Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto nor any part of it.

Hey guys, thanks for reading… if anyone did. I don't know, this far no one's left reviews. I'd love it if you guys did! Thanks!… and sorry I forgot to mention in the first chapter… Tsunade's the Hokage already..ummm… the Third is already gone. And this story started with the genin team choosing but then jumps ahead to higher levels of skills for the three of them.

Broken, then Re-made

Sakura lay under the covers on her bed in her room, safe from Sasuke's cutting words. She had held them back when his original words had rushed into her mind. She curled up and rubbed her red eyes. Sasuke's face, filled with annoyance and negativity, swam into her mind's eye. "I don't care for you!" It repeated over and over in her ears, ringing. After a long while it stopped, but the ringing continued, but now the sound held shame, sorrow, and a feeling of loss.

Sakura's eyes were closed as the ones in her thoughts opened. Her Inner Sakura woke up, and instead of being victorious and rebellious, she felt nothing but sadness. She wandered the corridors of her mind, where all her pictures of her and Sasuke together in a happy couple were curling at the corners and cracks and rips ate at the edges of the images. On each picture a long rip was sliding down through the middle. Through the middle, and in between Sasuke and Sakura. The rips she saw on the pictures tearing through the middle tore apart different scenes. She watched picnics together, sunsets and sunrises, and last of all, her last imagined perfect world, her last mind's image, a picture of her and Sasuke close together, shoulder to shoulder, holding hands, rip apart. She watched as the tear raced down the picture and tore their hands apart.

Tears coursed down her face, eyes tightly shut, but the tears streaming out anyways. She ran, in her mind, ran away from all of it. She got lost in the now dark and colorless corridors of her mind. But, as the minutes ticked by, Sakura found a new feeling she hadn't really felt before. It was determination and the thought of one-minded fierceness in pursuing something she wanted badly. Her Inner Sakura found a door that was the same dark as the rest of her thoughts, but glowed through the cracks around the door. She reached out, and opened it.

Sakura woke up the next day from dreams she grasped at, but couldn't remember as they slid away from her memories. She felt strong though, and confident. She leapt out of bed and began to search for her day's uniform. It wasn't easy though. She had decided when she woke up that for some whim of her mind, she was going to wear something different from the red uniform/dress that she normally had on. Again, it wasn't easy, because it seemed that the uniform thing was the only thing she even had to wear that was hanging in her closet!

"Dammit!" she hissed, as her arms windmilled about in the closet, red uniforms flying out of it. Her mom knocked on her door as she normally did to make sure Sakura had awoken, and entered the room to find Sakura in a bathrobe standing in a pile of clothes…

"Sakura-a-a…" her mom snarled. "You're cleaning that up, you know."

"Help me find something else to wear other than this insane constantly multiplying mass of red, and I'll make sure I do." Sakura returned, rebellious and annoyed from her encounter with the closet.

Her mom returned to find the floor clear of red dresses, and held up a new set of clothes for Sakura to see. First of all, it was crazily skimpy. It was basically a cut off tank top that stopped wayyy too high, and a mini-skirt. Sakura blanched. To top that, it was also bright orange and striped with neon green. It hurt her eyes to look at it.

"MOM! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!" she screamed, pointing at the glowing clothes and shielding her eyes.

Her mom said briskly, "Well, if you don't like the clothes that you've been happy to wear for the past years of your life, and you don't appreciate the money your father and I work to earn so we can buy you those clothes hanging in your closet, then you can wear horrible things like this." Sakura noticed the sunglasses on her mom's face to protect her from the light reflecting off of the horrid … clothes? Sakura didn't even know if those counted as clothes.

Sakura let out a long breath that whooshed past her clenched teeth. She took her normal uniform into the bathroom to change, and hear her mom sign in relief and leave her room.

She finished changing into her uniform and hung her flower-printed pajamas on a hook. Some money was taken off a shelf and put into her kunai-container (sorry for my ignorance if this thing even has a name) , taking care to arrange it so her money wasn't sliced into pieces. Then, she ran downstairs and said a hurried goodbye to her mother and her father, who gave an absent-minded wave. After that, she just charged out into the street and straight to her favorite store. About an hour later, she walked out with several bags bulging with a billion (excuse the exaggeration) sets of… a new uniform. The new clothes were dumped out and taken downstairs for later washing, but she took one set of the new uniform, and changed into it.

Dang, I'm good. Just in time for practice. She thought, grinning at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She called to her parents yet another goodbye and an "I'm going to training!" as she walked out of the door, and didn't notice her mother's gape-mouthed stare and her father's thoughtful hmmm's. She felt great. Time for training. Yes. She didn't even realize that she wasn't thinking about Sasuke-kun at all.

