Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster. ~ Sun Tzu
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The hospital was dark and mostly silent, but I awoke easily, sliding into wakefulness between one breath and the next. There was a dark shadow looming over me.
"Been working overtime?" I asked, levering myself to sit up. The medics had knit my bones back together, but they were still soft and would easily rebreak. It would be at least a week before I'd be combat ready, though admittedly that was much sooner than the normal time frame for a broken bone to heal.
Dad jerked. In the low light, I could barely see him, but he looked tired. "Sorry, pet. Didn't mean to wake you." There was something in his hands and I squinted, making out the shape of a clipboard.
"It's just a broken arm and fractured ribs," I said, guessing what he was looking at. My medical report was missing from the slot on the foot of the bed.
"And this?" he asked, tapping the bandages taped to the side of my face.
"Just a scrape," I said. "The medics feel like they have to bandage everything. I wont even end up with cool scars like yours."
He snorted. "You're far too young and pretty for that."
Mum had fussed much more when she had been here earlier but Shika had told me about the look on her face when he'd shown up at home alone, so I hadn't protested.
"Do you know what happened?" I asked. "In the Forest?"
He hummed. "I've been working on it," he acknowledged. Which was probably as much information I was going to get about how much they knew about Orochimaru and what they were doing about it. "I was going to get you to give a report tomorrow."
"I can give it to you now," I offered. "Verbally, anyway. I haven't got anything written up yet."
"That's fine," he said, dragging a chair over to the side of the bed. "When you're ready."
I took a moment to organise my thoughts. Then I began to speak. I recounted our movements in the Forest of Death and gave our approximate position when we had been confronted by Orochimaru posing as a Grass ninja. I listed the attacks that had been made, what I could remember of what he said to us, and how we had responded. I mentioned that Naruto and I had been knocked out and continued with the second hand information we had been given by Sasuke. I wanted to skim over the fight with the Sound team, but didn't because they had admitted to being sent by Orochimaru and anything that tied him to the Village Hidden in the Sound was important. I told him about the power of the curse mark and what we'd done at the tower to try and mitigate it. That got a raised eyebrow. I even mentioned sensing Orochimaru posing as one of the Jounin at the preliminaries, how he had left after Sasuke had fought and what Kakashi-sensei had asked and my theory about how he had known to ask.
"I have Jounin that can't give reports that detailed," Dad said with a wry quirk to his lips when I'd finished.
I shrugged. "Can you tell me anything?"
"Not really," he replied. "We don't really have much information. We know he was here, and that he was after the Uchiha but the ANBU sent after him haven't returned."
Dead, hovered unsaid. ANBU didn't skip reporting in.
"Does mum know? That we got attacked, I mean," I asked, picking at my blankets. It hadn't seemed like she had and I hadn't wanted to bring it up…
"No, she doesn't," Dad said levelly. "We've been keeping his presence here quiet. It's the kind of thing that causes panic… or sets people out looking for revenge. The fewer people who know…"
There would be quite a few people in Konoha that had something against Orochimaru. More who despised traitors on principle.
"I see," I said. "Team 10 and Team 8 know. We told them." I shrugged. "I don't know who they've told."
Dad sighed. "It can't be helped. But for now… try not to bring it up, alright?"
I nodded. Well, if Mum asked I could always just say Dad told me not to tell. Then he could deal with her.
"Wicked imp," he muttered, a knowing glint in his eye.
I gave him my best innocent face.
He snorted, clearly not buying it. Then his face shifted into seriousness again. "How have you been holding up?"
"I don't know," I said quietly, looking away. A lifetimes worth of 'thou shalt not kill' warring with a decade of life as the daughter of a ninja clan… logical 'they threatened to kill us' against 'did I really have to?'… "Everyone keeps looking at me…"
"You're probably the first of your friends to take this step," Dad said. "They don't understand yet and they're looking to you to see how you handle it."
"I know. It's just…" I struggled to put words to it. "How am I supposed to feel about it? With everything else that happened… its such a small thing…"
"You feel about it however you feel about it," he said gently. "No one can tell you that you're right or wrong to feel that way. But you can't change what happened either; its too late for that now."
