Kim Kitsuragi: The air outside is brisk, the lieutenant is silent for a moment. He listens to the traffic hum, then...
Kim Kitsuragi: He pulls out a packet of fruit snacks. "Where shall we begin? We should talk about the investigation first and foremost, but I also remember you wanting to discuss the RCM."
You: "I didn't know you had a sweet tooth, Kim."
Kim Kitsuragi: "I have fruit snacks every night when I go over my notes. It's something of a ritual."
Electrochemistry [Easy: Success]: Oh man, he looks so devastatingly cool with those fruit snacks.
Composure [Medium: Success]: And then there's the fact that he looks way cool doing it.
You: "I think I might want to pick up sweets. Do you have another pack of fruit snacks?"
Kim Kitsuragi: "I apologize, but I only brought one with me. I have exactly one pack of gummies every night while going over my notes."
Shivers [Challenging: Success]: Below, the city trembles with its remaining lights. People are eating meals, going out to a restaurant, snacking. Edges of dining tables, hands, aprons flicker through windows before the lights go out.
You: "How did you get so cool, Kim?"
Kim Kitsuragi: The light of the Whirling-in-Rags contours his face, a fleeting smile just visible in its illumination. "You mean this?" He tears open the packet. "This isn't cool -- it's an unnecessary trial of will. And unhealthy."
Kim Kitsuragi: The lieutenant deposits the fruit snacks within the packet onto the palm of his hand, before shoveling them into his mouth. Despite this flagrant act of gluttony, he neither chews nor swallows. His cheeks bloat and his jaw slacks as his mouth makes room for the sweets. He simply allows them to sit in his mouth, occasionally stirring them with his tongue.
Volition [Easy: Success]: Keeping the habit within the parameters he's given himself takes a lot of focus. It would be easier to eat them normally.
Composure [Medium: Success]: Yet were he to simply chew and swallow, he would lose the cool factor. The show of willpower, to not act on the temptation to chew the fruit snacks, is a point of pride. This man relishes his cool quite a bit -- below it all.
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@xoxo-lahh
So in this verse, Tsunade never ends up teaching Sakura- as that role is fulfilled by Chiyo. (But she DOES return to Konoha eventually).
And Chiyo's first rule (for everything lol) is: Nothing is Free.
Chiyo always demanded something in return for healing, and unlike Tsunade, she considered medical jutsu a part of her arsenal. If it could kill, then it was always an option.
So Sakura learned from that mindset, trading her services and using her rare skillet as a powerful negotiating tactic, especially during Tea Country's civil war. Her healing effectively kept her, Enji, and Saeko in relative safety and provided her a card to play when she needed.
And, while Sakura is nowhere near as jaded as Chiyo is, and often enough of a bleeding heart to help people for damn near free, (a place to stay, food for the night, a new holster for her kunai), she is also VERY pragmatic about her skillset. The civil war taught her that sometimes, letting someone die is better. This puts her at odds with Tsunade, who has a very different mindset (and was, historically, bitter enemies with Chiyo).
Another issue that arises with Tsunade, is that the Godaime is a doctor- while Chiyo is more of a healer. Their understanding of the human body comes from a different place.
Tsunade can name every bone and muscle and perform open-heart surgeries. Sakura can heal bone and stitch back together muscles and flesh on a very basic level, but she's never going to be able to open up a human body and revolutionize medical history like she does in canon. (In canon, Sakura creates a Jutsu that allows her to do a four-man surgery alone; she can't do that here.)
However, she can do some stuff that Tsunade claims is impossible—like reconstructing/altering someone's chakra network, unblocking tenketsu, sometimes turning off someone's dojutsu from a distance, and lite-healing remotely (Tsunade is very upset about this one specifically). A lot of it comes from her mastery of Genjutsu.
Genjutsu, as I reworked in my comic, requires a complete understanding of someone's chakra network to control ALL their senses. Sakura's understanding and control are so prodigious that she can almost autonomously control people's bodily functions (a skillset that is GREATLY aided by training with Chiyo's puppet mastery).
She uses Genjutsu as a tool to understand the body and employs it as both support (helping an ally maintain a sense of gravity as they're pulled underground or flung in the air, etc) and offense.
And that's it for the wall of text! Once again, thank you SO much for the amazingly kind words and all the interest in this AU! <3
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