Chapter 75: Arm Wrestling
Hokage's Office
Hiruzen looked at the woman sprawled across his new sofa and felt something warm settle in his chest.
Of his three students, Orochimaru had been the most gifted. Jiraiya had been the most like him. But Tsunade — Tsunade had always been the one he'd worried over the most, cared for the most. He'd raised her less like a student and more like a daughter.
Although, he reflected, he seemed to have acquired another daughter recently.
Granddaughter, he corrected himself. Technically.
"Old man." Tsunade didn't look at him. She was eyeing the sofa. "Say what you need to say. Why am I here."
Her gaze lingered on the upholstery with an expression he recognized — the particular regret of someone cataloguing which pieces of the past had been replaced.
One less thing the Second left behind.
He told her everything. The Chūnin Exam, the joint nations format, Orochimaru in the Forest of Death, the Kazekage and Tsuchikage arriving for the final tournament. He spoke without hurrying. Tsunade sat and listened and turned his antique teacup in her hands, around and around.
When he finished, she looked at what she'd done to the teacup.
Fragments.
And another one gone.
Hiruzen mourned it quietly.
"So." Her fine brow arched. "You took my techniques — my Enhanced Strength, my Yin Seal — and handed them to some girl I've never met."
She hadn't asked about Orochimaru. Hadn't asked about the Kazekage or the invasion risk. She'd gone straight to the fourth student.
"Ahaha, well—"
"Where is she."
"Third Training Ground, probably. She tends to practice there."
"Hiruzen." The warning in her voice was mild but present. "I'll say this once. What I think of my students is my business, not yours."
"You'll like her," he said, still smiling.
She stood, dropped the teacup fragments on the side table, and left without ceremony.
The shards glittered in the afternoon light.
Three antiques this week, he thought, and reached for his pipe.
Third Training Ground
The field was empty except for one pink-haired girl, sitting cross-legged in the middle of it with a scroll open across her knees.
Sakura had put the Heavenly Canopy Method down around the time she'd figured it out conceptually, and had spent the last hour making sure she understood it precisely enough to actually run it. Jiraiya's notes helped — his marginalia were detailed in the way that writers' notes tended to be, full of observations about what surprised him and what hadn't.
The technique was elegant in its simplicity. Push chakra outward from the body in an extremely thin dispersal — barely a membrane — centered on yourself, expanding to roughly a hundred meters. The chakra was too diffuse to function as an attack or defense, but it could detect. Anything it touched reflected back a signal. Like a radar dish you wore.
Not Byakugan range. Not anywhere close to the Mind's Eye of the Kagura.
But a hundred meters of continuous, mobile awareness, moving exactly when she moved, feeding her a live map of everything nearby — that was precisely what she'd needed.
She formed the seals.
Monkey — Ox — Rabbit — Dog — Rat.
Her chakra flooded outward.
She closed her eyes.
The training ground came to her — not through sight, but through something else. Every blade of grass. Ants at the root of a tree. A bird adjusting its grip on a branch overhead. Fish turning in the river beyond the fence.
Oh.
The smile happened before she could stop it.
This is it. This is exactly it.
She was still holding the sensation, still calibrating, when three signatures appeared at the edge of her range.
One she recognized immediately — Asuma's chakra, familiar by now. The other two were unknown to her.
Except —
That one. The second signature. The sheer weight of it.
That's not someone I've felt before. But that's definitely someone.
"Not bad."
The voice came from the treeline. Sakura opened her eyes.
Tsunade stood at the field's edge with her arms crossed, watching her with the measured appraisal of someone who has seen many people attempt things and is deciding how impressed to be.
Asuma hung back slightly. He had the look of a man ready to intervene if the conversation went in an unexpected direction.
"That's Jiraiya's technique," Tsunade said. "First time using it?"
"Yes."
"And it worked." Not a question. She was still looking at the forehead mark. "Hiruzen told me the short version. Eight years old, four years to complete it, Uzumaki assistance." A pause. "Shizune trained under me for over a decade and never got there."
Shizune, behind her, managed to look both flattered and embarrassed simultaneously.
Sakura bowed slightly.
"Senior."
Tsunade looked at her — really looked, cataloguing. Taking apart the pink hair, the slight build, the composed expression, the mark on her forehead, the way she was standing.
Hiruzen said this girl reminds him of me.
Where, exactly?
She was small. Softer-looking than Tsunade had expected. Her posture was correct but not imposing. And—
She's flat as a board. Tsunade did not say this aloud. We have nothing in common.
"So." She let the silence do a little work. "The old man gave you my techniques."
"He did."
"Then I'm going to test whether you actually know what you're doing with them." Her chin came up. "Arm wrestling."
The composed expression on the pink-haired girl's face sharpened slightly — something in the eyes going a fraction more precise.
"How would you like to do that, Senior?"
(End of Chapter 75)