Chapter 175: Naruto: Don't Pat My Head — I Won't Grow Tall
Head a little heavy. Neck stiff. The sound of firewood crackling somewhere close.
Hikaru opened her eyes.
First instinct: assess the situation without moving.
They hadn't tied her up. Four targets, gathered around a campfire, cooking something. She could see them clearly from where she lay.
Careless children. Probably from some privileged household — no sense of how dangerous the world is.
Not my fault if they suffer for it.
"EVIL LITTLE UCHIHA BRAT — I'LL TAKE CARE OF YOU MYSELF—"
She surged upright, hands already moving through seals—
And her legs buckled. She caught herself on one knee, barely.
My chakra—
She reached inward. Found almost nothing. A thin trickle, just enough to keep her alive.
If this continued for any length of time, she would die out here in the wilderness without anyone lifting a finger against her.
"Oh! She's awake!"
The loud blonde had noticed her.
"We have eyes, idiot."
The red-haired girl.
"How are you feeling?"
The pink-haired one crouched down in front of her, tone perfectly civil.
Hikaru looked up at her. More specifically, at the diamond mark on her forehead. She forced words out through her teeth.
"Born-arrogant Senju brat..."
She turned her head.
"Born-stupid Uzumaki brat!"
The red-haired girl's expression went through several phases.
Why am I the Uzumaki one?!
The actual Uzumaki in the group scratched his head.
I'm the one with the Uzumaki name. Why does everyone keep aiming that at Kushina? First Orochimaru, now this girl—
"I think you may not have a clear picture of the current situation," Sakura said, calmly, to someone whose brain was still running on several-centuries-old information. "It might help to explain a few things."
"Nothing to explain!"
"Kill me or don't — I don't care!"
"Though I must say, I never expected to see an Uchiha running around with Senju and Uzumaki."
She was looking at the dark-haired boy standing behind Sakura, who had been trying to say something and failing.
Sakura looked at the girl in front of her — spine straight, chin up, entirely prepared to be executed — and simply reached past her to the fire, pulled a fish off the skewer, and handed it to her.
Hikaru stared at it.
Then at Sakura.
"What do you think you're doing, you arrogant Senju brat?"
"I'm not a Senju, actually. And the Senju clan, for what it's worth, is down to one member — an unmarried woman well past her prime. By any reasonable count, that's extinction."
Hikaru's expression said this was the most unconvincing lie she'd ever heard.
"The Uzumaki are mostly gone too," Kushina offered, somewhat awkwardly.
There's me, Naruto, Nagato. That's about it.
Sakura didn't add anything to this.
"The Uchiha clan was destroyed seven years ago."
Sasuke's voice was quiet. "By a single person."
"...I survived."
The air changed.
Hikaru looked at all four of them in turn. The campfire popped.
"If you're going to lie, at least make it believable." Her voice had lost some of its edge. "These three clans are the most powerful in the ninja world. How could they all just — disappear?"
"Clans rise and fall over centuries," Sakura said, evenly. "You've been sealed away for several hundred years. Is it so unreasonable that things have changed?"
Silence.
Hikaru knew how to spot a lie. She'd grown up in a world where lies kept you alive, and she'd gotten good at it. And this — this particular story, with all three clans conveniently destroyed — was too preposterous to be a strategic deception. You didn't invent a claim this easy to disprove if you were trying to manipulate someone.
But she couldn't make herself believe it either.
"Then explain the seal on her forehead," she said, at last. "And the red hair. And—"
She looked at Sasuke.
"You reek of Uchiha. I could identify one of you buried underground."
Sakura kept a straight face with some effort.
"The Yin Seal and I — I trained under the same teacher as the last Senju. Perfectly normal for a student to learn the master's technique."
Hikaru pressed her lips together.
She looked at Kushina and decided, on reflection, that extended conversation with someone she'd already categorized as an Uzumaki idiot would affect her own intelligence. She redirected.
Kushina felt that she had somehow been insulted twice in one sentence without any words being directed at her.
"The Uchiha clan," Sasuke said, quietly, "was massacred seven years ago. I'm what's left."
He paused.
"I've been... surviving."
The fire crackled. A branch settled.
Hikaru stared at him for a long moment.
"My name is Uchiha Hikaru."
She said it, and then went silent.
She didn't know what to do with any of this.
If they were lying — she'd find out the moment she stepped outside and asked anyone. The lie was too large to maintain. It would collapse immediately.
And if they weren't lying—
The Senju are gone. The Uzumaki are gone. The Uchiha are gone.
The people who sealed me are dead. The grudge that kept me going is gone. Every enemy I had has been dead for centuries.
She turned the fish over in her hands.
