I used to rule the world

Seas would rise when I gave the word

Now in the morning I sleep alone

Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice

Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes

Listen as the crowd would sing

"Long live the king!"

One minute I held the key

Next the walls were closed on me

And I discovered that my castles stand

Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

-Coldplay

Figured this lyric goes really well with the theme of this fic. I was coincidentally listening to a cover of this song and went O.o "WTF!" Is something wrong with me that I immediately had to think of Tobirama reincarnated when I heard it? Maybe. So of course I had to share my crazy with you! Hehe. As always, hope you enjoy!"

One year. It had been almost a year since Sakura had first enrolled in the Academy. If you asked her, all of what had happened in that time was quite insignificant, though by conventional standards, most people would likely disagree with this assessment.

Most notably, Sakura had acquired a bit of a reputation among shinobi weapons stores… or rather, Sakura's henged alter ego had. The thing is… well, unlike Tobirama, Sakura didn't have a teacher or access to fuinjutsu scrolls, and she'd need, at the very least, the latter in order to be able to learn the complex craft. However, the reference seals that were available to the public (sealing scrolls, explosive tags, etc) were very expensive and no civilians in their right mind would spend their hard-earned money on buying them for their six-year-old – thus Sakura's conundrum… and her morally-questionable solution to it. Needs must after all, and she needed those scrolls, so she had resorted to, ah, preemptively borrowing them for an unspecified period of time.

Of course, she had every intention of returning the money the moment she was able (which would perhaps be when she made chunin, in about seven years, which…. well...), and took to careful bookkeeping of every single article she'd taken as well as its price and the store.

Sakura was well aware that what she was doing was wrong by most standards, but such things had never stopped her before. She was acting with the best of the village in mind, anyway. Hell, Konoha probably wouldn't even exist without Tobirama, so the least they could do was suck it up and loan her some scrolls. Hmp. Not to mention, it was their fault if they let a six-year old steal from them. Given, the logistics of pilfering scrolls in the shinobi weapons stores were often more complex than one might imagine, as the clerks were usually retired ninja, and Sakura had had quite a few close calls that had made her rue the day she'd decided that stealing from veterans was a good idea. In the end, however, practicality and her need for knowledge had always won out, and she shortly found herself pilfering scrolls again. In her defence, this decision had proven beneficial, as the many close calls during her shoplifting excursions had forced her to get much better at chakra suppression than any first year Academy student had any right to be.

Speaking of her education, though her time at the Academy was rather uneventful, Sakura regularly used it to work on her fuinjutsu studies. So far, she had managed to understand the inner workings of all the tags and seals she'd pilfered and, memorably, had managed to adapt a common sealing scroll so that it could be used by civilians. She'd honestly designed that particular sealing array as a side thought. It had been meant as a scroll to make her mother's shopping easier on the woman and nothing more. And yet, quite unexpectedly, the small invention had turned out to be so much more.

It had started off with her mother gifting the scroll to a neighbour, who, after trying the scroll out, had proceeded to offer a generous amount of money for more scrolls so she could give them to her sister… who had then turned out to be even more enthusiastic, and had placed a large order so she could use them for her delivery business… and voilá. Before she knew it, Sakura's scrolls had started selling like crazy, with such great demand that she had been forced to pull repeated all-nighters in order to complete the orders (and then sleep them off at the Academy).

Indeed, the revenue that the scrolls brought in was immense, moreso as the Harunos had complete monopoly of the 'secret formula' to make them. (No other store had managed to replicate the fuinjutsu array, something Sakura was still in cloud nine about.) It had gotten to a point where she had been forced to teach her parents the basics of chakra manipulation so that they could help with the manufacturing process as well, as she herself couldn't keep up with the market demand. In short, her scrolls were multiplying the Haruno households' income by astronomical numbers. Honestly, Sakura didn't much care about the money as long as she got to keep delving into fuinjutsu, but she was quite pleased with this outcome because, once her parents had realized that her 'ninja skills' were a veritable goldmine, they had quite suddenly lost all of their reservations about her shinobi schooling. Unfortunately, the downsides of her little invention had soon made themselves known as well:

"Sakura-chan, I promise it won't be too long, okay? We just have to oversee this expansion to the capital. It's really important, baby."

Sakura scowled. She hated it when her mother called her that. Baby. She was not a baby. Goddamnit! "Do both of you have to go?" she snapped.

