By morning, Sakura was as prepared as she figured she would ever be. She had her old pouch of supplies and a bracer of kunai, but of course her younger self didn't have any of the medical supplies or other gear she had collected over the better part of 5 years. She felt kind of exposed and vulnerable without them, like she was missing part of who she was. She'd just have to suck it up and deal with it.

She stared in front of her mirror, her mother's voice calling her for breakfast only background noise. "Okay," she coached herself. "You are Haruno Sakura, age twelve; shallow, Sasuke-chasing genin of average abilities." She clapped her hands together, whether in excitement or prayer even she wasn't certain.

Now she just had to make them believe it. She went down to breakfast. She was wearing her old red dress, mentally wincing at what Kakashi-sensei's first thought regarding her would probably be. Sure, it was both pretty and functional, and hardly as impractical as some of the kunoichi outfits out there (Kurenai), but it didn't really send a message of competence and willingness to work hard. But the dress had been the only thing that would stand up to any sort of rigorous training, her other clothes were all dresses and things, civilian clothes. And she damn well planned for the bell test to be rigorous, this time around; no passing out in the first five minutes for her. Maybe I can look into buying some pants, she thought idly. She could buy cute clothes again when she wasn't so far behind everyone in her ninja skills, she promised herself.

Breakfast passed her by in a sudden flash of nerves. First meetings could be messed up so easily. What if she somehow didn't do something right, and screwed it all up? Or gave something away? Kakashi and his Sharingan were scarily perceptive, for all he never seemed to pay attention to anything except his perverted reading material. She answered her mom's concerned questions about what she would be doing today mechanically, and got moving as soon as she could. By the time she reached her front door she was almost running.

Almost as soon as she hit the street, she ran into Ino. Her best friend lived only two blocks away - the Yamanakas weren't one of those clans that sectioned themselves off in their own little encampments, like the Hyuuga and the Uchiha had - and they'd been walking to the Academy together since they were 6 years old. That hadn't changed even when their friendship had mutated into a quasi-serious rivalry.

Took a deep breath and carefully stepped into her predetermined role.

"Are you feeling okay, Sakura? You were really out of it yesterday." Ino asked, a bit of concern showing through. Then she grinned. "You wouldn't be coming down with something, would you? Sasuke-kun wouldn't like you much if you were runny-nosed and sneezing."

"Just fine, Ino," she replied, falling into the game. "I'm sure I could get Sasuke-kun to notice me if I were half-dead with fever." She thought she'd captured just the right amount of their old juvenile one-upmanship, and mentally patted herself on the back. Score one for Sakura, actress supreme, Inner Sakura grinned. All right, damn it!

Ino could be perceptive when she felt like it, but it would take a mind-reader to get from 'Sakura is acting weird' to 'Sakura is from the future.' Oh wait, she was a mind-reader. Maybe a little caution, then.

Pretty soon, they were rushing off down the street, growling at each other. This is kind of fun, she admitted to herself. After Sasuke had gone, she and Ino had drifted apart as she fell more and more into her training with Tsunade, and Ino became more attached to her own team and the study of her family's jutsu took up more of her time. Getting into catfights with Ino gave her a certain bittersweet feeling of nostalgia. She figured she might as well get used to the feeling, because she didn't see it leaving her anytime soon.

And if Ino noticed her heart wasn't really in it or that she seemed distracted, she didn't say anything. They charged into the building neck-and-neck.

A judicious foot sweep as they came down the hallway sent Ino tumbling and missing the open door. She knew a lot more taijutsu that she used to, even if it would take time and effort to make it natural and ingrain it into her muscles again. Sakura stepped into the gap, hip-checked Naruto aside - rather more gently than she could remember doing when she really was twelve (twelve the first time? Twelve again? Time travel could give even her big forehead headaches) - and slid into the seat between the two boys. She flashed them a grin. "You guys don't mind if I sit here, do you, Naruto, Sasuke-kun?"

Naruto got red in the face and stammered that it wasn't a problem. Just from me noticing he was here? The poor kid is so starved for attention. Well, she guessed he wasn't really a kid, no more than she was anyway, but that's how she thought of them. They were just so... young. Sasuke just grunted noncommittally. He was, Sakura admitted, seriously cute even at twelve. And she knew from personal experience that he would only grow even more handsome in later years. Too bad about all the emotional baggage. She didn't have the first clue on how to piece that broken child back together again.

Pretty soon, Naruto and Sasuke were ignoring her in favor of engaging in a stare-down with each other. Story of her life. Ino re-appeared and slammed her palm down on the desk. Sakura looked up at her with artful innocence.

'That was a dirty trick, Forehead Girl," she hissed. Sakura widened her eyes so that she looked, if possible, even more innocent of any blame.

"Me, Ino-pig? Whatever do you mean?" She added gaily, "First come, first serve, you know."

A thump drew her attention back to Naruto and Sasuke, who seemed to be trying to electrocute each other to death with their eyes from about three inches away, Naruto crouched on Sasuke's desk.

She checked the situation against her memories. A lot had happened since then, but she'd always had pretty good recall. Hey, come to think of it, didn't they end up...?

She didn't have long to wait. Less than a minute later, the pony-tailed kid in the front row leaned back, and the end result - a Naruto-on-Sasuke liplock. Sakura's lips twitched.

