A/N: this is a little taste, or simply, a gift to wet your appetites and alert you to the fact that I have returned and will be updating this story. Which, true to its time leaps and erratic narrative voice, has been a bitch to pick back up the thread of. I hope you guys who still care, enjoy. Also apologies to everyone who's been waiting for updates, i'm sorry for being my trash self. anyway, excuses aside. i have come back. for what it's worth.

i also have other fics, if u like them, show 'em some love, I miiiiiight be tempted to update 'bang bang bang' just coz of how much fun I had writing that one. I hope the three fics that I have prove that I'm able to vacillate peculiarly (if pleasantly) before completely different tones and types of story-voice.

also anyone who's interested in otome gaming check out my profile

but otherwise...i really missed writing this fic, and i am so happy that you guys are able to somehow sift through all the nonesensical grammar and crazy shit to connect with this fic. thank you!

updated A/N as of 18.01.2020: most of you received this chapter really well and in the way I intended, but enough people were hella mad/heated about this particular chapter and I had to remember that I am an old fandom grandma and the 'omake' style of chapter updates is sadly lost on some because it is simply not something we see anymore these days in fic. Guys who want to take this chapter as cannon law (within the fic's cannon of course), you are welcome to do so! Others who felt MadT because this chapter was stupid, I don't know what more to say to you. It's a stupid chapter. That's the point. But I got a few messages of Utter Hatred for this and I felt a little awkward so I just wanted to clarify coz it's Not That Deep. Anyway this is fic, it's not above sucking. But this chapter is meant to be a funny mood-lightener. If it made you wanna be an arsonist then ok. But that's Sasuke's job so please contact him first.

"Well," the Fifth declared abruptly. "It's about time I fucked off."

Sakura's brows lowered and her eyes scrunched, her chin dimpled and her mouth thinned long and...disgusted. "Huh," she said through lips twisted up in disdain. "Couldn't pass off the hat fast enough?"

Tsunade brought her fist down hard, clattering all the sake-cups at this polite tea house they were visiting this night. The war was still fresh and it had recently reopened after rebuilding. Having the Fifth in was meant to be an honor, her students tried not to wince on behalf of the manager who had wisely retreated into the cellars so they could have some privacy. "Listen, you disrespectful runt!" Shizune sighed in long-suffering as their superior drunkenly began to struggle to expound about the validity of her views, before typically, losing her train of thought. "Anyway, yeah. I'm going. Kakashi's been inaugurated, and I've suffered enough. It's time for me to go back to my travels."

"Only half of your travels were about taking a holiday, the other half was just running from debt collectors," Shizune said remorselessly, and with timing perfected over thousand such gatherings lifted her palm serenely so Sakura could Amen and Hi-5 and Damn Straight this righteous no-phone-just-fax burn. "Tsunade-sama, this is...unwise. I will not be there to..." babysit "...assist you."

"I don't know how much soul-searching you need anyway," Sakura added. "didn't you already do that enough? for like a long-ass time already?"

"I can't keep looking after you guys."

Shizune and Sakura exchanged narrow-eyed glances of sour disbelief.

"It's time for you to stand on your own two feet."

Sakura raised her hand.

"No."

Shizune raised her hand.

"...I'll allow it." Tsunade said.

"This is surprising and sudden," Shizune said a lot more diplomatically than Sakura would have - the drunker Tsunade got the more dangerous she was, the drunker Sakura got the less respectful of the authority she became. Drunk Sakura was a Spinning Wheel of Dangerous Variables on a Family Game Show. It was up to her (Shizune) a True Saint, to mediate and direct this conversation before it could fall into misunderstandings and educational brawling. "You've done a lot of great work and the rebuilding would have been impossible without you of course..."

"Of course."

"But...we cannot stand to lose you this early, Tsunade-sama. Naruto will need mentoring, Kakashi will lead sensibly as he is able but Naruto could stand to learn from your direct guidance as well as Kakashi-san's."

"Female energy," Sakura declared suddenly, pressing this point, slapping at the table to punctuate each word. "We. need. female. energy! All Kakashi knows is angst and dirty books."

"Sakura, please be less bitter."

"Impossible."

"Anyway!" Shizune went on ignoring Sakura's cartoon-cat hiss of vehement refusal, in order to be the only one (evidently) with a brain. Determined to not to be distracted, firmly refusing to let everyone go off on tangents, Shizune managed herself. "Tsunade-sama, please don't go."

