[open]

[nobrassknuckles]

Who: Sakura and YOU.
Where: Parlor, library, possibly up to the second floor -- wherever, basically.
When: Night 004.
What: New ninja + paranoia + exploring.
Warnings: Sakura's temper...?

Comments

[nobrassknuckles]

Not forgotten -- at least, not by this girl. Sakura turned more fully toward him, her feet spread apart, every muscle in her body taught with a challenge, an indictment. "If you know how you died, you probably know most people think Itachi killed you and forged your suicide note, Shisui-san. I've been over that file. Now you tell me you know about the massacre. Did you know that Itachi tortured Sasuke-kun with the sharingan when he was thirteen? Did you know he was unconscious until Tsunade-sama returned to Konoha and healed him? And now you expect me to believe that Itachi has his best interests at heart." She scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "I don't pretend to know his reasons. I just know that he's a threat to the people who matter to me most, and I don't trust him."

Had she wondered about his reasons? Yes. At length. And there were things that admittedly didn't add up. But they weren't enough to believe a complete stranger over her own instincts -- not yet.

This wasn't the time to be puzzling over that anyway. She was already too puzzled by Shisui's description of Sasuke. That small? "... how old is he?" she asked, frowning.

"I've tried dispelling it multiple times." Which wouldn't help her against a sharingan at all, but Itachi was dead, and Sasuke -- he was better, but he wasn't Naruto and he wasn't Sakura. It was difficult for her to believe he had the depth and control of his chakra to pull this kind of illusion off. And he was right: multiple people casting would add more chakra, but it would be easier to find faults.

Sakura turned these things over in her head, her jaw tight. "If it's not a genjutsu, I don't know what else it could be."

[forwantofpeace]

He paused, filing away the information she had offered, fitting it in with the pieces he already knew and the pieces she was giving him. He smiled faintly, tiredly. "I have very many doubts that he forged anything at all, Haruno-san. I know my state of mind when I lost this right eye, I arrived here in that state. If I died, if Itachi killed me, it is because I told him in order to fulfill certain conditions. And there is really only one reason I would do that, Haruno-san, and that is because I didn't want him to die."

His smile tightened, head bowing and finally breaking eye contact. Danzo's words had not been kind, or in any way softened to spare his feelings. "I know some of that. Not all of it, but Itachi threw much the same details at me. I-I understand his choices, even if I do not condone some of them. He was always horribly reactive. I did not know that Tsunade-sama had returned, actually. So that I didn't know. But, Haruno-san, you are from a civilian family, are you not? In clans, many times it is not the well-being of our children that we have in mind, merely their survival. I grew up on the battle field, it is not a kind world. Unconscious is so much better than dead. Unconscious means a chance to grow stronger, to learn from the mistakes that put you in a hospital bed. He was thirteen? That is...less horrible than Fugaku-sama's choices for Itachi, after all. I do not make excuses for him, Haruno-san, I do not pretend that Itachi is innocent or that he is without blame. But then, we are both ninja, aren't we, Haruno-san?" Neither of them had been innocent for a very long time.

He smiled. "Itachi was surprised too, but Sasuke-kun is seven. Only a little boy still. A child."

He nodded. "Hatake-san and Itachi as well, myself. Hyuuga-san as well, but it seems real enough." He rolled his shoulders in a gesture that wasn't quiet a shrug. "Transportation Jutsu, you've done Shunshin, haven't you? Yondami-sama could travel from one place to another instantly. Many people can do that sort of thing, it simply takes the right sort of skill. Even time and space, it's not impossible, even if it is dangerous. I don't pretend to be the best, Haruno-san, but I am far from inept. I have been here for several weeks. It's not a Genjutsu."

[nobrassknuckles]

Sakura was silent for a long while, her jaw tight. Shisui's speech about gave her a lot to think about. A lot to ponder, a lot to reject - she's seen the kind of damage that a clan can do to their own by focusing only on their lives, and not their well-being - and a fair amount of insight into the kind of relationship Shisui and Itachi might have once had. Obviously, he trusted him. It made her wary again. But he still wore his hitai-ate intact, she wouldn't ignore that.

"Tsunade-sama is the Godaime Hokage. I'm her apprentice." There. Another offering of information, and a declaration of where her loyalties are. Screw Danzo. "You're right, Uchiha-san, we're ninja. And Uchiha Itachi is a wanted criminal in our village."

In other words? The subject was closed. This wasn't a debate she could have right then.

Sakura crossed her arms thoughtfully. If there was one thing she didn't doubt, it was the skill of those men. So, not a genjutsu. "I've done it, but I'm not on that level." Her lips twist in a sudden, ironic smile. "Shunshin no Shisui.

