It started out as what should've been one of the easiest missions of Sakura's shinobi career.
A daimyo had fallen ill and requested a medic attend to his sickness. Any medic would've done, even non-shinobi ones, since the severity of his illness was akin to something only slightly worse than a cold.
But the daimyo specifically requested Sakura. Only the best of the best for a man of his stature, he claimed. And while under normal circumstances, the request would've been refused considering Konoha's best medic had more important matters to attend to than a daimyo with the sniffles, they couldn't.
After the war, Konoha found itself in desperate need of money. And the daimyo was offering enough that Sakura couldn't refuse, nor could the current acting Hokage, Kakashi. So in spite of the fact such a mission was far, far below Sakura's current level, she went.
It should've been in and out. It shouldn't have taken her more than two weeks. All the mission entailed was grinding up some herbal concoctions for the daimyo to swallow down and putting the man to sleep. He was back on his feet before Sakura could even say 'this is a waste of my time'.
But as always, she ran into trouble on the way back. It was always the easy missions that ended in such disaster. It seemed to be a running theme with members of Team 7.
She'd been running via treetop, trying to urge her legs to work faster so she could get home sooner. There was a new poison she was just dying to play around with and the daimyo had ket her away for too long.
But as she ran, she noticed in the corner of her eye something coming straight at her head. It wasn't very quick or particularly hard, so Sakura had enough time to pull out a kunai and counter the projectile.
She narrowed her eyes into the canopy of trees. Whoever attacked her wasn't very skilled, but they were good at hiding. After a long moment of scanning, a figure emerged from beneath the trees. They were cloaked in a black sheet, their face obscured.
A masculine voice emerged, "I thought you were supposed to be the weak one."
"You thought wrong," Sakura replied. "What do you want?"
"No harm in admitting it, my initiative is to get rid of you," the figure said.
"You're doing a great job so far," Sakura said.
"No. I suppose I could do better," the figure chuckled. Then he struck, throwing a barrage of weapons. And it was pathetic. There weren't many who could best Sakura in combat, but the figure's attempts were just sad. He couldn't even come close. He didn't even stand a chance. His moves were slow and sloppy, hardly worth caring about or even noticing.
Unimpressed, Sakura hopped down from the tree. She used chakra to cushion her fall and the ground crumbled a bit under her feet. She backhanded a shuriken bumbling toward her.
The figure flinched slightly as she began to approach them, her hands fisted.
"If you're going to play ninja," Sakura said, "don't play with the big leagues."
Perhaps it was out of pity, since her attacker was clearly at genin level, but rather than punching his head clean off, her hand shot out with precision to hit the figure where she knew there to be a pressure point, chakra congealing on her fingers. It should've been enough to knock them out, had her fingers connected entirely. Instead, as her hand dipped underneath the robe, the figure managed to move just ever so slightly. Enough that her efforts would've been excruciating, but not enough to knock out. The figure fell to their knees, hissing and holding their hand up to their neck.
"Huh?" Sakura muttered. Her fingers tingled. Her attention snapped entirely to her hand, specifically the hand she used to attempt knocking out her attacker with. At first glance, it didn't seem like much, after a moment longer, she noticed something. The very ends of her fingers seemed to be crumbling away. Her fingers were turning into dust before her very eyes. "Wh-What the hell?"
She attempted to draw more chakra to her hand, but as soon as she did so, her entire hand crackled and burst into ash. She stared at the stump in muted horror. After that, she should've been bleeding profusely, but she wasn't. The rest of her arm just continued crumbling away.
"More chakra just makes the process go by quicker," the figure said.
"Wh-What's happening to me?" Sakura asked. She backed away from the figure, staring at her arm in muted horror as more of it continued to waste away.
"I told you, my initiative is to get rid of you," the figure replied. "Admittedly, I didn't think I'd have to use that, but, well...it's working, isn't it?"
