Title: The Road To Badass
Summary: "They left me temporarily, so I'm going to make it permanent." The what-if scenario when Sakura decides to make a stand for herself when the Team leaves her behind yet again.
Disclaimer : I do not own Naruto and it's characters, I am merely borrowing them. However, I do own the delicious heavenly dango worth of Itachi's time and it's owner - Kanbaji-san.
Happy reading guys!
"Chakra... chakra... chakra..." Sakura muttered in her terrible uncomfortable situation.
Hunched, on the floor because she really couldn't kneel after that training session, wet hair plastered to her neck and fingers carefully thumbing page after page.
How long had she been in here?
So she had finished training close to... 9.00? And relaxed... rinsed at her little waterfall... had a healthy breakfast of dango... and it was 2.30 in the afternoon. She had spent at least three hours leafing through page after page, book after book in her quest for knowledge. Where were those damn book anyway? The librarian had pointed her over to the shinobi-classified area that was open to Genin, but it was getting really tough to find even one book on chakra-stamina. All she had found was a sentence about meditation and mental states being powerful.
But you also just had to know how to hit those mental states!
"Ugh..." Her head hurt and throbbed as she got up into a seated position.
Hey baka, you know there is still one book you haven't gone through yet right?
What book?
See that tiny little book in-between those tomes?
WHERE!
Left... left... no turn your head a little more right...
Oh...
In-between two thick books titled Chakra: Tips on Controlling it For the Young Shinobi and Fire Techniques and How They Came to Be, was a tiny, thin little sliver of a book. She would have missed it if Inner hadn't pointed it out to her. Carefully, she reached over and pulled it out. The leather top felt somewhat crumbly and the dust on it was really thick.
She opened it and-
OH MY LORDY!
Dropped it immediately.
Idiot! Pick it up!
For once, she did not question the annoying little bug in her head.
Look, it says there it's Jounin-classified. ONLY.
What! I better tell the librarian!
Wait! Read it first why don't you!
But...
Look! All the other ones had nothing on anything! The only thing useful was that one book about Don' Yoku, and that was like... a detailed story about his adventures. Nothing about chakra or energy!
Yes Inner.. but still... I mean... it's for Jounin! I shouldn't even be reading it!
And the Chidori was totally Genin-level. Like, any seven year-old could totally do that.
Yea.. but..
Look, this is the best bet we are going to get! You and I both know, that techniques and stuff are all in the Chuunin section. Everything here is so basic, there isn't any ninjutsu. Only the origins of those jutsus. Look at that scratched out traditional writing on the cover. It's old stuff. Just read it damnit!
Okay... Okay.
She opened it carefully and blew away the dust particles. Inner was right. Everything in here would be impossible to read, or at least to anyone who hadn't spent their free time learning the old language.
"Energy..." She whispered out the title of the book.
Inner... it says energy! Not chakra. But energy!
Inner?
Well, her eyes were fairly bugged out, so Sakura imagined she was feeling a little bit fascinated.
Hunching in on herself once more in an effort to make sure that the librarian really did not see her, she began reading.
The skies are a clear blue today...
Over in a dark corner, a figure looks down onto the pink-haired, fair-skinned child.
The genjutsu placed over the leather-bound notebook was a fairly powerful one, few doujutsu could see past it, and even those needed the user to be highly attuned to chakra, almost the way a sensor would be, the girl clearly was not trained in the sensory arts... how then had she been able to see it?
Could it be her natural chakra-mind fluctuations?
She was not an enemy of Konoha, that much was obvious.
Well, she had seen past the genjutsu, she was worthy enough, the figure supposed leaving her alone would not do any harm. For now.
Konoha was a place hidden beneath genjutsu after genjutsu, a maze hidden in a maze of a thousandth-folds. The trees built around the shinobi home were filled with chakra and a humming of an unidentifiable power.
In the massive forest that civilians never dared to roam, lay Konoha, and yet the true wonderment of it were the forest around it and it's unconventional magic.
Unconventional you say? Yes, indeed. Because it was magic in the form of poisonous plants. Dangerous, irritating, terrifying plants of the most poisonous order came in every species and sub-species possible. They could be intertwined into a grotesque form of unseen, rare variety or your common rat-killing-fumed plant.
Well, a dazed and tired Sakura, at three in the afternoon had forgotten that North-west was opposite South and was dragging her feet past the sandy, safer paths of this forest. As luck would have it, it was not her lucky day and she walked straight into a tree with sandy-colored bark, which moved, and was warm. And also had a very big chest.
