Chapter 31
“this is weird”, Naruto says, looking at an chakra exhausted Sakura, “her reserves practically tripled and how she was regulating her chakra output, she should have lasted at least more six hours”.
“that’s indeed strange”, Lady Mito says, looking at the pink haired girl lying flat on the very nice bed of the bedroom Naruto provided her in the beach house, “also, why do you have a private pocket dimension summer paradise?”.
“it’s my answer of the age old dilemma of wanting a vacation but not having the time for one, after all, time flows differently here and in the main universe”, Naruto answers, “also, as the name implies it is private, no one can set a foot here without my permission, which means, I can actually relax as much as I want without being bothered”.
“honestly, if I could I would have done the same”, Mito who was in bikini and sipping a margarita says, turning her eyes to Sakura, “now, what is causing your chakra exhaustion”.
Seeing as his need for cheating the system for the heck of it wasn’t nearly close to be satisfied, Naruto brought his team, Haku, Kurenai, Anko and Mito into one of his pocket dimension, more specifically a paradisiacal beach island, after all, it was summer so why not have training camp on the beach.
Everything was going swimmingly well until Sakura collapsed from chakra exhaustion, which would not be that surprising is it wasn’t for the fact of how she collapsed.
Sakura and Haku were having a more personal training with Tsunade who was honing their chakra control.
On one second, Sakura was effortlessly doing the exercise, on the next she collapsed as if her chakra flow was cut all of a sudden and that raised suspicions.
“she’s perfectly healthy”, Tsunade says also chugging a margarita while conducting a diagnosis jutsu on Sakura, “and I can feel her chakra reserves, just like you said, they should have lasted longer”.
At the same time, Naruto was running a diagnosis spell.
Tsunade and Naruto keep probing until they find something.
“did you saw that?”, Naruto asks, “there’s something constricting her chakra coils”.
“yes, it’s limiting her chakra flow”, Tsunade says noticing what Naruto said, “it’s not a disease… it’s something else”.
Naruto, scratches his chin as he thinks that it looked too much like something he had saw before.
“you know, back in my previous life”, Naruto says, and the two woman freeze, eager to hear about Naruto’s past life, especially after his new flesh grew back revealing his elven features, including long and pointy ears, “there was curse called restriction of the seven rings that did the same thing to what happened to Sakura”.
“what are you talking about?”, Mito asks, curious.
“the restriction of the seven rings was, as I said, a curse, a cruel thing that would restrict the amount of mana someone and their descendants could have and/or use”, Naruto explains, “basically whoever was cursed would have their mana restricted to certain level and any attempt to use more than that would result on the whole mana flow being shut down. Which is both painful and possibly lethal”.
“wait are you telling me someone cursed Sakura?!”, Mito exclaims her eyes going wide.
“is something like this even possible?”, Tsunade questions, she had heard a lot of things in her career, but even she has to admit that a curse was an outlandish claim.
“not Sakura herself”, Naruto says, taking a lock of Sakura’s hair, “but maybe an ancestor or something. I think for now we should let her rest, I’ll investigate this”.
Naruto was in his lab, why do he has a lab in his vacation home. Because he enjoys doing research and the pocket dimensions was more than a way to relax while saving time, it was also a way to buy more time to solve crisis.
“hey bud, Haku said dinner is almost ready”, Mito, his teammate says, walking inside where she sees Naruto grinding something into a fine powder, “what are you doing?”.
“did Tsunade said anything about Sakura’s condition?”, Naruto asks, mixing I some small glittering crystals into the mortar hair.
“you mean the curse?”, Mito asks, pulling a chair, sitting down and taking a look at the indescribably lab, “man, Tobirama would have killed for such great lab”.
“not the point here”, Naruto says, delicately dumping the powder into a bronze bowl over a flame. Gently stirring the powder to help it dry before adding some sort of wax like substance and gently mixing it, “the point is I was right it is a curse, a cursed seal to be precise”.
“a seal?!”, Mito springs out of the chair.
“precisely”, he says, pointing to an apparatus. A small glass dish under a big magnifying glass, “here take a look at it yourself.
Mito does that and looks trough the magnifying glass, which had zoomed into the hair strand down to the microscopic molecular structure and as Naruto said, there was seal scriptures all over it.
“sweet mother of Kami”, Mito says, shocked, “I never saw something like this, who could have done it?!”.
“if you ask me, an Uzumaki”, Naruto answers as he carefully dips of melted wax and the powder into a candle mold where a thin string made of the lock of sakura’s hair served as the wick, “as far as I know, they are the only ones with enough skill in fuinjutsu to pull something like this”.
“you are probably right”, Mito says with a grunt, “but why Sakura, as far as I know, she’s a no name civilian born kunoichi, what whoever did this have to gain by cursing her?”.
