Meeting Kakashi on the roof is nerve wracking for her. Sasuke by her side, Naruto even further away from her. The half oval steel beams floating above, holding up a sign right above the trees. Kakashi stands leaning against the railing, not a care in the world. It's odd, he's so arrogant, she can already tell, and yet she finds his obvious experience alluring. He'll make a great teacher, she's sure of it, if a lazy one.
Her analytical mind spins a million times a minute, trying to figure out why he couldn't talk to them in the room when they were the only ones left. Why was he late? Why seat them so far away from him, and why did they listen without question? A commanding aura, perhaps a high ranking even among Jonin? Did they truly get someone special, or is it all a really well held together facade that's about to come crashing down like a cascade of novelty. Their time has been wasted, but maybe that was a test on its own. Did they fail by pranking him, or did they succeed by being clever? He had to have let the chalk eraser hit him, but why?
She rests in her own little world, pondering endlessly and contemplating what his statistics must look like if they were put on a status screen.
Yes, a status screen. Sakura Haruno, top kunoichi of her class, official leader of the Sasuke fanclub and academic genius, spends her nights tirelessly playing games. Not even necessarily good games, mostly old RPGs her parents used to gush about when she was little. The odd action adventure, maybe the odd dating sim if she's feeling especially romantic any given day.
Fawning over the boy by her side - a total dark and brooding anti-hero with a tragic past -, being aggressive towards her blonde aggressor, even fighting with Ino, growing out her hair, buying the odd perfume; it's all to hide where her time and money really go. Everything is to hide that she has an obsessive gaming addiction that's eating up her life, her sanity, and her ability to function in society.
Fangirl is one thing, but if they really knew what a loser she was… The loser she is.
Laughter would be the last of her worries.
Wait, why is Kakashi looking at her?
"Oh, is it my turn?" She asks, jumping in place, her big green eyes wide in surprise. Her cheeks glow a little red, and her palms land on her bare knees. "I'm Sakura Haruno." She begins, looking between them all to make sure they didn't realize she wasn't paying any attention at all. "What I like… I mean, who I like is…" Her eyes move between Naruto and Sasuke, clarity coming back. Right, Sasuke, it's Sasuke!
She likes Sasuke, definitely not whatever gaming hero is in her head on a given day, the broody prick that's given her about as much attention as he has mastering that awkwardly pensive pose. Okay, that's unfair, Sasuke has depth and an ocean of emotion hidden under that cold exterior, and she does appreciate it quite a bit. Buuuut, if she managed to snag him he'd find out she's a gaming obsessed insomniac so fast his rejection would make her head spin so fast her neck snapped.
"And, my hobby is, I mean, I run the Sasuke fanclub."
"That's you!?" Sasuke finally looks at her with something other than disdain, that's progress! Disgust is progress! "What the hell! You all stole my toothpaste yesterday!"
"In my defense, your toothpaste cost more than my conditioner." She quips quickly.
"Errp-" Realizing she just admitted it, and flushing harder than any tomato ever has.
The boy sighs, looking away from her. "At least you can steal."
That actually wasn't her, but they did report it to her, and well it tastes a bit like ice cream. Who buys toothpaste that tastes like ice cream? Spoiled rich kids with too many problems deep inside to count, that's who… She kinda wants to know where he got it.
"My future dream is-" She takes a deep breath, so she can get a nice screech in there. It's really convincing, she's sure of it, that look of pure disappointment Kakashi is giving her could not be fake. Even with that mask she can see actual sweat dripping down the side of his face.
She's a useless fangirl, she definitely doesn't spend her entire night grinding mats and leveling up, only to crawl out of bed unsure when she got there each morning and force herself to school. That'd be a very odd thing for her to do, and she's very normal. She likes boys, she likes Sasuke, and she gets tons of sleep!
"My first thought…" Kakashi begins. "Is that you're lying."
He really does stare her down.
"Errr…"
"I'm just not sure about what."
At least there's that.
She doesn't even bother listening to Sasuke's intro, she knows everything there is to know about him. Maintaining this cover has been a full time job for years now.
Now if only her grinding had actual real world applications…
[Sakura Haruno
HP: 72
Chakra : 24
Strength: 27
Constitution: 24
Dexterity: 25
Agility: 27
Mental: 93
Control : 200
Charm: 6]
A lot of information appears before her very suddenly. She rubs her eyes to make sure she didn't pass out sitting down again, before parsing it while Sasuke talks. Not her problem, this is.
