Well, I'm definitely neglecting Tide-Over now. Whatever. Sakura's seventeen, Itachi's nineteen. I just like them being closer in age. Naruto's not back from his three-year journey yet. Blah. (bows, runs away, trips. Owwww…)

Chapter 1

"Sakura, you're free for another long-term mission, right?"

Oh, Tsunade had no idea of the effects those words would have. Neither did Sakura.

"Sure. But I hope it's not another six-month stretch…?"

"Oh, no. Just a quick recon and recover mission in Iwa. It's just that the journey will take maybe a month, since you're traveling alone." So clueless. Tsunade would regret assigning that mission to Sakura for as long as she lived.

Sakura ran out of the village, navy blue cloak and satchel secured tightly. Her assignment scroll was clutched in one hand.

Rank: A

Approx. duration: 3 months

Summary:

You are to enter Iwagakure under cover. Gain access to the Tsuchikage Tower and locate information on Iwa's planned battles. It is strongly suspected that Iwa intends to invade Konhagakure. Secretly sabotage all attempts to do so and then immediately return. Iwa has a "kill on sight" policy for invaders, so you will be disguised as a wandering medic of the Earth Country. Do not break cover.

Sakura squeezed the scroll until it crumbled, using a faint layer of chakra to help. It was custom to destroy assignment scrolls when on an undercover mission.

Bouncing from tree to tree, Sakura took a small mirror from her fanny pouch and examined her new face again. Since her face and hair were so recognizable (like, hello, HOW many kunoichi have naturally PINK hair?), a Glimmer Jutsu specialist had altered her hair, eyes, and face. Now Sakura's face had a distinct Earth look to them: oval face, big slanted eyes, and strong, fine features. Her hair was now cropped short with long, straight bangs covering one eye, since that was apparently the most popular fashion. Her hair was black streaked with bright orange, but her eyes, Sakura though, were the prettiest. They were not one color. They were red and gold and orange and ash-white, and sometimes there were hints of blue as well. It was like she had two live coals for eyes.

The best part about this was that it wasn't an eye-fooling jutsu. Glimmer Jutsus actually physically rearranged the face and body, so no chakra was required to keep up the illusion. The Glimmer would stay until the caster personally removed it. However, Glimmer Jutsus took almost an hour to solidify, and she had left before the hour was up. Tsunade had bid farewell to a black-haired, long-haired, green-eyed Sakura.

Sakura had also been given a new specialty arsenal as part of her disguise. Instead of poison and monster strength, she was now a Sun's Ash specialist. She already had Fire nature chakra, and she knew Sun's Ash fairly well. All she had to do was use three hand seals to fill the air with choking black ash. Then she activated it, and the ash would glow so intensely that it first blinded, and then disintegrated the enemy in less than a millisecond. It was death at the speed of light.

She was going to be a wandering medic-nin, a medic who had opted to leave the life of a shinobi but had been trained in medical jutsus. That way she wouldn't have to fabricate a village headband.

Sakura put away the mirror and let the warmth of chakra fill the soles of her feet, speeding up her steps many times over. But she had to be careful not to leave dents on the branches. "No physical trails, no fires, no blood. No physical…" she muttered. That mantra had been the first lesson for the students in the Stealth & Concealment class at Academy; and muttering helped pass the time. Not bounce, bounce, bounce. It was mutter, bounce, mutter, bounce. A much better rhythm.

Sakura passed through almost a fourth of Fire Country that day. As the sun began to set in a slow, frozen blaze of pink and gold, she came across a small, natural clearing beside a tiny sparkling stream.

Dropping soundlessly to the earth, Sakura took a moment to close her eyes and let her harsh breathing slow. Let her chakra rush across the area like a tiny breeze. Feel the forest and its inhabitants. Nobody here. Good, because I'm tired as hell.

But she saw something as she opened her heavy, itchy, fire-colored eyes. It was a miniscule, distinct dash of white in the fading gold sun and purple shadows. Anybody who was not a shinobi would not have seen it.

Sakura hadn't felt any chakra nearby, so she walked to the tree at the foot of which rested the tiny white thing. It was a delicate bird statue, she saw as she bent over. It stood on the tree's exposed root, little eyes closed. There was a ruff of symmetrical squared feathers around its neck.