“my running theory is that it wasn’t targeted at her specifically”, Naruto says , turning to Mito, “I think that whoever made this seal underestimated its potency and cursed the original’s target entire bloodline”.
“as absurd as what came out of your mouth sounds, it makes perfect sense”, Mito says, “there’s a lot of registered cases where an Uzumaki seal worked way better than expected. So what are you doing?”.
“doing what any good teammate would do”, Naruto says while the candle solidifies, “I’m helping!”.
Later that day after Sakura woke up, Naruto and Tsunade relayed the news.
“so someone cursed me?”, Sakura asks as she eats a bowl of rice porridge that Haku prepared.
“by proxy, yes”, Naruto says as he notices the growing horror on Sakura’s face.
You know those situations where you have a condition and you are perfectly fine until you find out that you have it then all of a sudden, you start shaking in your boots?
That’s how Sakura is now after finding out that she has a curse.
“why would someone do this?”, she asks, putting the bowl aside as the horror grows on her.
“for any number of reasons”, Tsunade says, “gruncle Tobi used to tell me horror stories of how worse the world used to be during his youth”.
“can you lift it?”, Sakura asks, as the pit in her stomach grows.
“easily”, Naruto says, “however, I would prefer if we ran a few more tests to fill in the gaps”.
“and, if you want to have it lifted, we have to get your parents in the loop”, Tsunade adds.
“please do it!”, Sakura says, trying to calm herself.
“easy there”, Naruto says, rubbing her back and using soothing magic to calm her down, “for now, all you have to worry about is getting better, me and Tsunade will deal the rest”.
And so they did and boy was that a headache.
“so, it turns out we are related”, Tsunade says, looking at the results of the blood works she did on Sakura.
The legendary doctor did not spared efforts no expenses and had gone all out, getting incredible surprised when she found out she and Sakura are related.
“wait, what?!”, Sakura screeches in surprise.
“I know right!”, Tsunade says, “I did a few more tests and lo and behold, my great uncle indeed didn’t died a virgin”.
Tsunade lets out a loud bark of laugher,
“Jiraiya owns me 500 ryo”, Tsunade says, “anyway, I already spoke with your parents and got the whole genealogy and if you agree I would like to add you to the Senju family registry”.
“I’m sorry lady Tsunade, but can you give a moment… I’m still trying to process it”, Sakura says, confused, “I’m a Senju?”.
“take all the time you need honey”, Tsunade says.
“and my parents were o with this?”, Sakura asks, still trying to make heads and tails of this situation.
“they know you wants to be kunoichi, despite the fact it caused them to worry to death and they see this as a way for you to get better chances at not coming back to them in a body bag or not coming back at all”, Tsunade says, not sugarcoating the conversation she had with Sakura’s parents.
Once again, the pinkette gets a contemplative look on her face.
“ok, I’ll do it”, Sakura says, “but I want to keep my family name if it’s possible”.
“I can’t see why not. What sounds better Senju-Haruno or Haruno-Senju?”, Tsunade asks.
“well, my parents raised my whole life and hadn’t been nothing but supportive, so I think I’ll go with Haruno-Senju”, Sakura answers.
“nice”, Tsunade says, “by the way, Naruto said the curse lifting ritual is ready, he’s just waiting your go ahead”.
“well, no use in stalling, let’s do it”, Sakura says.
Sakura didn’t even had to get up, Naruo came into her room carrying the same candle he had made using some assorted crystals and her hair as a wick.
“now, in any other circumstances, I would just snap my fingers and the curse would be gone”, Naruto says, lighting up the candle which burs with a pink flame, “however, there would be a risk that by doing that, all the chakra being restrained would be released all at once, which could kill you”.
“uhum”, Sakura says as nervous bead of sweat rolls down her brow.
“thus, we are going with this”, he points to the candle, “it’s specially made for you and your curse. The way it works is as it slowly burs it slowly burns away the curse while helping your body adapt to a curseless state”.
“is there any risk to that?”, Sakura asks, “I am not going to self-combust, am I?”.
“oh no, worst case scenario you get a horrible headache and some cramps, other than that it’s perfectly safe”, Naruto says, “now all you have to do is lay down and rest, let the candle do it’s magic”.
“ok”, Sakura says, lying down.
A few hours later Sakura awakes feeling different.
She could feel, she was more stronger, her chakra reserves felt like an ocean instead of the kids pool it was before and she also had a horrible headache.
“sweet kami, he wasn’t kidding about the headache”, she says getting up, “I need some wa-“.
As she says that, she turns around and glances upon a mirror, seeing the reason of her head ache.
Smack dab in the middle of her forehead was what looked like a nine tomoe sharingan while a pair of rabbit ears like horns sprouted out of her head.
She obviously, does the logic thing. She screams and passes out.