The idea had come to Sakura shortly after the incident in Suna where she had extracted posion from Kankuro and used the Suna greenhouse to make an antidote. Upon looking through the greenhouse to find the exact plants she needed for her life-giving concoction she'd found Cannabis, better known in the shadier circles as 'weed', 'pot', or 'marijuana'.
She'd later asked the head medic about its presence to find the hospital used it on patients that were in immense pain with no chance of recovering. This 'purely educational' conversation had then lead to how to grow and maintain it along with its dosing. And then with a little effort Sakura managed to convince them to send a little back with her to grow it in Konoha's greenhouse's and use for medicinal purposes.
Unfortunately, or fortunately for Sakura, after testing from Tsunade and herself they realized that the drugs that the hospital normally stocked worked much better which left Sakura with a moderate amount of the plant and nothing to do with it. It was then that Sakura had come up with the perfect was to 'dispose' of it. After checking that Konoha had no laws prohibiting the distribution of said substance she began operation SWAGER: Sell Weed And Get Extremely Rich.
She started with in the alleyway between T&I headquarters and the Anbu offices. Kami knew that those were the people who needed it most and it was where both buildings' smokers came to indulge in their guilty pleasure. Being smokers already, none of them had any problems smoking a different substance especially when she told them about the bonus effects.
After the first week she'd had more money than she knew what to do with and but a small portion aside to help her enlarge her supply in the greenhouse as well as pay a small bit to the greenhouse's gardener so that they would not complain about the strange plant being grown in the corner.
Two months went by and she had a system. Once a week she would stop by the smoker's alley to deal and every other week she would stop by the shadier part of the civilian district to sell to regular folks what she had left over from her shinobi buyers.
It was sometime in the third month when she was pulled aside by a visiting dignitary from Kumo. She'd just exited Tsunade's office after delivering finished paperwork from the hospital when and older gentleman in his mid-50s asked if she'd be so kind as to help him with something. She'd walked him back to the hotel where visiting dignitaries and shinobi stayed and found that he'd learned from one of his Anbu who'd gone to Smoker's Alley that she sold a special leave.
She'd then revamped her schedule to where she went to Smoker's Alley twice a week, the hotel once a week, and down to the civilian district every other week. From there she had worked up enough clientele to keep her pockets fairly full, yet small enough to not draw attention to herself, as well as a close rapport of buyers who were incredibly loyal to her as they were afraid to lose their dealer. An interesting loyalty that brings us to Sakura's current situation.
Sakura would've liked to say that the day had started out fine. She would've liked to. Unfortunately, the day had started out as shit and had gotten consistently worse as the day ran on. She woke up late for their mission, got made fun of by Kakashi of all people for being late, and then found out that their mission was to Kumo of all places. Relationship between the village of Leaf and Cloud were still tense and her ever so intelligent Shishou had decided to send Naruto of all people along, they were going to die. Then Sai and Naruto couldn't quit bickering. Yamato was accidently encouraging them and Kakashi wasn't doing a single thing about it.
Their stupid amount of noise was how they'd been caught by surprise by a group of non-shinobi bandits.
Naruto immediately rushed forward with an attack followed by Sai. Yamato had jumped into the fray and just as Sakura was about to jump in Kakashi had stopped her, "We don't want you getting hurt, Sakura," and he ran off. Sakura huffed and swore under her breath, but stayed back like her Sensei had asked.
In about five minutes the bandits had five shinobi lined up and loaded crossbows in their faces.
Sakura hung her head, "You know I'm honestly not surprised by this the way this day has been going."
"It's not like you were any help, Ugly."
"I was ordered by Kakashi to stay behind. Besides it's not my fault that all you guys suck at strategy. The first thing I would've done would've punched the ground," she ignored the 'typical' muttered from one of her teammates and continued, "which would've scattered them and cause them to drop their weapons instead of just charging in and getting caught with a crossbow aimed at the back."
The silence was thick and gave perfect opening for the bandits' leaders to make their appearance. "Well look who we have boys. It's Copy Cat Kakashi, and that weird kid with whiskers from the bingo book. Looks like we've got a pay day comin'."
Huh, that voice sounds kinda familiar, Sakura thought, but she didn't dare look up yet as her head was lowered so her cloak covered her hair and face to hide the fact that she was a woman and the hokage's apprentice. A stronger gust of wind came and moved the hood a bit. No! Bad wind! Stop, she thought, hoping that the yammering leader wouldn't notice her colored hair.
The wind picked up again and this time her hood was blown back completely. Shit, she thought as the leader stopped talking.
"Ayo, its Sakura-chan." What? She popped her head up to look at the leader. Oh she remembered him, he was one of her semi regulars from the civilian districted that came by every month. "You should've said something girl. Hey these guys they're with Sakura-chan," he called to his men as he came over to undo her bonds himself. "Man that that shit you sold me was cash. The best I've ever had. That's saying something because we go through all the nations on business and yours is the best out of all of them," he continued talking.
What was his name? 'Ex' something. Mex? Bex? Drex! "Only the best for my customers, Drex-san," she smiled up at him which was apparently the right thing to do as he grinned big.
"Sorry about all of this, we'll make sure not to catch any of your guys again, though normally we never actually get any ninja."
Sakura watched some of the other bandits eye their leader distastefully, after all they had just been relieved of their paycheck and pulled a few packages out of her pack, "Here have some of these to share around, I feel awful about this," she lied in an attempt assuage the bandits' anger. Drex grinned and they completed the handshake favored by the more questionable inhabitants of the civilian district. Palm slap, back of the hand slap, fist bump and their interaction was completed.
"Until next time, Sakura-chan," Drex called out as he led his company in the direction that they five some had previously come from.
Sakura then began to untie her companions' bonds, ignoring their incredulous stares.
Kakashi stared at her "What just happened?"
"Business," she retorted sharply then motioned them to follow her as they made to go after the bandits, "Come on we need to make it to Kumo by tomorrow evening." Thankfully they relented, but she knew that they'd have questions that she'd have to answer eventually.