There were things in this world that were unfair.
Very much so.
And there's a certain boy who could tell you about a whole slew of those, and still have left over. And he'd tell you with a smile, while minimizing how much it must've hurt to be the one suffering from those unfair things.
This was the world of one Haruno 'Sakura', starting with his name.
Yes. His.
It was an odd thing that had accompanied him since birth, originally a nickname born from his actual name, Gohan, and one of the unfortunate aspects of his life. While the characters with which it was written differed, the pronunciation eventually led his parents to come up with the embarrassing nickname shortly after he was born… after they'd seen the bright pink hair on top of his head.
Truly, the intimidating hair color of a manly man.
Even worse, his mother liked his hair quite a bit, and liked to see it when it was quite long. Even despite the fact that it fell down his back in a messy cascade of spikes, she liked to play with and style it in different ways. It didn't help that it usually grew back very fast, even if cut, and seemed to take very well to all sorts of treatments done to it. Except, of course, hair dye. It just washed off.
Very much a curse, inherited from his grandfather on his mother's side. Except that man's pink hair had been dark enough to pass as red.
Bright, bubblegum pink had gotten Gohan confused with a woman so much that people genuinely tended to think his name was Sakura. It annoyed him.
Oh, well. There was no point in dwelling in such a thing. His mother liked it. His father didn't see any reason why he should be ashamed of the color of his hair. And while getting confused with a girl was annoying sometimes, at least he'd mostly avoided teasing because people genuinely thought he was a girl and as such didn't really care that he had pink hair. On a boy, it would've been funny, but on a girl, it was cute. Right?
Gohan wasn't quick to correct them.
***
By the time people started to notice Gohan as a boy more than a girl, there were very specific reasons why he wasn't picked on.
Some people liked to joke that he'd gotten handed bad genetics, until he started to resemble his father.
While he'd once been short and very girly, by the time he hit eleven years of age he had shot up in height. Where once he'd been shorter than a great deal of his peers, now he stood at the top of the height charts in his class. His hair was now cut much shorter, as well, and while still pink, at least it didn't draw quite as much attention as before. Not when people were mostly looking at the muscles that really shouldn't have been on a boy his age.
Particularly considering that he was a civilian boy.
Indeed, despite a retired shinobi as a mother, and a deceased shinobi as a father, Gohan had chosen the life of a civilian. Admittedly, his mother's reluctance to allow him to even train with his father in order to stay in good shape might have played a part in this, but Gohan liked to think that if he'd wanted to be a ninja, he'd be one. Because while his mother could piss and moan and scream and yell, she would NOT prohibit him from doing what he wished to do, no matter how horribly worried for him she might become.
He'd even mostly dropped his priorly regular workouts. Before, he'd kept on par with the exercises his father put himself through, yet these days he merely did enough to maintain himself in acceptable shape. He was still the best in just about every area in regards to his school work, outdoing his peers in academics because of his innate genius coupled with his mother's superb and superbly demanding tutoring and leaving them in the dust in terms of physical education due to his past Shinobi training.
He enjoyed no less than six years of Civilian education, until his twelfth birthday.
Of course, not everything can be this easy.
Gohan knew his father was a very well known shinobi, at least amongst the very few people at the top who were actually important. His family got a sizable stipend that allowed them to live comfortably despite the fact that his mother was retired and Gohan himself was attending a rather expensive school, and his father's Jounin jacket was never removed from the perch next to the door, where it'd been since the last time he had left. Even his headband, with the massive crack down the middle that had never been fixed, was still in his home.
It was only a matter of time before someone approached him to offer shinobi training to continue his father's work. He'd have thought it would've been perhaps one of his father's old teammates. He'd even half expected Maito Gai to show up, or even their shared teacher Roshi, offering training. But it'd been neither of them. Instead, one day, his family had hosted the Fourth Hokage.
It'd been, fittingly, the anniversary of his father's sacrifice.
A lot of people had talked about the man, and his family. A lot of people liked to gossip about who would be the next person who would try their hand at filling the void Uzumaki Kushina had left at the man's side, but Gohan knew full well that Namikaze Minato had rejected each and every single person who'd attempted to replace his wife. In a similar fashion, several men had tried to approach Gohan's own mother, but she'd soundly rejected each and everyone of them. Gohan knew that it wasn't his mother refusing to move on.
No, it was her simply judging the men who attempted to woo her and finding them lacking in comparison to her husband.