If that's what it is, to pull people from vastly different times -" and worlds, it seemed - "they would have to be incredibly powerful. I don't even think Yondaime-sama could do it."

[forwantofpeace]

"Of course, Haruno-san." His polite smile returned, voice soft with respect. "It's an honor to meet the apprenticeof Godaime Hokage-sama, I am sure you are a credit to your teacher."

And useful as well. For all the faults he knew of Tsunade-sama, her healing had never been a thing anyone questioned. If she had taken a student, then that student could only be one worthy of her attentions. It was as simple as that.

He did not address the issue again, she would need time to accept and that was as simple as that. A ninja could nearly drown, but trying to make them drink the water against their will was an impossible thing.

He laughed, eye flashing with good humor. "Secretly, it only became my proficiency because I'm lazy." It had become his proficiency because he had been small and fresh from the academy and thrust into the middle of the war, but the thought that he was simply too lazy to bother walking softened that some.

"Ah, yes. I've never seen something like this before. Finding out what caused it would perhaps come after we find out what it is." Could his honorable ancestor have done it? He didn't know. Madara's skills were rarely spoken of, out of some old fear that speaking of a demon might in fact summon them.

[nobrassknuckles]

"It's good to meet you too." She hadn't said that yet, she realized. Mostly because she'd been too suspicious of him, and it might not ultimately turn out to be true. But he seemed pleasant and polite enough, so Sakura figured it was probably time to return the favor and demonstrate that she was, in fact, capable of being respectful.

Pleasant, polite, and with a sense of humor, too. She couldn't help but smile. "I'm sure." No, she didn't believe that for an instant. Shinobi sweat and bleed to become good at something because they have some reason to - family, war, broken teams. She wouldn't call Shisui on it. "I won't tell anyone else.

"It's a house, as far as I can tell." Not that she'd had the chance to explore it as much as she'd like. "There are a lot of others who are in our situation, I've heard."

[forwantofpeace]

"Having more Konoha ninja here is reassuring in its own way, I feel. I'm a creature of habit." He kept his smile, relaxing. She seemed pleasant enough when she wasn't declaring his best friend a traitor.

"Thanks, it would ruin my reputation for sure. I think that's what the Yellow Flash was up to as well. Finding the laziest way possible to visit the dango stand from his office." Jokes were a strange defense mechanism, one he'd learned from his brother. Though Obito had never been very good at telling jokes, his brother had always been good at laughing at himself.

"It seems to be a house." He corrected absently. "The way the rooms are mashed together, I think perhaps it might be better to say it is pieces of houses? Some things simply do not fit. There is a hospital in the basement, for example. So why create a trap that seems like a house? We're also kept well fed, food appears in the kitchen with seemingly no source." He nodded. "I've met several myself, I was in too bad a state when I first arrived to really explore much, but I am trying to make up for."

[nobrassknuckles]

"It is. It's good to know there are people here I can trust." If nothing else, there was Kakashi. She'd have to track him down sooner, rather than later.

Sakura snorted. "It's a good thing shunshin was never Tsunade-shishou's area of expertise, we'd never be able to keep her out of the pubs." For all that it was meant to be as humorous as his quip about the Yondaime, she was a little bit serious too. Pubs and gambling houses. Much as she respected her teacher, Tsunade was a woman with well-known vices.

"Pieces of houses? Isn't that what rooms are?" It was an odd way to phrase it, that was for sure. Sakura looked off to the side thoughtfully. "It seems to me that either we have to figure out who created the trap to know more about it, or we'll have to explore it more to find out who set it. Either way, I should probably check out that hospital."

[forwantofpeace]

He smiled faintly, inclining his head in agreement with that. "It's almost amusing, isn't it? We're trained to work alone, but to be alone in a hostile environment makes every ninja jumpy."

He snorted. "Well, lucky for the affairs of her student and the village, it was never an area Tsunade-sama choose to focus in. From talking to some of the Yondamie's guard detail, it made things rather frustrating. He was libel to slip away if he lost patience. I wonder if-" He cut himself off, having forgotten for a moment that this girl was not of his generation, and hadn't grown up to stories of how awesome Obito's teacher was. A comment about Naruto was as illegal as it was ill-advised.

"Mhm. Houses have a plan, a blueprint. They are made in a certain way, following that blue print. Perhaps some are a little more eclectic than others, but the rooms are part of the house. This place....it's pieces. The rooms do not always fit, do not always make sense. This place is made of pieces, fragments of other places cobbled together." He nodded, agreeing with her. "I have looked around and tried to learn the layout, but many locked rooms become entire wings, or entire other buildings. But a medic could probably make better sense of the hospital than we can."