Disclaimer: I do not own the series Naruto or any of the characters or concepts connected to it. I also have no claim to the various folk-tales that will be mentioned.

ONCE AND AFTER

Price

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"Who the hell are you?"

Under normal circumstances, Kakashi might have been pleased to see the boys so perfectly in tune with one another, but the harmony had long since lost any novelty its unfortunate origins hadn't immediately stripped from it. As it was, he had to suppress the sigh the welled up and put on a happy face in order to pretend that he wasn't as dissatisfied with this turn of events as Naruto and Sasuke so obviously were.

The source of their shared hostility merely beamed at them, his feigned smile far inferior to Kakashi's own affected expression of cheer.

"Greetings. As of today, I am the third member of this team, due to your ineptitude in keeping track of former Genin Haruno Sakura." The boy curved his lips and even tightened the right muscles around his eyes, but the hollow expression was only all the more disturbing for the effort. "You may call me Sai. I shall be in your care from today onwards—please look after me more diligently than my unfortunate predecessor."

Kakashi, for the life of him, couldn't actually pinpoint which of his boys lunged for the replacement's throat first. They didn't make it to their target, naturally, because one, Kakashi wasn't that lax even if the punk had struck a low blow, and two, someone on the Council had pulled rank and slid in something that did not belong on a genin team.

It took one to know one, Kakashi supposed, and Kakashi certainly had known 'Sai' for what he was the moment he set eye on the boy. His file claimed that he was a private apprentice 'in need of remedial training in teamwork in the field,' and it might even be true. But Kakashi knew this type of maladjusted, eerie attempt at normalcy too intimately to mistake it for anything else.

"Now, now," he chided gently, hands fisted firmly in blue and orange scruffs respectively. "No killing your ticket into the Chuunin Exams, boys."

Oh dear. He did hope that cracking sound just now hadn't been Sasuke's molars finally caving to all that grinding and gritting—but no, luckily it was just the bridge of Naruto's nose colliding with Sai's tanto sheath after the blond had wriggled free from his jacket.

"I'm not going to repeat myself," Kakashi said, in a pleasant tone expertly patterned after Sakura's preferred final warning. Sasuke and Naruto stilled immediately, stiffening up. A lifetime of service made it easy to bury the guilt that cropped up at using such a cruel tactic. The thought that Sakura, wherever she may be, would probably approve was a cold comfort, but it was one he clung to all the same.

None of his contacts from his days back in ANBU had turned up any whisper of kidnapping avenues being erased, or covert auctions taking place. The trail inside the village had grown cold by the time he had woken in the hospital, the streets washed clean by two late spring showers. If Sakura had left of her own volition, which was the current theory held by a small majority, then fate had been firmly on her side. Kakashi was torn between pride and terror at the continuous lack of international reactions.

Civilians had the saying, "No news is good news."

For a shinobi, "no news" might as well be an advanced form of emotional and mental torture. In fact, he was fairly certain that Morino Ibiki and company had whole strategies devoted around that particular tactic.

"You don't have to like one another," Kakashi compromised, very reluctantly. He saw Naruto's proverbial hackles smooth down from the corner of his eye. Sasuke's stayed raised, with great prejudice. "But you do need to be able to work together, if you want any chance at promotion."

If you want any chance to rank up, and get closer to knowing the fully-disclosed truth about Sakura, he didn't say. He didn't need to, of course, because the three of them had already discussed the matter privately, at length, and at almost every volume combination possible.

Still, the Council had moved fast. He supposed that the Daimyo had already been informed that the last Uchiha might be featured in the upcoming Chuunin Exams Konoha would be holding; that sort of boast wasn't something the village could bow out of, and the sudden...vacancy and on their team made it vital that they work through the prerequisites as quickly as possible.

"…fine," Naruto grumbled, glaring at the chipped tiles underneath his feet. "But if he brings up Sakura-chan again, he'll be eating his teeth."

"Agreed," said Sasuke, his voice soft but dripping with venom.

It was both heartwarming and heartrending to see that Sakura hadn't ceased to be the glue of the team, even when absent.