Kizashi looked away guiltily. "Well, yes. We're both integral to this business venue, I'm afraid."

"But can't you just leave me here in that case? I can fend for myself just fine."

"Aww, we know that you're very mature, sweetie, but you're still our little girl!" Mebuki cooed.

Sakura's eyebrow twitched. Noticing this, Kizashi quickly added:

"Look, Sakura-chan, this is the opportunity we've been waiting for all along – finally I can restore my family business to its former glory. We have to do this. And you need to add your little grain of salt by staying with Grandmother and being a good girl."

LITTLE? This was all thanks to her, damnit!.

"Former glory?" Sakura repeated, making her voice as dubious as possible. Sounds like utter bullshit. In her opinion her parents were just being greedy gold diggers who didn't give a hoot about her wellbeing and were sticking her with some old woman she'd never met! Not that she would miss them or anything. But goddamnit!

"Hey now, don't pout, Sakura-chan," Kizashi said gently. Pout? Pout? Is that what he thought she was doing? Maybe Kizashi should brush up on his vocabulary, because Sakura did not pout. She scowled. She glared. But she did not pout. Mind you, there was a big difference. Kizashi meanwhile seemed not to have picked up on this. "Anyhow, Sakura, why don't you run along and get your bag?" he asked hopefully.

Sakura was practically quaking by that point. She had come up with the special scroll. She had proven to them that she was intelligent. And yet they still insisted on treating her like an imbecile! Not even bothering to hide her anger, she shot her father her most fulminating glare and retrieved a scroll. "I've already got my stuff, Father. In here. You know, within the scroll that I invented ." Not you .

Kizashi stiffened, giving her a wary look. "Ah… right." There was an awkward silence in which Sakura glared holes into his skull and Kizashi pretended not to notice. She recalled Tobirama's red eyes mournfully – and their intimidation prowess. Unfortunately, almond shaped green eyes just weren't as imposing to look at. Kizashi harrumphed. "Good. If you're all packed up, let us go."

Sakura pointedly slammed the front door as they left.

Per her parents' agreement (without bothering to consult with her whatsoever ), they would be dropping her off at her grandmother's place. Sakura was already imagining some horrible, cramped apartment with a lot of cats and cutesy cutlery and some old lady just bursting at the seams to smother her with sweets and baked treats and making kissy faces at her coupled with sticky lipstick. Needless to say, she was not thrilled to be making the old woman's acquaintance. Which, to be honest, was already strange: how could it be that Sakura had never met her until now? She barely knew anything at all about her father's mother, and she didn't like it. It was suspicious, with them living in the same village.

Kizashi had insisted that his mother wasn't so bad, though Mebuki's disapproving looks whenever the topic of Sakura's grandmother came up called this statement into question… and now they would be leaving her all alone with the old crone for over a month. Fantastic .

Haruno Yuzuha's house was in the older part of the village. It was a residential area, with old houses and dusty streets. The buildings were wooden for the most part, rustic-looking and with gardens that were concealed by thatched fences. It was calm and silent; harmonious and beautiful in an unpretentious, almost accidental manner. As she observed the foreign, yet simultaneously all too familiar neighbourhood, a strange, yet potent sensation unfurled in her gut. It felt like coming home after a long day, like putting on a pair of long lost comfy woolen socks in the middle of winter. Tobirama had come here often.

They made it to Grandmother's house after a few minutes (that felt like seconds) of walking through the old neighbourhood. Hesitantly, Kizashi pressed the old gate open, revealing a wild garden and house. Trees and wild bamboo outcroppings grew every which way, seemingly uncontrolled. Some wildflowers and heathers were scattered around the property as well, though upon closer inspection Sakura spotted a bunch of stark blue flowers that seemed to have been planted and cared for. The house at the very back of the garden was nothing special, if one ignored the fact that it seemed to literally be sinking into the ground. At a closer glance, Sakura noticed that the entire soil of the property seemed moist, almost like marsh. The house was literally sinking , even if the process was likely slow going. The process of crossing the garden till the house was also slow going, it turned out, because the ground being covered in marsh was not an exaggeration. It was closer to a swamp than an actual garden in some parts, something which was very distressing to Mebuki, who promptly fell in.