Hang on. A big chest?
Hang on, we don't have this kind of sand in the N-W forest.
Not to mention our grass isn't this thick...
I think we have walked into a person.
A crazy one, because we are pretty deep in this forest...
And no one ever comes all the way out here.
Unable to appreciate the good fortune of being able to have her face in a rather popular rack of Konoha, Sakura made a face and backed up to see who it was she had walked into.
Her eyes met with one infamous Mitarashi Anko. Legendary lady with a penchant for insanity.
Yes, she had just made a face at this scary woman's boobs.
What was she thinking?
Well she didn't need to start the conversation that was for sure.
"Kid you have some real guts. Smooshing your face in this and then making that face!" She sneered/smiled.
Sakura gulped and backed up even more.
"Oh I wouldn't do that if I were you kiddo. That's a Pulentas Scriverus, my favorite plant."
What is a Pulentas Scriverus?
As if reading her thoughts, Anko answered "It's a cassava morphed with a mutated baneberry. Causes cardiac inflammation and within the hour, certain death by a slowly melting heart."
A SLOWLY MELTING HEART!?
SAKURA I DON'T WANT TO DIE HERE!
"Of course, you need to be able to activate it with chakra.. and you don't know how, so I guess you're safe." Sakura breathed a sigh of relief. "For now." And she sucked it right back in.
"Uh...uh..." She stammered. Today really wasn't a day for her to die and she still wanted to finish reading her book.
She eyed the maniacal glint in the woman's eye, down to her body posture. Okay, the woman had a Konoha hitai-ite on, so she was shinobi of Konoha, and she probably was a Jounin since Sakura couldn't see the Chuunin flak vest was no where to be seen...
She was probably at a pretty high status considering she had no Jounin vest on and could get away with it. In short, Sakura doubted she was in a lot of danger right now.
"You wouldn't hurt me."
"Oh?" Anko grinned and folded her arms across her chest.
"Yeah." This was not a time to lose her confidence.
"Alright, tell me then kiddo. Why wouldn't I hurt you?"
"Well, for starters you are a Shinobi of Konoha, that much is obvious, and so you are subject to the Hokage's rule..."
"So what kid? You're that little smartie on Team 7, I'm sure you've read enough history books to know that I'm not the most... what was that word?" She paused for a moment before smirking, "Stable... so... I wouldn't be so sure about me being under the Hokage's thumb."
Anko eyed the little girl in front of her. Short, thin, not a lot of muscle. Pink-haired, wide-eyed and rather innocent and naïve-looking. Oh, she knew the girl well enough. The only one in Team 7 not on the same level as her teammates. She was so far away in terms of everything it wasn't even funny. Although... she had seen the weights on the kid, obviously from the spandex freak- Gai, and she had been the only one to get full marks on her exam sheet.
Not bad, she guessed. And she was pretty observant, for a Genin.
It would be fun to toy with her.
The kid was already gulping down all that saliva, what was she going to say, beg her to spare her? She was smart enough to get what Anko was driving at her, but this was the part where lots of kids ran off.
What would she do?
What should she do?
Not being under the Hokage's thumb? Not stable!? That woman could attack her right now and she would be totally screwed! Wait.
That's right. She could have attacked her by now if she wanted, but the woman was smiling. Now Sakura couldn't read eyes very well, but Anko's weren't particularly maniacal... at least not the harmful kind she had seen in Zabuza, Orochimaru or the more dangerous foaming at the mouth thieves in the beggar district...
"I'm not worth you hurting me..." She started out. Slow, careful, testing the waters.
As expected, a smug smile was on her face and her eyebrow rose, very Kakashi-like when he was questioned about something he said that was false.
"In fact... I'm willing to bet that you are just having fun with me."
"Oh really? How can you be so sure?"
Sakura took in a deep breath, "I'm not. But I have facts and logic that prove to me that you won't hurt me."
"Tell me kiddo. Tell me with everything you've got."
"Alright. First, you may not act like you are under the Hokage's rule, but history, like you said I've read a lot about, proves you may not act like it, but you still defer to them. You may not act like it, but the fact that you can tell me that you are not stable proves you are in fact, in complete control of your mental faculties. Not to mention that if you wanted to hurt me so badly, you would have started already. You are clearly just toying with me."
"And how do you know I won't hurt you with all this toying?"
"I don't know. I just doubt you will."
Anko smirked.
Smart kid.