"I'll keep that in mind," Sai said pleasantly. Kakashi felt, in the pit of his stomach, that this baby-faced assassin would be trouble. He wondered if it was some sick form of karma.

.

Urashimako sighed. "No, really, I know where I'm going."

Momotaro raised his hands, as if to emphasize that he meant no harm or offense. Had the monkey come with them, instead of banding together with the small group of simian survivors from the ninja's extermination at the shrine, he rather thought it might have copied him.

"I'm certain you do, but…" He paused, trying not to fidget or worse, start popping bones in and out of his skin. It was a horrible nervous habit he had picked up during his stint of solitude. The Old Woman would have been so disappointed in him. "It's only that you said your parents were likely to the west…and we've been heading north for the past few days."

"Well, yeah." The girl readjusted her pack as they trudged onwards, further through the forest than Momotaro had ventured since the Old Man had first brought him home. They had been at it for the better part of half a week, and were actually running out of forest. It was a novel experience for him. "We've got to go to the Land of Rain before we even think about going near the border for the Land of Wind."

"…we do?"

"Let's, uh…" Urashimako faltered, grimacing a little. "Let's just say we picked up some…contraband…that would catch a lot of attention if we cashed in or handed it off while knee-deep in on of the Great Shinobi Nations."

"…a scroll full of heads wouldn't catch attention in the Land of Rain?" Momotaro asked, honestly taken aback.

"The Land of Rain is kind of…" She pulled a thoughtful face. "There have been some recent…" She puffed her cheeks out, thinking deeply on what she wanted to say. Then she let her shoulders slump. "The Land of Rain is kind of one big fat political hot mess, outside of the actual village of Amegakure," she finally admitted bluntly, having given up the apparently insurmountable task of politely framing the situation. "Bounty hunters and hunter-nin don't usually do business in the…nice…sense, and Rain's full of people who are just happy to have the opportunity to make a living, according to Unc—uh. According to somebody I know," she corrected herself. "He's…kind of an authority on things like this."

"Bounty hunting?" Momotaro asked, beginning to get accustomed to the strange, strange circumstances surrounding Urashimako.

"Mercenary mercantilism," she corrected absentmindedly, peering back to get a good look at the sun's position. "Which is kind of similar, except with pottery and silk instead of heads and maybe two or three times as much murder all around." She blinked, then shot him an apologetic look. "Sorry, I've gotten used to saying my unkind thoughts out loud while on the road."

"I've heard worse," Momotaro said, thinking of the blistering curses the Old Man would occasionally let fly when he dropped a tool on his foot or hammered down his own thumb. He whistled softly, calling over Shiro and scratching the dog's ears gently in lieu of pursuing the awkward trailing edges of that line of conversation.

"Still." Urashimako rolled her shoulders in a self-conscious little shrug. "I'm sorry. I've been on edge for a while, but I shouldn't take it out on you."

"I think I can make an exception, on account of extraordinary circumstances."

She breathed out a laugh, shaking her head a little. He took a moment to admire the sound, and the way her hair fluttered, and let his own lips curve ever so slightly. Urashimako, he had concluded at length, was one of the select people who were happy as a base state. He hadn't been sure at first, given how nervous and brusque she could be at times, but he had gathered enough hints here and there during their time together to give him a fair glimpse of the girl that was his impromptu companion.

He hoped that they could reach a point where she could be at that happy base state with him—if she didn't mind him sticking around that long, of course. Hopefully, he mused, his monstrous heritage might actually work in his favor; she had been thankful for his help with the ninja woman, after all, and when it came to hunting and locating manageable paths during their trek so far.

Half a week wasn't much time to forge a bond, to be fair, but it was half a week more than he had spent with any other human, the Old Man and Woman and the vague memories of his birth family notwithstanding. In a way, she was familiar now, and a lifetime as Boy had spoiled him for familiarity.

"It feels like 'extraordinary' is becoming the norm," Urashimako sighed, jostling him from his thoughts. His lips tilted back down as the moment of levity quickly slipped away, as it always seemed to. He silently promised himself that he would find some way to make it stick, soon.

He hummed in a vaguely affirmative way and tilted his head to glance up at the sky, since he didn't think that comment was meant for him in particular. "…we should stop to set up camp, soon."