She didn't understand what was happening to her. She couldn't get home fast enough to get help. She couldn't summon Katsuyu without using chakra and risking her very being crumbling away. There was nothing Sakura could do. Except one small, insignificant thing. Something that, at the very least, would make her feel better.
She hadn't been able to knock this person out, but perhaps there was something else she could do. Sakura charged chakra to her foot, considering it to be a better option at the moment. Both of her arms exploded into ash up to her forearms.
"What are you doing?" the figure exclaimed, still unable to move from their knees. "You're making it go faster!"
"I don't care," Sakura hissed. "I won't die alone."
The figure, in spite of their incredible ability, really was a pretty shit ninja. When Sakura's foot slammed into where their head should've been, the attack connected. Their head flew clean off, out of the black robes, and deep, deep into the trees of fire country. She only saw a split second of their appearance, light blond hair was all she saw. After her attack, Sakura's arms crumbled away up to her shoulders and her feet fell apart beneath her.
With the loss of her feet, Sakura collapsed onto the forest floor, unable to use her arms to catch herself. There was nothing more she could do, but watch herself fade away.
If she activated her yin seal, it could just speed up the process. Then again, if she was going to die anyway, maybe speeding it up a bit wouldn't hurt. It was just a chance.
Activating anything without hand signs was difficult, but as the mistress of chakra control, Sakura could do it. She felt the release of chakra from her seal, then a split second as she saw the rest of her body crumble away with incredible speed, then nothing.
Well, not quite nothing. Her time in the dark could've been anything from an eternity to a millisecond, but sight returned to her. None of her other senses, but she could see what laid before her. A dimly lit room. She could only make out a few shapes. The outline of a bed, a plush couch, and a man. The man was illuminated the most out of everything in the room.
There was a thin scar outlined around the entirety of his neck. It looked as though it had been haphazardly attached to another's body, which Sakura knew firsthand wasn't possible. A tattoo, perhaps? Like the purplish star tattooed on my man's shoulder. In the darkness, Sakura could only see a bit of shiny blond hair outlined by the moonlight.
And the man's body, well, that was clear as day. He had the kind of muscles any shinobi would've envied. Not good if one wanted to fit in, but one couldn't help admire the raw power the man must've possessed with muscles like those.
"Hm?" a smooth voice emitted from, presumably, the man. He shifted slightly, turning his head towards Sakura. She still couldn't see his eyes. "Someone's watching me. Joestars again?"
Joestars? Just what were those?
"Heh," the man continued. "It's useless. I, Dio, will win in the end."
He turned around completely. His eyes glowed reddish orange in the darkness, sparking like hot coals in a fire. And the world went dark again.
The next time Sakura awoke, she actually could feel her body, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. She ached all over and she tingled. Her body stung. She could barely think, let alone move. When she opened her eyes, there was only a blinding white light. Presumably, her eyes would adjust. But Sakura didn't like being helpless and her last few memories didn't really give her a lot of hope.
Best course of action was to get some chakra pumping through her veins.
It was only then that Sakura realized she couldn't feel her chakra. At all. There was nothing. And under normal circumstances, Sakura should've either been dead or very close to it, but in spite of her pain, she was very much alive. Even with chakra restraints, she could still feel a bit trickling through her coils. Even before she knew how to access her chakra, she could feel it.
This was complete nothingness. And Sakura had never felt more empty. Resisting the urge to panic and hyperventilate since that wouldn't get her anywhere, Sakura closed her eyes and tried listening instead. There was quite a bit of noise, something she noticed even with the disorientation she felt after awakening. What was important was differentiating.
A dog barking. Footsteps. Mindless chatter, though Sakura couldn't pinpoint any specific words. Machinery. Wind. Good, that was good. This all meant she was in a public area. Was there anything else? Smells. It smelled dirty and the air seemed thick and smoky, but not enough to feel like she was in a fire.