"Alright, alright... bravo little munchkin..." She smiled while clapping her hands slowly.
"You are pretty right on all accounts I guess... But never let it be said that this baby was never called crazy."
"I wouldn't." She replied.
"Sure you wouldn't... Walk with me shrimp," Anko said, motioning to the path out of the forest, "So what are you doing out here, all by yourself? Where's that old man of yours?"
The pinkette scrunched her nose. "Old man?"
"Yeah you're perverted sensei. Shouldn't you be training or something?" It didn't escape her notice that Sakura had stiffened slightly at the mention of her sensei. Was he bad at it or something? Probably, but the girl really shouldn't be this far in the poisonous section of Konoha. Or maybe out of Konoha, she might have added some trees around and under the gates with chakra so she could get in and out easy, but still.
"Oh.. he's on this training thing with his team..."
His team?
"His team? You are a member of that team pinky... aren't you?" She doubted her memory was that bad, and the girl wasn't exhibiting signs of mental distress yet.
"No.. I'm not on that team anymore.."
"Huh, doesn't explain why you were out here. You looked like you knew where you were going.."
"I was lost?"
"Kid anyone would have noticed that green equals forest which equals not home, you just kept walking on that path."
"..."
Alright so that was a touchy subject.
"So kid..."
Said kid looked up at her.
"Why didn't you run away?"
Sakura paused for a moment, and then said, "Well, it would have been better to face you on than run away right? You are definitely much faster than me... and facing you on would have the same repercussions as running away since you would catch me?"
"Tch."
"Also, I'm really tired."
Anko laughed on the way out of the forest, baneberries in a little pouch.
Cardiac arrest was really useful on the battlefield.
Let's back up a bit. Anko Mitarashi.
What had she been doing there in the first place, aside from picking baneberries.
Well for that, we need to first understand, an Anko Mitarashi.
She is a bloodthirsty woman who is playful. Intelligent with extremely good reflexes. Sadistic, unsympathetic... insane are all words used to describe her, but let Anko describe herself for you.
"Crazy, sexy and damn good at what I do." Followed by a fist-pump in the air. Now we all know she was an apprentice of the pedophile snake, Orochimaru and is the only one who survived the cursed seal.
Sexy, because she has a very curvy and lean body. One of the top ten racks in Konoha and the mesh bodysuit does not kill her sexy vibe. She comes off as extremely badass and dangerous to anyone who tries to approach her and so has remained single for a while.
Damn good at what she does, because guys, she trained with the snake-man. She has really powerful abilities, has outmaneuvered The Orochimaru with her crazy good relexes not to mention, has precise aim. A tokubetsu jounin is nothing to scoff at and she could become ANBU if deemed it worth the effort she would need.
Crazy because, well she didn't call herself crazy. She just does because every one calls her that and when she reaffirms it, everyone wets their pants. She has a really high immunity to poisons, and that is really good considering a liver is strong enough to take it all, but I'll say she's a little crazy because the woman was in the South section of Konoha's forest, traversable through a certain path that few could distinct from other paths like it, and some amount of undefinable foliage, to test out more, rare poisons on herself. That's right.
Pulentas Scriveras wasn't a real plant, but she did however, plan on creating a plant that the same qualities as it did. Sadly, cassava didn't actually do the job so she had spent a few hours there figuring out which poisons would, but testing them on herself. Because, really, a poison that could melt your heart in an hour? Think of the pain. Usually the suckers just died right away.
She didn't know how it worked, but she had applied to T&I and she was planning to test those newly mixed poisons on the to be executed rogues, and if they worked, she would build an immunity to it. Although a melting heart? How would you be immune to it? You would need to get the body to produce the antidote.
And then it hit her.
Convince the body to produce the an antidote to any poison, and not only would she not just be immune to a poison, it would be unable to affect her, should it get past her immunity. Her body could break it down!
This was when she leapt up and pumped her fist in the air, and one Haruno Sakura walked straight into her boobs.
Many minutes later, Haruno Sakura was deemed as Only-retard-in-Konoha-not-to-act-like-one. It was a good accomplishment, the girl just didn't know that yet.
Heck. If she wasn't in Kakashi's team anymore, maybe Anko, the Mitarashi Anko, could train her.
How cool would it be, to have an apprentice, to test poison's with?
And even better, to be totally immune to it, and freak people out with it?
As one Haruno Sakura walked to Kanbaji-san's dango stall to eat, she felt a cold chill down her back and wondered what it was.
