"On my mark, the successful Shadow Clone will dispel him- I mean, herself!" Sakura called. "Three, two, one— Mind Body Transmission Jutsu!"
The Shadow Clone who was slightly better than the others crossed his, or rather, her fingers and vanished in a puff of white smoke, sending her experience back to the main body, Naruto… or rather, Sakura in Naruto's body. Upon receiving the memories, she broadcast them back to the remaining Shadow Clones.
"Oh, I get it now!"
"That's so much easier than what I was trying!"
Sakura performed the clone seal once again. Now that the Shadow Clones could last a little longer, they could occupy more of the water's surface, instead of being stuck at the edges.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
A thousand new Shadow Clones appeared in pillars of white smoke.
Sakura's remaining Naruto chakra was divided even further; having started with only one thousandth of Naruto's maximum, each of these new, second-generation Shadow Clones only possessed somewhere between 1.5 and 2 KKs.
If Sakura wanted to create new Shadow Clones on top of those, she would have to dispel the old ones first, or limit herself to a hundred or less to avoid killing Naruto. This was another limitation of the Shadow Clone Jutsu… unless your name was Uzumaki Naruto, it was not safe to create new clones while already having pre-existing batches active!
…and to Sakura's surprise, the next generation of Shadow Clones performed far better than she had anticipated. Far too well, in fact…
"Hang on, this sort of training is useless!" Sakura groaned in realisation. She facepalmed. "I'm supposed to be learning how to handle huge amounts of chakra; I already know how to stand on water with low amounts of chakra!"
The last time Sakura had been able to operate normally as a kunoichi was when she had climbed up to 425 KK, right after the collapse of the north-eastern front line. For now, Shadow Clones each possessing 1500 KK trying to fine-tune their chakra control was still beyond their capabilities, which was why they struggled so much to stay afloat… but this training still wasn't good enough, because her true body had ten times that much… 15 000 KK!
"That means I have to limit myself to a hundred Shadow Clones, since I have a hundred times less chakra than Naruto," Sakura muttered to herself. "My initial training regimen was too ambitious… but maybe making the first thousand wasn't useless after all… after all, I've gotta start somewhere. Better to gradually increase the difficulty instead of jumping straight to 15 000 KK clones, ya know…"
Sakura dispelled the 1.5 KK Shadow Clones, since they actually were useless, leaving the four hundred and ninety-eight from the 1500 KK batch to carry on training. Since the 1.5 KK batch had only remained in existence for a few seconds, the mental burden was still within acceptable limits, allowing her to continue with the training.
Plan A was a failure, but it could easily be amended, and so Plan B was rapidly thought up and implemented. Time continued to pass, and Sakura repeated the following procedure in one-minute increments:
Each time a Shadow Clone managed to remain afloat for an additional minute, she would have it dispel itself, and then she would update the other Shadow Clones through the Mind Body Transmission Jutsu. This went on until it appeared that all the remaining Shadow Clones had become proficient enough to remain standing on the water's surface indefinitely, at which point Sakura dispelled the lot of them, including those doing the 361-leaf challenge.
"I'm so booooored, ya know?" Sakura groaned as the sum of their weariness hit her all at once. "Narutoooo… come give me some encouragement…"
Thankfully, Naruto was more than happy to provide cheerleading services with her own body, much to Sasuke's consternation. He couldn't help but feel there was something off about his two friends' level of skinship; even though Sakura was technically feeling up her own boobs, she was still readily allowing a boy (whose name was not Sasuke) to touch her in a sexual manner, as though they were more than just friends…
"Hmm…"
"All right, my batteries are fully recharged!" Sakura exclaimed a few minutes later. "Here we go again… Shadow Clone Jutsu!"
This time around, Sakura only produced five hundred Shadow Clones in total, meaning each of them had around 3000 KK, double that of the original thousand-strong batch. She was planning to reduce their numbers incrementally until each of Shadow Clone possessed the same amount of chakra as her true body, and then perhaps even a bit more!
