Replica

By TwinEnigma



Chapter One:

Sakura sighed, standing up, and wiped off her hands as she walked back to the rest of the team. "We got him stabilized for now, but he's going to need surgery, soon. There's more internal damage than either of us can fix on the field."

"Injuries like that don't come from nowhere," Kakashi murmured, eye narrowed thoughtfully. "And if he's any indication..."

Naruto frowned and Shikamaru snorted in displeasure, his strategies already shifting.

Pakkun sniffed at the large bundled cloak on the ground. "Oi, Kakashi. Sasuke's scent is coming from here."

Sai was closest, the other members of the new Sasuke retrieval platoon having spread out to form a perimeter. He leaned down and tore off the cloak.

Beneath it, in bloodstained white clothes, were the barefooted, unconscious forms of Sasuke and his redheaded female companion.

Sakura started forward immediately, kneeling down next to them and taking their pulses. She looked back to Kakashi and signaled 'asleep.'

He made a gesture and both Naruto and Sai backed off a little. Behind them, the rest of the platoon listened, waiting for further orders.

Sakura leaned forward and gently shook Sasuke's shoulder. "Sasuke, can you hear me? You have to wake up now, Sasuke."

He frowned a little and pulled his arm away from her, but didn't wake up.

Naruto stared in shock and Shikamaru's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Sasuke," Sakura said, a little louder, "It's time to wake up."

Sasuke frowned again and this time he opened his eyes a little. Instantly, he sat up, looking at them in genuine surprise and confusion. It was as if he didn't recognize them at all.

Next to him, the red-haired girl stirred and, upon seeing them, scooted very close to Sasuke, until she was practically hiding behind him.

"Hey, Sasuke," Sakura said, calmly, as if she weren't talking to her dangerously unstable former teammate, but rather a small, lost child.

He stared at her, blinking slowly, and then looked around. "Where's Juugo?"

So that was the big man's name.

"Ah, Juugo's hurt very badly, Sasuke," Sakura explained. "We're taking care of him, though. See, he's right over there."

She pointed over to the spot where Ino was monitoring the big man's vitals, Hinata and Kiba standing careful guard.

"Oh," he said, instantly looking less tense.

"Sasuke, I'm going to check you both for injuries, is that all right?" Sakura asked gently.

He cocked his head to the side. "Like an examination?"

"Yes, just like that," she said, keeping a pleasant tone.

"Okay," he said.

Sakura quickly checked his torso and abdomen for wounds and then moved up to his head, searching for evidence of severe head trauma. She repeated the procedure on the girl, who clung tightly to Sasuke's hand the whole time, but was otherwise just as docile.

"There, all done!" she said cheerfully.

Kakashi cleared his throat.

"Sasuke, can you and... Karin... wait right here for a minute? I'll be right back," Sakura said, recalling the name the big man – Juugo – had whispered as he was passing out.

Sasuke nodded complacently.

Sakura smiled pleasantly and walked over to where Kakashi, Naruto and Shikamaru were waiting for her.


"That's not Sasuke," Sakura said bluntly, her face deadly serious.

Naruto stared at her in disbelief but a signal from Kakashi stopped him from protesting.

"What's his status?" Kakashi asked.

"He's in perfect physical health," Sakura said. "No injuries, no illness and no scarring."

"None at all?" asked Shikamaru, frowning.

Sakura shook her head. "Absolutely no scars anywhere, not even calluses on the hands. And it's not just him – the girl, too. Nothing."

"I don't get it," Naruto said. "What the hell does that have to do with him not being Sasuke? He looks like him, doesn't he? And Pakkun says he smells like him, too."

Sakura sighed and held up her hand, so that Naruto could clearly see the knotwork of fine scars on her knuckles and calluses on her fingers. "Every ninja collects scars over the course of their career from fights and training with their tools and jutsu. Additionally, they form calluses from routine training."

She paused for a second and then continued, "Sasuke had burn scars on his left fingers from the fire jutsu he favored and electrical burn scars from the Chidori, in addition to the scars left from Haku's senbon and regular training with shuriken and kunai. He had the curse seal on the left side, at the junction between his shoulder and neck, and likely also had the snake summon contract tattooed on his left arm. We know that he had some additional scarring on his chest when we ran into him at the summit."