I nodded. "Was it the right choice?" I asked.
He considered it. "I can't tell you that. The life of a ninja is a hard one, with hard decisions that have to be made. We might not always make the right choices, but we learn from them regardless. And sometimes, the choice we must make isn't one we like, or sometimes none of the options are happy ones. Only you can tell if the decision you made was the right one."
I fidgeted with the sheets, my fingers twisting around and around. "I wish they hadn't attacked us," I confessed. "But… I don't feel guilty. I don't… regret it."
They were going to kill us. I couldn't regret it. And if that made me a bad person then so be it. It frightened me, just a little, that I could be so callous.
"It's something that every ninja has to face at one point or another," Dad said, and there was no judgement in his voice.
I leant backwards and sighed. It might not have been the most conventionally reassuring conversation but… it helped. The silence reigned for a moment before I spoke again. "You better go home or Mum will start to worry about you too."
He quirked a smile and pressed a kiss to my forehead. "We can't be having that," he agreed. "Sleep tight."
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Kakashi-sensei showed up the next morning while I was gathering my things to sign out. He didn't even say anything, just lounged about reading his book, like it was a perfect coincidence we were even in the same place. I might have even bought it too, if, y'know, we hadn't been in my hospital room.
"Sensei?" I asked uncertainly.
"Hmm?" He looked at me over the top of his book. "Did you want something?"
I rolled my eyes. "Did you come here for a reason?"
"Ma, two of my cute little students are in the hospital. I had to come and see how they were doing." He smiled, eye crinkling happily.
"You've been to see Sasuke? How is he?" I asked eagerly, picking up on the implication.
"Ah, well. They're not letting visitors in to see him," he explained. That didn't, necessarily, mean he hadn't been there. There wasn't that much hospital security could do to keep a Jounin out as evidenced by Dad seeing me outside of normal visiting hours.
I looked at him expectantly.
"He's fine," Sensei said, caving. "We were just planning a little training trip for the next month."
"Trip?" I repeated, suddenly feeling a lot less enthusiastic. Wait, wasn't this when Sasuke had been taught Chidori? "To where?"
"Oh, not far. Just past the outskirts, probably. This isn't really training you want to be doing in the middle of the village."
And it'd keep Sasuke isolated. Just in case.
I bit my lip. Somehow, removing Sasuke from all social contact except Kakashi-sensei for a whole month didn't seem like a good idea to me. "Where abouts?"
His one eye narrowed. "Why all the questions?"
"So I can find you," I admitted. It looked like he was about to deny me, so I rushed onwards. "I can bring food. Supplies. And if Sasuke needs a sparring partner I'm plenty fast when I want to be!"
He blinked. "Fast…? How did you-" He cut himself off.
"Err," I stammered. "Since Lee exposed the weakness of Gaara's Sand Defence in regards to speed then I figured you were going to train Sasuke to take advantage of that… or ways to slow it down more, I guess. Was I wrong?"
"No. No, you weren't wrong." He sighed. "I'll let you know before we leave."
I nodded, satisfied. Even if he didn't there were only so many places they could go; I'd find them eventually. Close to Konoha, large enough to camp and train, away from the main routes of travel… I was already crossing out large sections of the map in my head.
"Cool," I said, picking up the vase of flowers from the table beside the bed. Honeysuckle, baby's breath and gladiolus, probably picked from our front garden as Mum ran out the door. Sweetness, happiness and strength of character. And there was a sprig of snapdragon nestled snugly in the middle because it was my favourite flower even though - or maybe because - it meant deception.
Come on, it was called snapdragon. How cool was that?
Sensei followed me out to the reception desk, looking for all the world like we just happened to be walking in the same direction.
We heard Naruto before we saw him.
"Sorry, no visitors."
"Ah! Are you kidding me?" Naruto shouted. I cringed. Jeeze, he was loud.
"Those are the rules," the receptionist chirped, not sounding very sorry at all.
Kakashi-sensei sighed. "Naruto, this is a hospital, keep it down."
