. Four hours a night and thirty minutes bursts throughout the day,” Sakura studied a vial with a critical eye, “I know better than to work on something this delicate while sleep deprived.”

Iwabi frowned around his cigarette. “I see. Well I talked with Kakashi. Tazuna isn't very happy with the mess you've made of his bridge. His workers are tripping over wires trying to get their lumber where it needs to go.”

“They'll thank me when the bridge is actually finished instead of blown to smithereens.”

”I spoke with Kakashi,” Iwabi changed he subject. “He says your progress with the seals is interesting and he knows more than me. Something about being unorthodox.”

”Unorthodox is all I have left,"” Sakura said, finally setting the vial down. She turned to face him, her face pale but her eyes burning with a green fire. "I can't fight the way I used to or even the way Chiyo-sensei taught me."

”So you're working on something else,” Iwabi observed.

“I'm evening the playing field," Sakura said. “If Kenji comes for us, then he's gonna be in for a nasty surprise.”

Iwabi walked over, looking at her bandaged wrist. “Hikari told me the nerves won't settle for a long time. You know I can't officially clear you for a front-line combat role if you can't weave signs.”

Sakura stood up, the movement sharp. She held up her right hand in the tiger seal. Chakra flared and up above, Teashi's head clacked to the ride, alighting right on her sensei as the puppet's jaw clicked open. Iwabi tensed, but nothing happened, and he turned to his student who was staring at him smugly.

“I think I'll manage.” She said cheekily, “Weaving hand signs has never really been my strong suit anyway.”

Iwabi stared at her for a long minute, before a small, proud smile came to his face. “No, I guess you don't.”

Iwabi reached into his vest. “Here,” he said, tossing her a small , weighted pouch. Sakura caught it with her right hand, staring at it with interest. "It’s high-grade ninja wire. Thinner than what you've been using, twice as strong, and also chakra conductive. It's not cheap, but it's been taking up space in my emergency kit so don't worry about paying me back."

Sakura stared at the wire, emotions boiling in her chest. This was basically her sensei's way of saying he believed in her and she could see that. She gave him a heartfelt look, “Thank you.”

”Just be careful, Sakura,” Iwabi warned. “I have faith in you, but the enemies we're going up against are just like me and Kakashi. They're hardened killers, and they'll come after you without a single ounce of pity regarding your injury. You can't afford to lag behind the others.”

“I won't be a liability.” Sakura said firmly. Iwabi's face shifted.

“That's not what I–” he sighed. “Just be careful, alright? And stay with the rest of the team. There's no guarantee that I'll be able to keep an eye on you during this fight.”

“Trust me, sensei.” Sakura clenched her fist, “You won't have to worry about me.”

~~~

The day of the attack came with silence and a fog that was more eerie than any scream.

Sakura stood at the edge of the bridge, her team on one side, Team 7 on the other. Tazuna was in the center, working on the most recent section of the bridge. There was a tension in the air, and a silence that was so thick even a kunai would struggle to get through it.

And then came the mist.

It rolled across the ocean in waves, a sweeping curtain of white that obscured what little of the horizon they could see. The workers around the bridge paid it no heed, but every single ninja present tensed at the tingle of chakra laden in every drop.

"Byakugan!" Hikari’s voice rang out, crisp and authoritative. The veins around their eyes surged, and immediately locked onto something the rest of them couldn't see. "Two signatures ahead. Moving fast. They're splitting.”

"Formation B!" Iwabi barked.

Tsu stepped forward, her sword leveled, and Tadao growled, his fur standing on end.

Sakura took her place in the rear. She didn't summon Teashi yet. She didn't need to. She had spent the last two days turning the first fifty feet of the bridge into a nightmare of hidden wires and seal-triggered traps.

A shadow loomed in the mist. The sound of a massive blade cutting through the air signaled Zabuza’s arrival, followed by the terrifying, high-pitched ping of a wire being snapped.

“So glad to see you again, friends!" Kenji’s voice cackled from somewhere above. “I was worried you would run away, but here you are!”

Yes, Sakura thought, listening to the feedback tingling through the wires she laid out. Here we are. Come get us.

One. He was getting closer.

Two. Closer still. He was almost on top of them.

Three

"Now," Sakura whispered. She slammed her good hand onto a master seal she had painted onto the bridge's floorboards.

"Puppet Performance: Iron Orchard!"

Threads of chakra burst from the seal like miniature arms, connecting to several points along the bridge. In an instant, dozens of seals hidden in the wooden supports all began to glow at once, before bursting open in plumes of smoke. Hundreds of high-tension wires, coated in glistening poison, whipped across the battlefield in a chaotic, interlocking web.

They settled around Team 3 in an intimate pattern. They weren't meant to kill, not yet at least.

A grunt of surprise came from the mist. A splash.

”What the–?” Kenji’s voice was no longer mocking. He had been snared in the web.

Sakura opened her eyes. The mist was still thick, but she could see the wires vibrating. She grinned and grabbed Teashi’s scroll before throwing it up into the air, sending another chakra string on a collision course with the storage seal.

Teashi appeared above the bridge and two of her six limbs reached out, grabbing onto the wires suspended in the air and holding tight. The poison running along the razor-sharp wire would be deadly to a human, but the puppet had no problem staying latched as Sakura moved her along.

Teashi spun, her scythes flashing against the air, guided by the very wires the enemy was trying to navigate. She was no longer a jerky, broken puppet. Now she was a mechanical marvel of death and destruction once again.

”Welcome to my parlor, little fly,” Sakura muttered, her teeth bared in a feral grin. “Let’s see how hard you can squirm.”