Haruno Sakura woke with the worst hangover she could remember ever having, and no recollection of any reason for having it. It wasn't a combination that made her happy; it was a combination that made her roll back over in bed, pulling the blanket over her head.
"I said you're going to be late for your first day. Sakura, get UP."
She felt the blanket being tugged away, opening her eyes to try and remember the face of the person who DARED for later punishment, before her mouth dropped open slightly.
Her mother, dead for.. twelve years now, was giving her a glare that she couldn't remember receiving for a good three years before that. Only half remembered aside from that; she'd only been seven, after all. "You're not even going to have time for breakfast. You need to get dressed and go." Sakura shook her head in disbelief, echoing the last word. "Go?"
"To the academy. For your team assignment? You weren't up all night reading again, were you, Sakura? Or obsessing over that Uchiha boy again?"
That was too much for Sakura to take; clearly this had to be a genjutsu. She decided, rather than watching it play out further, to move out of this part of it. She had to congratulate whoever was doing it; Sakura hadn't expected seeing her mother again to hurt quite that way.
Sakura went to the window, not caring that she was in hideous (but comfortable) pink pajamas. She jumped out, ignoring the cries of her mother's surprise, and landed horribly by falling on her butt. She looked down at herself, confused.. "What the hell?"
Her hands were SMALL. So were other parts of her, and she had long hair, a style she'd never had because it got in the way. She had a bad case of bedhead right now, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was that she was in a very wrong body. The hair drifting in front of her eyes was definitely hers - she'd never met anyone else with the color - but she was young.
And... getting a team assignment? She'd avoided any of the normal paths for becoming a ninja, one of the benefits of being seen as a prodigy, but that would put her at somewhere between ten and thirteen.
"Damn it, Itachi, I'm not in the mood!" She shouted, angrily, knowing that the only person capable of putting her in a genjutsu this complex was the Hokage. Who she wouldn't put past doing it as a joke on her. That just got extremely odd looks from a few of the passers-by, so she rolled her eyes, heading towards where she knew the academy to be.
She didn't even bother with an illusion to hide her rather unformal appearance, sitting towards the back of the room, ignoring the incredulous looks she was getting from a few of the students, including a blond girl she vaguely recognized and another blond, that one some hyperactive boy.
"Sa.. Sakura-chan, what happened to you?" the boy asked, drawing her out of her contemplations of revenge against whoever was doing this.
She sat up sharply, hearing something in his voice, giving the boy a closer look. It was definitely him, though she'd never seen him at this age. "Naruto?"
"What is it, Sakura-chan?" He almost seemed to be cringing, but she just shook her head.
"Never mind. I'm fine, just woke up late." She offered him a smile, before turning back to the front of the class. She was seeing far too many ghosts in this genjutsu for her tastes. Did even Itachi know her this well? But, even if she could break it, she might not - it was deeply imaginative, an illusion that she could appreciate as a master artist admiring another artist's painting.
Sakura zoned back out, barely paying attention as the teams were announced. At least until she heard a name she hadn't really expected.
"Team Seven will consist of Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, and Uchiha Sasuke."
She blinked, looking around the room. Naruto wasn't a surprise - she only half recognized the others she'd noticed in here, though she hadn't taken many close looks. But the weakling, Itachi's little tagalong brother?
She quickly found herself alone with the pair, as Jounin instructors picked up all of the other teams. Theirs was quite rudely late, and after hours of waiting she was glad to see Naruto at least try to trap him, though using an eraser instead of something more painful wasn't really much of a trick.
Sakura offered him a slight smile, while Sasuke brooded in his seat. Naruto gave her a slightly bewildered look before grinning back fiercely in return, and it was only a few more minutes before their jounin instructor poked his head in the door.
He fell for the trick, but that hardly mattered to Sakura, as she was in complete shock. Her instructor for this little exercise in illusion was, evidently, supposed to be a man she knew all too well, one who had come damn close to killing her, and she had come close to killing... The current leader of the rebellion against Konoha, Sharingan Kakashi.
Sakura was staring, she knew she was, but she still couldn't bring herself to believe the outrageousness of this. She'd gotten a full night's sleep, she'd swear she had, and there was no way that someone could have kept her in an illusion this complex, this long. Sakura would have recognized a sign of it by now, at least.
