[OP: "Notos"--The Oh Hellos]

Sai was trying to sketch some facial expressions he'd seen that day when he was interrupted by Ino appearing in the doorway.

"Is there a problem?" He looked up, confused.

"Oh, no...I just...uh..." Ino held up a shopping bag. "This is...I just thought it might be useful."

"Oh? For what?" Sai didn't get it.

"Just look inside." Ino held it out like it was a dead animal.

Sai didn't understand the point of this, but he took the bag anyway and opened it.

"This looks like a traveling pack," he said, taking out the black bag inside the shopping bag.

"Yeah." Ino was not making eye contact for some reason. "I mean, I was looking for supplies, and I noticed they had this newer model, and I thought...well, it has a waterproof lining on the inside, and the top actually zips shut like the heroes' packs do. It seemed more durable."

"It does seem sturdy." Sai still didn't get it. "Are you replacing your bag?"

"Oh, no, mine's fine--well, maybe I will. I mean, I'm sure Momo could make copies of this if we need it..." Ino was babbling almost. "But I thought it would be good for you to...so you don't lose your notebooks again."

Sai only registered right at that moment that this might be a gift.

"Oh...is that for me?" He was surprised.

"If you don't want it I can take it back!" Ino panicked. "I mean, I didn't want to presume--but I thought about it after earlier, and it just...was there..so..."

"It would be helpful..." Sai examined it more closely. "And it is the right size."

"I thought so," Ino said, more relaxed, before she seemed to tense up again.

"Is something wrong?" Sai was not quite sure why she was acting like this.

"No, nothing," Ino said quickly, reddening a little. "So...you like it?"

"I hadn't really thought about that part yet," Sai said. "But...I suppose I like it. Did you just get it for me to be nice?"

"I know it's none of my business," Ino said hastily, "but why go all the way back there, right?"

"I don't know what that has to do with it," Sai said. "But...thank you." He smiled. A real smile this time.

Ino looked more flushed than before. "Oh...okay...uh...you're welcome? I should go...uh...change, so...see you later."

She walked away in a hurry.

Sai opened the top of the bag. It really did have insulation on the inside.

"Well, my picture book will be safe in here for certain," he said to himself. "And there's a small compartment for pencils--or extra weapons, I suppose." As an afterthought. "Very well thought out. I wonder what made her think of doing it?"

[Ah, Sai, you will probably not get it for a while, but it's cute--also I couldn't help but think of that Eeyore's Birthday Winnie the Pooh story writing this, with the balloon and the jar. Sai really has the same childlike wonder vibe, I guess.]

* * *

"Girl, why you smiling all glowy like that?" Camie asked Ino when she came out of the shower stall in the girls bathroom. Ino was trying to take her hair tie out in front of the mirror--which was hard when her hair was that long.

"Hmm? Oh, nothing," Ino said.

"Something good happened, huh?" Camie tapped her chin. "Did it have to do with Sai?"

"No!" Ino turned bright red, so Camie knew it was BS.

"Wow, girl, get it!" she said, smirking. "Making moves, right?"

"I was not! Please, Camie, that's ridiculous." Ino finally got the tie out and started to brush her hair. "Just trying to be nice, that's all... Actually, I'm just a little relieved. I was nervous about going through it once I got to the point."

"Why? What did you do?" Came asked.

Ino explained in an embarrassed tone.

"Oh, that's so sweet!" Camie placed her hand to her chest. "Wow, I have to get better at remembering what people need like that. I'm the kind of person who gets gift cards or random beauty supplies because I never remember what people are into."

"I wasn't really trying to do anything that big. I just thought it would help," Ino said.

"Well, it will, so that's all good," Camie said. "Why would you be nervous about that though? I'm sure Sai would love it if anyone remembered anything about him."

Camie was so savage when she dunked on Sai's so-called friends and their standards for treating him well.

"Oh, it's stupid," Ino said. "I knew better, but I kept thinking about how the last time I gave someone something I either got ignored or they gave it back to me later."

[That would be referring to when Sasuke ignored her confession flower and when Sakura gave her back the headband Ino gave her in their backstory episode--one of them.]

