Chapter Text
Shinobi Academy,
The Hidden Leaf Village,
The Land of Fire,
Autumn…
Haruno Sakura, plucky, pink-haired, and doted daughter of one of the wealthier and respected textile merchants hailing from the warm sands of the Land of Wind, was an odd child. A careless bystander whose mouth ran faster than their own feet would call her 'mad' and suffer the immediate ire of Haruno Mebuki and her trusty cast iron skillet. Haruno Kizashi, however, had never bet a single ryo on how anyone perceived his darling girl. 'Mad,' indeed. Ha! As his dear old grandpappy—may his soul rest—had once declared, 'what was madness but a beautiful marriage of genius and passion, of intellect and heart?'
So what if her daughter unsettled lesser minds? So what if she covered every inch of her room with frantic sketches and written ramblings that made heads spin? So what if she muttered and cursed at empty air in the wee hours of the morning? So what if she filled journal after journal with strange symbols and codes that his lovely wife, for all of her love for puzzles and cryptograms, couldn't crack? So what?
Couldn't those ignoramuses see the prodigy, the marvel that his daughter was? Kizashi wrinkled his nose. Sometimes he was glad for his influence in enterprise—not that he used it for ill, of course, Mebuki would rip her heart of gold right out of her chest and clobber him with it. It was simply because people learned how to keep their mouths shut and their gazes lowered regarding Sakura. Only through that privilege was she free to pursue whatever fancy she desired, even if it could possibly grant their whole family a permanent vacation to Château T&I.
Hobbies did come with their own sets of thrills, didn't they? He himself couldn't have made it this far in his career if he hadn't taken a few hare-brained risks. Although the most perilous of his business dealings paled in comparison to his personal passion, which was literature. He had long dreamed of becoming a writer. He had devoted many a year to the art, indeed, his explorations into putting his ideas to paper began when he had been but a lad of ten summers. He regularly perused numerous publications dedicated to bettering such skills—The Wordsmith's Workshop, The Penman Papers, The Fictionist's Folio, Manuscripts Monthly Magazine, etc. He might even dare venture to profess a thorough acquaintance with every single literary classic from the Lands of Wind and Fire.
Regrettably, the only thrills he enjoyed from his literary hobby were confined to his personal study. He had never found the courage to make capital out of his passions, nor had he ever allowed anyone besides Mebuki the pleasure of reading his works. He had no one to blame but himself in that regard; however, he couldn't help but resent how his own literary mentors had utterly humiliated him, declaring to all and sundry that he 'couldn't possibly believe that he could ever have a future in such a noble art.' Kizashi had vowed never to allow his daughter to experience such vitriol from so-called 'educators' who couldn't bother to nurture some patience or encouragement for children like Sakura—spirited, imaginative, and possessing of such creativity rarely seen in people thrice their ages.
Here he was, in the Hidden Leaf Village's Shinobi Academy, facing down that very same 'educator,' whom Sakura had once described as 'the most arrogant, supercilious dingbat with an unprofessional prejudice against myself and other children who weren't weaned off a kunoichi's poisoned teat.'
Such a way with words, his little blossom. Mebuki had been so proud to hear such a… florid declaration. He, on the other hand, had recorded her tirade in secret to be used as inspiration for his own writing. He would most certainly ask for Sakura's permission to borrow her turns of phrase, of course. A writer worth his salt should always exercise a deep respect for their subjects and sources of creative influence.
"If I may have your attention, Mr. Haruno?"
Kizashi internally sighed but he expertly kept the genial smile plastered on his face. This was the third time his daughter's academy instructor had called for a private parent-teacher conference. The last two times had been for separate instances of 'belligerent, uncontrolled behavior unbecoming of a shinobi,' which Kizashi had later understood as 'Sakura showing some no-good ne'er-do-wells what-for.'