She picked it up hesitantly. Who had put it here? It felt like cold, baked clay in her hot palm. So, so tiny. It looked like it could crumble if she put any pressure on it.

Shrugging, she turned, the bird in her loose fist. Finding a tree with thick, spreading branches to protect from possible rain, Sakura sank down onto the damp dead leaves and fell asleep.

The days quickly fell into a dull pattern, broken only by Sakura's brief stops in civilian villages to restock her small food supplies. It rained for three days straight after the beginning of her journey, making the thick trees have an ethereal green-gray glow to them as the tiny water drops fell from the leaves and refracted whatever light leaked through the heavy silver clouds. Sakura was forced to use a soldier pill on the third day, so she could continue using chakra to keep from slipping on the slick, mossy bark.

Then came four days of maddening heat, baking the rain out of the ground and into the air—and then directly into Sakura's already-pressed lungs. Her bangs stuck to her forehead and dried there, and she had to keep brushing away the hairs as they got tangled in her eyelashes. She still hadn't gotten the hang of leaping with her head tilted, so the bangs flew back and let a tepid breeze blow away some of the heat from her damp, flushed skin. The trees were beginning to thin, fortunately, as she approached the border of Fire country.

One slightly cooler day, with faint hazy clouds splashed across the pale blue sky, Sakura saw a tiny town, only a few dingy wooden buildings along the dirt road. But there was a convenience store, and she was out of the iodine pills she used to purify water from the puddles that sometimes were the only water around.

As Sakura swung open the dusty glass door, a plump young woman came hurrying up to her. "Hello, good afternoon, Miss, how can I help you?" she said in one rush. Must not get many customers, thought Sakura.

"Yeah, I just need some iodine pills, and if you have any, could I look at some maps?"

The woman nodded and scurried off, light brown braid swinging. Sakura took the opportunity to bend over and examine the, luckily, fresh newspapers stacked beside the counter. There wasn't much to see. A mudslide had almost buried a village, but somehow stopped fifty yard away from it. Lucky…And an art museum was displaying a large collection by some anonymous donor: sculptures, origami, human-sized puppets, an abstract self-portrait (there was a tag identifying it as such), and eye-tricking silver creations that weren't quite sculptures. There were photos of the silver things, and the origami.

A small white bottle was suddenly thrust into Sakura's limp hand. Startled, she turned and saw the woman also brandishing a fistful of brightly colored maps.

Sakura scanned the maps quickly and found them accurate and fairly current, so she bought the pills and all the maps. The woman seemed very glad to have any customer at all, so Sakura bought a heavy enamel coffee mug (the most expensive thing in the store) out of pity for the hard-up shopkeeper.

Outside, crouched in the muggy shade of a dying oak tree, Sakura looked at the largest map more carefully. She was probably three day from the Fire border, closer than she'd thought. It would be another day in Rain, and then she would be in Stone.

The next three day were totally unremarkable—actually, they were mind-numbing. Nothing happened, except the final edge of the forest thinned out until Sakura was running across a dirt road in the middle of endless grasslands. Her satchel bounced with ever step, but she was thankful that with this new super-short haircut the handle didn't catch on her hair.

And then Sakura was approaching the border with Rain. She had to be careful here; sneaking through wasn't an option unless she wanted to arouse suspicion, so she had to cross the actual legal check-point.

The orange-haired ninja barely looked up as Sakura passed him her false documents identifying herself as a wandering medic-nin. He shuffled the sheaf and waved her through. He was probably some jounin put there to guard any forced entrances—but there were no forced entrances. Ever. So he was probably dying of boredom, as well.

Sakura stopped by a clothing shop and purchased the inevitable hooded poncho and boots. She got the lightest boots there, so she could run properly. Outside, the gray sky was drizzling already, a breeze blowing it into a mist that coated the entire city. She could hardly see.

Throughout her two-hour journey in the city, Sakura kept her chakra subdued and heavily masked. It would not do for some Sensory type to detect a Fire nature chakra—and a huge amount of the chakra, at that—roaming the city. Almost everybody in Rain had Water nature chakra. This place was rumored to be the Akatsuki's headquarters, too. Sakura jumped every time she saw red and black, but it was always just some civilian's poncho.

The back of the city, facing the interior of the country, was rather seedy. Sodden advertisements for risqué establishments littered the dim, muddy streets, and drunkards leered and catcalled from every alley and corner. Sakura shuddered at one particularly graphic exclamation and hurried out of the city.