A lot of that info is as insulting as it is accurate, but it raises a few questions.
If her charm is six, does that mean everyone knows she's lying and not just the awkwardly perceptive Kakashi? Are they just too polite to mention it?
Why is her Chakra identical to her Constitution? Shouldn't it be some equation based on her mental and constitution, what with spiritual and physical energies?
No… It's a mixture of the two, which means when she runs out of physical energy there's nothing left to mix and she has no chakra.
She needs to do push ups, to do jutsu.
Why is her control so high, is that even a high number or are all her other numbers just really low?
More importantly, if Chakra works on an exact value, why does Naruto have so much of it when his mental score has to be abysmal? Yes, she's noticed. She'd have to be blind to miss him actively failing basic jutsu from too much energy.
His stamina is commendable, and his physical scores are great, but he's dumber than a bag of bricks trying to do calculus while flipped upside down. Perhaps these stats don't work this way for everyone else?
Or perhaps she's an idiot, and she forgot to sleep last night while binging a new MMO, and is now hallucinating while all three members of her team wave their hands in front of her face trying to get her attention. "I'm awake!" She shrieks, falling back and waving her own hands in defense.
"... Right." Their teacher says, standing over her with one foot bent on the bench and the other awkwardly back. "Did she really pass?"
"Yep." Sasuke nods quickly, quietly, boredly.
"You betcha! She's the smartest!" Naruto praises her, and she actively has to suppress the power overwhelming level timidness trying to out her across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Scarlett is a beautiful color, and also the screen name of a trans Olympic Esports champion; it is not the color she wants her cheeks to be while her team stares down at her.
"Well, we meet at five in the morning." Kakashi says, disappearing in an actual puff of smoke.
Leaving her to look at her two teammates in surprise.
"What'd I miss?" She asks, and they actually do look at her like she ate the whole stupid tree bark and all.
"Sakuraaaaa!" Naruto whines quite loudly. It's enough to make her wince.
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It's less that a headache started, and more like she woke up with it and Naruto can't help but prod it with a stick. She really should've slept last night…
She has a day to prepare before this test or whatever, Naruto described it very loudly and her head was throbbing so she might have missed some of it.
She'll be sure to get a good night's sleep tonight so she doesn't screw up whatever that test is. Today was embarrassing, and she's a ninja now. She'll fall behind on her grinding but, sacrifices must be made for her future. Besides, her mom was super clear, if she fails to become a Genin her computer will get taken away and she needs that or she'll die. She can lose some grinding to be able to grind at all.
Now she just has to figure out what to do with her day besides sleep, so she can be productive, prepared, and then sleep. Doing that in the wrong order could be a problem…
"Skills." She mumbles to herself.
Academy Taijutsu Style
Studying
Gaming
Clone Technique
Transformation Technique
Body Replacement Technique
Lying Badly
That's not a good list. Especially that last one.
"Traits."
No Life Gamer
Chronically Underslept
Sasuke Trivia Expert
Unnaturally Good Chakra Control
Cram Study Master
Double Life
Disappointment
"Okay." She nods to herself.
"I can live with that. That's mostly positive."
She can probably work off Chronically Underslept by, you know, sleeping…
That last one's a bit of a sore blow for no damn reason but that just means when she becomes a Genin people will be all the more shocked and believe in her!
She just has to figure out what to do with today, so that she can become a Genin tomorrow.
Fuuuuck, she needs a nap…
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One nap later, she wakes up in a tree. Why nap in a tree? Because comfortable sleep would steal her entire day, and she isn't prepared for tomorrow.
"Status." She grumbles, and finds the same information from earlier appearing in front of her. "So it's not a hallucination… Or if it is, it's persistent." A part of her wonders if someone's messing with her. A genjutsu to screw with her head would be pretty effective all things considered. That being said, who would do that to her?
No one she can think of. Ino would be capable, maybe, but Ino's not malicious enough to try to make her think she's crazy. Kakashi? He wouldn't have singled her out, that'd be pointless.
Her parents might come up with something to try and steer her away from games now that she's graduated, but doing it right now would just sabotage her and they do want her to succeed.