Each of the five hundred Shadow Clones affixed a leaf to a different tenketsu and stepped onto the water… and immediately fell through the surface with a series of loud splashes. The training was twice as difficult as before, and the training time would likely be twice as long as well, since the Shadow Clones' numbers were halved… but still, Sakura forged onwards with her procedure.
As soon as any one of her Shadow Clones achieved some kind of minor success, she dispelled the doppelganger and used the Yamanaka clan's jutsu to share her attainment with the remaining Shadow Clones. When all remaining Shadow Clones could stand on the water for as long as they wished, she dispelled the lot of them, received their combined experiences, received some 'encouragement' from Naruto, and then produced the next, smaller batch.
And so, the cycle continued, and Sasuke resigned himself to waiting even longer to read the Uchiha Stone Tablet's message, while Kakashi pulled out Volume 2 of Icha Icha Paradise and began rereading the book. Morning turned to noon, then afternoon, then at last evening, as Sakura successively reduced the batches of Shadow Clones she produced until they were only a hundred strong.
"It's been five minutes, I think I've got it!"
"Dispel yourself in three, two, one… Mind Body Transmission Jutsu!"
Kakashi glanced up from his book at the Naruto doppelgangers.
"To think the Yamanaka clan's techniques could be used in conjunction with the Shadow Clones in such a manner," he sighed wistfully. "I used to think Naruto had achieved the maximum efficiency humanly possible, but since he's reinforcing both the good and the bad at the same time, he can only sort through his experiences at the endof each training session, and then advance through sheer accumulation…"
Sasuke couldn't shake a feeling of uneasiness.
"However, Sakura can sort out the good from the bad, keep only the breakthroughs, and share them with her Shadow Clones mid-training session to increase her proficiency even faster…" Kakashi went on. "Sakura's brains in Naruto's body… I can only imagine what kind of monsters their children will be one day…"
"What… what did you just say?" Sasuke said in shock.
"You mean… you didn't know?" Kakashi said, frowning. "Naruto and Sakura are a couple. They have been for a while… isn't it clear enough just by watching them?"
For the second time in a week, Sasuke's entire world shattered around his ears.
For as long as he'd known her, Sakura had always been chasing after him, but he had always spurned her. Her constant advances were an annoyance, so at first, he'd rejected her as nothing more than an obstacle in his path to vengeance… but gradually, he began to warm to her, especially after discovering that she, too, was an Uchiha. He then tried to distance himself from her, wanting to spare her the pain of losing him to the fires of revenge, but he simply couldn't bring himself to sever their ties completely…
"I lost Sakura… to that moron…!?"
Ever since he'd learned the truth about Sakura's powers, insidious doubts had begun gnawing away at his heart, eating him up from the inside, until it all came to a head when they defeated Hiruko, another vulture eyeing the Uchiha's power. His love for Sakura turned to hatred, and seeing no reason to remain in the Hidden Leaf Village without her, he left to find a proper mate, a real Uchiha woman who would bear his children and revive the clan at his side…
…but Uchiha Nanashi, despite being a pure-blooded Uchiha, held no interest in reviving the clan that had turned her into a human weapon. She hated the Uchiha even more than Tobirama… she was not the woman he'd been searching for all this time.
All along, it was Sakura.
"I took Sakura for granted…" Sasuke muttered incoherently. "And I… lost her…?"
As much as he wanted to detest Sakura for choosing another man, his love for her had already turned to hatred once before. He could not bring himself to hate her again, or even blame her… because he had already had his chance and blown it. He could not reasonably expect Sakura to wait for him for ever.
"Sasuke…?" Kakashi said, tapping his shoulder. "Are you feeling okay…? You look a little pale…"
And so, Sasuke's hatred turned inwards. Everything he touched turned to shit, didn't it? First his brother, now his relationship with Sakura and his hopes of reviving the clan… only in a dream would his dreams ever become reality…
"Never better," Sasuke said weakly.