New story! I know I shouldn't but I've never been able to help it before, so why should now be any different? :P

Anyway, this is a time travel and de-aging fic, with a Mokuton using Sakura. I mean, why not? She uses earth and water, and if Moegi can do it, why not Sakura? I know, I know, Kishi's probably gonna come up with some 'explanation' for Moegi having it, but whatever.

At least it's more believable than the fics that have Naruto with the sharingan, of all things. :P

So, disclaimer that I don't own, and enjoy!

Bakuhatsu

Chapter One

The urchin glared at anyone that came near or noticed her, teeth bared in a snarl. The girl was small, dressed in rags, and covered in dirt, like she hadn't bathed in years. Or ever.

She wandered through the streets of the small village, mostly unnoticed, despite the mop of pink hair on her head. Slipping through the crowds, small hands went unnoticed as they slipped into pouches, plucking food from stalls, the owners of which probably still hadn't noticed that anything was missing. The day was spent like this, then most of her her spoils were dropped off in a dingy little alley, where other children waited, hungry and dirty, for something substantial to eat.

And then, when the sun started setting, the child made her way out of the village.

Walking along the main path for only a few minutes, she stopped briefly, checking to make sure no one was around, then darted off the main road and into the nearby thicket. Following a familiar path, to her at least, she ended up in a hidden clearing that no one had found yet, where a small and rickety, but deceptively stable hut stood. As she stepped past the boundary of the trees, a small dome shaped barrier glowed.

Letting out a sigh, the girl went into the hut, pulling out the remainder of her day's haul and storing it all in cupboards and containers. Then she closed her eyes, and the dirt faded from her body. Mentally thanking her mentor, she then set about gathering up some clothes to go to a nearby stream to bathe. The girl, who wasn't really a child, made her way through the woods, past her barrier, to a place she knew that no one went to. The simple reason was that it was too difficult to get to, unless you were a ninja.

And as far as Sakura knew, there were no ninja in the surrounding areas.

Haruno Sakura, a twenty year old woman in the body of a nine year old child. She'd been here almost three years already, since the day that an exploding goddess (not literally… well, maybe) had pushed her into the past, de-aging her at an alarming rate. Her coils had been fried in a chakra overload, and her yin seal had been shattered. With a younger body, she'd lost a lot of the physical strength she'd come to rely on, and with her haywire chakra system, she'd been incredibly vulnerable for some time.

Now, it was a completely different story.

Once her coils had healed, mostly on their own since she'd been unable to do anything for them herself, Sakura had discovered a rather neat side effect. The size of her chakra coils were almost triple what they used to be, and after working manually on her stamina and strength, she was once again able to punch craters in the earth. Almost immediately once her chakra had recovered, she'd worked on reapplying her yin seal, and even though it irked that she'd had to start from scratch once more, it was already at full capacity. Thanks to her larger chakra network, of course, and already hidden from view by a tweaked version of her shishou's vanity technique.

The same technique she used to hide in plain sight as a dirty street urchin.

There were other… unexpected side-effects from Kaguya's insane chakra tearing through her system. The biggest was one she'd taken quite some time to figure out, and even when she had, Sakura'd been in denial for a few weeks afterwards. She was in the past. In the past. She had no idea what had happened to her boys, though. Sasuke, Naruto, and Kakashi had been right there with her. But they weren't here with her. Was she really the only one that had been sent back? Or were they also here somewhere, possibly de-aged as she was?

Another was one that she considered to be even more impossible, since she didn't have the DNA connection for it to actually be possible, artificially or naturally. Sakura had been experimenting with her jutsu only ten months ago, running through water and earth jutsu, since those two elements were her affinities. Without thinking, she'd combined the two, and had somehow caused a nearby sapling to grow out of control. It had freaked her out, and her panic, which hadn't helped matters, had somehow caused the wood of the rapidly growing tree to warp until she finally got herself under control.

The tree had been almost grotesquely mangled, and Sakura had put it out of its misery by using it up as firewood. Since then, she'd carefully experimented with her brand new ability, and luckily hadn't had another incident like that.

Cutting off her thoughts as she reached the stream, Sakura went about her bathing ritual. The rags were stripped off and set aside, the soap she'd 'liberated' from a store in the village put to use scrubbing the actual dirt she'd accumulated from wandering the dirty streets of the nearby town. This era she was in, which she'd figured out was the Warring States Era, wasn't very sanitary, and she'd almost cried when she'd discovered that it was also pre- indoor plumbing.

Despite that, Sakura knew enough about sanitisation that she was at least able to keep herself clean and free of germs. She might be tempted to find someone and show them how to do it too, but there were a couple of factors in the way. One, she was nine, and children, or even women at this point, weren't really all that respected. No one would listen to her, she knew it. And two, Sakura knew that they weren't far off from the start of application of hygiene to the standards she was used to any way. They were maybe less than a decade away from Hishida Kazuo publishing his revolutionary texts, anyway.

As she scrubbed, Sakura's mind wandered to family and friends that she missed. Nostalgia washed over her even as she scrubbed soapy water through her hair. Taking a deep breath, she ducked under the water, staying under as the soap and dirt rinsed off. Considering she could hold her breath for about ten minutes, Sakura decided to linger at the bottom. The water was clear enough for her to have her eyes open, and she watched a few fish swim by, skittish of the intruder into their realm.

When her brain started yelling at her for oxygen, she kicked back up to the surface, only to scream when she got there at the sight of a boy with brown hair and wide, shocked, brown eyes staring at her from the bank.

So, you might know who the boy is. I'll give you two guesses. ;) No dialogue this chapter, but there will be next chapter.

Review please! :)

Bakuhatsu: Explosion. Referencing the fact that Kaguya's chakra 'exploded' to send Sakura back.