Genre: Adventure/Romance/Drama/slight Humor

Rating: T for explicit violence, gore, swearing, and future suggestive themes.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto nor the Shaman King series.

Type: Ongoing crossover.

Main pairing: Haruno Sakura/Asakura Hao

Side pairings: Kyoyama Anna/Asakura Yoh; Haruno Sakura/Asakura Yoh; Uchiha Madara/Senju Hashirama; Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto

A/N: During one of my annual Shaman King re-watches and re-reads – I like to feel nostalgic every now and then – a lot of different scenarios ran through my head. All these different possibilities molded into irritatingly persuasive plots, which were just begging to be written down on paper with ink. Or..err.. You know what I meant.

I adore crossovers; they're just so fun to read and/or to write. Though lately, I've been noticing that – and I doubt it's just for me – coming up with a way to mix two (and in some cases—more than two) different universes together and to just make it work is the hardest part.

After many failed tries, I can humbly say that I truly like how this one turned out. So, without further ado, I give you this story, which was born from my irrational need to write something while my other stories are in a deep writer's block.


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17AK.10.10.

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She once had a feeling that it would end like this; all four of them together again—Team 7 reborn. They stood before the floating Goddess under the bleeding moon that had placed almost everyone under its spell.

Almost.

Sakura decided she didn't quite like that word.

Almost. It indicated a lot of things—a lot of pressure, to be exact. That small word alone made despair and hysteria swell in her chest as she was lifted into the air by her sensei's Susanoo, all the while glancing over her shoulder to check if her teammates were still alive, still breathing as they turned their rapt attention to the final barrier between peace and the end of everything.

Her two boys, her two brothers-in-arms, that were usually so different from one another, had never looked so alike. One shone like the golden sun, while the other blended with molded shadows. Even with all the clashing qualities, their eyes held the exact same emotions: raw determination, familiarity, unfiltered confidence, and rage. It pulsates through the valley as even Sakura felt the strong wave of her teammates' feelings wash over her from a great distance. She wanted to stand in between them, though; to look at Kaguya with the same unyielding bravery they so easily – and quite effortlessly – perceived.

Yet all she did was wait.

Wait for the perfect moment to strike.

Her heels began to tremor with chakra.

It was almost time; yet not quite.

Not quite yet.

Almost. Almos

She leaped from the very essence of the Sharingan's ultimate Jutsu.

Colors and sparks and electricity illuminated the area below her. For a fleeting second, Sakura appreciated the last minute light show Sasuke and Naruto produced with their direct hit to the wailing Goddess.

Sakura saw that she was weakened.

Even better—she was open.

And Sakura took that as an invitation.

All her life, people severely underestimated her and her more than competent abilities. Be it ignorant academy teachers or her overconfident peers: they always seemed to turn a blind eye on her blooming progress. Today, that worked as a double-edged sword. She didn't feel an ounce of offense or childish hurt by being disregarded by the almighty Goddess; rather, she felt prideful as she brought her scrapped, clenched fist above her head as she slowly, slowly, descended from the very heavens.

An imitation of a slow-motion movie played before her eyes as Kaguya turned her bruised face upwards, staring into her general direction as she did so. The unsolicited pain was etched across her elegant features as Sasuke dug his hand deeper into her abdomen, while Naruto diverted his eyes from the maroon, gory sight; as if it was too hard to witness. And it probably was—for him. Still, Sakura didn't fail to notice his glowing hand cutting through skin and tissue and muscle and her.

The anguish screams seemed to encourage the pink-haired medic to commence with her surprise attack using more strength than was necessary.

To her—it was necessary, though.

This Goddess, this woman, this beast, needed to stay down for good.

So she brought her fist down with every last bit of strength left in her bruised and beaten body; relishing on the satisfying cracks of bones and teeth, wondering just how someone with skin as soft as hers could cause such a chaotic hassle. So many innocent, good lives had been sacrificed, and for what? For a madman's dream? For a centuries' long conspiracy? Neither seemed to be a valid reason for her to testify the rather pointless bloodshed of the innocent.

No matter, she reminded herself quietly, digging her injured fist further into the split flesh.

It was almost over now.

Almost.

That word again.

It's funny, really, that those six simple, connected letters were the last thing on her mind as a sickening, swirling motion broke out before her tired eyes.

She had looked; that was a stupid, clumsy mistake on her part.

She had looked into those dreadful, cursed eyes of hers—those three, world-altering eyes.

What a stupid mistake indeed.