Presently, the man was three seconds away from suffering a horrendous apoplexy but as much as Kizashi disliked him, he silently prayed for his good health. Kizashi was but a humble merchant; he hadn't the knowledge nor the time to perform first aid and subsequent healthcare procedures.
Without missing a beat, he replied indulgently, "You may."
"Mr. Haruno, please," urged the instructor through gritted teeth. He was pale, both in skin and hair, and alarmingly rail-thin for a shinobi. If Mebuki were to take one look at him, she'd drag him straight to dinner and fatten him right up. It was frankly ridiculous for a man in his line of work to be nothing but skin and bones, especially when he was in charge of such impressionable young minds. It wouldn't do for aspiring kunoichi to believe they would have to slim themselves down just because their instructor made a wraith look like the very picture of health. No, it wouldn't do at all!
"Why, you're very welcome, Mr. Mizuki!" Kizashi beamed. He reveled in the other man's outraged sputtering.
"I—you—Mr. Haruno."
"Yes, we've established that earlier, I believe. Ah, might you need a refresher?"
"No," the teacher practically spat, "No, thank you. I do not need a refresher."
"Then by all means, my good man, speak your piece!" Kizashi said with a cordial wave of his hand, "I'm quite the busy sort and I've had the rest of today allotted to very precious father-daughter time, you know. We're going to this lovely café on the south side of the Oak District. People say their sweets can rival even the best from the Hidden Sand Village! A grossly uninformed exaggeration, of course. Nothing beats delicacies from the Land of Wind!"
Mr. Mizuki's slow inhale and exhale was music to his ears.
"Your daughter," the instructor said lowly, but not at all slowly, for the longer he spoke, the faster his words left his lips and the higher in pitch his voice went, "spent the last week committing numerous violations of the Academy Student's Code of Conduct, one after the other! She disrupted multiple classes by making a tornado of..." He shuffled some papers, skimmed through one of them, and quoted with an air of disgust, "Paper 'planes', whatever those are, sticking 'windmills' to the roof—again, whatever those are—and nearly setting a classroom on fire by building a... a..." Once more, he squinted at the paper in his hands, mouthed a word to himself twice, and then gave up entirely. He slammed the offending paper onto the desk with a resounding bang!
"Blast it all, whatever that is!"
Kizashi gently smoothed it out, took his time in cleaning and adjusting his spectacles, and enunciated the word—which he did quite perfectly, might he add.
"'Dirigible.'"
Mr. Mizuki made a rather believable impression of an asthmatic elephant.
As entertaining as this was, Kizashi couldn't allow this tedious session to eat up on his time with Sakura. He squashed the urge to push this odious man's buttons a bit more and adopted an air of contrition. An insincere apology and several platitudes later, with the addition of promises of disciplinary action that he had no intention of honoring, he exited the faculty building with a spring in his step.
What wonders his daughter had done! His knowledge of what a 'plane,' a 'windmill,' and a 'dirigible' were were bare-bones, and finding out that Sakura had built them in an environment that held little regard for any kind of innovation that wasn't oriented towards murder, was enough to bring a tear to his eye. Never mind that his dear Mebuki would give them both a stern tongue-lashing that they'd feel for weeks after.
Flying machines! As the youth of today would say, 'who'd'a thunk?'
Kizashi walked the academy grounds for about a minute until he saw his daughter's distinctive pastel pink hair behind a tree. Upon closer look, she was hunched over her sketchbook, immersed in her own little world. Her hand flew across the paper at light-speed and before his eyes, a smudged, scratchy drawing of a hooded man with a blade attached to his arm took form.
"Blossom?" he called.
She turned and Kizashi fought back the urge to coo and sweep her up into a spinning hug. Her bright eyes sparkled with a new wave of ideas just waiting to be put to words. A wide grin fattened the rosy apples of her cheeks. She scrambled to her feet and rushed towards him, arms akimbo and pink hair a-flying. Her sketchbook was gripped tightly in one hand and loose papers were nearly jostled out of place from the speed of her run. A chilly autumn breeze picked up, sending dust and dried leaves into the air.