Gohan couldn't really blame people for trying to get at either of the widowers. Namikaze Minato was powerful, one of the most powerful ninja ever as well as the leader of an entire village, rich, mostly because of his ninja prowess, and handsome, at least according to his hordes upon hordes of fangirls. Haruno Chichi, Gohan's mother, had the backing of a wealthy family and a great deal of political power, even if she never chose to wield it herself as a result of it. It helped that her kunoichi training had left her with the enviable body of a kunoichi even long after she'd retired.
Poor Gohan had more than once suffered as a direct result of the few male friendly acquaintances he had noticing the fact that his mom was, indeed, quite attractive. If he were less nice, he might've actually beat up a few of the people who went too far with their comments.
Incidentally, the Fourth Hokage and his mother were friends, and of course the gossip had put them together fairly quickly. Both denied it soundly, and completely truthfully. Part of the reason they were friends was that they could joke about people trying to seduce them. They'd been introduced to each other by their spouses, who had themselves been teammates.
On that anniversary of his father's passing, Gohan met, for the first time, the Hokage's daughter. And had found her terribly confusing, overbearing and, dare he say it, annoying. Unfortunately, he'd been raised by his mother to be a polite and kind young boy, and thus he hadn't told the then-little girl to go screw herself and leave him alone. Furthermore, she was family of a family friend, and as such, Gohan had to not only put up with, but also entertain her.
She liked to call him Sakura, and apparently genuinely thought that was his name. He had not been able to disabuse her of this notion.
The Fourth Hokage himself was a pleasant man, who was ready to treat Gohan like the mature young man he was rather than the child he appeared to be (when he was wearing long sleeved clothes that hid the rippling muscles on his body, of course) and avoid patronizing him. He hadn't been condescending or annoying. Instead, he'd lay bare the facts and reasons why he wanted Gohan to become a shinobi.
Indeed, it came down to Gohan's father, and his legacy. The shoes left to be filled.
Gohan had inherited several traits from his father. His body was chief amongst them. Even despite the fact that he'd never been formally trained, the man had been faster and stronger than the academy's teachers when he'd been entered—two months prior to the graduation exam he took—, and his amazing talent had allowed him to learn their moves and styles within that short a time. While he was a lost cause at anything requiring finesse, it hadn't been a problem in the middle of open warfare.
The pink haired boy knew full well he'd likely run into the exact same problems as his father, and he had the exact same advantages as well.
In truth, being a shinobi just seemed like an ideal job for people of his lineage. He started to think that his father had a bloodline limit that allowed them to be stronger and faster than others, as well as have massive chakra reserves. Unfortunately, it also rendered them essentially incapable of using jutsu, due to the accompanying extremely poor chakra control. There were ways to bypass this, and it was his father's discovery of this that allowed the man to become one of the most feared demolition experts in the entire world. The knowledge of the skills and techniques his father used had, in fact, been passed down to Gohan. Not for his own use, but so he could give the choice to his children if he wished to.
There were a lot of reasons why he would accept.
But even so, he had turned to look at his mother.
He himself was ambivalent. He enjoyed training, enjoyed fighting, even, but he'd never been a fan of true violence. He'd never been a fan of actively hurting another to reach your own ends.
It was then that his mother had solved the quandary for him. "Your father fought for what he believed in. Your father fought to protect me, to protect you, and to protect the village that had taken him in as one of its own. He didn't like hurting people any more than you do, and he enjoyed the few times of peace he could enjoy more than anything… But he was always ready to take arms to protect what he cared about."
"We as Shinobi do what we must, Gohan, to ensure the protection of what we love. We are the ones who endure that pain, so others don't have to," the Fourth had spoken.
It was again, a glance at his mother, that followed.
What he loved, then?
His mother—she had retired from that life. He knew why. It wasn't a very good life, and there were many things that hurt her, that kept her awake at night. Sometimes, he knew, she woke up in a cold sweat and crept into his room, to watch him sleep, as if to reassure herself that he was still there. He knew, because she wasn't as stealthy as she thought she was.
Was he strong enough?
He didn't know.
But he'd have to try.
At the very least, he'd try to live up to hopes of dreams that had been placed upon him by others long gone. He'd been enjoying the life of a civilian, but all good things must come to an end.
Sometimes, you have to take responsibility.