Serves her right , Sakura thought, watching with her arms crossed as her mother tried (unsuccessfully) to wipe the mud from her blouse. She'd only looked away for a split second when Mebuki started screeching. Alarmed, Sakura whirled around only to be met by a… a log? But no. She could tell that it was an animal from her chakra sensing… wait. A crocodile? Sakura was not typically prone to fits of open-mouthed gaping, but just this once, she did, even as she sprinted to stand protectively between the beast and her mother.

"Ah, not to worry!" Kizashi cut in nervously. "That's just Wasabi."

Mebuki's head whipped around to stare incredulously at him (though Sakura's eyes did not leave the beast's for a second).

"E-excuse me?" Mebuki asked shrilly.

"That's my mother's… pet," Kizashi supplied with a pinched expression. "Don't worry, he's harmless."

Sakura very much doubted that. Though, if an old woman could live with the thing in her backyard, maybe it wasn't too murderous. Not that it would pose a threat to her, but her parents were another story.

"Whatever," she scoffed. Coming here had clearly been a bad idea. "Let's just go in already." The sooner they were out of the beast's range, the better.

Haruno Yuzuha turned out to be a disappointingly (suspiciously?) normal old woman. The inside of her house was almost exactly what Sakura had envisioned, with old furniture and useless old woman paraphernalia, and the woman herself had the stereotypical look of a grandmother about her: short white hair, pronounced crow's feet, and extremely sunken green eyes. Living with the woman was strangely anticlimactic. Sakura had expected some sort of freak show from her after the little episode with the crocodile in the backyard, but nothing. Since her arrival, Yuzuha-obaa hadn't bothered to address her pet choices, nor did she do anything particularly out of the ordinary, besides of course for feeding her pet crocodile, but even that was done in such drab manner that it got boring after a few times of watching her do it. She usually dressed in woolen, likely hand-made clothes of warm colours. Like most grandmothers, Yuzuha had quizzed Sakura on her favorite foods so that she could pamper her by cooking them, and often tried to surprise her by bringing pastries home with her. In all honesty, Sakura was a little thrown by her behavior. Thus far Yuzuha hadn't done anything to warrant the bad reputation she seemed to have, Sakura was surprised to note. It actually led to an easy, albeit quiet, coexistence.

"Sakuraaaa." Sakura looked up with annoyance. Her personal pet peeve Kotaro was once again doing what he did best and annoying her.

"What."

"Do you think the Hamaiyans would be able to invade Starlight Castle, yes or no?"

Sakura proceeded to ignore him. Kotaro Kobayashi, or as most called him 'Cootie Kotaro' was the only child her age she regularly conversed with. Well, he did most of the conversing, anyway. He was not an ugly child, but had a terrible bedside manner that had earned him his atrocious nickname, and the general ostracism of his classmates. Sakura was the only person who didn't give two hoots whether the kid ate his own snot or not (well, it was rather disgusting, but she honestly had better things to get worked up over) so needless to say, Kotaro had taken her passive silences as an open invitation to friendship, and had began seeking her out, much to Sakura's eternal annoyance. Not only was he an annoying chatterbox, but his unpopularity had also stuck to her now, meaning Sakura was class pariah number two, right behind Kotaro himself.

"Sakuraaaaa, c'mon, I wanna know what you think!"

Sakura sighed and gave up on concentrating on her fuinjutsu array. "The Hamaiyans would succeed."

"What? No way! The starlight fortress is unconquerable! Didn't you hear when I said that their fortress wall is made of carved diamonds with a bunch of melted butter on the surface so no one can climb it?"

Sakura rolled her eyes. Clearly, wall walking was a joke to this kid, she did not say. Instead, she went with: "You do realize that the logistics for creating such a fortress would be impossible, right?"

"Not if you're rich enough!" Kotaro rebutted stubbornly, though this was mostly muffled as he chewed loudly on his unhealthy excuse of a lunch, AKA his usual processed baked goods. Sakura sighed and rolled her eyes again. One of the main reasons why Kotaro was laughed at so much was the fact that he was terrible at physical activities. Sakura was pretty certain that his unhealthy eating habits had something to do with that, since they were not exactly conducive to building muscle and getting vitamins. She'd told him as much a few times to quit bringing such unhealthy lunch foods, but Kotaro never listened. Noticing her laser stare, Kotaro defensively stuffed the industrial sweet in his mouth and chewed. Sakura looked away in disgust.