Tsunade thought about it hard, nose between her hands.

She came to a decision.

"Denied."

She struck the table once.

A fissure snaked through the surface like lightning.

The table was made of construction-level concrete.

"Anyway, been nice knowing you and whatever," Tsunade said. "but I've got a male-harem to acquire in preferably tropical locales, I also heard of this casino slash beach slash hotel slash nudist colony in the Land of Sun or whatever it is they're calling themselves to gather tourists to them."

"Well, it worked," Shizune muttered unpleasantly.

"I don't get iiiiit," Sakura failed in whispering, wildly wondering. "if they're naked where do they keep their money?"

"You can't be going around collecting men, it's not age-appropriate either." Shizune admonished her mentor, disappointed "also there's a power imbalance, you should be more aware of abusing that! Why, if a man had said such, it'd be deplorable indeed!"

"Also, they invented this thing called the ninjanet." Sakura abandoned the mystery of the naked people finances in favor of trying to soothingly reason with her crazy mentor. "It won't be dignified at all seeing you butt nekkid on someone's kunaichat, you are the Fifth Hokage!"

"This whole technology shit is a bubble that's gonna pop, it won't last. You'll see." Tsunade sniffed. "And stop babying me! Know your places! Since when did you young folk become so boring, I don't need this kind of negativity in my life, especially when it's coming from washed-up hags who just haven't been Getting Any. You're all just projecting in a major way, and it's making you ugly."

It was obvious to the two mentees that their superior was In A Crisis.

You could not reason with Crazy People, you had to huddle down and shelter, and wait the Crazy out.

And Tsunade was in her I Do What I Want crazies, it was best to just nod along until you could find a moment to distract her and get her drunk enough to remember other priorities. Bait and Switch. With sake. She'd forget about it in the morning, suffering a crazy hangover she'd be too tired to remember she could heal. And this Crisis would have Passed.

Anyway, Sakura and Shizune woke up the next day to find they had made a Mistake.

Tsunade had fucked off bright and early. She had even left a letter calling them Bumm Bitches Harshing her Mellow with their Excessive and Unearned Mom-ing.

"That's unfair," Shizune frowned, opening up the conversation again about a week later when Sakura had visited on the rare (1/1000 likelihood of happening) days when their off-shift hours aligned. Sakura had come to force-feed Shizune her Frankenstein creations, having been Rage Baking to deal with whatever it was she was dealing with that week. "I don't think I'm a Bum Bitch and why does everyone think I'm the Mom-one? Because I value Emotional Intelligence instead of just having Ego where Emotional Intelligence should be? And just because I have a higher IQ than you guys? Especially when it comes to making decisions that require sanity and rationality, instead of operating solely on feelings of Vague Angst?"

"That's exactly why," Sakura said sympathetically as Shizune shrugged in favour of scrolling through her clunky phone. "I can't believed she called me a Bum bitch though. Like what does that even mean? I'm consulting the slang and is it meant to be like...homeless or...lame? I'm not homeless though? And yeah, I have been a bit of a loser lately but like I'm Owning it, I'm Comfortable With It, it's My Brand...what's gotten into her? She doesn't have to be just going On The Attack like that. Damn."

Sakura was too distracted to forget not to much on the burnt corners of the brownies she'd brought Shizune, and stuck her tongue out 'blegh'ing.

"Gross. Hey. My mom thinks I'm training to be a House Wife. Joke's on her, coz Men Are Poison. if I wanna have any savings I'm gonna need to eat out less. Lol, get it, Shizune? Eat out?...Look, can you stop looking at your phone for one second and just laugh at my dumb innuendos, my self-esteem is suffering and I'm about two unbearable 24 hour shifts and three more failed jokes from running away to Suna to force a handsome, oil-rich sheikh to marry me."

"Insensitive. Problematic. Too Ambitious. Kinda racist."

"That's like the main plot of every trash romance I've been reading lately. Also, we would fall in lurve first. And yeah, I know like, Jiraiya's the great Sannin and people live and die over his books. But like...I've been reading better? And Sheikh Romances? That's where it's at. There's a huge market for it. It kind of dances the line between cultural fetishization and just plain old fashioned racism, but when those crazy romance writers get it right, boyyy do they get it right, Shizune. And there's plot to go with that erotica. I like Jiraiya-sama's stuff but at this point...isn't it just nostalgia? Like it's got a lot of sentimentality in it, but yoooo that purple prose is too perfume-y. That prose? Is Not Aging well. Kakashi-sensei can meet me in the goddamn pit but I said what I said. And! You're...not listening... Shizune? Shizune, don't tell me you've become one of those sad people who use technology as a crutch in social situations. You won't even - "

" - eat your radioactive brownies?"