"…yeah." She stared at the trees still in front of them, and wrinkled her nose. "If we go any further today, we'll leave the forest entirely and I'm not sure what kind of cover we might find after that."

Momotaro made a soft noise of assent, and began scouring the ground nearby for any suitable kindling for the evening's campfire.

.

"Oh thank—go away already, you pest—thank goodness!" Sakura sighed, jogging down the beach. She had paused briefly to offer a small, irritated aside and an angrily thrown shell to the now-familiar phantom before brushing past it as it began to waver out of existence and scooping up the shrunken demon it had been terrorizing. "I was beginning to feel like you were just a part of a really elaborate psychotic break, Isobu-san."

"It hasn't been that long since we last spoke, has it?" Isobu asked, confusion coloring his size-softened voice.

"It's been days!"

"…so not that long," the turtle affirmed, craning his neck to study her.

"Yes that long!" Sakura snapped, before pausing to review the gibberish that had just spewed from her own mouth. "…oh, you know what I mean."

"I…" Isobu paused, rolling his tails. "Sakura-san, before you, I didn't exactly have daily chats with my containers. I think for each, I could count the number of times they directly spoke to me on my tails."

"Well…we've already established I don't intend to be like any of them," she grumbled, but crouched down to sit on the sand, apparently appeased. "And I'd rather talk with you than deal with anxiety-inspired dreams. Things have been pretty…pretty hectic, lately." She stared gloomily as the surf came up to lap over her toes.

"That's part of why I've been trying to keep my distance," Isobu admitted. He crawled off of her lap to settle beside her, growing a few sizes and staring out at the reflection of the moon on the waves.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Three armored tails rose and fell, rose and fell, in the nervous tic that was fast becoming equal parts endearing and irritating.

"Isobu-san!"

The demon sighed. "…when you become particularly…agitated…it's much easier to flood my chakra through your system. To put it another way—"

"—it's much more difficult to keep your chakra out of my system when I'm upset." Sakura finished, frowning grimly.

"Well, not much more," Isobu tried to reassure her, but his tails had yet to still. "It helps that you yourself aren't trying to access it."

"Why didn't this little tidbit make it into your first explanation?" Sakura wanted to know, picking at a sand dollar that had been buried upright.

"Because I thought that telling you to avoid being unduly stressed or angry might amount to little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy," Isobu remarked dryly.

Sakura was quiet for a moment, finger stilling along the edge of the imaginary sand dollar. Or perhaps it was a calcified metaphor, though for what specifically she had no idea. "…point to the turtle," she said at length.

Isobu's tails finally settled, and he rested his head on his front legs—or, she thought vaguely, perhaps they were arms; she wasn't quite sure what to label his anatomy. Either way, she was suddenly struck by the thought that there was something akin to a satisfied smile on his fearsome maw. "On the subject of stress and anxiety, however…are you really alright with taking a detour? You might miss your parents, you know."

"I'm more alright with that than with getting caught with a head-hunting scroll in Wind," Sakura said wryly. "And I left a message, sort of."

"Two circles with a leaf symbol inside of them and a line through all of it cut into a tree by the shrine is a bit…cryptic. Or perhaps a rather gentle form of reverse-patriotism."

"The circles are the Haruno crest!" Sakura said, defensive. "Well…a rough one, at least. We shouldn't hit any more big delays either way if we're ducking through Rain, of all places, so it shouldn't matter."

Isobu, perhaps divining that arguing the weak point—she herself had only recently decried the current state of the country they would be detouring through—would be counterintuitive to his 'Keep Sakura Calm' plan, merely rolled his shoulders back towards his shell in what Sakura took to be a shrug. "Just playing devil's advocate," he said.

"…if my dad were here, he'd make a crappy joke about that." Sakura stared out at the dark, rolling waters, mood dampening once more. "He's going to have a field day over the naming thing as it is."

Isobu glanced at her, then the sea, then back again. He obviously had something that he wanted to ask about, but was hesitating. Sakura gave him an expectant look, and he eventually spoke. "Your family…what are they like?"