"People can be so mean for no reason," Camie remarked, opening one of her bags and pulling out skin lotion for her face. "Hey, Baku and I's 6-month dating anniversary will be coming up before too long. I wonder what I should get him. He likes food and blowing s--t up, but I can't exactly give him dynamite, and I can't cook."

"Gift card?" Ino said.

"But that's so lame," Camie sighed. "What would you get him?"

"I don't know him that well... Does he like anything else?"

"All Might...but that could be a sore point since All Might had to retire," Camie mused.

"Does he like books?"

"Well, he likes the stuff Shine gives us to read, but those aren't really like the school books for our course," Camie said. "And I don't know if he reads outside of that. He's more of a man of action."

"And he doesn't care about clothes, right?" Ino said.

"Nah, not really. He looks good in anything, but he doesn't put effort into it. Hey, maybe I could get him a new Punisher t-shirt."

"I don't know what that is, but if he Iikes it, sure." Ino shrugged. "When it's Shikamaru's and Choji's birthdays, I just get Choji a gift card for a restaurant or potato chips or something like that. And Shikamaru always says he doesn't want a gift, and I think he's serious because he has no hobbies other than playing shoji. So we usually just get dinner as a team."

"What do they do for your birthday?" Camie asked.

"They always don't remember it till the day of." Ino tilted her head. "So nothing really. We might hang out, if my mom and I aren't too busy. My mom will make birthday soup and stuff. It's not really a big deal though."

"I always get money on my birthday now that all my family are too old to know what I'm into now," Camie said. "Cash is fine though. Gives me an excuse to go to the mall."

"I like shopping," Ino said, smiling. "I don't get to go with anyone though."

"Too bad I'm flat broke here. We could shop," Camie sighed. "This living on charity thing kinda sucks sometimes. I guess it's more spiritual, but I like to have a little fun liquid."

"You guys do the work like we do. It seems unfair that you don't get paid for it," Ino said. "I mean, we're getting some kind of penchant for doing this since it's a service to the villages. Maybe you should too."

"Idk." Camie gestured wildly. "I don't even know how it's gonna work out in this village now."

Ino sobered up. "Camie...if I knew part of the reason that Tsunade might do this, but it was something I wasn't sure I should share, what would you tell me?"

"Uh...it's pretty obvi that's not a hypothetical sitch if you say it like that. So spill the tea."

By now Ino knew what that meant.

"I just know that someone in Leaf Village told her about your team," she said.  "More than they probably should have. I didn't know that till today, though. I swear I never told her anything about you guys. I didn't know that much to begin with, and she never asked me."

"So who did narc?" Camie asked. "I'm betting on Sakura, since she's her protegee, but it could have been Shika too, since they're always asking him for advice."

"I don't know if he said anything or not," Ino said.

"So it was Sakura," Camie said.

Ino sighed again. "I'm wondering if the leaders should know about that. I don't want Sakura to get into big trouble for it if she didn't mean any harm--we are kind of supposed to report to the Kage about things, so she couldn't say no...but she never mentioned it before."

"Like...how long ago was this?" Camie asked. "Was it now?"

"No, no, it was a year ago...and after the war."

"Crap...like I was even on that mission," Camie said. "And the war....Iike, that was a lot of crazy stuff. Dang, I wonder what she spilled then."

"Mostly about your powers and how you didn't force things to happen," Ino said. "Which sounds harmless...I think, but I'm not sure." 

"I guess it depends on if any of that would be ammo against us later," Camie said. "I mean, I got nothing to be ashamed of personally, but people seem to twist our abilities into something weird, y'know? Like, we say we can't make people do capa, and they go and say that we're just letting them commit crimes. Like that's the same thing."

"That might be something you don't want Tsunade to know," Ino said. "I'm not sure how to explain how our rules work with almost everything."

"This sucks." Camie frowned. "We're so screwed...but maybe she would not talk about it."

"Maybe..." Ino said. "I mean...it's not just you guys--all of us look bad if you get defamed. I would expect that Tsunade-sama wouldn't want us to look bad. Maybe she's not going to report anything."

"I think you'd better pass it on to the DJs anyway," Camie decided. "They'd like to stay one step ahead of this crap fest."

* * *

"So she told you this herself?" Shine said, a while later after Ino had told them.

"She didn't want me to tell you about it either," Ino said guiltily. "I didn't promise I wouldn't, but..."

