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Can't Go Back Now

Looks like a girl but she's a flame
So bright she can burn your eyes
Better look the other way
You can try but you'll never forget her name

There was something about hearing the sound of your laughter naturally blend in with that of a group—new and unfamiliar—that would have scared the living daylights out of a five-year-old Sakura. As a bullied child, gaggles of laughter were often preceded by episodes of her classmates ridiculing her unusual pink hair or "unsightly" wide forehead. Talking to new people was overwhelming, making friends with them unimaginable!

It wasn't until Ino found her crying in the meadows one day that things changed. Yamanaka Ino had walked in with all the confidence of a future clan head, whose understanding of the title only went so far as to know it gave her hefty social capital, and had smacked sense into Sakura's perpetrators ("one more word about her, and I will make you regret you ever learned how to speak" ), and Sakura herself ("they will have nothing to hold over your head once you stop holding it over yourself" ). Ino encouraged her to embrace herself and, in doing that, taught her how to protect herself.

Ino gave her the most precious gift—that of friendship—and opened up a whole new world to her.

As Sakura easily laughed along with a group of people she never—not in her wildest dreams—could have imagined meeting, this quick burst of memory brought back the soft floral scent of lavender that accompanied Ino everywhere she went.

The pinch that immediately followed aptly felt like a thorn drawing blood.

When the five nation strong Shinobi Alliance was brought down to their knees, Ino had viscerally felt each standing combatant's devastation. She forged the neural network for long distance strategizing and communication on the battlefield; and it had cost her severely. Ino swallowed the despair—amplified thousand times over—like cut glass. She let it rip her insides.

Sakura's laughter slowly waned.

Dinner remained a boisterous affair but she was not entirely there anymore. She learned quickly that sitting on a table with Obito and Kushina, one need not ever worry about running out of things to talk about. She smiled, she nodded, she tried to keep it together.

Time passed, even when she did nothing to acknowledge it. It moved in tandem with Minato and Kakashi gathering everyone's dishes and lugging them over to the sink. It carried on as Obito remained seated, contentedly rubbing his protruding belly and burped loudly.

Rin asked to see the pieces of Kushina's shiromoku for the wedding, and only then did Sakura feel something stir in her. Marriage, like almost every other adult convention, had only ever been an abstract idea. Before Sasuke left Konoha, taking with him only a backpack and the vestiges of Sakura's naiveté, her days were often filled with fantasies of becoming an Uchiha by marriage. Sakura used to think all she needed was time on her side; that in three years, or in five, seven, ten, Sasuke would open his heart to her.

"This is so white," Obito said, staring at the elaborate ensemble of wedding garments laid across the bed. The scrunch of his nose looked more bemusement than distaste.

"It's supposed to be," Rin countered, eyes gleaming with awe as she slowly reached out and touched the fabric. "Wow, it's so silky."

Obito sidled up to Rin, and tentatively touched the fabric. Kushina watched them with amusement as his eyebrows subtly rose in surprise.

"So? What do you think?" Kushina asked, knowingly.

"It's not bad, I guess," He said, hurriedly switching back to nonchalance.

"Not bad ?" Rin scoffed, "It's not just not bad, Obito. This thing is made of the softest silk I've ever come across."

Sakura was inclined to agree even without getting a feel of the fabric herself. On the other hand, Obito was pretty spot on in his assessment too. The kakeshita Rin was delicately holding up was starkly white, so much so that it almost had a blue tint to it. The ribbed fabric looked crisp like it had yet to see any use. The kimono that went over it was beige and much warmer in tone. Floral embroidery spanned the entire length of the fabric.

"When do you ever see silk?" Obito asked, confused.

"That's not the point," Rin shushed him hastily. She turned to Kushina, with starry eyes. "Where did you buy this from, Kushina-san?"

"I inherited the fabrics a long time ago," Kushina said softly, caressing the material of her kimono . "She didn't think I was ever going to get married, but passed these down just in case."

Sakura could tell whoever she had inherited these beautiful fabrics from was no longer around. She felt a pang of ache for her new friend. It felt wrong that even a joyous occasion like a wedding could be punctuated by notes of sadness.

Sakura stepped around Rin and Obito, and put a hand on Kushina's shoulder. "She must've had impeccable taste. These are absolutely stunning."

"Baa-chan was the most elegant person I ever knew." Kushina said, smiling. Then, with a chuckle, she added, "I'm just glad I'm not giving the old woman any reason to turn over in her grave."