Adrenaline pumped through her veins frantically as she threaded her fingers through the Goddess' hair in a useless, feeble attempt to brace herself for what's about to come. She was certain that, if she took a wild guess as to what her fate was at this point, she'd hit a bull's eye for sure. Her ears had ceased to function properly as the distraught yells and screams of her teammates (even Sasuke) seemed to be blocked out; as if she were deep underwater rather than in mid-air. Her vision – which used to be so sharp and precise – had become blurred, but the humongous swirl in front of her and Kaguya was still as clear as the night's sky. She took in a generous gulp of air as her insides started to bend and turn; a reminiscent of the feeling she had grown accustomed to in these past few hours.

A Transportation Jutsu.

A powerful one at that, judging by the overwhelming urge to lurch and heave her very heart out.

Colors and outlines started to slip, yet her numb and weakened hands still held onto the long tresses of the other woman's hair as the swirl enveloped them both.

Almost.

She had almost made it.

They had almost ended the war with their combined effort.

The goal – their goal – had been almost in their very reach; so close that Sakura's lips had already formed victory songs beforehand.

They had been so close.

She had been so close.

But now, she had managed to tangle herself – quite literally, she may add – in Kaguya's decisive escape plan.

And Sakura swore.

She swore if she makes it through this trip, all Hell will be unleashed.


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1999.10.11.

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No words could describe the excruciating pain she was in at that moment. It would seem as if her neglected body was finally catching up to her after a long week of near starvation and exhaustion. She tried to raise herself up, but her strained muscles began to protest—not to mention the quite audible creaking of her bones when she struggled to get on her hands and knees.

Hell, even the roots of her pink hair ached dully as she slowly rotated her neck clockwise.

Sakura groaned softly as she crawled and clawed her way to the other battered body lying in a destroyed patch of lush long grass just a few small steps away. But in her condition, it took her a great amount of Herculean effort to even make it halfway to Kaguya's mangled form. She tried, she really did, but her trembling hands soon gave out under pressure as she landed in a heap on her scraped elbows.

But she was so close.

She can't just give up now when she was almost there.

Almost.

There's that damned word again.

Sakura gritted her teeth as she draped her injured, cut-littered leg over the other woman's blood-covered stomach; she didn't even care nor mind the new blotches of stains that appeared on her already ruined pants. The pink-haired medic observed the Goddess as she took in ragged breaths with a dull, unamused expression. Kaguya had her eyes – all three of them, thank goodness – closed with a fairly vacant façade. Sakura too cleared her face of any form of emotion that crossed her mind as she rummaged through her pouch, looking up as she did so.

Huh.

She has never seen a stranger skyline than this one before; the usually bright, littering white dots were absent from the inky night sky, even though there wasn't a single cloud in sight.

How peculiar.

Sakura stiffened when her fingers didn't make contact with the all too familiar steel of her trusty Kunai knife or anything of its kin. She exhaled loudly, breathing in through her nose as realization registered in her mind.

She was going to do this the old-fashioned way.

"You know," Sakura croaked out, feeling as if the Suna desert resided in the depths of her throat. "It's because of you that a lot of my precious people have been hurt," she explained with a rather nonchalant tone as she looked down at the white-haired woman, who was most likely sporting a buzzing headache from her previous beat down.

Sakura's facial features morphed in thought as she stared at her lower face, but still catching the telltale colors of her eyes.

Those cursed, damned eyes.

Sakura just wanted to—

She contemplated her rather obscure, violent thoughts. Yes, it was morally wrong of her from a medic's perspective but as a shinobi that she undoubtedly was—killing was just an unavoidable part of the job requirements.

It was a normality.

When civilian children – kids her own age, at the time – gushed about crushes and marketing goods, shinobi-in-training huddled up together, chasing away the nightmares caused by the things they learned and saw from their mentors and experience.

It was a necessity.

Sakura could have avoided this lifestyle; she was from a civilian family, after all. No parents or guardians had pressured her to join the academy at the ripe age of six or seven—she did that on her own accord. She chose to be an asset to her village and its military force—she was loyal and ready to give up her life for duty and service if that's what's required of her.

And that was precisely what she had just done.

She didn't know where she was; the landscape was completely unfamiliar and unrecognizable. It was already clear that they weren't in the Elemental Nations any more, or anywhere near them, for that matter. It made a strangled moan escape her mouth in realization.

She was in another dimension again.

This time, unfortunately, though—there was no point of return for her.

Or for the woman below her.

Sakura's emerald eyes hardened as she saw silent, inaudible words form on Kaguya's lips. She was trying to say something.

But Sakura didn't listen.

Oh, no. She wouldn't. She couldn't.

This was all her fault.

Why should she listen to a woman – no, no, she was no woman – that ruined uncountable lives, directly or not?

This whole ordeal – this whole damned war, even – was all her fault.