And now Kakashi was trying to put them through the stupidest test she could think of, at least if her skills were actually at the level of a newly graduated genin. It was probably meant to teach betrayal, by having them work together to get the bells and then stab one another in the back at the right time, but it was so obtusely done that she couldn't see how the man ever expected to have genin.
Of course, even if her chakra reserves seemed to be pathetically bad, and she felt more out of shape than she remembered being since she was eight, she could probably still surprise the man with a proper skill or two.
Assuming he wasn't holding her in this illusion to kill her, but it seemed unlikely - she had slept, twice! Whoever was doing it could have had her dead to rights.
"You'll need to come at me with killing intent, if you want to have a chance." She shouldn't have trouble with that, but Sakura knew she wasn't really going to be able to fight properly, given her completely screwed up balance and body. Genjutsu might work, if he kept that damned eye covered, but her reserves were so pathetically low...
No, best to try to catch him off guard. At the least, it would warn her if he really didn't know her abilities; there was no way he'd anticipate the strike. She'd only have one shot at it, likely.
And while she was trying to stop herself from caring about this test, it was a challenge, of sorts, and she'd never really been able to back down from challenges.
She smiled at Kakashi, who had announced the start of the test, trying to give him her best creepily cheerful in-battle grin.
"Don't you two think you might should hide?"
"I'm not going to hide from a proper fight!" Naruto said indignantly, and Sakura stepped back, watching him in amusement. She might as well see what he was supposed to be capable of, at least until she saw an opportunity. She was only going to have one chance to catch Kakashi completely unprepared, and even that depended on him parrying to show off instead of dodging or using a clone.
She was disappointed and impressed at the same time. Naruto had no real sense of style, but the brute force of his chakra was pretty damn impressive. If he had average control for a genin his age, his chakra levels were something like a hundred times her currently dreadful ones. Luckily, she didn't have average control, Sakura thought to herself, smirking a bit as Kakashi did something EXTREMELY age inappropriate to Naruto, sending him flying and howling in pain from the violation of his dignity. Kakashi had a kunai in hand. Hopefully he'd have an instinct to parry.
This group of would be genin was weirder than normal, Kakashi decided early on. Of course, he'd expected that when he'd seen the composition. The last Uchiha was probably the third's way of tempting him.
And if it had been the Uchiha alone, that might have been enough. The Kyuubi kid, though, was another matter. Kakashi was torn on the subject, but what he'd seen of the kid so far hadn't impressed him.
The girl was the least notable so far. She'd mostly just stared at him, and had had to be prompted twice to even give her name, much less anything else.
Of course, he'd half expected Naruto's open challenge, but Sakura had just stood out and watched without bothering to hide. He'd been almost impressed initially, thinking they were going to fight him together, but she hadn't helped Naruto, and now he was going to make her pay at least a little price for that. Before he failed them, some experience with genjutsu might do her good at the academy.
As he thought through that, she started charging him, faster than he'd expected from what he'd seen in a brief glance at her file, swinging her kunai around wildly at his head in a sloppy over extension. He moved to catch it with his own kunai, ready to trap the girl in her own head after he disarmed her.
There was a sickening sound, even as he felt the wound as it landed, quickly backing up. She'd managed to somehow slip past his guard and get to his neck! Kakashi looked at the girl, confused, as she grinned at him, then dared look at the weapon in his hand which had become quite imbalanced.
It was cut clean through.
He could feel the blood running down his throat, and he knew he was in some degree of trouble. Not bothering to pause to ask for help or explain, he clamped a hand to his throat, sprinting towards the hospital.
He managed to make it before passing out from blood loss, but not by much.
Sakura was annoyed with herself. She hadn't managed to actually kill Kakashi, and the three of them had to put up with almost an hour of questioning from an ancient man in the Hokage's uniform. It was bizarre to think about, really; Itachi was only eight years or so older than her, and while Orochimaru had been considerably older than that, he'd looked much younger.
On the bright side, as she was increasingly convinced this wasn't an illusion, but something much stranger, she had evidently passed the genin test. It was certainly a lot easier than the first one she remembered being subjected to.
And now she was walking home, to a home she barely remembered, aside from thoughts of that one night.
Orochimaru had still been Hokage then, of course, and she'd been nine, part of the accelerated program for three years, not having seen her parents since the day she'd earned her way there.