"You are going to make such a beautiful bride!" Rin squealed, clapping her hands together. "Sensei should consider himself a fortunate man."

Obito looked like he was going to disagree, but he swallowed the words when he saw Rin bouncing in excitement. His eyes softened, and he smiled in an unguarded manner that Sakura didn't think she had seen before.

Sakura caught the abrupt shift in his demeanor, and instantly knew what was going on.

Oh to be thirteen and crushing on your teammate, she thought, highly amused.

"Minato definitely knows he lucked out," Kushina agreed, laughing.

To Sakura, the two of them seemed like such a beautiful pairing, and not just visually. She had noticed them finishing each other's sentences a couple of times. They traded shy smiles whenever Kakashi and Obito started bickering, and Rin took it upon herself to play mediator. It was clear as a summer day, how in love they were.

How fortunate for both of them, to have found each other.

"You know, you two are going to make the most beautiful babies!" Rin snickered, with an edge of mischief.

Sakura once again felt inclined to agree with Rin, but Obito was scandalized.

"Ewww," He protested.

Kushina, who had turned close to the same shade of red as her hair, scowled at Obito.

"My children need not be beautiful! I will be fine as long as they are not troublesome like a certain someone we know," Kushina insisted, staring blankly at Obito.

"Who are you call—"

Before he could finish, Rin had grabbed Obito's wrist and started pulling him towards the door. "I think Kakashi is looking for us."

"Oh, okay, yeah," Obito struggled, turning pink-cheeked.

"Bye, Kushina-san! We'll see you at the ceremony tomorrow!"

Sakura realized she'd been left behind. She was about to step out as well, when Kushina spoke up, "I can't believe how perfectly that outfit fits you!"

Actually, the fit around her chest was a little loose, but Sakura didn't plan on disclosing that to anyone.

"They're really comfortable too," Sakura said, facing down to examine her pastel yellow wrap. "Thank you very much, Kushina-san."

Kushina ruffled Sakura's hair, much in the same manner that Kakashi—her Kakashi, the old man—sometimes did. "They were packed up to be given away, but I had a feeling they were still going to prove useful in some way."

Sakura had never even known of this woman's existence, but she couldn't shake off the urgent sense of familiarity.

Perhaps it was that sense of familiarity that prompted her to ask what she did next: "What is it like? To have someone you love, love you back?"

The mortification hit her so fast that she was barreling into a clarification before Kushina could even respond.

"I mean, you must be so excited... excited for... excited to be marrying the one... the one! You know?" She tapered off, awkwardly.

Kushina's bright eyes had dimmed a shade. There was still warmth in abundance there, but some of the shine she so unapologetically embodied previously seemed to have worn off.

"Sakura," Kakashi's droll voice suddenly blew in through the door, hanging in the air like a protective screen. "Sensei is buying us ice cream. Let's go."

He was gone in the blink of an eye just as he had appeared, but Sakura had never felt more grateful for an interruption.

"Ice cream sounds really good right now." Sakura smiled at Kushina and started making her way out of the to-be-bride's new room. It was a clumsy transition, but she didn't care. Anything to get out of this sticky situation.

"It's like yelling into the void, and the void yells back at you."

Sakura stopped in her tracks, found herself turning around to face the one she had just been dying to get away from. Kushina smiled, and the kindness in her eyes made up for the lack of its shine. Sakura realized she wasn't being pitied or consoled.

"And it says, I hear you, I understand you, I cherish you."

"Like an answer?"

"Like the right one."

It was reassurance Sakura didn't know she'd needed.

Time was linear.

Like the sun was inexhaustible, and the sky was endless.

The past was set in stone, the present continuous, the future inevitable. But now, everything was seemingly jumbled. The future—pitch black darkness that she had been plucked out of—was presumably set in stone. The past was continuous—like a river in retrograde, flowing upstream but flowing all the same. This left the present in an unprecedented state of influx.

If the past was the present, the present was no longer merely unfolding. It was unfolding with an awareness of its precarious position in this delicate imbalance. That awareness, Sakura realized, could empower her to erode the surface of the stone, wipe it clean so it was a blank slate once again. She could rewrite not only the past, but also the future.

If she could change something, if she could do anything different—maybe Naruto could live to be Hokage one day, maybe she would be able to see her parents, the rest of her classmates, and everyone else that was lost to the Eye of the Moon again, maybe the world could know light again.