"Well, then you're fine," Wally said. "If you didn't say you wouldn't, then it was on her for telling you without checking that first. This is a problem...but...Sunshine, I don't know if we can be too hard on Sakura. She didn't know you that well 4 years ago, and after that war she hardly knew us either. And Tsunade was her mentor."

Shine did look kind of angry, Ino thought.

"But it's bad?" Camie asked.

Shine swallowed. "Maybe it's true that we can't blame her too much, but if she told her information that would make Tsunade more suspicious of us...well, that is what Tsunade meant earlier when she said she had information on us. I knew there was a chance Sakura was the one who told her, but I thought it might be someone else. I guess we did not swear all of you to secrecy about our activities back then, and I didn't think there was a reason to because we were leaving...an oversight on my part, if we planned to come back."

"But still it's not like she knows who we really are," Wally said. "Just that we can do weird things and don't interfere too directly with people's choices."

"Uh...but, Babe, do you see how that could be a problem?" Shine said.

"Um...I feel dumb, but not really...?" Wally said. "Other than the power questions, but we don't have to answer it."

"I must just think more morbidly than you." Shine rubbed her forehead. "Because if I was trying to undermine us, I could twist that direct interference into something else. Or, I could use it as a way to force us to leave the Village because of our code of conduct. I only hope Sakura did not know enough about it at the time to explain how that works, or we'd be as good as gone if Tsunade passes that on to Onoki."

"What do you mean?" Ino asked.

"If someone asks us to leave, we have to," Wally explained. "It's a tricky rule. But there's no point in staying if someone doesn't respect your message. Though we're here as part of Gaara's squad though, so I'm not sure it would be the same?"

"Depends on if he tells Gaara to go or only us specifically," Shine said, "and if we can use Gaara's title to claim that we do not need to submit to the leaders here, but at this point we're getting into semantics, and the real problem is that if they will us to leave, they won't be open to our help and we might as well just get out."

"That's sucky." Camie pouted. "Why do people gotta be like that?"

"Well, I'm hoping it's not that bad," Shine said. "Tsunade has admitted to us that she doesn't really want to bring us down but that she will still have to report if she finds anything that could look suspicious. And for all we've studied your culture, we're still new. We can't possibly account for everything you could find suspicious."

"I live here and I can't do that," Ino pointed out, "because you seem harmless to me, but even within the people in Team Zoe, there's a lot of debate about that."

"She's got a point," Wally said. "I wonder why Sakura told you at all, though."

"She must have felt guilty," Shine reasoned. "So she confessed to someone else since she was too afraid to tell us. Well, the entire team would be livid if we told them she did that, even if it was before she came under our authority... We have no right to punish her for it since it was before then, but I can't see the others feeling that way."

"So we don't tell them?" Wally said.

"No reason to." Shine shrugged. "They can't do anything about it, and neither can we. If discussing it would help, I would tell them, but it won't."

"So...you're actually going to spare Sakura?" Ino said. "You won't send her home?"

"Again, technically, this is not a breach of our current trust," Shine said painfully. "So while it's annoying, and I'm tempted to be angry at her, I don't see how I can act on it with any fairness. Though I may have a hard time being natural around her for a while."

"Yeah, might be hard," Wally agreed. "But I'm also thinking that we can't really punish her for it...unless she does it again. That's more what I'm worried about."

"So should we talk to her about it?" Shine asked him. "To make sure she knows not to spill anything else?"

"Wouldn't she know that just from the team meetings we had?" Wally said. "And that she didn't tell us herself that she already let this stuff slip kind of bothers me. Isn't that more a violation of our trust?"

"In a way...but I could see why she wouldn't want to tell us--we already have her on thin ice," Shine said.

"But it's still selfish not to warn us," Camie said. "I mean...for real, all that could happen to her is you might kick her out. We've got a whole other problem."

"Still, we don't know yet how much damage she's done, if any," Shine said. "And we should probably wait till we know that to assign blame."

Ino hoped for Sakura's sake that it turned out she hadn't told anything that important.

* * *

Day 42:

Sakura didn't get confronted till the next morning, early.

She was not happy to hear that she'd been finked on, as Wally called it, but Shine told her plainly that it was her own fault for letting that slip without securing secrecy.