Perhaps, had he been raised to be any less than what he was, he would've shrunk upon himself when the Hokage offered him this chance. Would've retreated. Would've thought that honoring the sacrifices made by those who cared about him would've meant that he'd have to live as a civilian, away from the life of pain and suffering of a shinobi.
But he was a kind, selfless young man, and when given the chance to live up to his father's legacy, to protect innocents like he had, Gohan had jumped at it after relatively little deliberation.
Even if the Hokage's daughter was quite aggravating about it.
***
There wasn't much to do in the academy, in terms of physical fitness.
Maito Gai could only aspire to match the feats of strength, agility and dexterity that Gohan's father could boast about performing, and he did, a lot. The same exercise routines that had led to that man's power had also led to Gohan's own.
Put simply, he was the strongest and fastest student in the academy, by a fair margin, and the only student he didn't consistently and completely curbstomp was the Hokage's daughter, who seemed to be insulted when he outperformed her. Instead of angering her further, though, he'd cut the level of his performances to a more… reachable level. Well above the norm, but still lowered enough that while he previously left everyone in the dust, now he could at least pretend to be in the same ballpark.
It was a defense mechanism, based on the fact that when he was outperforming everyone significantly, people didn't really like him. He'd spent only two months as the top of the class, before dropping to the third place. Namikaze Rozalin was first of the class, and she clearly took pride in this. Uchiha Rin followed her, a girl who truly mystified Gohan on a great deal of topics. Mostly because Gohan could see how nasty the girl could actually be when she wasn't projecting the image of the perfect student.
His hearing was good, and he had heard her, more than once, disparaging Rozalin under her breath. Admittedly, Rozalin was an arrogant, annoying brat and had a habit of angering everyone around her, but some of those comments were really mean. That, and he was sure that, despite the nastiness in their relationship, they were friendlier than they'd like to admit.
Mostly because they were the only person the other would acknowledge as a proper rival. The only ones to match each other in terms of ninjutsu and genjutsu. Gohan himself outdid the both of them in physical matters and textbook knowledge, but that was about it. He could never outdo either of them in Ninjutsu or Genjutsu, and actual practical applications of the textbook knowledge, such as the camping and survival exercises.
Admittedly, their own competition with each other had almost caused them to fail, as the exercise had been based on teamwork. Fortunately, Shino and Kiba had been along for the ride and between the three of them, they'd managed to fill up all the holes and account for the fact that the two best students in the class were more interested in outdoing each other than in actually surviving.
Sparring just plain sucked. He had to hold back in order to not hurt his opponents, otherwise he'd be failed—and this wasn't idiotic, he knew intellectually, because sometimes you have to subdue an opponent without harming them—which he really wasn't all that good at. He'd survived on Civilian School mostly because the sports practiced in them almost never included contact. Furthermore, despite his prodigious strength and speed, he was quite rusty. It was a rough wake up call to have the Akimichi of the class match his physical strength and then show him how far he'd fallen from just a few years back, by beating him down with superior skill.
Even worse was losing to Uchiha Rin, even though she barely had to put in much effort into the fight. She just outstripped him in terms of skill in hand to hand combat to such a point that he couldn't even take advantage of his superior physical strength to do even the slightest bit of damage.
Finding out that he had disappointed Namikaze was the worst though, because she'd apparently been expecting much more from someone who her father had favored with his presence. They hadn't even fought, she'd flat out refused to fight him, citing his pathetic performance against her rival as evidence that he'd perform just as bad, or worse, against her. The sheer insult that came from that almost made his blood boil. It reminded him of the days when adult ninja would squirm in fear whenever they were hired to be sparring partners. He'd been ten years old then, and now, he couldn't even face genin! It was humiliating, it was angering, it almost made him want to cut loose, to stop holding back and show them what he could do!
And it had to have shown in his face, because his mother hadn't taken kindly to it.
"You've got pent up aggression," she informed, simply. "I'm really proud of you for holding back as much as you do. It's as good an exercise as any, since both you and your father have the same control problems," she added, sighing and leaning against the kitchen counter, looking at the ceiling as if reminiscing. "He was so much worse than you, though. He really couldn't go more than a month without getting into a life and death struggle."
It was clear that she missed him.
Stressful situations and all.
"You're not really built to be a frontline fighter… You got cursed with a body made for the sole purpose of fighting," she said, frowning. "It's my fault. You've got your brains from me, and your body from your father," she said.
At this, Gohan smiled slightly, "except the hair," he added.