Uchiha Itachi came to a sad realization that day. Of course, the mentally stunted teen did not realize just how sad it was, but it was indeed, a sad realization.
He was stalking Sakura.
He certainly hadn't meant to.
Not at all. It just was since his shift finished this morning after concealing himself from her in the forest, going home for breakfast, training and realizing her chakra signature was a mile away from him, he just had to go and find her.
So he did. With a cloaking jutsu on, he wound himself around alleys and trees, garbage bins and brambly bushes only to find, with some mild volume of horror, that Mitarashi Anko, and her were walking side-by-side. They had just come out of the forest, both smiling, one slightly maniacal, and for some reason he found himself perturbed by that. He couldn't understand why, and so shut down his feelings at that point in time, and decided to just follow the girl.
Now, Anko certainly noticed him there. It wasn't a very good cloaking jutsu. Okay it was, but as a previous apprentice of pale-snake, she was particularly good at sensing out cloaking jutsus, no matter where. It had been a necessity while travelling with the mentally-insane man, especially with the dangerous people they had seemed to attract. But anyway, the woman had smirked and bid Sakura a smirking goodbye.
Naturally Itachi, was for the first time a bit stumbly in controlling the feelings he was quickly gaining from observing the pinkette, and so did not have a complete hold on everyone else around him. He was only concentrated on the pinkette. So, it was not something particularly surprising or bad that when a certain hyper-active Uchiha appeared behind him and startled him.
It was the first time Uchiha Shisui had gotten the better of his Weasel-chan, and it certainly would not be the last.
"Itachi-chan!" He shout-whispered, "Who's that girl you're following?"
The dear Itachi-chan stiffened ever so slightly which was equivalent to a Naruto jumping in the air and running all the way to the other end of Konoha. Had he been too concentrated on the pink-haired girl?
Thankfully, Shisui soothed his worries. "Now, now Itachi-chan, not to worry. You aren't getting rusty or slow. I just saw you a lot earlier so your little cloaking jutsu didn't work on me."
So, the relieved Itachi-chan nodded.
"Now would you tell me why you're following her now?"
"I am not following Sakura-san."
"Oh... so you know her name! You guys must be close!"
Itachi sighed and shook his head.
"But you know her name!"
So, to clear up any misunderstandings of how he was obsessed with Sakura, Itachi went on to explain how he had sort of met the girl in a certain... location, he definitely did not want to give up his secret dango stall, and had picked up all sorts of information and knowledge of her from that encounter.
It took a while for Shisui to stop choking on his laughter, but when he did, he just kept laughing without the coughing or hacking.
"Oh! My lovely Itachi-chan has finally grown hormones! Figures, the first girl you like ends up running away from you, did you scare her or give her some horrid impression or something?"
Itachi just looked at him, a mild feeling of... insult and... some other feeling he did not like scratched at the inside of his chest. It increased even more when he realized the stall Sakura had gone into was one of the well-known places that had horrible mitarashi dango. The kind that he had, incidentally seen on her plate before she had dashed away into the night.
Why was she in that stall?
Well she probably did not know the dango there was that bad.
And a few minutes later he was proven right. She walked out with a sour expression on her face, a sneer at the angry little woman by the reception and stormed off in the very vague, but most probably direction of Kanbaji-san's dango.
He would make certain to drop by later on, or perhaps bump into her on the street. It was nearing four so... as Kanbaji-san had mentioned offhandedly, she usually went there early in the evening. So he would make it a point to be there in the early evening.
It was completely unstalker-like, perfectly normal...
But first he needed to find a way to convince Shisui that he should leave and nothing interesting, in his terms, would happen.
Sooooooo~ What did you think guys?
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Omg I have like four assignments. Is it just me or are teachers like, crazy villains who stomp on you relentlessly? Maybe it's just me XD.
ANYWAY...
So I'm not going to make her all powerful yet even though I am dying to.. so, so badly, but that would just make that kind of sad because you can't read her journey, so like, ugh... self-control! So the chakra energy stuff will come along eventually and you guys can slowly see her getting better at stuff. I'll do a time skip in like...a chapter or two so hang on guys.
And...
I am a big, big, BIIIIIG fan of Anko and I absolutely love how crazy cool she is. And how was Shisui guys? First time writing about the guy so if I've got him a little wonky, do leave a review/ comment just to tell me about it.
Criticism is totally appreciated because I can always do better.
So review for any reason at all, it encourages me. SMILES. :)