"Wowwwwww."

"I'm just glad you're reading."

"Well! My schedule doesn't make it easy, you know! So laugh it up. Reading this trash is about as close to self-care as I get in this here environment like I already have so much shit happening in my life that I can't even process emotionally, let alone physically. Nevermind that I've suppressed everything to the level that I can't even function like a normal human being. Everyone around me is just as (if not even moar) dysfunctional, which, while fair, is immensely inconvenient to me and I'm allowed to be selfish, ok? It's not like I'm flush with emotional sounding boards I can yell at! Are you gonna leave me too, huh, Shizune? Are you gonna just up and go and become a connoisseur of international dick? Like why couldn't Tsunada-shishou just be normal and tell us in advance, and waited a little. We could have thrown her a chique party and made it like fun and sentimental and nice, we could have been like those cute girls in those city romcomsitcoms, and given gifts and sent her off with our blessings. It would have been nice. It would have been perfect! But No! That's what a normal assortment of people would do! We certainly can't have that! So between my team's bullshit, this rebuilding crap, the romantic non-drama that's busy Not Happening in my life, the endless hospital shifts, my complex about being a valuable member of society and a valued member of a team that might as well just be called the Serial Ghosters - I now have our mentor, the woman we're supposed to get advice and reassurance from, just up and fuck off. Now I have to just Adult this shit and bother you, and force feed you crap I don't even wanna eat let alone make because now I'm an Adult who has to pay bills, get tired and try, and can't afford to eat her favourite take out every single meal and sufficiently stave off debt at the same time. So yeah, maybe I read a trashy book once in a while so I can at least have some purple-romantic-cliche shit to wash away the medical tomes and poison indexes that I've burned into the insides of my eyeballs. And yeah, a Bitch is Reading! So yeah, maybe I deserve better than that! But I'll tell you what, it's something I can have right now - before I go absolutely bat shit! It's something to stave off my madness, to make this crap bearable! Do you know how hard it is being me? Wow, that sounds vain - but boy, setting how it sounds aside, seriously! It's hard! But you can just laugh snidely with your deadpan face and your fucking stellar enviable comedic timing about me reading. Just laugh it up, Shizune! Haaaa! You can just - "

"Iwa." Shizune said plainly.

"What?"

"Tsunade's in Iwa."

"I thought you were searching definitions for Bum Bitch." Sakura's rubbed at her temples, tired. And then she squinted. "but...how do you know that?"

Shizune flashed her phone-screen at her younger contemporary. Sakura was, for the first time in about forever, struck absolutely silent.

Shizune's expression was calm, if empty-eyed, she had been exasperated constantly by the people around her that she could only turn cold and dead at these new problems.

If anyone needed a holiday it was Shizune.

"I can't." Sakura said. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Indeed, she could not.

It was up to Shizune to Can, as it always was, even in the face of tremendously difficult situations that challenged her very ability to Can.

"What..." Sakura tried somehow. "What?"

"That is the Fifth Hokage at a Rave," Shizune supplied, heroically dead to this shit. "in Iwa, throwing up gang signs with the Raikage."

"That is an...interesting use of...neon paint."

"Interesting is a word."

"50,000 likes on ninjagram."

"I'm...tired, Sakura." Shizune said. "I am going to go to sleep. And then I am going to write the Fifth Hokage a Very Strongly-Worded Email."

Sakura had received a few Strongly-Worded Emails from Shizune in her day, and the memory of them was withering enough as was without the Very. "Uh," she said meekly.

"Yes." Shizune said. "I am going to go to sleep."

"I won't disturb you," Sakura said rushedly. "Even if the sky is falling."

"There's more romance in your wording than I've had from a man in a year," Shizune said with a thousand-yard stare at Absolutely Nothing. "But appreciated. Good night."

It was one in the afternoon, but Sakura accepted this rearrangement of the hours because she did not want to Die. "Good night."

Shizune escorted Sakura to the exit impassively and shut the door of her apartment on the young medic.

A whole year?

Sakura listened to the summer birds tweeting and quietly, quietly crept away.

Damn.