"No, this is real." She decides, rubbing her eyes and taking a stand here in the trees. This is the training round Naruto said they'd be at tomorrow morning, so now that she's napped, she decides to scout it out and see if she can come up with any plans. Her stats say her mental is her only real strength. Well, control, but that's useless to her with so little chakra.
She doesn't have to understand how the numbers work to know that her constitution is low. If her constitution is low, and her chakra is linked to it, then her chakra is low and weak.
Actually, she can make a pretty good estimate of how the stats work right now.
She gets a stick and starts drawing them out on the ground.
Maybe in a few months she'd forget, but right now is perfect. Excluding the clan kids and their frankly absurd advantages, she can pretty easily compare herself to other academy students that passed. She's on the higher end of strength for them, most of them being from civilian families or disadvantaged in some way. She's about the same speed as most of them with her hand movements, but faster than them in raw speed. She has a little less stamina, but not much.
With that math, an average academy graduate probably has about twenty five in any given stat. Well, no one is truly average, but as a base.
That makes her pretty much where she's supposed to be everywhere but mental, control, and charm. Work ethic actually wasn't that important in the academy. You either passed or you didn't, so by passing she had to be average, it makes sense.
Charm is probably her ability to convince people of what she's saying, or maybe her likability? Probably not, people like her, she thinks… but then what if they're just putting up with her? It's not like she puts effort into other people. It's something to think about. If statistics like charm have passive effects, she might be lowering her team's capabilities by not being very friendly. Top that off with being paired with two freaking monsters in their own right, and this might be a terrible situation.
Control is taught in the academy, it's the concept of being efficient with jutsu and applications of chakra. Being efficient also means being effective, and such a high and overblown number gives her a lot of perspective on what she could be doing. She did think it was weird how easily she learned the academy three. Even Sasuke had to try, but she just kind of did it.
Mental is probably not directly intelligence. While she had perfect grades, she frequently made very poor decisions. She didn't even sleep last night, and off the cuff decided to sleep in the damn trees. She lacks foresight, but has great in the moment decision making, so perhaps it's about off the cuff moment to moment thought processing?
This is too much thought all at once. She grumbles, wishing for some caffeine or maybe a longer nap. She kicks the dirt to hide what she drew, lest someone connect what she did to a game system. It doesn't take a gamer to detect gamer habits. She's put a lot of effort in over the years to evade detection. Now, looking at her charm, she wonders if anyone believed her in the first place or if people just kind of stared and moved on when she made an excuse?
Does she come off crazy?
She contemplates her skills while wandering around the training field in hopes of finding a good place to lay a trap or plan an ambush for tomorrow.
The Academy Taijutsu Style has zero chance of passing any advanced test of capabilities. She's not especially strong, fast, skilled, or tough, and it's only meant to provide a basic ground to work from. It covers every area a little so that you can find matters you're proficient in, and you always have a move that could theoretically reply to the one sent to you.
Against a jounin, it's an automatic loss.
Studying is useful if it applies to stuff like this field, which it appears to. She can't tell if it's mental skills or studying itself, but she very quickly grasps the lay of the land and understands intuitively exactly where they should position themselves tomorrow if they get trapped or cornered. The exact terms of the test were not given, but she can make an educated guess that Kakashi will likely try to pummel them. Why? Because he's a smart ass, and pummeling them would be funny. She knows the type, she's gotten into enough arguments with them in various guilds and raids.
Gaming isn't useful here unless he's about to challenge them to a team fight in CoD or something. Perhaps some RTS knowledge could be useful while knowing the grounds, but without having any clue about their enemy's statistics or her teammate's statistics, no real strategy can be made. The best she can come up with is having a Naruto kite while Sasuke uses range and she oversees and directs them.
Actually, that's a good idea. She has a few headsets, she's sure they have something which can receive her voice without Kakashi hearing it. She'll get that ready, maybe meet them early tomorrow and get them familiar with the devices. It'd give her away a little bit, but they're gonna find out. They're her team. She'd rather be the useful loser than the idiot who decided not to be useful who is also a loser.
Clone technique isn't useful against a Jounin. He'll see right through it. Even if he can't literally do so, the moment they move he'll know better. It'd be better if he knew some of their skills, but aside from maybe cloning a Kunai or trying to copy one of Sasuke's fire jutsu so Kakashi dodges something he doesn't have to, there's really not a lot there… She will probably do that. She's got amazing control, she can probably clone it after seeing it once. This is important, because having him do it before the training would waste his chakra, and every resource is invaluable.