Naruto spun around to face us. "Kakashi-sensei! Shikako! You're okay!"
The exclamation marks practically bounced off the tiled floor.
"Yup," I said, slipping past him to hand my release forms to the receptionist. Good thing I'd already filled them out. "As of now, I'm officially out of hospital."
"That's great! I was coming to visit you guys but they wouldn't let me in." He scowled at the receptionist who just smiled pleasantly back.
"Sasuke's in the part of the hospital where they don't let visitors," I explained, bumping shoulders with him lightly. "Can you just imagine how many of his fan girls would have shown up?"
Naruto sniggered, probably thinking about how annoyed Sasuke would be at being unable to escape them. "Anyway, Kakashi-sensei, I have a favour to ask you."
"Stop right there," Sensei said holding up his hands. "I already know what you're going to ask. So I've been looking for someone that can oversee your training for the final rounds."
"Hold on!" Naruto protested immediately. "Why can't you train me, Sensei?"
"I have other matters to handle. I don't have time to deal with you Naruto." I felt like slapping my face. Seriously, Sensei? Did you really think that was a good thing to say?
"Hey! You're going to train Sasuke, aren't you Kakashi-sensei?" There wasn't just annoyance in his voice now, there was the barest traces of hurt.
"Now, now, don't complain. Listen, I found you an even better teacher than me." Sensei smiled cheerfully.
"Well, who is it?" Naruto pouted, crossing his arms.
"It is I."
Ebisu. A clanless ninja who made Special Jounin at twenty two years of age solely on his mastery of basic and generalised ninja skills. Without a defining and powerful technique or jutsu set he'd probably never make the jump to full Jounin, but he was a crafty and tricky ninja who used high levels of strategy to employ his abilities to their fullest level.
I wondered why he and Kakashi-sensei had chosen to meet at the hospital, then I realised that by the time you made Special Jounin you probably realised that letting Sensei set a meeting place was a bad idea. Because a meeting place implied a meeting time and Sensei wasn't very good at those. Easier just to hunt him down.
"You!" Naruto shouted, pointing at him.
They knew each other? Wait. Ebisu was currently teaching Konohamaru. Naruto and Konohamaru did know each other, so it was likely that the two of them had run into each other before. And Naruto didn't always make great first impressions.
"Such insolence." Ebisu sniffed.
"You're kidding me! Of all the guys you could have picked you picked this guy to train me! He's weaker than I am!"
Okay, I think I needed to step in. I'd never really considered myself much of a peacemaker, but around Naruto I sometimes felt the urge. Just to stop him from yelling so much.
"Ne, Naruto," I began. "Ebisu-sensei was promoted to Special Jounin on the merits of his teaching skills and strategising ability alone."
"That's right," Kakashi-sensei echoed. "He's a private tutor who only trains the elite. Frankly, he's a better teacher than I am."
"So he's pretty smart," I continued, sort of ignoring Sensei's interjection. "He'd be able to help you come up with a plan for fighting Neji."
Naruto's surly look faded, just a little. "Why can't you help me?" he argued.
"I can, of course," I said, soothingly. "But if one plan is good, then two plans are better, right? And I'm going to be helping Shikamaru and Ino and Sasuke, too. So you want some one who can help you more often, right?"
He nodded, barely.
"Right." So he was almost convinced. Now to set him a task to do so he'd forget he wanted to argue more. "Maybe you should talk to Hinata about how Neji fights, if you're going to be trying to avenge her. I'm sure she'd be willing to talk to you. Even if she lost, they have the same fighting style, the Hyuuga Jyuuken. She might have some advice and I'm sure Ebisu-sensei can help you decide what questions you need to ask her."
Ebisu pushed his glasses up his nose. "A very intelligent plan, young Nara," he said. "Knowing one's enemy is paramount for success."
Naruto mostly ignored him. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I should talk to her." His fist clenched. "She didn't deserve that."
I plucked the snapdragon from my bouquet and held them out to him. "Here. You should give her these. She's probably going to be in the hospital for a while, so it'd be nice if she had some flowers."