But the genin test was the same for all genin whose parents weren't ninja, herself included. She'd heard vague rumors in advance, but dismissed them, since she was officially listed as a ward of the village.
Sakura shut her eyes, dismissing the thoughts. They hadn't been her first kills, but they'd been among the first, and they were among the few she regretted.
She decided against going home, then, considering what other options she might have. It wasn't all that late, after all - it wasn't even dinner time yet, and the three of them had had an awkward meal with what Kakashi had brought to taunt them with. Noticing a flower shop, Sakura gave a smile, deciding to step inside. She could always make time for flowers, after all.
"Hey, Forehead girl, what do you want?" rang out a voice.
Sakura hissed, not having had anyone dare talk about that in years, flashing anger focused on the vaguely familiar blond girl. Yamanaka something. Emi? "What did you call me?"
The girl flinched, then looked nervously at her. "Calm down, Sakura. Honestly, what's with you lately? You didn't even say hello yesterday, or taunt me about being on Sasuke's team."
Sakura shook her head. "Why would I care about being on the weakling's team?"
That just drew a bewildered look from the blond. "Is.. what?" She asked in confusion. "The weakling? Even if you're trying to trick me somehow, I can't believe you'd say that. Sasuke's amazing."
"Ino-chan! Do you have a customer right now? Oh, hello, Sakura." An older man, probably Ino's father or possibly an uncle, walked into the store from the back. Sakura wasn't terribly upset to have the conversation interrupted, and the reminder of Ino's name was definitely helpful!
Though the girl was still giving her that look, promising future annoyance about the weakling.
Sakura just smiled and greeted the man, before deciding to ask after Ino's genin test. "So, did you pass whatever test your jounin set you?"
"Yeah. I can't believe I'm stuck with those two idiots, though. At least you only have one.. What about you?"
"Hmm? Well, we didn't complete the objective, but that's mostly because I cut his throat open and he fled to the hospital ten minutes in. The Hokage passed us. We should have just passed for putting up with waiting four hours for Kakashi to show up, though." She decided to leave out the less happy parts, but smiled brightly and happily as she thought of cutting Kakashi.
She made a note to check out whether finishing the job in the hospital here would be feasible. It was a fortress where she was from, and even though she didn't really respect the mednin, one would definitely notice any poisons she knew how to use. Probably just a nice fantasy.
She giggled a little to herself, before noticing that Ino and her father were staring at her. "W.. what?"
"You just.. kind of zoned out. Are you sure you're okay, forehead?"
Sakura forced back the killing intent this time, though some of it leaked out anyway. "..Ah, yeah. Just let me order some flowers." And she proceeded with her order, a smile on her face.
The Third Hokage, one of the strongest ninja in the world, rubbed his forehead.
He should have made Jiraiya take the job after the fourth's death. He could have had a nice retirement, on a beach somewhere.
Instead, he had an idiot jounin in the hospital and then off duty for most of the next week because he'd nearly bled out in a genin test, of all things.
To a blow inflicted by the weakest of the members assigned to his team. He'd felt obliged to pass the three after that, without consulting Kakashi; if they could do that, then he wanted them to be genin. He just wasn't certain he wanted Kakashi to be their instructor; he was considering sending Kakashi somewhere very unpleasant as an example. There was a six month mission involving bodyguarding a Lord's son on a hiking and hunting expedition that could work. It was only barely a b rank, though, and slated for a single chuunin.
With a sigh, he made the decision - Kakashi couldn't be gone that long, and hopefully having nearly killed him wouldn't cost Kakashi the respect of his team. Besides, the jounin that were available were mostly either unreliable for teaching purposes or too busy with more important duties.
Team Seven would have to just be delayed a week or so.
AN: I know, I know. Dancing needs a new chapter, too. This one bit my toes and made me start it first.
Basic premise; Naruto and Sakura are forced into attempting the desperate time travel featured in so many stories, good and bad.
And boy, howdy, do they fuck it up, sending back an alternate version of Sakura instead, drawn from a Konoha where things went very different in the past - Orochimaru was chosen to be the Fourth Hokage, and Konoha started on a mission to conquer the other ninja villages. A largely successful mission.
In that world, Sakura was identified as a protegy at an early age, after killing another student who was bullying her during recess. She, along with several others, eventually helped Uchiha Itachi overthrow Orochimaru for control of the village and its empire, becoming one of Konoha's top officers in the process.