Transformation isn't useful right out, nor is Body replacement. While she could probably pretend to be Sasuke when she uses the clone technique, he'll catch on if there's two of them and that might kill the gambit before it starts. Body replacement means getting hit, and she doesn't trust her twenty seven agility to keep her alive if Kakashi actually tries to hurt her.
Lying badly… Actually.
She might have a plan.
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Standing in a full out clearing, headset on, Sasuke's voice whispering into her ear while Naruto sets traps with a surprising skill she didn't know he had, well, she can't help but smirk when Kakashi arrives in front of her. "Not even going to try and run or hide, Sakura?"
"Nope." She lies, grinning like a loon. "I won't play your game, you're playing mine."
"You know, I've played a few games myself over the years." He stands with his hands in his pockets, not even a care in the world. "You're communicating with headsets, that's fairly basic although those are very bulky."
"It's more comfortable for long sessions." She admits freely. "I imagine this is going to be long."
"Really?" He asks, taking one step forward-
"I would totally do that if I were you, absolutely undefended." Sakura lies through her teeth. "Not a single plan."
"... Sakura, after I send you back to the academy I'm recommending they give you a trainer for deception." He scowls, taking a step back.
"Nothing that way either, nope."
"..." He looks around.
"Not there, or there, or there."
"You've booby trapped the entire area." He realizes. "Dangerous?"
"Noooooo, why would I want to hurt you Sensei?" She asks, reaching down and collecting a bit of dirt in her palms. "Hehe, let's be real Kakashi-sensei, you'll see through anything I do."
"..." He decides to stare for a moment, see where she's going with this, or maybe analyze to see where her weaknesses are. If nothing else, he'll assume the dirt means something. Making him overthink is her only real shot here.
"Which is why I'm not doing anything."
"Wha-" It's at that moment that the ground erupts from all around. He tries to move, and finds he cannot, his body won't let him, even as he's grabbed by a hundred blonds and dragged to the ground. They hang off of him, holding him in place above a massive pit. It's so simple, with his arms grabbed, and his legs grabbed, and his entire body suspended above a field of thousands of blonds in all directions, for a simple kunai to fly by and snag the bells, bringing them to Sakura's hands.
"As a Jounin, you would instinctively recognise what was and wasn't stable ground without even thinking about it. Subconscious skills are great, they keep you safe, they work so well that they become automatic. I can't even imagine how powerful you must be, or how above us you are." Sakura cites. "But if you don't consciously recognize it, you wouldn't catch up to why you landed on that exact spot, or why I'm standing here without moving."
She spins the bells in her fingers happily. "You'd land exactly where I wanted you to, because the entire field was a trap."
"What if I had landed on you?" He asks.
"What's a game without a little risk?" She can't help the cackle that leaves her lips.
"You missed one small problem with that plan." Kakashi explains.
"Oh?"
"You're still a genin." He winks, one eye smiling brightly at her after a moment. "This isn't just a trap for me, you're also stuck on that spot." He points out the fifty foot chasm all around her. "It's a trap for both of us."
"Well yeah, but I'm useless." Sakura says, spinning in place and hucking the bells as far away as possible. "As long as none of us attack you, you can't use replacement. We're both stuck here, while Sasuke keeps the bell."
"And when I get out of this?" Kakashi asks.
"Winning was never an option." She shakes her head, telling the truth for once. "You were either going to cheat for us by not trying very hard, like a miniboss version of a later challenge, or you were going to give us an impossible fight we were supposed to lose. This is your time to reveal that, Kakashi Sensei. Was the game rigged from the start?"
"Yes."
"Wha-oof!" Her vision goes black as a foot places itself directly in her nose.
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"It's broken." Sakura groans, lying in a puddle of her own blood surrounded by Narutos
"We won though." Sasuke says from a little to the side, "good work, Sakura."
"Thank you." Another her might have just died.
She really just wants a nap. She stayed up all night planning that!
It's way too easy for her to forget to sleep. "If he was gonna let us win, why'd he break my nose?"
"Pissed him off." Sasuke shrugs. "Woulda pissed me off."
"Yeah…" She agrees. "Naruto, good work."
The overly excitable boy does exactly what she expected, and hops. Not just him either, a hundred clones hop. It actually shakes the ground.
"Carry me to the hospital?" She asks Naruto, and finds he's a very useful pack mule.