Her body was telling her it needed food. She understood that mechanically, the way she understood her own breathing.
But she couldn't find a reason to care.
"Hikaru."
Sakura came closer, choosing her words carefully.
"Is it alright if I call you that?"
Hikaru looked up at her. The pink-haired girl's eyes were steady, attentive. Hikaru gave a small nod.
"I don't know exactly what you're feeling right now. But if you give up on living..." Sakura paused. "Someone who cares about you is going to be very hurt by that."
Hikaru almost laughed. "Anyone who cared about me has been dead for centuries."
"There's a new one."
Sakura tilted her head toward Sasuke.
Hikaru looked.
The boy was watching her with an expression she had no category for. Something raw in it. Desperate, even. A kind of silent pleading — please don't, please stay, please don't make this the ending.
What is this.
Every Uchiha she had known before the sealing had looked through her, past her, around her — she was a weapon, she was a resource, she was not a person who warranted that kind of look. She had been used, and she had fought, and then she had been contained.
And now here was an Uchiha she had never met, looking at her like she was a rope thrown to someone drowning.
She didn't know what to do with that.
"Don't die."
He said it, finally. Only those three words. He'd clearly been trying to say more and run out of language for it.
The last survivor of a massacred clan, facing someone who might be the one other person in the world who understood what that meant.
Sakura watched him flounder through this moment of sincerity and suppressed the urge to intervene.
You're usually so articulate. This is what happens when it actually matters.
The next morning.
Crescent Moon Valley. The summit above it.
Hikaru stood on a large rock at the edge, looking out over the gorge that had held her for several centuries. The cold highland wind cut through her.
The leaves were falling. Everyone she had ever known was long gone.
"We can go whenever you're ready."
Sasuke's voice behind her. Warm, for him.
She turned around.
"Fine."
I must be losing my mind, agreeing to go anywhere with this evil little Uchiha brat.
"One condition." She looked at him directly. "This is temporary. I'm coming with you for now. If I decide I want to leave — you don't stop me. Try to, and find out what that costs you."
"Agreed."
He said it immediately.
"You're very eager."
She turned away from him, back to the gorge, back to the view she'd never see again from this angle.
Sasuke said nothing. But he didn't move, either, waiting for her.
You absolute disaster, she thought, without venom. She turned and walked toward him.
Nearby, in the tree line, Naruto was watching.
A small, quiet feeling had settled in him that he couldn't quite name.
Sasuke has family now.
Where's mine?
He'd never had an answer to that question. And watching Sasuke find one — unexpectedly, in a gorge in the middle of nowhere — made the space where his own answer should have been more noticeable, not less.
It's fine. I'm happy for him. He was. Both things were true at once.
Sakura had been turning something over in her mind since last night.
The gorge itself. The shape of it.
Sasuke had seen it first — recognized the clean geometry of a blade cut, the single decisive stroke that had split the earth. He'd been right. It was a sword cut.
But what level of technique left a scar in the landscape that lasted several hundred years?
She knew the answer, roughly. Susano'o. A complete one.
But Hikaru's Mangekyo was an ordinary Mangekyo. Wasn't it?
Then how?
"Sakura?"
Kushina had noticed her expression.
"Nothing. Just thinking."
She let it go for now, filed it away for later.
Naruto had drifted out of the tree line, still quiet.
Sakura looked at him for a moment. Registered what she saw. Didn't comment on it.
"Naruto. Time to head out."
His expression lingered for a second, then settled.
"Coming."
She watched him walk over, and then — without overthinking it — reached up and ruffled his hair the way she'd done when he was small.
He immediately stepped back.
"Hey! Stop doing that!"
Sakura blinked.
"The Pervy Sage said if a girl pats your head, you won't grow tall!"
She stared at him for a moment.
Then she grabbed his face by both cheeks.
"You're worried about growing tall?"
"I have been telling you — for years — to stop eating instant ramen. Years! Did you listen? Did you eat the ramen anyway?"
Naruto tried to respond and could not, on account of his cheeks.
He wanted to argue. He had no counter-argument. The cabinet in his apartment was full of instant ramen. Including several collector's edition limited releases he'd been saving.
He ate ramen even when he could cook better.
"I'm sorry, Sakura..."
"Idiot." She released him. "Drink milk. Start now."
"He could start by finishing those mushrooms he picked yesterday," Kushina added, entirely helpfully, from a short distance away.
"Don't gang up on me..."
Naruto looked between the two of them with an expression of genuine suffering.
Why am I scared of Kushina? He was, though. He'd never been able to explain it. Something about that red hair produced a specific feeling in him that he couldn't name and didn't want to examine too closely.
He decided not to examine it now either.
"Let's go."
Sakura turned toward the road back to Konoha.
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