"-Snerk-" The sound erupted as she tried desperately to keep her laughter under control. Sakura put her head down on her folded arms and began giggling helplessly from the looks on Sasuke and Naruto's faces. Their utter horror was hilarious to watch. Perhaps that made her a bad person. But it was just so funny.

Naruto abruptly stopped hacking and choking and whispered, "I sense danger." She was impressed by the weight of killing intent the girls were producing. Maybe they had what it took to be ninja, after all. Soon he was getting the crap beaten out of him by a third of the class - just about every female in the room except Sakura and Hinata.

She didn't know why they were so pissed off. She thought it was kind of hot. Just replace the little kid versions with what she remembered from the future - oh yeah. Rowr.

"... We've arranged the groups such that overall abilities are equivalent." Iruka-sensei finished. She blinked. She'd lost a little time, there. Nothing important had happened while she was daydreaming, at least. Then went the reading of names. first, second, third, fourth... she couldn't even match most of their names to faces. For all she knew, they might have never passed their sensei's tests and made genin. Poor kids. "Next, seventh group." Moment of truth, here... "Uzumaki Naruto. Haruno Sakura. Uchiha Sasuke."

She couldn't help it. She did a little victory pose along with Naruto, fist thrust into the air. Though likely not for the reason people thought: things were situated exactly as she wanted them to, Naruto and Sasuke both. There was no reason to think that the team assignments would be different, but still, somewhere in the back of her mind, she'd worried.

She resisted the urge to cackle evilly on the grounds that it might scare off her new teammates.

A short time later, she was leaning back against one of the desk rows, bored out of her skull. Her mind had glossed over exactly how much of her early teenaged years were spent waiting around for her pain-in-the-ass jounin teacher, probably as some sort of defense mechanism. There were some things the mind just didn't want to remember. Everyone else had gone to meet their new jounin, Ino's group being the last to go.

Still, it did give her an opportunity to covertly watch her new-old teammates. Naruto with his stupid jokes, and Sasuke with his moody slouching, and their whole silly schoolboy rivalry thing. It was all she could do not to squeal 'adorable!', latch on to them, and never let go.

No! Bad Sakura! No abusing your teammates, she chided herself.

"No jounin would fall for that." Sasuke's disdainful voice prodded her out of her reverie. She really needed to stop doing that. She looked up, just in time for their new silver-haired jounin sensei to catch the chalkboard eraser in the head and prove Sasuke wrong, and for Naruto to burst into laughter as his trap worked.

She shook her head, a small grin on her face. Kakashi certainly was good enough to dodge anything they could throw at him, so it must have fallen into the 'dick around with people's heads' category that was half of everything Kakashi did.

"Maa," Kakashi drawled. "My first impression of you guys is..."

Here it comes, she thought happily.

"I hate you."

Ahh, nostalgia, she thought, her grin never faltering.

'Well, whatever. Let's go," their new jounin led them away. The rooftop where they situated themselves was just the rooftop of the Academy, which totally fit with Kakashi's lazy persona. Taking his kids to the park like Asuma did would no doubt take up valuable porn-reading or memorial-visiting time, she figured.

"Now, let's introduce ourselves," he declared, leaning back against the railing. Sakura tossed herself onto the ground next to Naruto and Sasuke, and waited with impatience as Kakashi worked through his non-answer: "I am Kakashi.. I have hobbies, but they're none of your business.. etcetera etcetera. Your turn." Ladies and gentlemen, my jounin instructor. They probably deserved each other. If anybody deserved to have a squirrelly, chronically-late jounin sensei like Kakashi, it would probably be their motley crew. She knew she wouldn't wish him on Hinata or Shino or Chouji.

Maybe Ino.

She then had to listen to Naruto's ode to ramen - how great cup ramen was, even if he didn't like waiting the three minutes for it to cook, how awesome Ichiraku ramen was, how he liked miso and pork best but vegetable, beef and seafood were good too - and her heart went out to Sasuke as talked about his one ambition: the death of his brother, who he would only ever refer to as that man. She'd never learned much about That Man, but she knew that he was responsible for the Uchiha Massacre where Sasuke's entire extended family had been murdered in one night of fire and blood, that he was a part of the Akatsuki and was at least mostly responsible for Sasuke being such a headcase, and that Sasuke did indeed slay him in the future. It hadn't exactly fixed the Avenger; if anything, he'd just gotten more irrational afterwards. When it got around to her turn, she thought about her answer for a moment.

"My name is Haruno Sakura," she introduced herself. "I like flowers, and cute things. And these two guys too." She jerked her thumb at her teammates. "But I also want to be a good ninja. In fact," some fragment of devilry made her add, "one day I'd like to be strong enough to kick your ass, Kakashi-sensei."

"Well then," Kakashi went on, looking like he had about a thousand things better to do, repeating his old speech practically word-for-word. "We have a mission tomorrow."

"What kind of mission?" Naruto practically salivated.

Kakashi's one visible eye was hard to read for the uninitiated, but she could tell their sensei was grinning under his mask. Schadenfreude, thy name is Kakashi. "Survival training."

She could just feel the malicious enjoyment dripping from his words. Naruto was hopping around in place, ecstatic. How Sasuke and Naruto planned to be ninja if they couldn't pick up on something as obvious as their teacher's malevolent grin, she didn't know.

A/N: Yes, yes, scenes we've all seen before. It'll get better, or at least I like to think so. Next chapter's going to be around twice this size.