The lives of her friends, the lives of her closest loved ones and companions; they were all in shambles because of this vile creature and her minions.

Sakura cupped the Goddess' face with a certain tremor in her fingers. She took an audible gulp, the buildup of her saliva forced down her esophagus. Sakura could feel Kaguya's facial muscles twitching and tensing under her fingertips, but she didn't mind.

Kaguya – physically – was rendered useless, so the only thing the pink-haired medic had to worry about were the three eyes glaring at her face groggily and unfocused.

Ah, yes.

Those eyes.

Without an ounce of hesitation, Sakura jabbed her thumbs into Kaguya's eye sockets.

The effect was immediate.

Haruno Sakura was no stranger to heavy gore; not with all the amputation and healing of particularly nasty and severe wounds she has been doing for the last month—or year, to be exact. Her stomach had been emptied more times than she could care to count: the bucket and the trash bins have turned into her closest friends over time during the whole ordeal.

But it got better. Surgery after surgery, assassination after assassination—she just got used to the sight.

But this. This was different.

Her body was shaking, her arms were wobbling. Even her heart was hammering behind her rib cage. But she pushed on, dropping her weight down to increase pressure on her tainted fingers. Never had her ears heard more deranged screams and wails and cries and screeches. The eye, in particular, was a rather sensitive organ. So much so, that her own eyes began to water and blur from the inhumane kind of murder she was committing.

Kaguya's mangled form thrashed violently under hers in a failed attempt of shoving her off.

Sakura dug her fingers deeper into her skull in response.

Her eyes – so dangerous and powerful – were rendered into gooey and squishy mush.

But Sakura didn't stop there.

Far from that, actually.

She rose from her knees, slumping her full weight on her hands; the hands which held the Goddess' face in an iron grip. Sakura's face scurried up as she hissed and groaned at the uncomfortable, nauseating sensation she was feeling. She felt the gathered tears rolling down her burning, stung cheeks; so she closed her eyes shut to will the horrid sight away.

Due to this, Sakura failed to notice that the once white hair had reverted back to pure black or the drastic – and quite noticeable – change in features and curves. It was only when Kaguya's screams dropped an octave or three lower than before that she finally noticed that something wasn't right.

So she took a risk.

Sakura opened her eyes with absolute caution before gasping at the sight that greeted her.

This wasn't Kaguya anymore.

Oh, no—far from that.

This was Uchiha Madara.

Seething rage and unfiltered relief filled her being at this sudden twist of events.

Relief, for the fact that this must mean that the resurrected Goddess has been dealt with, and rage, that the man, who was actually the direct source of her despair and misery, is in her presence once more. Sakura's abdomen ached in remembrance of the almost severe injury he had inflicted upon her. It didn't hurt anymore, nor did it scar—but the mental damage was a true open wound.

Even when Sakura let herself be consumed by her thoughts, she was fully aware of the screams that were slowly – but surely – dying out.

"Almost," Sakura gritted out as she curled her thumbs further into the cracking skull, feeling the damaged bone there in between blood and flesh. She had to give him some props, though; no other human being could still breathe through the pain at this point.

But he wasn't quite human, was he?

No, she supposed not.

Any other person wouldn't fight against death the way he did; for some reason, he just wasn't willing to stay down for more than a few decades.

Sakura's lips turned downwards as bile rose in her throat at the worsening sight before her.

This time will be different, though.

This time, Sakura will personally make sure that Uchiha Madara will never be able to terrorize any of her friends ever again.

In this lifetime, or the next.

So she pushed and stretched her coated fingers to either sides, relishing on the breaking and cracking and squishing an—

Something splattered on her face then.

Sakura blinked once. Twice. Thrice.

She couldn't hold it in any longer.

She turned her head to the side and vomited the tiny amount of food that she had consumed prior to the 'main' battle. Her throat burned in protest at the ripping feeling, but Sakura couldn't stop her body from cleansing itself without her mental consent. Gut wrenching sobs and lung scratching heaves were the only sound echoing throughout the peaceful forest. Everything she had bottled in, every loss and emotional pain she had felt during the war, just spilled out from her mouth in unadulterated sounds and chokes. As her very being emptied itself out of her system – literally and figuratively – worries began to flood the vacant places in her very core.

Worries for her teammates, men she considered brothers, were dominant: were they able to break the ultimate genjutsu? Were the worries for the rest of the Rookie 9 and her comrades all in vain after all?

Knowing Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi—they definitely were.

Sakura let out a breath at that.

She released an empty, quiet chuckle as tears that streamed down her pained cheeks seemed to cease. Her very soul seemed to lighten considerably when she realized something. A small detail that had been bugging her for hours on end.