"And that boy has no scars at all," Shikamaru said thoughtfully.

Sakura nodded.

"So, could there be some kind of weird jutsu that gets rid of them or something?" Naruto asked, frowning.

"Normally, that's the possibility I'd lean towards," Sakura sighed. "But not in this case. See, there's a whole bunch of other weird things going on with those two."

"Like how he didn't attempt to attack when you woke him up," Kakashi said, eyebrow furrowed in thought. "And the way he still trusted you even though he didn't recognize you. That sort of implicit trust is something you only see in very, very young children."

"Right," Sakura said. "He has no head injuries or brain damage to suggest that this is amnesia from severe head trauma. Adding to that, they're both wearing hospital scrubs and have a serial number tattooed at the wrist."

Naruto scratched his head, looking over at the two complacent, strangely docile teenagers being watched by Sai. "So, what do you think it means?"

"I think it means we need to find out where Juugo found those two," Shikamaru said seriously.

"We can't ask Juugo," Sakura said, firmly. "He's in no condition. And we're going to need to transport him soon if we want him to survive."

"We can have Naruto reverse summon him to Shizune," Kakashi supplied. "And I suspect those two will want to go with him. We'll have to send someone back with them with our findings and to avoid... misunderstandings."

Naruto looked thoughtful. "Ino and Sai are the best choices for that. Both are good with that kind of thing."

Shikamaru scoffed a little, but didn't disagree.

Kakashi nodded. "Ino and Sai will go with them, then. Sakura, why don't you see if those two can remember anything about where they were?"

Sakura nodded.

"Sakura," Shikamaru piped up. "Have Sasuke channel some chakra to his eyes, will you?"

She looked a little confused, but nodded.


"Hey, there, Sasuke," Sakura said, smiling. "How are you doing?"

Sasuke stared up at her. "Is something wrong?"

"Well, we're having a little trouble treating Juugo," she said. "We need to know how he got hurt so we can fix him correctly when we take him to the hospital."

It wasn't exactly a lie. The more they knew about how he'd been wounded, the easier treatment was going to be.

Sasuke's face fell. "He got hurt when he took us out of that place. He rescued us."

"What place?" Sakura asked.

Karin shook her head, pointing wildly to her left, and clung tightly to Sasuke, who answered her, "I don't know. We didn't see a lot of it. There were a lot of dead people, though."

"Do you think you could show us how to get back there?" Sai asked, kneeling down and unrolling a blank scroll.

Sasuke shook his head. "I don't remember. It was all so fast."

Karin shook her head and clung to him harder.

"Karin doesn't remember either," Sasuke added. "She thinks it was that way though."

He pointed to the same spot Karin had been pointing to.

"Thank you, Karin. I know it's hard," Sakura nodded, smiling at the girl.

"Will Juugo be okay now?" Sasuke asked, anxiously.

"Don't worry, we're going to send him to one of the best hospitals around," Sakura said, soothingly.

"We want to go with him," Sasuke demanded.

"I know, that's why we're sending you with him," Sakura explained calmly. "I just need to do one more test first and then we'll send all of you to the hospital. I know he'll be happy to see you both there after he's better."

Sasuke immediately seemed pacified.

"Now, Sasuke, do you know what chakra is?" Sakura asked.

He shook his head in the negative.

"Okay," she sighed, taking a deep breath. How to explain this? "I need you to close your eyes and picture a ball. I want you to slowly pull that ball up until it's at your head and then open your eyes."

Sasuke complied, screwing up his face as he attempted to concentrate, and then opened his eyes, revealing two immature, single-tomoe Sharingan eyes.

"Now, close your eyes and let the ball go," Sakura said, watching as he immediately did so. "Good, very good. You did very well."

"It was hard," he pouted, looking at her with once-again dark eyes. "My eyes felt weird."

"It's okay. You did very, very well, Sasuke." Sakura smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way as she offered him a hand. He took it carefully, allowing her to help him to his feet, and then turned to help Karin to her feet as well.

It was utterly surreal.

Sakura mentally kicked herself and asked Sai to come with them. She had some first-responder notes she wanted to send along with the patients and his shorthand was the best.


AN: "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Athur Conan Doyle

Ladies and gentlemen, what is a Sasuke has Sharingan and looks and smells like Sasuke, but is not in fact Sasuke?