Kizashi nearly toppled over when she crashed into his legs. "Hey, Papa!" she greeted loudly, "Hyuuga Hinata told me about this bakery that sells the best cinnamon rolls! Let's go treat Mama!"
"Oh? But I pinky-promised I'd bring you to that café that Ino told you about—"
"Okay, okay. Cinnamon rolls for Mama, then café. Wow, I'm starving. I might eat through the whole bakery. But I don't feel tired at all! I could swing from tree to tree if I could! Youth is amazing!"
Kizashi chuckled as she tugged his hand with all the willful exuberance of a seven-year-old who had eaten too many sweets—ah, he shouldn't have snuck extra treats into her lunchbox that morning; he spoiled her rotten, he did. He lost himself in her usual stream-of-consciousness rambling about her classmates' latest shenanigans, her wanting to train in kendo (heaven forbid; they had gone through too many broken valuables with her own style of stick-fighting—'a-ru-nisu,' she called it, if memory served), and how she had tried her hand at 'harnessing fire' for flight.
"Honestly, it's nothing too out of this world. Anyone could've thought 'hey, what if we could make things fly?' Why did we, as a civilization, create the floating lantern and collectively decide to not do something creative with the principles behind it? Lame. Anyway, I set the groundwork. This kid from 1-B—his name's Unagi, by the way—asked me for blueprints and told everyone then and there that he'll 'unlock the secrets to aviation.' I doubt he'll pursue a shinobi career after that. And you know what, power to him! This world needs more men and women of science! More Da Vincis and Teslas! More Curies and Lovelaces and Jacksons! And their own Assassin patron—okay, too far-out."
'Assassin patron?' Kizashi wondered. Now that was an idea. Already, he was crafting snippets and scenarios involving a mad scientist, feared by many for the brutality of his experiments, catching a reflection of his own deranged expression on the edge of his assassin's blade. He imagined the scientist barking out a cold and cruel laugh at the masked face of his impending demise—having deduced that the individual who presently held his life on a sword's edge, was his selfsame patron. His patron who had delivered to him 'fresh cargo' in the form of battered, broken men, weeping women, and wailing children…
"You know, I hope that Unagi kid actually does something with my ideas," Sakura rambled on, blissfully ignorant to her father's wandering thoughts, "I don't plan on pursuing them myself. Too much work. I just did all the stuff with the planes and dirigibles 'cause we weren't learning anything useful. What's the point of learning how to do fancy 'jutsu' when we don't know anything about the practical and philosophical principles that create them? Not that I have any idea about that, of course. Anyway, Unagi should compile his findings into a book. Maybe title it something like… hmm… oh! 'The Aviation Compendium!' Yes! Intellectual and Industrial Golden Age, here we come!"
Kizashi listened intently, trying his best to follow her light-speed rambling. He was far from a 'man of science' himself but even he could be suitably impressed by his daughter's inventiveness and imagination (a part of him still wept over her callous foisting of her ideas onto someone else). And he saw no reason to scold the poor girl for simply wanting to put her ideas to the test; her instructor had assured him that she hadn't harmed her classmates—not a single bruise was suffered nor a single eyelash lost. Kizashi would have interfered otherwise, of course. Discipline was imperative for a growing child.
If Instructor Mizuki had been in the line of fire, well... he was a shinobi. If the stories about them being able to breathe fire and run faster than the wind were true, then a measly little burn wouldn't be a cause for the slightest concern. Kizashi would never forgive the man for calling his precious daughter 'a bit mad since she's too much of a ditz to be a genius,' no matter how offhanded it was, notwithstanding how he had not-so-accidentally eavesdropped on said instructor's conversation with his colleague the last time they had conferred.
The world could call his little blossom 'mad' until the skies fall down and the seas dry up. Kizashi would not, will not, ever nip her growth at the bud. What kind of a father would he be if he did?