I don't own Naruto!

I'm not sure if the part about Karin's team is true but I'm just going to pretend it is.

Chapter 1

Karin stared wide-eyed at her reflection. Her reflection in the mirror! She looked just like Sakura! 'What is going on?!' she wondered silently to herself before a voice broke her from her thoughts. "Sakura? Are you okay, sweety?" the voice of a woman, presumably Sakura's mother, called from outside her room. "Y-yeah! I'm fine!" she called back unsurely, noting that her voice sounded like Sakura's too. "Well then, get ready! You don't want to be late for your exam, now do you?" the woman called back. "Okay!" she called back after a short pause. What exam was she taking? Karin looked back down at her chibi-fied body. It probably wasn't the chunin exams, was it?. Genin exams maybe? She sighed and slumped her shoulders. There was no point in worrying about it now, she'd have plenty of time for that later. Right now she just needed to play along with Sakura's life and act as inconspicuous as possible. Karin strolled over to the closet and searched for something to wear, but only found some uncomfortable red dresses. She had to admit though, the dresses were rather pretty. She looked around for something else, anything else, but couldn't find anything. "Okay, screw inconspicuous. I'm going shopping for better clothes when I get back." she muttered to herself as she slipped into one of the dresses… Okay, maybe they weren't that uncomfortable, but she still needed moving space…..which those dresses didn't offer. She was still going to get her some new clothes later, when she was done with this exam.

After she had finished getting dressed, she brushed her teeth and hair. Her new hair was extremely annoying. A few strands would keep falling into her face, not that she minded that. She did, however, mind that the long strands kept falling in front of her eyes, obscuring her vision. Karin huffed in annoyance before grabbing a kunai from the pouch that she had already secured around her waist.

"What are you doing?!" a familiar voice hissed.

"Cutting my hair, what does it look like?" she asked out loud, looking around for the disembodied voice that was talking to, and now scaring the shiz out of her. Random voices didn't just talk to you out of nowhere!

"Don't cut my hair, I like it like this…well, maybe cutting it shorter wouldn't be such a bad idea."

"Wait, your hair?" Karin felt dread creep into her heart.

"YES!"

"Sakura?" she asked carefully, feeling just a bit scared. Not that she'd ever admit it though.

"Correct." The voice answered back calmly, as if this was something that happened every day.

"Why am I in your body?! How did this happen?" Questions spilled from Karin's mouth at an insane rate. She didn't care about being polite right now, even if the other did save her life. She wanted answers and she wanted them now!

"Guess I should explain it, huh?" she said. Karin could see Sakura in her head, like when using her imagination to picture something, but the image of Sakura was much clearer.

"I used a jutsu. I was searching through the rubble after Madara and Sasuke's attack on the village, looking for anyone that might have survived or might have needed help…"

Sakura pushed some more chakra into her arms as she lifted yet another piece of debris from a small pile of bodies. It was a rather large piece of wall from one of the buildings that had collapsed during all the carnage of the battle. Once she had lifted it she let her eyes travel over the bodies. They were obviously dead before the piece of crumbled wall fell on them. One of the bodies was decapitated, by a sword she guessed. Another had a deep cut all the way from the sternum to below the stomach – gutted like a fish.

"No survivors…." she muttered as she looked over all the corpses that littered the street. Bodies of women and small children, of ninjas and civilians alike lay scattered all around her, making her stomach churn with an intense hatred for the ones responsible. For the boy she once claimed to love. Sakura threw the giant piece of junk away from the bodies. Some of the others had stab-wounds and slashes all over their bodies while others had severe burns that made them almost completely unrecognisable. They were going to need to use dental records to identify most of them. She clenched her fists tightly as she looked over the streets filled with death and desruction. 'Sasuke, this is all your fault!' she screamed in her head, memories of all her dead friends filled her , Sai, Kakashi… She took a shaky breath, before releasing it slowly, along with all the tension building between her shoulders. She shook her head before slowly trudging onward, once again looking for anyone that might still be alive and in need of medical attention. She lifted another large piece of debris and threw it out of her way, but to her surprise there were no bodies underneath, just a large pile of dirt and junk. Sakura stared at the pile for a few short moments before starting to dig through it. She had no idea why she was doing it, but her gut as telling her to search through the pile for…something. Listening to her gut seemed to pay off and after four minutes of digging she held a small, old-looking scroll in her hands. Sakura looked around for anyone else in the area. Once she was sure that there was no one else she gingerly opened the scroll.

'Instructions for a jutsu?' Sakura wondered as she read over the instructions very carefully. 'I should be able to pull it off.' Sakura once again checked for anyone that might see her before placing he opened scroll on the ground and sitting down cross-legged in front of it. She took a deep breath to try and focus her mind and started with the series of handseals. Once finished her hands were in the position of the tiger seal, but to her utter disappointment nothing else happened. Her chakra was just completely drained. Sakura sighed heavily as she took a chakra pill from her pack and swallowed the bland-tasting drug. She wasn't completely sure what she was expecting. She just felt the…urge to do it. She quickly dragged herself back onto her feet and prepared to start running again. Her vision was starting to blur and her head was pounding. Sakura tried to reach out for something to lean on, but soon enough she found herself face first in the dirt. She felt her body shake and convulse for an unknown reason. Her breathing became ragged as darkness started to claim her vision. She heard someone call her name. It sounded almost like Naruto to her, but she knew it was impossible. She had seen him get impaled straight through the chest by Sasuke's sword. She had heard his last words to her – an apology for not keeping his promise. She had felt his pulse diminish before disappearing completely beneath her hand as she tried to heal the severe wound.