Maybe, just maybe.

"Maybe not," Kakashi said, voice entirely devoid of any enthusiasm. He was hanging upside down off the side of an old oak tree, his knees hooked over a sturdy looking branch. "There is no guarantee. What if you make things worse?"

"It can't get worse when you're at the... when you're quite literally at the..."

"...end of times?"

In a sense, Sakura thought but could not say out loud. She settled for nodding.

In the distance, Obito was running around the training grounds like a headless chicken. His latest attempt to activate his sharingan involved physically tiring himself out to see if completely depleted chakra reserves may have a hand in kickstarting the dojutsu. He had already tried getting his ass beat by Kakashi, staring up at the sun for far longer than anyone should (despite the stern medical warning from Sakura and Rin), attempting to hold his breath underwater for impossible periods of time.

Rin was on standby, sitting on a patch of grass only a stone's throw away from him, in case he hurt himself unintentionally. Or intentionally. Sakura couldn't tell anymore.

"I need the dirt on Madara," She said, turning back to Kakashi.

"Man's been dead for decades. How could he orchestrate worldwide annihilation?"

Uchiha Madara—the legend, the myth—had somehow risen from the dead, and snatched the life force of the entire Shinobi Alliance to satiate his hunger for power. Sakura had read about the founders in the Academy, so she knew who he was, of course. But their books said so very little, and as children who are given only crumbs would be prone to do, they made up elaborate stories about the great founders, told tales of the cataclysmic rivalry between the Senjus and Uchihas, spearheaded by Hashirama and Madara, that eventually blew up, leaving the Valley at the End in shambles.

"Well, that's what we're trying to find out," Sakura said, haughtily.

Madara was the alleged instigator of this life long feud, which left the clan in an uncomfortable position. The Uchiha Massacre only further sensationalized this narrative. In the aftermath, it wasn't just the kids talking.

"Uchihas were a blood-thirsty, cursed clan of savages."

"They harbored in their hearts a cycle of hatred that consumed them whole in the end."

"They got what they deserved."

At the Academy, no one dared say anything to Sasuke, but in the playground, where he was never to be found, kids played tag chasing after one another trying to 'pass' the Uchiha curse.

Even when she couldn't understand the implications, Sakura knew this was wrong. But children that were once brutally bullied seldom find their voice again. The guilt festered in her stomach, made her fixate on her broody classmate. She couldn't speak up for him, so she decided to show her support from the sidelines. At which point, her feelings morphed from support to actual genuine affection, she was never able to pinpoint. She only knew that one day, without any conscious deliberation, she had come to love Uchiha Sasuke.

The shock of seeing him on the battlefield was fresh. In the midst of the devastation, it had been a relief, however short-lived, to be whole as Team Seven once again.

After achieving the Sage of Six Paths mode, Madara had rattled off about bringing true peace in the world. But what was peace without freedom? Only someone truly unhinged would find a mirage like that fitting. This entire thing seemed to be at least somewhat rooted in the Uchiha clan. Why and how was Madara able to pull this off? Why had Obito been helping him? Where had Obito been all this time?

She needed to go back to where it all started. If she could intercept the very source and unravel the cause of this insensible violence, maybe it could all be prevented.

Maybe.

"Why do you hate me?"

Sakura startled out of her reverie, and found Kakashi's inverted eyes staring at her.

"I don't hate you."

"It sure does feel like you have a bone to pick with me though."

"Let's just say that you've been known to play favorites."

"Oh so, I don't like you either."

"You like me just fine!" Sakura snapped, glowering at Kakashi. "I mean, I'm pretty sure you do. Unless I've managed to offend you somehow. Oh lord, maybe I did offend you. That would explain a lot actually."

"I see."

Kakashi's non-reactions were beginning to grate on her nerves. Not that she wanted him to react in any extreme way, but some show of emotion once in a while would be great.

"Can we focus on this?" She said, wildly gesticulating in Obito's direction. "I think it's safe to say he is not unlocking those magic eyes by tomorrow."

"I told you he wouldn't."

"Can you not do your smug I told you so routine right now?"

Kakashi abruptly unhooked his knees from the branch he was hanging off of, flipping his body to land on his two feet. "Where's the fun in that?"

"I could just knock 'em out, you know. The guards," Sakura mused.

"That is probably not a good idea. If they find out Obito was somehow involved, it will be his neck on the guillotine."

"I thought you didn't care about what happened to Obito."

