Chapter 24: The Monkey King
BOOOOOM!!!
The entire Third Training Ground felt like it had just been hit by a localized earthquake.
The earth split. Dirt and stone went flying. Centered on Sakura's tiny pink form, fissures spread out across the ground like a spiderweb!
Several of the massive surrounding trees toppled over. The lake that had been sitting peacefully nearby actually poured in to fill the cracks!
Hiruzen Sarutobi, eyes wide and white with shock, was crouched on top of a tree some distance away, staring down at the carnage.
That was way too goddamn familiar...
If he hadn't personally known Sakura's family background, he'd have been dead certain this pink-haired terror was Tsunade's secret love child!
Sakura was breathing hard, feeling the chakra in her body emptying out in the wake of that single punch.
In the future, if she ever had to fight someone for real, she needed to be careful with her chakra economy unless she was certain she could finish things in one hit.
After all — getting hit in the head with a hundred-pound iron block versus a ten-pound iron block didn't really matter to the recipient. They were dead either way. The corpse was just slightly more upsetting in the first case.
"Huh? Master?"
Sakura looked up and squinted.
"What are you doing all the way up there?"
She actually waved at him.
The instant Sakura's fist had started its descent, Hiruzen's instincts had screamed at him and he had bolted — straight up the nearest tree without so much as a glance back. He had been very, very afraid that her tiny pink fist was about to send him on an early visit to have tea with the First Hokage.
"S-Sakura. Next time you're going to demonstrate your Enhanced Strength at that kind of level, you let your old master know in advance, all right?" Hiruzen surveyed the wreckage of the training ground with a faintly pained expression. "These old bones of mine can't handle that kind of treatment."
"But Master, you're the one who said full power."
She tilted her head at him.
"And there wasn't really anything around here worth hitting."
Sakura looked at him with absolute, earnest sincerity.
Hiruzen: 〇_〇
"Yes. Well. All right then."
He decided, very firmly, that this conversation was over.
What had he been thinking, asking an Enhanced Strength user to show him how strong she really was?
That said — for a girl her age to have already mastered Enhanced Strength to this degree, "prodigy" wasn't even the right word anymore. The technique might as well have been designed for this child.
Looking down at the little pink-haired girl, Hiruzen's memory of a young Tsunade slowly began to overlap with the image of Sakura standing in front of him.
"Sakura. Now that I've decided to take you on as my disciple, there's one technique that I, your old master, insist you learn."
He shook the legendary slot-machine-loving spectre out of his head and refocused on the actual girl in front of him.
"What technique?"
Sakura tilted her head, a little curious.
Hiruzen bit his thumb and started running through hand seals, one after the other.
When she saw what he was doing, Sakura's expression went briefly slack.
The Summoning Technique?
The old man wants to pass the Monkey clan to me??
But — but she might have already signed a contract with the Slugs by now!
It wasn't that the Monkey clan was weak. Far from it. The Monkey clan had been personally acknowledged by Orochimaru himself as the strongest summoning beasts in existence.
And Orochimaru, mind you, was the one who had personally laid eyes on all three of the so-called Sacred Lands.
The Toads of Mount Myōboku. The Slugs of Shikkotsu Forest. The Snakes of the Ryūchi Cave.
In Orochimaru's estimation, not one of them measured up to the Monkey King.
The Monkey King had a body of literal Adamantine, and could transform into a giant staff.
When you really thought about it... Enhanced Strength plus a giant staff actually had kind of a vibe to it.
But that wasn't the point, dammit!
What if she signed a contract with the Monkeys and the next time she tried to summon one, she pulled a slug out instead?!
Sakura's brain spun frantically, and a finger of pure decisiveness shot up inside her head.
There was only one option.
Strike first.
Hiruzen was running the seals slowly — deliberately slowly, so that Sakura could see each hand sign clearly.
Boar — Dog — Bird — Monkey — Ram—
He completed the sequence and slammed his palm down on the ground.
"Summoning Technique! Monkey King!"
BOOM!
A violent burst of white smoke erupted from the ground, and a hulking silhouette with arms folded across its chest loomed over Sakura's small body.
"Hiruzen! Today's enemy is... a little girl?"
The Monkey King's deep, rumbling voice came rolling out before the smoke had even cleared. Then he actually got a proper look at Sakura, and his serious expression slipped clean off his face.
The smoke dissipated, revealing him in full.
A Konoha forehead protector across his brow. A massively built frame draped in leather armor. White fur, a long white tail, and standing at least two meters tall.
Yeah. That was a white-haired monkey, all right.
"This is my new disciple. Cute, isn't she?"
Hiruzen had the distinct air of an old man showing off to an old friend.
"Hm? Sakura doesn't look the slightest bit surprised. Did you already know the Monkey King was your old master's summon?"
He was a little disappointed, frankly. He'd been hoping for at least a dropped jaw.
"Wow~"
"Master has a really big monkey~"
Sakura played her part with impeccable timing.
"..."
Hiruzen looked at the visibly fake expression on the little girl's face and felt his own face fall.
"BWAHAHAHAHA! Hiruzen, this new disciple of yours is interesting!"
The Monkey King, on the other hand, was roaring with laughter. He didn't seem the least bit bothered by being called a "monkey."
"Ahem. Sakura. This is my old comrade and friend, the Monkey King. The two of you should get along well from now on."
Listening to his old friend speak, Enma — the Monkey King — caught on immediately.
Ah. He's choosing a successor.
None of Hiruzen's previous students — Tsunade, Orochimaru, Jiraiya — had ever been the one to inherit the Monkey clan contract.
This little girl was the one Hiruzen had finally chosen.
Enma had no objections to that whatsoever.
A doddering old man on one hand. A bright, lively little girl on the other. Anyone with eyes could tell which way to bet.
And besides — she was Hiruzen's chosen successor. On top of which, Enma couldn't sense even a trace of the kind of darkness in this child that had once clung to Orochimaru.
When it came to reading people, frankly, the Monkey King considered himself rather more reliable than Hiruzen Sarutobi.
"My name's Sakura Haruno. Mister Monkey King... sir?"
She held out a small hand, then visibly hesitated over the honorific.
"BWAHAHAHA! Just call me by name, none of that 'sir' or 'lord' nonsense. It rubs me the wrong way." He thumped one massive fist against his chest. "I am the chieftain of the Monkey clan. Enma, the Monkey King."
Enma dropped down into a casual cross-legged seat, and even sitting like that, his enormous frame still towered well above Sakura's head.
"From here on, I look forward to working with you, Sakura."
He extended one paw — a hand bigger than her entire skull — and very gently closed it around her small hand.
Hiruzen stood off to the side, smiling at the scene with the satisfaction of a man whose plans were coming together perfectly. Then he turned to Enma.
"In that case, why don't we have Sakura try summoning some of the other monkeys from your clan? Just bring out the scro—"
He didn't even get the word scroll fully out of his mouth before he heard a sharp, clear little chant.
"Summoning Technique!"
!!!
Sakura's entire body vanished into a puff of white smoke right in front of one man and one monkey.
"Oh — oh no—"
"We are so screwed!"
The Third Hokage and the Monkey King stared, dumbstruck, at the empty space where Sakura had just been standing.