Now there was the occasional splash of icy mud in Sakura's face to break the chilly, damp monotony. Her satchel strained uncomfortably under the poncho, but it wasn't waterproof and had to be kept under wraps. Jagged rocks hid beneath the mud, tripping Sakura several times. It would take longer to get out or Rain than she had expected.

When the already dark sky dimmed until Sakura couldn't see her feet, she stopped and felt out a relatively dry cave near the road. Rain was riddled with the stone pockets, a useful thing when it basically rained constantly in the entire country. She pulled up her hood more securely and fell asleep.

She woke with a jerk. Someone was hitting her. Hard. She could barely breathe—and couldn't see in the night's utter blackness. But if she unmasked her chakra to find out who was there, she would give herself away as a Fire shinobi.

Wham. Wham. Wham. Sakura coughed, and a moan escaped her. The blows pinned her to the rock. Her back was bruising. She couldn't move.

"Well, looks like our little kunoichi's up," a sneering female voice said. The punches stopped, and Sakura sagged, fighting to drag air into her lungs. She didn't succeed. There was a horrible growing heat deep in her chest, like her internal organs were being crushed. Sakura recognized the symptoms of a collapsed lung.

"Get up, brat." A deep male voice sounded now, sounding like there were cotton balls stuffed in Sakura's ears. She struggled to her feet.

"Some ninja you are. You hardly masked your chakra at all!" piped up a squeakily androgynous voice. Sakura winced, struggling to get to her feet. They knew already, so it wouldn't hurt to use her chakra a little.

She sent a feeble stream to her eyes. She knew that she was only getting about twenty percent of the oxygen she needed—Sakura would collapse within five minutes.

With her flickering, chakra-aided eyes, Sakura saw three ninja, all of them about the same size. They held long daggers, and wore Rain headbands. That was about all she could see.

The closest ninja stepped forward and slapped Sakura. Her knees went out from under her, and she slid sideways, smacking her head on the rock. Sakura was getting desperate, now. "Well, girly, you gonna tell us where you're from?" It was the first kunoichi, the one who had been punching Sakura to wake her up.

Sakura tried to say "Go to hell," but nothing but a trickle of blood and the very last of her air came out. The kunoichi swore viciously and kicked Sakura's leg. There must have been some sort of spike or blade on it, because Sakura felt her skin break at the same time as her bone.

Air. Air. Air. Breathe!

A shuddering in the ground Sakura's head lay on told of another person's approach. But she couldn't feel scared now. Just the desperate desire to breathe, to draw fresh air into whole, healthy lungs.

"What the hell are you doing?" A deep, reedy, laughing voice.

"Fool." A soft, deep, smooth voice. Sakura…knew that voice. But…who…

She blacked out just before the first kunoichi screamed.

"You little brat!"

"Who do you think you are, parading around with that mountain of a forehead in front of us?"

"And that disgusting, tawdry hair! You make me sick."

Sakura shrunk back, eyes wide beneath the fringe of pink hair. The older girls had cornered her behind the Academy. Her nose was bleeding.

"Seriously, girl. You're a blight upon this lovely city and you need to go. Why don't we hurt you just a little so your dumb civilian parents wills see how much they need to move?"

They hurt her then. Sakura felt her wrist snap. It was the worst injury she had had in her short life, and the pain was overwhelming. But now little cuts, scrapes, pounding…

She wanted nothing but for them to stop. Just stop hurting, stop jeering. Stop. Stop. "STOP!"

Footsteps running. Sakura could hear them over her quiet sobbing. The girls stopped very suddenly.

"What the hell are you doing?" It was a boy's voice.

"Fool." another boy snapped. "You girls," he said to the gang standing near, "Get away from her. I should do the same to you what's been done to her, but I'll count to four thousand very slowly, so you have a fraction of a chance at getting away first. One. Two."

Sakura looked up, tears streaming down her face, and saw two boys, maybe eight or nine, standing over her. The bullies were running away as fast as they could.

The boy who had threatened them was holding out a hand. "Are you hurt badly?"

Sakura held up her broken wrist dumbly.

He huffed. "Well, my name's Uchiha Itachi. You're Haruno Sakura, right? Let's get you to the hospital. Come on, Shisui."

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