That did nothing to pacify her.

"So am I out?" she asked tightly.

"No," Shine said, sounding a little tense herself. "Not yet."

"Yet?" Sakura said.

"We discussed it," Wally said, "and with Gaara--uh, he didn't want to ask about it with us because he thought it was indelicate to question you about Tsunade since she's been an ally and all--but he agreed that you didn't break any promise to us since it was in the past, so it would be unfair to kick you out. We do kind of feel like you could have been more discreet, if you used a little common sense to think about why we might not have explained ourselves in the past--but it's not like we explained it clearly."

"Even so, you could have owned up to it," Shine said.

"Can you blame me for not? You're all nasty to me," Sakura defended herself.

"Maybe we are," Shine said. "Maybe you exaggerate how bad it is because you avoid taking responsibility for your actions. Maybe it's both. But whichever it is, it still bothers me that you don't feel any remorse for doing something like this even by accident. I know I would."

"Please, like you wouldn't have done the same if you were me," Sakura said.

"Would I?" Shine tilted her head. "I don't know. I suppose I might tell a trusted person about concerns...but I would have let us know I did it. So we could prepare. That's the thing that bugs us more. It's not what you did before we knew you that well, it's what you're doing now that you know us. "

Sakura couldn't think of a defense for that except, "Well, I knew you would blame me."

"Are we?" Wally asked.

Sakura frowned. "I'm sure the others would... Are you going to tell them all now?"

"No," Shine said. "But I would like to know exactly what you've told Tsunade about us... She indicated that it might be enough to hurt us, if it's taken too seriously anyway. But that could mean anything."

"It's been a long time." Sakura rubbed her arm. "I don't remember everything I told her years ago. I know I did say that you wouldn't force Sasuke to return with us, but that's not a crime...I think...since you weren't working for Leaf Village at the time...technically. But after the war she wanted to know how you found us again. I told her I thought you were contacting some of us. That does seem kind of suspicious...."

"It does," Shine said. "But you knew that we didn't contact the others to learn about ninja stuff. They were just talking to us about life. Nothing that would interest the Kage except that they mentioned things like Gaara's kidnapping--which you would mention to a friend anyway. Also that war, yes, but Temari was desperate. You guys lost half your force in one day. She knew we could help. That's not a bad thing for her to do, and I really don't see how us helping was bad either. We have not stolen secrets from you, we have not forced your hand in any conflicts, and we have not lied to you. We just didn't tell you everything. And why should we? It's our business."

"Well, that's the thing," Sakura said flatly. "Maybe it is your business, but shinobi look into secrets, so if you have any, and we know, we're going to do it."

"So you're saying you won't respect our privacy?" Wally asked.

"I never did any digging about you!" Sakura said. "I didn't even ask Shikamaru or Hinata about you. I didn't want to know. Though I kind of thought they stayed in touch somehow, since they never brought it up or seemed worried that you disappeared, and then when you showed up in the war, I figured you must have been...but I didn't ask. I was hoping you'd stay gone, and now I wish you'd never come!"

She said that last part as an outburst of emotion, and she thought it would get more of a reaction than it did.

But neither of them even blinked.

Even Sakura, who ignored people's feelings a lot, could see that they simply weren't surprised.

Which meant her obvious disdain for them had been just as obvious as intended. For some reason she didn't really feel proud of that now. Just annoyed.

"Well, what do you think, Hon?" Wally turned to Shine.

"I suppose it's as I thought--she didn't mean to do any harm," Shine said, as if Sakura was not there. "I expect this kind of thing from her, but it's not punishable. Except that she didn't come clean of her own volition. That's not technically a rule we gave them, but it does indicate wanting to save face more than protect the team."

"I told Ino." Sakura objected to being accused of not protecting the team--even if she hated them, she did have friends on this team.

"And asked her not to pass it on, but luckily she's smart enough to know that we should be informed so we can be ready," Shine said. "I can't see what we can do about this, but it's good to know what we're up against. All of this depends on how badly Stone wants to defame us. If they don't care enough to press Tsunade for this kind of detail, and she doesn't want to sink us badly enough to mention it, it may not matter. In which case, your behavior in the future will determine how much we trust you. But if this is the reason this goes south, there's nothing we can do about it now. And while we can't punish you, I really doubt you'll enjoy it as much as you think."