"I don't. I just don't like things to get messy."

"Uh huh."

"Did we go to war?"

"What?"

"We've been on a stalemate with Iwa for months. No direct attacks, only covert sabotage missions. How does it end?"

The Third Shinobi World War had famously ended with the destruction of Kannabi Bridge. Namikaze Minato, before he was the Yondaime Hokage, had led his team to complete this pivotal mission, which immediately turned the tides of the war in Konoha's favor. Sakura wasn't sure if divulging this information would be a good idea.

He picked up on her hesitation instantly. "Can you not talk about it?"

"It's not that."

"What is it?"

"Maybe I just shouldn't talk about it."

Kakashi cocked an eyebrow.

"It's the future, you know. What if I tell you, and something that was supposed to happen, doesn't?"

"We're headed for the end of the world anyway," Kakashi shrugged. "Maybe changing a few things along the way wouldn't be such a bad thing."

Sakura bit her lip. He wasn't wrong, of course. But an odd sense of apprehension had settled over her stomach, like some kind of an ominous warning.

However, it felt unfair to deny him, especially after he had been so accommodating to her.

Truly, if the roles had been reversed, and a random teenager had shown up one day claiming they were from the future, Sakura wouldn't think twice before turning their suspect ass in to the Godaime.

She opted for an oversimplification, an incomplete truth. "We won the war."

She didn't say Konoha was going to be an empty husk of its former glory by the end, that it was going to cost him greatly, that every single person surrounding him today was no longer around in the future. His life would be spent standing in front of the cenotaph, mourning friends he had lost along the way.

"Cool," Kakashi said, like he was telling her what day of the week it is.

Sakura was grateful he didn't ask for any elaboration. If he had explicitly asked for details, she didn't think she had it in herself to refuse.

What would he do when he learned what awaited him round the corner? What if he wanted to save his friends? What if that ended up altering the entire course of history? What if an evil force more malicious than Madara rose to take his place?

Sakura recognized her own hypocrisy. She was trying to do the very thing she feared Kakashi would do. But no matter how she looked at it, it just didn't feel prudent to mess around with anything just yet. Not until she had a better understanding of how this bizarre phenomenon worked.

There was a loud thud. Sakura turned to the clearing and saw a concerned Rin crouched over a prone Obito. Soon, she helped him up, and they started making their way back to the edge, where Sakura and Kakashi had been stationed.

"We need a Plan B," Obito said, panting. He was hobbling, his arm slung around Rin's shoulders for support.

Kakashi rolled his eyes. "What a surprise."

Even in his worn out state, Obito looked ready to lunge, but Rin spoke up first. "Don't start again, you two," She said, firmly. The boys glared at each other, but otherwise backed off.

Sakura looked at the young kunoichi, impressed. This was really what she should've done when Naruto and Sasuke got into one of their insufferable arguments—put an end to it before it even began.

"I don't know about this, Sakura-san," Rin said, skeptically. "It may be more trouble than it's worth."

Breaking into a clan shrine to show it off to a tourist was definitely not worth the trouble. But, to overturn the grim ending that awaited them down the line and save countless lives? Sakura was ready to do this, and so much worse.

"I have an idea," She said, looking at Rin's concerned eyes.

Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina were wed in a small, private ceremony on the third day of the 11th month of the Year of the Monkey. Neither had any family to speak of, so those in attendance were only their close friends and well-wishers. Kakashi rarely let emotions get the best of him, but today was one of the few exceptions. As he looked around the wedding hall, that Hatake Sakumo was not present, left his chest feeling a little hollow.

His father had been Kushina's genin sensei. One who had taught her for a decade. Some of Kakashi's earliest memories involved being under her care whenever his father was out of the village on missions. In hindsight, he realized how much trust there had been between the two of them. When Sakumo died, Kushina had been more devastated than Kakashi in some ways.

As he grew older, Kakashi began spending more time with Minato. They were in the same team after all. But that Kushina was still more of a kin to him than his own sensei never changed. She was the closest thing he had to a family. Maybe this was why he felt funny. Now that she was married, was she no longer going to be his person? He liked to act nonchalant and annoyed when she did thoughtful things for him, but in truth, those moments were precious to Kakashi.

The ceremony was followed by a reception. It was a much larger gathering. Attendees this time included people the bride and the groom had worked with, clerks from the Hokage tower, mission mates with whom they had shared the very real possibility of death, classmates from their graduating Academy class. In short, it was pretty much the entire shinobi population in the village.