He took them gingerly, very much a pre-teen boy faced with flowers. "Umm, right. Lets go!" He marched off into the corridors, flowers held out at arms length in front of him.
I stared after him, bemused. "Do you even know what room she's in?"
Ebisu groaned. Naruto froze, then turned around with a sheepish look on his face.
I sighed. "Ask the receptionist. Now, don't forget to use your Shadow Clones during training and I'll see you for lunch tomorrow?"
"At Ichiraku!" Naruto nodded enthusiastically.
I waved goodbye, noting vaguely that Sensei had already vanished, and stepped out of the hospital, basking in the fresh air and sunshine. I twirled my snapdragon through my fingers before tucking in neatly into the loops of my braid.
It was a lovely day.
I meandered slowly back home. Even though I hadn't made the Finals, that didn't mean I was going to slack off on my training, because the day of the Third Exam was also the day of the invasion. Knowing that, I probably had more motivation to train than my peers.
Physical training would have to wait until my ribs were well and truly healed, but there were other things I could do.
There was no one home when I got there, and I spent most of the morning cleaning my ninja gear and restocking my mission pack anyway. It was unlikely that I'd get a mission before the Finals, but I technically wasn't involved in them, so it was possible. It made me feel better to have it ready, anyway.
At lunchtime, I cast an uninspired eye around the kitchen and decided to go out for lunch. Maybe I'd go see Sakura and hope I caught her on her lunch break.
I headed towards the Haruno household, but as I was passing the Yamanaka Flower Shop I was nearly tackled and dragged inside.
"You've got to help me!" Ino said, grabbing me by the shoulders. "I'm going to get crushed out there!"
My head wobbled back and forth as she shook me. I clamped my hands down on her wrists to stop her.
"Ino!"
"Did you see Temari? I can't fight like that! What am I going to do?" She babbled. I took a moment to look at her. Ino looked terrible. Drawn and frazzled. "I'm going to get killed."
I didn't bother asking why she was at the Flower Shop instead of training, if she was so worried. The Yamanaka Flower Shop was practically Ino's second home and it had a very calming atmosphere inside with the numerous flowers everywhere. It was a good place to think and there was always more work to be done inside.
"Ino!" I repeated. This time she listened. "Calm down. You've got a month to work things out. Have you talked to your dad?"
She blinked and breathed in deeply. "No, not yet. What could I say? 'Sorry, I'm going to embarrass us all'?"
"How about 'Dad, I made it to the Third Exam, could you please help me train'?" I suggested wryly.
She flushed.
It was a logical first step. Inoichi was still the master of their family style, even if he didn't teach her any new techniques, which I doubted he would, frankly. Like our family style, there was only so fast you could progress. I wasn't sure of the details - clan secrets - but some techniques took their toll on the user. I could imagine that throwing your spirit around was one of them.
"Is he here?" I asked.
"Uh, yeah. Out in the greenhouses," Ino replied, twisting her hands together.
"Go and talk to him. I'll watch the counter," I said, making shooing motions at her. It wouldn't be the first time I'd worked here as the cashier. "Then we'll get together and write up a profile for Temari and see what we know about her."
"Right," she breathed deeply. "Good plan. See, I knew you could help me!"
I rolled my eyes. "Whatever, Ino."
I fluttered about the shop, taking care of the flowers, chatting to customers and cheerfully ringing up purchases for about half an hour before Ino came back out, her dad following behind her. I wasn't really surprised by the long wait, since Inoichi was the master at getting you to spill. Ino probably would have cracked and talked to him before too long even without my prompting.
"Shikako," he greeted. "I'm sorry to hear you didn't make it to the Finals."
I shrugged, philosophically. "Luck of the draw. If I'd come up against nearly anyone but Shikamaru, I probably would have."
Nearly anyone, because I would have forfeited twice as fast if I'd drawn Gaara.
"That's the spirit," he said. "Now, you two girls go and get some lunch. I'll take over here."
Ino was much more cheerful, nearly approaching her usual buoyant attitude, as we swung by to pick up Sakura who was predictably ecstatic to hear that Ino had made the Finals.