Chichi smiled. "It looks cute on you," she said, shaking her head. "Though it'll probably look silly on the manly adult you'll become. At least people won't call you Sakura if you look like a sculpted statue."
"I don't know. Rozalin seems convinced that it's my name," he said, frowning, "and a lot of people just follow her lead."
"…Have you tried telling her?" asked the mother, raising an eyebrow.
"Twice!" Gohan said, frowning. "I honestly don't know if she ever listens to anyone but her father."
Chichi laughed. "She's just like her mother," she said, nodding. "That woman would only ever listen to the people she respected, and that list was very short," she said, sighing in remembrance. "Getting her to change her opinion if she didn't respect you was harder than getting your father to give up food."
Gohan winced in sympathy towards his father. He remembered quite a few punishments for their actions had been to deny his father the food he loved so much. "Speaking about food…"
Shaking her head, Chichi laughed again, before turning and moving towards the kitchen. She'd have to get started early, 'cause her son seemed hungry.
***
In two years, despite comparatively subpar instruction, Haruno Gohan had returned himself to a respectable level of skill in hand to hand combat. And by that, he meant a level in which he could handily defeat the grand majority of his peers and also more than match the top students in the year. Rin was still a nightmare to deal with, as she had no superb strength or speed and as such relied almost entirely on her skill and her particular style advantages to make up for superior opponents. Something Gohan had learned first hand long ago was quite painful.
Still, his own recovery in terms of skill had allowed Gohan to actually give her a challenge and even defeat her if he cut somewhat loose and risked giving her lasting injuries by bringing out most of his strength.
Proving his mother's prediction right, Gohan had noticed that he'd had an immense amount of trouble getting Rozalin to respect him even the slightest bit. Even if he defeated her in combat, which he had, she seemed to regard him as little more than an overgrown worm. It hadn't helped that her attitude had definitely worsened as time went by.
At least he'd formed friendships with his other classmates. Chouji was a very fun guy to be around, and had been the first to make a friendly approach to Gohan, despite the girly hair. The fact that they both shared a love of food certainly greased their relationship quite a bit, as they would often talk about that if there wasn't anything else to talk about. Chouji's friend Shikamaru soon started tagging along, providing his own insight in whichever ways he could, and while he didn't share their passion for the art of stuffing yourself until you explode, he was still a very friendly guy once you got passed his lazy attitude.
Inuzuka Kiba was just plain friendly when you weren't an animal hater. Given that Gohan wasn't, and he in fact liked all sorts of animals, including dogs, they got along fairly well and sometimes Kiba even used Gohan as an accessory to his troublemaking. Unwillingly, of course, but it was always in good fun, and Kiba hadn't intentionally gotten him in trouble. Actually, Kiba had used him to get out of trouble, more than anything else, but they still collaborated from time to time.
The girls were a lost cause, however. Besides Yamanaka Ino, most of them simply avoided him for some reason, and he couldn't understand why. It seemed there was a recurrent problem with fever striking the classroom, probably a bug that just refused to go away, because the girls were almost always flushed when he could manage to interact with them.
Yamanaka Ino, meanwhile, seemed to like him well enough to compliment him at random, often about his hair, which, much like his mother, she seemed to really like. Maybe it was a blonde thing? The guys often did make 'dumb blonde' jokes regarding Ino, but that was just an unfair stereotype.
Being fifteen years old was supposed to come with a whole slew of trouble, but Gohan wasn't really seeing what his teachers had been talking about when they were talking about all of their bodily functions. Intellectually, he understood the reproductive system and its purpose, and he understood hormones and their effect on a teenager's body, but he'd never found himself acting like Kiba sometimes did, never found himself looking at the girls when they were doing their stretches the way he could see the grand majority of his classmates doing.
While others had their eyes glued to the curvature of Uchiha Rin's barely covered posterior or Rozalin's sizable mammaries, Gohan himself was doing his own stretches without a care in the world. Despite the fact that the both of them held some level of contempt for him, as they seemed to do for all males, he also happened to be the one most often chosen by either whenever they needed a male partner for anything. In a ninja academy, that came up more often than you'd think. The reason why he was usually chosen came down to the fact that when they told him to shut up about something that'd happened, he would.
He was just that nice.
It also helped that he was, of the class, the only one to actively disregard their special circumstances.
But mostly it was the fact that he'd never revealed to anyone the fact that Rozalin couldn't sleep without some stuffed toy to keep her company or that Rin was a nasty bitch underneath the cold, calm and collected façade she presented to everyone.