"Mom and Dad?" Sakura fiddled with her unearthed sand dollar, her mouth quirking up. "Oh man, where do I even start…well, I mean, Dad's very…dad-ish. You know, puns, bad jokes, a little scruffy around the chin and cheeks on the weekends, a horrible hundred-ryo haircut…"

"I do know," Isobu agreed, perking up as though refreshed by meager common ground.

Sakura was briefly surprised, before blinking and shaking her head. "Oh, right. You mentioned your dad before, didn't you? I'll have to ask you about that another time."

"Another time?"

"Yeah; right now, it's still my turn, right? Now where was I…oh, yeah. Dad. He's…he's a really good guy, you know? I mean, he's always been really supportive of me, even when I decided I wanted to become a ninja. He always says that any fulfilled life has some measure of chaos in it, and things like that. Well, in between puns, but I've warned you about those already." Sakura's eyes were soft, and her thumb lazily drifted over the pits and grooves of the sand dollar. "I think he's been feeling the old wanderlust flare up more and more as the years went by—he and Mom were basically nomadic before they had me—so they've been taking more and more 'business trips'."

"I see," said Isobu, possibly reviewing what scant details he had gathered about her life before him.

"Mm." Sakura rubbed the back of her neck. "Mom's the more responsible of the two of them, but that's probably because her dad was grooming her to take up a leadership position in their family before she decided that really wasn't what she wanted out of life and skipped town with Dad." She gestured to the beach in front of them. "We went here together when she was thinking about taking me to meet my grandfather and maybe mend bridges but then I got kidnapped by pirates so that got indefinitely derailed."

"You were kidnapped by pirates?" Isobu asked, aghast. Or perhaps he was just incredibly surprised at the seeming non-sequitur; he had gradually grown again, until their eyes were level, and it made his voice deeper and more solemn as a matter of course.

"Technically, yes," Sakura agreed, mouth quirking up. "Mom and Dad had unearthed some ancient treasure or another while exploring a cave at low-tide a couple days before that, so…" She shrugged in a 'what can you do' sort of way. "It wasn't all bad. The first mate was terrifying, hands down, but the captain was actually pretty nice. Flamboyant, definitely, and in retrospect probably a womanizer, but he was funny and let me wear his hat and play with his jewelry." She shivered. "He almost let me help steer the ship but his first mate shut that down real quick. One-eyed demo—er." She coughed delicately, her own gaze sliding to meet his sheepishly. "Um. I mean…"

"I know what you meant," Isobu told her, in what could only be deemed a wry tone. "And for the record, I do have two eyes."

"Really?" Sakura perked up in interest, studying the comb-like growth that covered half his face.

"Really. I just have to keep at least one protected at all times so I don't end up totally blinded at the worst possible moment."

"Smart," she agreed, impressed.

"I like to think so," he agreed, before nudging their conversation back on track. "But you were talking about the pirates, I believe."

"Right," Sakura said, wracking her mind to try and remember her train of thought. "Oh, right. So I wasn't really mistreated, and it turned out fine in the end; a passing genin team from Konoha helped my parents get me back and fought the pirates a little. It was pretty cool; that was what made me decide that I wanted to be a ninja in the first place." She blinked, dropping her eyes to where the water lapped at the sand. "…I haven't thought about it in years, really." It was a little scary, to think about how much Sasuke-kun had dominated her mind and heart over time. Or perhaps that was just the fast-developing reflex of fear in response to even thinking about him flaring up again.

"…was the runner-up choice for your career piracy, by any chance?" Isobu wanted to know, something she tentatively identified as amusement coloring his voice. Or perhaps he felt the off-shoot thought of an Uchiha and wanted to distance it immediately.

Sakura laughed all the same. "Yeah, actually. Dad was pretty supportive of that possibility too, but Mom gets kind of weird about actual criminal activity, though, so she said I'd have to be sixteen before I could even think of setting sail. The Academy sign-up date came first, so…" She gestured. "Here we are."

"Here we are," Isobu agreed, and they settled into an almost companionable silence as the sea hissed and rolled in front of them.

.