"Are you still on with that?" Kotaro complained. "I don't get what you have against my Yamazaki Bread. It's tasty."

"Yeah, and unhealthy," Sakura said scathingly. "You want to be a ninja, don't you?"

Kotaro chewed on it. "So? I figure if it was that bad, Shizuka-san wouldn't have given it to us. You're just jealous, aren't you?"

"Terribly," said Sakura. "Who is Shizuka, anyway?" Maybe Kotaro also had a crazy grandmother who tried to smother him in sweets.

"Oh, uh." Kotaro faltered for a moment, which in itself was odd. "She's the matron."

Sakura blinked. Matron? As in–? For the first time, Sakura looked at Kotaro more carefully. His clothes weren't rags by any means, but they didn't look very flattering on him either. Kotaro's wild locks looked like they hadn't seen a haircut in a while, and she'd always known that he was quite behind in Academics, had been, ever since the beginning. Could it be that he was an orphan?

Sakura was so busy looking him up and down that she barely noticed when Kotaro started fidgeting. "Uh, Sakura? Why are you looking at me like you want to eat me?"

Sakura turned her gaze away. "The hell?"

"I mean if you wanted my Yamazaki bread that badly…"

"No," Sakura snapped, snatching the bread away from him and throwing it in the bin.

"E-eh…?"

Sakura crossed her arms and leveled him with a serious look. "Do you have anything to do after school?"

"Uh… no."

"Good."

As soon as school was over, Sakura promptly herded Kotaro to her grandmother's house, where he soon received the first healthy, nutritious meal of his short life, courtesy of Yuzuha-obaa. After the meal, Sakura proceeded to help with cleaning the dishes and strongarm her pet peevee into doing the same, who also did a marvelous job of filling the usual silence by chattering about some imaginary story or other. Whilst he wasn't looking, Yuzuha's gaze found Sakura's own, an inquisitive look etched in the wizened features. Sakura frowned. As soon as Kotaro had gone to the bathroom, she explained:

"He's an orphan and from what I can tell, barely gets any healthy food. I figured one of your meals would do him good, Grandmother."

Yuzuha nodded thoughtfully. They went quiet again as they continued washing the dishes. Later, much later, as Kotaro and Sakura were leaving the house (she had decided to accompany him in order to subtly check where he lived), Yuzuha stopped them at the door.

"I will give Sakura-chan your bento from now on," she declared without much ado. Sakura's eyebrows shot into the air, though Kotaro's scrunched as though he'd just encountered a very difficult math problem. "Does that mean I don't get to eat my Yamazaki bread anymore?" he said at last.

"Only during the weekend, young man," Yuzuha informed him, as though this were the natural order of things.

Kotaro seemed to ponder this for a second, and then nodded. A small smile was playing on his lips. "I guess I can live with that, Yuzuha-baa."

Sakura, who had been trying and failing to get him to stop eating the stupid bread for almost a year, resisted the urge to cuff him. Or gape at her grandmother. Not that she was complaining, to be honest. It'd be nice if Kotaro got better at sports. Maybe then he'd leave her in peace…

Surprisingly, the boy was quiet on their way to his… home. Sakura, who had never been particularly good at interpreting emotions, was somewhat at a loss on what to do.

"Do you have indigestion or something?" she found herself blurting.

Kotaro looked up. "Huh? Oh. Uh, no. I guess I was just thinking about how it's not fair that you have a grandma and I don't."

…well, that was blunt.

"Life isn't fair," Sakura said after a moment. "Be happy you're not a child soldier in a war or something."

Kotaro gave her an odd look, one she'd never seen on his face before. "Ne, Sakura. Don't say stuff like that. You'll jinx me."

"Don't be daft, those are superstitions."

"Would you bet on that?"

Sakura gave him a sidelong glance. Tobirama's memories flashed through her mind, and she almost stopped walking. He and Hashirama had created Konoha with the express purpose of making sure that no children would fight in wars again. The matter shouldn't even be called into question… and yet…

She never answered, which was answer enough. She hadn't taken up the bet, and found herself embarrassed over it. Embarrassed and sad. She should have more confidence in her brother's dream.

They were still silent by the time they made it to Kotaro's orphanage. It looked okayish from the outside, if not a little on the small side. The garden was fine. Sakura had just set about charting the place with her chakra perception, trying to find out how many adults there were, when, unexpectedly, a huge cloud of something exploded in her face. For a moment she just stood there, completely floored, as someone in the distance commenced cackling madly.