"I wasn't trying to bring you down." Sakura was still testy. "You always think the worst of me."

"I think we think about right." Shine shook her head. "You think that we've always thought you were wrong, but it's not true. I've often thought you were right--but your methods for getting there aren't something I support. There's no use being right if you can't act on it."

"Excuse me?" Sakura said.

"At some point, Sakura--" Shine held up her hands like they were a judge's scale. "--you have to learn that knowledge is useless without action. It's not enough that you know how messed up things can be in the ninja world. I remember, you've even acknowledged things like the Uchiha Massacre and how horrible it was--in a way. You know that Naruto is reckless, and you know that we're...unusual. But you spend your time complaining about the problems and thinking that you can't do anything about them. Perhaps you can't, but you haven't actually tried that hard."

"How can you say that?" Sakura said. "I tried to get Sasuke to not leave Leaf. You never acknowledge that... I bet you know about it though, if you know that I said that."

"I know you begged him not to go," Shine said. "And perhaps that's not wrong--but it didn't work. The issue for me is that you kept trying the same thing every time. I change my approach when it fails, till I find one that doesn't--or conclude that the person just doesn't want help. Same with Naruto. You always treat him the same way. Same with everyone else. You complain that you're weak, but the fact is, when your friends do need you, you don't do anything for them because you're afraid to try something different. You say that we're unfair to you--maybe we have been, at times...but other times I think not. I think you just hated it because you couldn't get by with those excuses anymore. Even Sasuke just accepted them instead of calling it out, since he doesn't know any better. But not with us."

Sakura was angry, naturally, but not yelling at her.

"So you want to know our problem?" Shine went on. "It's not that I think you're useless or weak. That's everyone else's excuse. I think you could help, but you won't try. Perhaps if you really listened to what your friends wanted, things could be different."

"Hey, who are you to tell me that?" Sakura said. "You might be some radical after all. Maybe you really are crazy, and maybe you do have uncanny powers. I don't have to listen to you."

"Then why did you join us?" Wally asked her. 

"Why did you let them treat me like that?" Sakura asked. "I mean, Dabi is insufferable to me."

"Why is it only a problem when they do it?" Shine asked. "Not when your own teammates do?"

"Hey! Don't change the subject!" Sakura insisted.

"It's a fair question, isn't it?" Shine asked. "If it's so bad, why only us? Come on, you know perfectly well that we're safer to complain about than they are. You know we won't do anything to you, at least not physically. And yes, the others were very mean to you, but we did talk about it. I can't force them to speak to you a certain way, and I won't micromanage them like that. Still, no one harmed you. Did you extend the same courtesy to us?"

"I think you hurt me by taking away my friends!" Sakura shot back. "Is that what you're trying to do? You want everyone to like you and follow you. No matter how much we've done to try to help them, you think you're better."

Wally looked like he was trying not to laugh.

"Is that funny to you?" Sakura demanded.

"Oh...sorry, no, I just thought... I mean, is that really what you think?" Wally said. "Because it's way off of what I think."

"Sakura, be realistic," Shine said, instead of getting angrier. "We'll go back home eventually--perhaps sooner rather than later at this rate--and you can have your chance with them again. We even allowed you to join us so you could have a fair chance now to help."

Sakura somehow had never thought of it that way in all this time and looked stunned.

"And you've never thanked us for it," Shine added, warmly. "Or even acknowledged that we were being fair to let that happen. What? You think we couldn't have stopped you from joining us? we invited you from the start. It was your choice to wait a week or so, and we didn't kick you out over that incident on the mountain, when we could have. Because we've tried to be fair. To give you the same chance as everyone else to prove you want to help. Was all this just to make you look bad? Please. You don't need our help for that."

"Hey!" Sakura cried.

"It was blunt, but it's true," Wally agreed. "Sorry, kid, but most of the stuff people complain about you doing you've been told before is a problem. The anger, the violence, the fact that you don't let stuff go....we're just the first ones to act like it's serious."

"So you're doing me some favor by that?" Sakura fumed.