She felt the darkness swallow her and at long last the pain that was coursing through her whole body stated to slowly fade away until only a dull ache was left.

"That's pretty rough." Karin gulped audibly as the images from Sakura's memory started fading out of her mind. She had seen some nasty stuff before in her life, but this had just felt too real. The image of all those corpses was never going to leave her, was it?

"Yeah, and it's going to happen again if we don't do something." Sakura told her seriously.

"So you want me to prevent this all from happening? You want me to stop Sasuke for you?"

"Yes, I do. I really, really do. I don't want to see everyone I love die again; I don't think I could bear it."

"…I see…"

"Well?"

"I don't really want to have anything to do with that prick. I don't even want to see him, much less help him. I don't even get why I had to be the one to magically reappear in your body. Why not someone else?! Why not your best friend or something like that? You're a nice girl, I'm sure you have plenty of friends to ask! Why me of all people?"

"Because you're the only other highly skilled medic I know, okay! Ino is a good medic and all, but her team is too dependent on her existence in this timeline!"

"So now I don't even exist in this timeline?! Oh, just great. Absolutely perfect, Pinkie! That's just what I wanted to hear! I no longer exist! Lovely!"

"Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't realise you had such an important meaning to your existence!"

"Are you saying my existence was meaningless!"

"Well, tell me then! What amazing goals did you have? What were you going to accomplish, huh? What difference did your life make?"

"I …I was-"

"Useless. You served no purpose to your genin team, so they abandoned you in the forest. You were slowing them down. They wanted a scroll so badly, but there wasn't any way for them to get it because you were always in the way. So they left you with your team's scroll and told you to protect it. And then you got attacked by a bear and you couldn't even defend yourself! No, Sasuke had to come and save you! You were useless when it mattered!"

"Then why the hell ask me to help you?! Why? If I was so useless before, what makes you think I'll be any different now?! Why did you ask some useless person to help you then!" Karin yelled, not caring who heard her.

"…because we're in the same boat. I went through your memories; I know you know you were useless. I also know you tried to change that." Sakura said gently, not wanting to anger the other again.

"Well obviously there's a difference between trying and succeeding." Karin said bitterly.

"I know. During those exact same chunin exams I was just as useless as you were and I tried desperately to change that because my teammates were in danger. I tried and failed, because only then did I realise that strength and power doesn't come overnight. You have to work for it. Before Sasuke left…I never trained or worked hard on my skills. I thought my smarts would get me through everything. I was wrong. I wasn't capable of keeping my team safe. I wasn't focussing on my training back then, only on trying to impress Sasuke. I spent hours and hours on trying to look my best and conditioning my hair so he would notice me. I never trained or practiced my jutsu – I was so distracted with a boy that I didn't care about that."

"…so? Why should I care?" Karin asked softly.

"Because…this is a chance for both of us to make things right. We can be useful for once. We can be strong. We already know what's going to happen in the future and we can change it. There is somuch time to change it!"

"Well who said I wanted to be useful and strong? Those things only make you a bigger target for people like Orochimaru! Maybe I wanted to be weak!"

"You're so stubborn! I know you never wanted to be weak and according to your memories, Orochimaru came after you anyway because of your chakra-tracking ability. Please! I'm begging you, just help me. Just help me save this village…please…"

"Okay, okay! ...Fine, I'll do it." Karin said reluctantly. "But if I'm doing it, I'm doing it my way."

Karin said with a small as she bent over forward and started cutting her now-pink hair, letting the pink curls fall in a small heap on the floor.

"Why you little-"

She ruffled her hair a bit to get rid of the last loose strands before standing back upright and smoothing her hair down slightly. Her hair wasn't as spikey as before and it was much softer now as well. She had only cut the strands that would bother her, letting the rest frame her face. Something still didn't completely look right, though.

Karin heard footsteps coming closer to her room. "Sakura, are you ready yet?" Sakura's mother asked as she entered the room, only to gasp. "What happened to your hair?!" asked. The pink-haired woman sighed angrily before grabbing the brush and taking a ribbon off of the night stand. "Honestly, what's gotten into you? Trying to cut your hair on your own…" she scolded as she started brushing Karin's hair. Karin stood completely still, frozen on the spot. It had been a while since someone brushed her hair. Her own mother had never been particularly interested in such things.

Karin watched in the mirror as the woman carefully put the ribbon in her now-pink hair. "There you go. No need to cut your hair, see?" the woman smiled gently as she placed her hands on Karin's shoulders. Karin simply nodded and tried to smile back at the woman. "Now, time for breakfast!" the woman declared happily as she started to lightly push her daughter, now actually Karin, out of the room and downstairs to the kitchen.