"Wow, Ino," Sakura said admiringly as we found a restaurant and ordered lunch. "Rookies so rarely get nominated for the Exams. For you to make it to the Finals is statistically… well."
Ino laughed uneasily, flicking her hair out of her face with a graceful wrist. "Yes, well. I got lucky in the prelims and didn't have to fight. That just means I really have to show what I can do in the Finals."
"Exactly," I agreed, pulling out a sheet of paper and a pen.
Temari of the desert, I wrote at the top. Ino and I started by filling in everything we knew or had observed about her and how she fought. Sakura might not have been present for those fights, but she was a well of knowledge about chakra and ninjutsu types and was able to draw conclusions from the information we had gathered.
"Alright," I said, taking a break from writing to eat. "So she's a long range fighter and pretty well covered against projectiles. She's no slouch up close, either, and getting in close is a challenge in and of itself. We didn't really get to see much, but she fought smart so I wouldn't count on her being easy to fool."
"So I'm pretty much screwed," Ino concluded.
Sakura 'donk'ed her over the head. "Don't be like that."
"Sakura's right," I chided. "You can't give up before you begin. Now, Temari mostly used her fan - a Suna Tessen - to whip up her wind jutsu. So her attack would probably be weaker without it, though she probably wouldn't be helpless. Her defence was based on deflecting wind currents… so I wonder how it would handle explosive notes? Hmm…"
"Explosions aren't the answer to everything," Ino and Sakura chorused, giggling.
I poked my tongue at them. "You guys make me out to be so much worse than I really am."
"Wind jutsu are usually divided into either cutting and slicing attacks or brute force shoving attacks," Sakura said, voice taking a lecturing quality. "They can range from incredibly precise to wide range devastating attacks. It's strong against lightning based attacks, but weak towards fire - which it tends to enhance."
"Thank you, Sakura-sensei," I said.
She flushed and slapped me lightly on the shoulder.
"The attacks we saw her use were quite large and Tessen lean more towards wide ranging than incredibly precise, so dodging them is going to be an issue," I mused. "There's also the fact that she was able to fly on it… so pinning her down is going to be difficult."
Ino sighed, then examined her hands. "Does anyone know what the arena for the Finals is going to be like? Inside, outside… What have I got to work with?"
I tapped the pen against my lips. "It's in the stadium, isn't it? We could go and have a look but they might change it between now and then."
"That's better than nothing," Ino said. "After lunch?"
"Sorry," Sakura said, looking down. "I've got class this afternoon."
"Yeah?" I asked. "How's that going?"
We chattered away until she had to leave, then picked up our stuff and headed towards the stadium. The offices were locked, but it was easy enough to get into the arena itself. It'd probably be more securely guarded closer to the date, but for now we got in just fine.
"Well," Ino said, looking around.
From inside, the stadium looked huge. The stark concrete walls were intimidating and tall, almost seeming to make the place claustrophobic. The ground was scuffed, dry dirt and grass, packed down hard, and there were scraggly bushes and trees around the circumference.
"Not very much cover," I said, inspecting the trees. They might do for a bit, but it wouldn't be a viable long term strategy.
"Mm," Ino said vaguely. I wondered if she was already starting to plan. Apart from her initial panic, Ino was nothing to sneeze at in an opponent. In any other year, she would have been the top kunoichi, if not the rookie of the year. Well, maybe not against Neji, but the point still stood.
On our way back to the Flower Shop we ran into Asuma-sensei.
"Oh, Ino! There you are. I've been looking for you," he said.
"Asuma-sensei?" She blinked. "Oh, right. We've been brainstorming." She fluttered the paper with Temari's details on it at him.
"Good girl. I was going to ask you what training you needed for the Finals." He puffed on his cigarette, eyes flickering to me.
"That's my cue to leave," I said wryly. By rights, with my team mates and brother in the Finals, I probably shouldn't stick around to hear her training plans. "I'll catch you around, Ino."
"Thanks for your help," she said sincerely. "I think I was a little freaked out this morning."
I laughed. "Something like that."