She tried opening her eyes again. It was a little better. The brightness had eclipsed to the corners of her eyes. She could see a blue sky above her, albeit a bit hazy. She thought she could see a bit of greying brick walls, but it was hard to tell. There didn't appear to be any immediate danger, so she could afford a few extra moments of waiting.
Eventually, the brightness in her eyes ebbed enough away that she could see her surroundings semi-clearly. There were, indeed, greying bricks around her. It seemed like she was in some sort of alley and when she moved her head a bit, she could see an opening with people passing by. Her body hurt and ached so desperately, but she had to get up now and move. She had to.
She did so slowly. Her brain had just caught up with her, she didn't need the whiplash. Everything hurt even more when she tried to get up and she felt something wet sliding down the back of her neck.
"Tururu." The sound came from seemingly nowhere and in spite of herself, Sakura twisted her head around to see. There was nothing, but to her surprise, she felt infinitely better than she had before. Fully recovered, even. Her head no longer felt like those days Tsunade threw rocks at it and her body felt fine as well. Odd, very odd, and presumably related to the voice she heard.
Even if the owner of that voice did her a favor, she wasn't sticking around for them to take it back. She hopped to her feet and gave herself a onceover. It was the same exact outfit she'd left in. A red dress with a black bustier as well as black shorts and her favorite ninja boots and gloves. Admittedly, it wasn't the most practical of her outfits, but the dress had been a gift from the daimyo himself in thanks for her help.
Normally, she wouldn't be so inclined to wear it, but since the daimyo had gone out of his way to find something suitable for a ninja to wear, it would've been downright insulting if she didn't. She still had her pack filled to the brim with medical supplies and scrolls, but without her chakra, those were virtually useless. She only really had her weapons pouch remaining.
Whatever. She could deal with that. She may not be a Weapon's Mistress like TenTen, but her taijutsu was in top form. Could she knock someone's head off without her chakra? No, but she could still knock them flat.
After brushing the dirt off her dress, Sakura walked to the entrance of the alleyway. There were hordes of people passing by, most of them too engaged in their own lives or conversations to notice her, but a few did. A few glanced at her in interest or confusion or disregard. But no one seemed suspicious.
It didn't sit right with her to walk into this crowd of people with her back to so many of them, she couldn't even sense their chakra, but she couldn't wait in the alley forever. She didn't know where she was going, but maybe someone knew where she was. Where that strange jutsu sent her.
When there was a large enough gap, Sakura blended into the crowd. At first, she attempted to speak with the people walking beside her, but they looked as though they would be more interested in anything else.
Fair enough.
But as she walked, she did come across someone standing to the side. Good, they weren't going anywhere. They could speak with her.
"Excuse me?" Sakura asked. The person looked at her in bewilderment. They were kind of small and dainty. "Do you know where I am?"
The person replied in some gibberish and Sakura almost started crying. She wasn't necessarily fluent in any other languages, but she knew all of the different dialects in the different shinobi nations and she could at least recognize other languages by hearing.
This really wasn't a place anywhere near her home.
"Konoha?" Sakura tried again, hoping it would strike a chord with the person. It didn't. In fact, it looked as though they were about to walk away. She needed something, anything else she could ask them. But there was nothing this person would understand from her, right? Think. Think. And then it came to her. That weird hallucination fever dream she had in the alley. That blond man had been saying all kinds of different things, in a language she shouldn't have understood but somehow did in that moment. What had he said? What had he said? "J-Joestar?"
At first, she thought she struck out again. But the person's eyes widened in recognition and they nodded. Finally, finally something good happening.
They spoke in more gibberish and then pointed at a shining building across the street. It was tall, taller than even the Hokage's Tower. But perhaps not all that impressive, considering the towering buildings everywhere in this area.
Sakura bid the person a thanks, hoping they could understand, then set her sights on the building across the street. Perhaps she would find answers there. Perhaps she wouldn't.
But it was a start.
This story exists because Thirrin73 said the word 'Sakura' to me and I was violently assaulted by the urge to write a crossover fic with JoJo. Well. Here you go.