Tch. Sasuke's eye's narrowed slightly in annoyance. Naruto and Sasuke were waiting on the bridge again. It wasn't that rare, infact, they did it everyday. Whenever they tried to sleep in later or go to the bridge later in the day, he was waiting for them when they came, even if they came long before he ever appeared. Yes, he would be there waiting and give them a disapproving look. So it was always the three of them waiting for Kakashi, and never any other way. But then again, they usually waited for Kakashi. Today, it was Kakashi and Sakura?

Naruto seemed puzzled too. "Oy, Sasuke."

"Hm."

"Where's Sakura-chan? She's usually on time, isn't she?"

"Neh… Not today, apparently."

Naruto settled back onto the railing, and Sasuke turned his head back up to the clouds where he watched the patterns go by. Last night, he had certainly not slept well. Sakura's quivering face had seemed projected from his mind onto the ceiling as he lay there staring at it. She had looked so sad. Damn it, but she's annoying. Yet as he thought those words and remembered his harsh words to her yesterday, he felt an odd feeling of regret. He hmphed to himself, and cleared his mind, and forced himself to bring up that dreadful image of Itachi.

"Gooooood morning!" Kakashi called from his personal little red arch. "Let's see… I got… lost?" He winked, although one eye was covered anyways. "Hmm… Sakura's not here?"

"Nah, she's late. Maybe she's sick." Naruto said.

Sasuke twitched as an image of Sakura in a corner crying popped up. He winced. He tried to wipe it away, but it didn't do anything. The three of them set off for the forest, where they had their latest mission.

"This is so stupid!" Naruto complained. "Why are we trying to catch a bunch of chickens that ran away from a restaurant? They're going to be eaten if they stay in the forest, and they'll be eaten in the restaurant too!" They were still walking towards the area of forest where the chickens were supposed to have run and were putting in earpieces and transmitters. Sasuke personally agreed with Naruto. Catching chickens. Tsk. Waste of time. Chuunin exam is coming up in a couple of months.

"It's just a simple mission. Ninja shouldn't complain about things that the people need them to do." Kakashi replied, cheerfully playing on Naruto's ninja pride.

They came upon a clearing and their ears were filled with buk buk..buk boGAAAAAAWK!

"Have fun, guys." Kakashi said.

He promptly jumped up onto a tree branch, settled down, and opened his Paradise book. Naruto and Sasuke glared up at him with lightning shooting out of their eyeballs at him.

"Damn it. Sakura's not even here! She's never here for grunt work." Naruto muttered.

"Shut it and get started, idiot. We're going to shepherd them into a circle then keep them there with that net you brought, Naruto. Then we can contact the restaurant." Sasuke said. He sighed, then tapped the ear transmitters. "Yeah… we contact with them with the transmitters. Get started."

An hour later, the last chicken ran squawking into the crowd of chickens that was gathered in the middle of the clearing. Sasuke used a mild genjutsu technique on the chickens and saw their movements die down as they fell asleep under the genjutsu.

"Naruto, the net." He called to Naruto, who was wrestling with a net that he had shoved inside his backpack, and had pulled it out to find it tangled. Naruto worked out a last knot or two, and then handed one end to Sasuke. Together, they tossed the net over the chicken group and arranged the stone weights.

"Phew. Done!" Naruto proclaimed, grinning. Sasuke was counting the chickens.

"There's only twenty-five of them. The restaurant needs all thirty back. We're missing five." Sasuke snarled. "Great."

Naruto gave a wail and a groan. He sat down with a thump on the ground.

"What do we do? Look for the others and leave these alone to escape again?"

BO GAAAWWK! The scream of another chicken erupted again as one charged out from under the net. The other chickens were beginning to stir.

"Shit…" Sasuke cursed.

"OY SASUKE WHAT'S UP WITH YOUR GENJUTSU!" Naruto yelled, as the chickens began to rustle madly.

"Well now, NARUTO! What about that net you made! You didn't weave that part!" Sasuke returned, and pointed to a foot wide hole in the net where the first chicken had run away. Naruto's face reddened in anger and embarrassment.

"Screw… THIS!" he roared, and suddenly a kunai was out of his pocket and flashing towards the runaway chicken.

"NARUTO! YOU IDIOT!" Sasuke yelled, but it was too late to be able to stop it.

Ding. Another kunai collided into Naruto's kunai, and pinned it through the hole against a tree. Naruto and Sasuke gaped at the kunai and the runaway chicken that was still running away. But before they could trace the kunai…

Buk buk buk buk! The rest of the chickens suddenly began to stream out through other holes in the net!

"Shit." Sasuke again, and along with Naruto this time.

Whoosh. A larger net of real quality landed over the chickens and covered them yet again. Naruto gaped again, but Sasuke's eyes blazed into Sharingan and he whipped around and caught…

Sakura.