There wasn't an almost any longer.

She had reached it.

Her goal. Their goal.

It was bittersweet, this victory.

Victory – what a pleasant word indeed.

It was too good to be true. She wanted to pinch herself to make sure that this wasn't some kind of glorious dream, but the aching pain spread out across the full length of her body already confirmed that this was, in fact—the reality.

But Sakura had grown wary and paranoid and precocious from the various sneak assaults executed by white Zetsu. She could still recall how he had turned what was once a seedling of a problem, into a blossomed, sturdy oak tree of distress by transforming into her comrades at the dead of night. So she turned to the mangled, and – quite frankly – unrecognizable body of the former Uchiha clan head with shuttered pain.

Ah. Just as she suspected; the third, malicious eye had long since sealed itself off from her prying eyes. The pink-haired medic had to wonder if perhaps, the doomsday device had hidden inside Madara's forehead at some point. But the thought of cutting open the blood-caked skin and fleshy gore caused another shudder to pass through her form.

No, she was too drained emotionally and physically to perform a meticulous autopsy and check her theory.

Actually, the drained adrenaline took away her strength to even crouch as she fell to her right, expertly avoiding contact with her own vomit and the man's pooling maroon blood. She stared blankly at the long stems of grass as she breathed in through her mouth, considering her nose was clogged. As she brushed her fingers across the more weeping and severe wounds littering her body, she counted how many days it would take for the chakra she had spent in her battles to return to her. A pained and frustrated frown marred her dirt-covered face as she contemplated her next course of action.

She drew a blank then.

Next course of action?

There was none.

Embarrassingly enough, Sakura used to daydream – quite often, too – about what she'd do when this blasted war was over with and won. She figured that deep down in her heart, she knew; she knew that victory would be theirs from the get go.

And so it was.

But Sakura was too far away to even feel the glory and gal of it all as she laid there, peaceful in the middle of an unknown forest.

A forest that was unharmed, untouched, undamaged.

It was a welcoming change from the rubble and ashes and barely cleared dust clouds she had grown accustomed to.

Sakura stared up at the sky, body paralyzed with exhaustion and eyes bleary. Something about it troubled her; it gave off the impression that a fire was brewing near her current location. But there was no smoke. None. Just a dull, brown-tinted skyline.

Where was she? Why had Kaguya tried to run away to here, exactly?

She frowned, puzzled as to why the buzzing questions seemed to die down to somber silence in her mind; as if her brain will soon shutdown. An uncomfortable feeling enveloped her body quite suddenly, making her wiggle around subconsciously for a moment.

Sakura was on red alert.

The very air seemed to grow cooler as she could spot the visible puff of leftover oxygen and carbon dioxide leaving her parted lips. She shivered, her skin tickling irritatingly as her muscles contrasted. Suddenly, her lungs emptied themselves as her hands shot up on their own accord. She yelped as her arms flayed up into the strange night sky. She felt as though she was a puppet; dangling from chakra strings as they manipulated her body to move and bend to their will. Sakura screamed as she was forced onto her knees, shrieking as pressure was applied to the more damaged of the two.

She couldn't think clear. She couldn't even move her own body as it refused to listen to her brain.

The only thing she could do was to see the world in white pain as she shrieked and yelled bloody murder.

But then it all suddenly stopped.

Her emerald eyes widened.

She heard a voice.

His voice.

No. No. No, no, n—

"You stupid, foolish girl."

Sakura managed to blink on her own, confused as to how her voice had become so... masculine, all of a sudden. It even sounded weird to her own ears; it was as if two synchronized voices spoke from her chapped lips.

Not to mention that it sounded like nails on chalkboard, too.

And the tiny fact that she was speaking in general at all.

Sakura hissed in pain and protest and anger as she rose to her feet, stumbling as the numb and sore and ripped muscles of her calves started to burn as if flames were slowly licking up her legs. Her arms swayed at her sides as she forcefully took a step forward, biting back a scream as she did so. Her head was fogged and dizzy. She felt sick. Nauseous.

Then it hit her like a ton of bricks.

This sensation.

It was very similarly familiar, but much more painful.

It was something that had nearly cost her defeat.

As her body moved without her consent and her very soul seemed to be outright penetrated, she realized that yes; she had felt something like this before—more controlled in comparison, though.

Reminiscent memories of the Chunnin exams reemerged to the surface: the feeling of two souls merging with one another, the surprising amount of will power she had displayed then, Ino's victorious smirk being wiped off from her face as her Shintenshin no Jutsu broke.

Oh, yes.

This sensation was very, very familiar.

Sakura forced her eyes to close with much more effort than what she was used to, already bracing herself for what was to come next.


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