Kasumi looked up from her newest edition of the Bingo book as a pair of kids entered her shop. Newbies, she judged immediately, and flipped her book shut with a finger wedged between the pages to mark her place. She smiled kindly at the pair of them, milking her naturally sweet, grandmotherly countenance to start things off.

"How can I help you, dears?" Kasumi asked softly, adjusting her spectacles. The girl stepped forward, as she thought—the boy looked ill at ease, and was probably the muscle to her brains. Most groups started in match-ups like that, after all.

"Cashing in," the girl said simply, withdrawing a slightly weathered storage scroll. She was a pretty thing, all glossy hair and bright eyes, and seemed, at first glance, to be fairly at ease with the process. If Kasumi hadn't been in the business as long as she had, she might have been forced to rethink her initial assessment. But no, there was a definite thrum of uncertainty underneath that assumed casualness; the girl had some idea of what to expect, but this was still a first for her.

"Well, let's see what you've got," Kasumi said with an encouraging smile, accepting the scroll and unrolling it entirely across the long counter before releasing the seals. She saw those pretty green eyes hone in on the hand seals she used, and felt reaffirmed in her belief that the girl wasn't the original owner of the scroll.

That belief became a certainty when seven heads appeared, the most notable belonging to one of the squad of missing ninja that stopped by every so often to collect bounties when their usual illicit dealings ran dry. The pair of children had gotten lucky, probably, if the expression of mild, now eternal surprise on the woman's face was any indication.

"Hmm…now let's see who we have here…" Kasumi hummed thoughtfully, opening her Bingo book back up and slowly leafing through it for identification purposes, and to see how the two might react to the slow pace. They seemed patient, which spoke of either good manners or no need to rush.

Probably both, with a nice dash of fledgling naiveté, she decided as she slowly punched numbers into her clunky dinosaur of a calculator. The girl was following along with the motions, which she approved of on principle; naturally the middlemen always made a profit over deals like this, but there was a difference between that and being wholly swindled. She had likely been warned about that by the same person who had given her advice about these sorts of transactions in the first place.

"How does this look, miss?" She asked, after a few more creaky computations, turning the calculator around.

The girl chewed at her bottom lip for a moment, mind obviously working furiously, but the boy seemed only mildly curious. Kasumi wasn't sure if he was simple or just deferential; it was hard to tell with that hair in his face.

"Fine," the girl said with a sharp nod. Kasumi had taken a slightly larger cut than necessary, but it was far from a true fleecing. Call her soft in her old age, but she didn't mind a little mercy here and there when it came to fresh meat.

"Very good, dear," she nodded, resealing the heads and then carefully counting out a thick stack of ryo. "Will that be all, or would you like anything else today?"

The girl visibly hesitated, trading a look with the boy before examining the glass case Kasumi had indicated. "…two loaves of the raisin bread, please," she requested politely, parting with a few of the bills she had just received. Kasumi obligingly wrapped and bagged it, passing it over the counter. The change went into the chipped 'Tips' jar, cementing Kasumi's good opinion of the children.

"You two take care, now!" She called after them as the door of the slightly run down Morning Dew Bakery swung shut behind them with a faint jingle.

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Chapter Word Count: 3,990

Total Word Count: 37,725

Two questions keep coming up, one of which is related to this story and one which isn't. In regards to Momotaro—yes. He is Kimimaro, and Sakura isn't the only one with a ripple setting her personal storyline off track with canon. Kimimaro's ripple was not staying by the flower and instead pushing onwards and finding the Old Man rather than Orochimaru.

Now, in regards to Where the Heart Is.

Let me say this first, to assuage the most popular concern: I am not abandoning that story. I have, however, written and rewritten and tore several versions of the next chapter apart, mostly because I started this story when I was still in high school, and when we knew nothing about Sakura's parents. I've started thinking about rewriting it completely, from the start, with several changes in respect to what we now know about canon. My writing has grown a lot since WTHI first started, and my skill at pacing has grown as well, so there would be less 'tell' rather than 'show' in the narrative.

In a couple days I'll be putting a poll up to see what you guys like best: struggling on as best I can with my original draft of the story, or keeping that draft up and starting anew with a deeper, slightly slower plotline.