"AHAHAHAHAHAH! YOU FELL FOR IT! YOU FELL FOR IT!"

She likely would've said something to the effect that the prank was idiotic if she hadn't been so busy coughing her lungs out. From what Sakura could tell, she seemed to have been hit by some sort of trap rigged on top of the tree she'd just walked past, which had resulted in some sort of white powder attack. The damn powder now covered her entirely, from her hair to her clothes to her skin and lungs.

For a moment, she was simply stumped. Sakura had never even once been hit by an attack, prank or anything of the sort. Not even once (in this life). Even in her past life, she couldn't remember any such occurrence. Thus, that some random brat would manage it…! It was very disconcerting. Next came the anger, partially at herself for falling for such a basic ploy (even though she had been busy with sensing), partly at whoever had dared to cover her in baby powder, of all things. Because that's what this substance was, she realized with dismay: talcum powder.

Once her sight finally cleared, Sakura looked straight at the bush her assailant was still cackling behind.

"Ahahah! You look like a ghost, ya know! I bet the teme would get scared if you popped up behind a tree or something!"

Much to her dismay, Sakura noticed Kotaro snickering next to her. Traitor.

Completely unamused, she stalked over to the prankster and fixed him with her most unimpressed look. He was too busy laughing his ass off to even notice she'd moved, and thus gave an undignified squawk when she promptly snatched the talcum bottle from his back pocket with one hand and grabbed him by his collar with the other, lifting him in the air.

"Oi! Lemme go! I didn't mean it! AHHHH! You're talking to your future hokage ya know!"

Sakura raised an unimpressed eyebrow and proceeded to open the cap of the bottle with her thumb, and then dump the rest of the baby powder over his head. After a moment, she also sprayed it down his shirt for added unpleasantness.

The kid was all the while kicking and screaming and making a general ruckus, yelling something about making a law against baby powder in the future, though Sakura's grip did not budge. From what she could sense, none of the minders in the orphanage seemed to be in any hurry to come to his aid, so she merrily continued emptying the powder all over him.

"How quaint. Now we match," she commented after she was done. "Maybe you can go and scare your friend yourself now."

"Gah! I'm not ghost material anyway! You're the one who walks around creepily silent! ANYHOW LEMME GO!" As he tried to yank himself free, Sakura did just that, prompting him to run into a tree. Kotaro snickered again, though she wasn't sure whether he was laughing at her or at the prankster. Giving them both an unimpressed look, she turned tail and strode off.

"O-oi! You're gonna pay for this!" She heard him shout. "BELIEVE IT!"

Sakura turned, amused. He was a little endearing… something about him almost familiar, even.

"I doubt I'll be held accountable once the matron realizes that all of her talcum powder has been squandered," she said pointedly. It was veritably amusing watching as the kid's face turned even whiter than the powder covering it. "CRAP! I gotta do something! You're not gonna tell on me, are you?" He gave her a pleading look that almost made her laugh out loud.

"Well. Who's stop me?" Sakura asked, eyebrows raised. "You?"

The boy went red with embarrassment. "Gah! Just you wait, I'll prank the daylights out of you!" And without further ado, he had scampered off.

Sakura watched him go, feeling greatly amused, almost even looking forward to it. She didn't understand why she wasn't more annoyed, as she rightly should be. She understood even less her next question to Kotaro. "Oi. What's his name?"

Kotaro shrugged. "Naruto. He never gets Kayama Bread, so maybe he's smart."

Of course that would be the one thing Kotaro would notice about him. Whatever. She fixed the odd name in her mind. Fishcake. It was oddly refreshing to find someone with a more annoying name than hers. She smirked. Naruto. The first person to ever get the drop on her. She'd remember it.

So... what did you think? Hopefully this chapter wasn't too boring, what with the grandma and Kotaro and all. Honestly, I had fun writing it. Also, weird fact you didn't ask for: crocodiles live up to 70 to 100 years.
Another fact: I have a calculus exam Tuesday and I wrote this during breaks. Well. I kinda felt bad about not having updated in so long, and I was really itching to write this... somehow here it is. Gloriously. At one thiry am. Hope y'all enjoy. I'll answer to all of your reviews once my test is over and done with. Apologies for not getting to that sooner, but please know that they mean the world to me.