Still, sometimes he wondered if he was just 'there' for them, because it felt like they barely noticed his existence, taking him for granted. Admittedly, both of them had lives that were exciting on their own, with political intrigue and even a rival to call their own, while the most interesting parts of his days were mostly his interaction with the people around him.
He knew the graduation exam was coming soon, and he hoped he wouldn't get put on a team with those two. Fortunately, it was unlikely to happen. He was the son of a civilian, even if that civilian was a retired shinobi, and those two wore big names behind their backs, which meant they'd get put in a team destined to be fast forwarded to elite.
If Gohan was going to follow in his father's footsteps, which was the most likely thing, then he'd probably become part of the demolition corps, which meant joining ANBU, which meant joining the Regular Forces. Elites were rarely ever sent into ANBU. After all, you want them to be the face of your ninja forces, not the invisible stage hands that build the scenario they'd perform on. The Hokage had been clear when he'd explained what he wanted out of Gohan's participation in the shinobi program in that regard, so it was a moot point to dwell on it.
With this in mind, Gohan had actively done his best in the graduation exam. To his utmost surprise, despite doing his absolute hardest, he had actually not managed to take the Rookie of the Year spot. In fact, he was still third.
It seemed that both of his 'rivals' for the position had themselves been underperforming. Either that, or the fact that they were rivals themselves had spurred them on to perform even better than usual in an effort to beat the other. If so, Rozalin had won, as she was the Rookie of the Year and Top Kunoichi at once. Gohan, third place overall, had taken the spot of Top Shinobi, which would normally be a shoe-in for an Elite, but the Hokage had final say in the teams the academy graduated, so he didn't think that he'd be put on an elite team.
It was the day of the teams's assignment, when the class had gathered one last time and the students who knew they wouldn't be meeting each other regularly anymore said their goodbyes and gave their promises to keep in touch, that Gohan found out that being wrong sucks.
"Team 13 shall be Namikaze Rozalin, Uchiha Rin and Haruno Gohan, under—"
The temperature in the room descended several degrees, and the teacher stopped for a second as everyone in class turned to look at the glare that Rozalin and Rin were shooting at each other.
Gohan sighed, already knowing this was just a terrible disaster in the making.
The teacher cleared his throat. "Like I was saying, Team 13's teacher shall be—"
"Team Ten," called a gruff, rough voice, interrupting the teacher. A bearded man that looked laid back and relaxed poked his head into the room. "Oh. Hey. Am I early?"
"Not really," the teacher said, frowning, "I'm just announcing the last team."
"Oh. Great. Anyway, Team Ten, there's a change of plans. Tobirama Park was occupied and I forgot to tell Iruka here that I'd be changing the meeting place, so I came to pick you guys up," he said, leaning back slightly. "Now, come with me."
Team Ten did exactly as ordered.
"Again, like I was saying, Team 13's teacher shall be—"
There was a loud crash as a woman in a trenchcoat came rushing through the still open door to the classroom, rushed to the window, opened it and jumped out. "What the hell?" someone asked.
Iruka cleared his throat. "Team 13's teacher—"
"ANKO IF I FIND YOU I'LL KILL YOU Y'HEAR!? I'LL KILL YOU!" yelled a rather shrill voice, as a woman wearing what looked like a dress made of bandages, but were clearly not, walked into the room. "Team 8! I've got your first mission! Trail the woman that just jumped out the window! And yes, I'm your assigned teacher, now GO!"
The three she had just ordered, even if she hadn't even looked at them, quickly leapt into motion, clearly frightened by the obviously violent woman they'd gotten as a teacher. The woman jumped after them.
"That just happened," Iruka mentioned, blinking, as he clearly tried to calm himself down. "I swear, I'm going to end up murdering someone if I get interrupted again. Anyway, Team 13's teacher is—"
"Yo Iruka, I'm real happy for you, and I'mma let you finish but—"
Iruka just turned around and slugged the newcomer right in the face.
Mizuki never saw it coming, and he was knocked flat on his ass.
"Oh-oh crap—I'm sorry!"
Gohan sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as Iruka began to fuss over his assistant.
It was only ten minutes later that Iruka revived Mizuki and sent him off to the school's infirmary to get the medic nin there to look at the ugly bruise forming on his face.
"Okay, now there should be no more interruptions. Like I've been trying to say for a while, Team 13's teacher shall be—"