Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Naruto.

Did she expect to see anyone else she knew while they were shopping? No. Which was why she wasn't too surprised that she didn't see much more than Hinata's head in the distance, examining a something-or-another that was engrossing enough that she didn't protest being trampled over. Not that she protested over anything, but still. If the girl had a backbone anywhere, Sakura had yet to see it.

Still. Just because she recognized someone didn't mean she wanted to go over and (re)introduce herself. If things worked out, she'd be out of here in three days tops, and Haruno Akira would never be heard from again. Instead, she followed after her father, always in step a pace behind him while her father obsessed over inconsequential things like toothbrushes.

Did she even need a new one, just because she was a guy now? It wasn't like she'd give herself cooties or something.

And she squawked when Dad tried to convince her that boys did not have long hair. Deliberately, she pointed out Hyuuga Neji. Apparently, branch family rebels didn't count. She spent the next two hours trying to figure out how and when Neji had ever rebelled against anything. What, did he not wash his hands after hitting the toilet or something? Ugh, no, he had to; he was too fastidious to do otherwise.

She screeched when the barber cut her hair too short. She'd agreed to maybe lightening it up to just above her shoulders; an entire three inches. This was definitely chin-length.

And yes, that was definitely the barber's teeth on the floor.

Damn, and he'd hoped that she could be the stereotypical long-haired bad boy. Not everybody on her team had hair that didn't even touch their shoulders. Hell, their hair probably wouldn't even recognize their shoulders even if they touched it. And that--she stared. That was definitely a curl. How the hell did her hair manage to curl? It didn't even curl when she was a girl, and she'd worked hard to make it try. Now she was a boy, and it curled.

Stupid hair.

"I'll never be able to go there again," Dad grumbled in a low tone, unhappy for the first time today.

"He ruined my hair," she reminded him irritably. "Ruined it."

"You didn't have to hit him."

"If you didn't yank me off, I would have killed him." She pouted. "Cut my hair. Should've killed him."

She followed him back home, barely surprised to notice that Mom was in the living room reading a magazine. "So you're back."

"He made me cut my hair," Sakura accused immediately, pointing to her father.

"He tried to kill the barber!"

"He cut my hair too short!"

"Talk some sense into your son!"

"Nephew!"

"Nephew."

She glanced up from turning the page. "It's a nice haircut," she said boredly. "And killing is wrong."

Sakura pouted. "You always take his side."

Mom shrugged. "He's cuter than you are."

She glared at them both for a long minute before departing into her room with her packages. She did, after all, have new clothes to hang. A girl did have priorities, man or not.

She was in the middle of dinner when it happened. Her mouth was half open waiting for the bite of salad she'd unenthusiastically put together ten minutes previous, and suddenly the burning sensation returned to her limbs.

She screamed. Her limbs contracted. The fork fell from her hand, hit the table on its way to the ground. Her chair fell backwards, and she hit her head hard on the ground, still convulsing. The screaming didn't stop. The burning didn't stop. Her vision faded out, jade eyes wide but unable to see anything but the red that lie under the surface.

Distantly, she was aware that her parents were watching her. Like this was only stage one of the experiment, and she wasn't their daughter, who they were supposed to protect and take care of. That right now, both would like nothing more than to dissect her, somehow put her transformation in slow motion so that they could watch and understand it more fully.

She couldn't stop screaming, even when the pain dulled and she was left gasping for breath.

"So the growth wasn't permanent," Mom said quietly, in a tone that she could have been discussing the weather. But she slid out of her chair and poked her arm firmly with one manicured nail. "Does this hurt?"

Sakura's vision whited out, but she couldn't scream; gasping breaths escaped instead from an already abused throat.

"Interesting." She sat back down. "Finish eating, darling, before your dinner gets cold."

A century later--or maybe only three minutes--Sakura finally recovered enough for two words. "The hell?"

"Obviously the process isn't permanent," Mom said coolly. "A failsafe, I'd imagine."

She rolled over onto her side. "So I don't have to get the sample from Sasuke-kun?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Even this reprieve couldn't be permanent," she paused for a second to take a bite of dinner. "Something will probably trigger the change again."

She shoved herself back up onto her chair, and tried to catch her breath long enough to get out another sentence. "So what does that mean?"

"Frankly put, darling, you're an experiment. It's a good thing that you're a medic-nin, because I'd imagine that if you have too many of these transformations you'd be facing extreme stress damage to your body." She took another bite, and gave a slight hum of pleasure at the taste. "If you weren't my daughter, I'd almost be tempted to see how long you'd last before your body self destructs. As it is, it might be interesting to witness this experiment first hand."

She picked her fork up off of the floor and carried it to the sink.

It was dirty.

Roughly two seconds after dinner, Sakura decided that she was ready for bed. Mom and Daddy decided that she needed a physical. She fell asleep on the examining table. And didn't particularly care whether or not she snored.

Maybe two hours before sunrise, she was in her own bed, naked just to spite her mother. Air flow was nice, she decided, and silk sheets always did feel good against her skin. Her velvet pillow was a delicious contrast, and once you got past the fact that it was polyester, even her stuffed bear Akira provided a welcome texture.

And since Akira had been with her through the years, since she was a five-year-old girl too scared to exist, she said the three words she always did before finally succumbing to sleep.

"Good night, Akira."

Because what was Akira was more spiritual than physical, she liked to imagine that her bear whispered the sentiment back to her. Because she was asleep, she never knew if he did or not. But she left that to the realm of teddy bears. She had more important things to do.

Note: Short and annoying.

Why am I writing/uploading so much so quickly? Because I didn't sleep at all last night. I'm trying to stay awake, and so I am writing, because otherwise I would be snoring in my brother's bed (he's on vacation with his girlfriend, and I'm visiting and just stealing his bed). Like I said, today's Mom's birthday, and Daddy's supposed to come over to have breakfast/lunch with us to help celebrate it.

And because I'm tired, thank you azianlovable for reviewing. We loves reviewers. Also loves alerters and favoriters. We loves hits, too. Hits are nice. But we really loves the reviewers.

By the way, isn't Sakura's family relationship sad? I'm still trying to decide whether I want her to actually be the product of these two having sex or actually have her be spawned our a foundling. Because for those who don't know, in the fic her Dad's just another "black-haired bitch" and her Mom looks like an icy blonde fashion model. And she hates them lots, even though she tries really hard to love them.

And Sasuke thinks he has issues.