"Maybe not." Shine shrugged. "But we're real. Come on, did you give us a chance to begin with? You remember that we did help you the first time we're here, too. Did you thank us for that? Really, what did you not bring on yourself here? But even if you have a reason to resent us, we're still not shying away from letting you have your voice here. If it comes to it, the thing we needed from you was honesty, and that's where I'm not sure we can trust you. No one made you be here, so if you were going to be, that meant accepting our authority. That's just how it works. Not undermining us by trying to get Sasuke to quit."

"How did you know--" Sakura broke off, realizing she shouldn't have admitted it.

Shine and Wally looked at her stoically.

"How...did you find out?" Sakura said. "I mean, not that I really was...exactly...." She trailed off. Even he knew that was BS. "Well, did he tell you?"

"I'm not a fool." Shine rolled her eyes. "I caught plenty of your side conversations. Even if I didn't hear them, I knew he got worked up afterwards. And plenty of what you did say to us showed it also. It wasn't subtle. And you complain about us all the time, to the others as well as to our faces. This is not good team behavior. But we didn't talk to you about it because you weren't willing to hear us. I did scold you that one time in Mist...but I didn't see any change of behavior after that."

"You expect me to change because you told me off?" Sakura said. "Because you told me I didn't know what love was? What should I do with that?"

"I did also mention that you didn't have any regard for what we've been through," Shine said. "Or what your teammates have done to us or our friends. and since you never did acknowledge that afterward, I knew you didn't take what I said to heart. Now, maybe you didn't like how I said it, but a fair person would consider if I had a point even if I was angry. And I do get angry also, Sakura, I'll admit that openly. But in my anger, I still try to be just. No one is perfectly fair and honest at all times, but some of us are working on getting better--and some of us are making excuses not to listen."

Sakura was stung yet again.

"I also think," Wally spoke again, "that while we were a bit tough on you, you have made it hard on even the people who weren't, like your friend Ino. So it was hard to feel sorry for you when you'd just bully your friends as much as your enemies in the team--or more, even, because they would let you. I don't really like that in a person. I can't help it."

"Perhaps the real issue is that we didn't talk about this weeks ago," Shine admitted. "We wanted to give you a chance to adjust, and I thought maybe you would eventually come to see that cooperation made more sense than conflict did. I guess I still hope that will happen, but, if hearing all this has made you think that you can't work with us, then I understand. You don't have to anymore. Your reputation could suffer if you get implicated in our group's mission and it does become an object of scorn to the villages. And since you never supported us, it's not really fair to make you join in that censure. So you can go, or you can just work for Tsunade exclusively and I'll understand. There's no reason to blame you for doing the smart thing if you don't feel you can be at home in our team. You stuck it out for this long. Maybe that's long enough to know it won't work."

"Wait, wait, you're just going to quit like that?" Sakura said. "You're not going to try to talk me into staying, like Sasuke?"

"Uh...what did you think we've been doing this whole time?" Wally said.

Sakura glanced at him blankly.

"Sakura, all we have is the truth," Shine said. "Whether I say it as a riddle or a story or outright, it's the truth. And we've told you the truth now. You may hate us for it, or you may find that it clears things up...but either way, what else can we do? If you don't think that's us making you an offer, then you don't understand us as well as Sasuke does. I think he's figured out now that this is how we communicate. Ask him if you're not convinced."

Yeah, that would happen, Sakura thought to herself. She was mad at Sasuke right now anyway...and that was a whole other issue she was confused about.

"So I think that's all we can say, right?" Wally asked Shine. "Not much left to talk about."

"I have nothing else," Shine said. "Other than, if this is the end of our time together, I do want to apologize for any time we have crossed a line. Sometimes it's difficult to know when that is. I can admit that."

"And I guess I would say we are thankful for the things you did to help us." Wally rubbed his head. "I mean, it was still helpful, even if we were fighting the rest of the time. So...uh, no hard feelings... And I wish you the best if you do decide you're done. I guess the rest is up to you, kid."

Sakura did not like it being up to her.

But she perceived that it was pointless to demand they talk any more about it.

[Well, she's got a lot to think about.

Wherever you fall on the Sakura debate, and even if you think that in this case she wasn't guilty of anything wrong, you have to admit that it's a tricky situation.

The show never explored the real conflicts of Sakura being caught between Naruto and Sasuke--they just used it to make her more helpless, so this is a new thing.]