"Why do you look miserable? Isn't this a happy occasion?" Rin asked, stepping beside him on the balcony. Dinner was not going to be served for a while, so he had decided to step out of the reception hall for air. Like him, she was dressed in traditional clothing. The purple marks on her face went along nicely with the lavender kimono she was wearing.

"I don't look miserable," He said, automatically. Hiding behind a mask was becoming more and more natural for him every day.

"How could you possibly know that?"

"What?"

"Maybe you are not feeling miserable, but you do look miserable, Kakashi," She said, chuckling with her mouth covered by a dainty hand. Rin's keen eyes rarely missed anything, so he decided to deflect.

"Where's Obito?"

"Bathroom," She said, wincing. "He ate something at the ceremony. It's not sitting well with his stomach."

Of course. The day Obito did not mess up, the sun was going to rise from the west.

"I know you're not going to tell me what you're thinking, so here," Rin said, holding out a piece of origami in her small palm. "Take this."

"What is this?" Kakashi asked, plucking it out of her hand.

"It's a crane!" Rin said, excitedly.

"Um."

Rin laughed at his confusion. "It's a wedding tradition, silly. It's good luck to fold one thousand gold origami cranes for the bride and groom."

"You made a thousand of these by yourself?" Kakashi asked, trying to not let his voice rise in surprise. Honestly, he was a little impressed. It must have taken forever.

She shook her head. "Obito helped."

Oddly enough, the first question that occurred to Kakashi was: Why didn't you ask me?

But he knew the answer already. When their team was first assembled, Kakashi had taken great measures to establish boundaries around his teammates. He hadn't wanted any friends, had explicitly asked that their relationship be strictly professional. Over the years, Rin and Obito had successfully stamped some cracks on his invisible walls, but it was still an unspoken rule that you didn't call on Kakashi for anything outside of practice or missions.

"That sounds like a pain," He said, shifting the crane in his hand to have a look from different angles. The gold shimmered, adding warmth to the already picturesque scene of the venue illuminated by rows and rows of string lights.

"It was a lot of fun actually!" She corrected him. "You should do it with us next time."

"Why would there be a next time?"

"These aren't just used in weddings. You can give them to anyone."

He looked at her with a raised brow, like why would anyone ever want to do that.

"When you give someone a thousand cranes," She patiently explained. "You are saying I hope your wishes come true ."

"Wishes don't come true because you folded paper."

"Yeah, but it's the thought that counts."

Kakashi remained unconvinced, but he didn't say anything.

Rin filled the pause with a surprising question, "Are you sure it's okay to trust Sakura-san?"

When he turned to face her, she added, "I just feel a little weird about this whole thing."

"What do you mean?"

"She said she is from the future," Rin started, smiling sadly. "But she had clearly never met me before."

Realization dawned on Kakashi. He'd made the same observation on that day. In fact, he had noticed this when Sakura did not recognize Kushina as well. But there could be a number of reasons for why Sakura had never crossed paths with them. Rin was passionate about medicine; perhaps she frequently traveled outside of Konoha to forage for rare herbs and plants. And Kushina had always expressed a desire to rebuild Uzushiogakure—her original home. He could see her moving back to do just that.

In any case, they were shinobis. It was no secret around the village that life expectancy in their profession was shockingly low.

"It doesn't mean anything," Kakashi said, trying to reassure her.

Rin chewed on her bottom lip, a nervous tic he was familiar with. "How can you be sure?"

"I'm not," He said. "But our lives are not our own. We pledged to die fighting for Konoha."

Rin didn't say anything. She only spoke when she had turned away from him. "I guess you're right."

Kakashi felt like he had said the wrong thing, but it was the truth.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Obito whispered, looking doubtful.

"Yes," Sakura said.

"But genjutsu runs strong in our clan. What if they figure out what's happened?"

"They won't. As long as you do as I say."

"Who said you could boss us around?"

"Unless you have a better idea, please shut up."

Obito threw her an incensed look like Sakura had greatly insulted him, but didn't say anything. The four of them—Sakura, Rin, Kakashi and Obito—were crouched behind the stonewall fence surrounding the Naka Shrine, the place where the Uchiha records were supposedly stored.

"Why are we doing this if we can't read the records?" Rin asked, nervously.

"I just want to check it out. There has to be something useful."

"Something useful? For what? I thought you just wanted to learn more about my clan."

Sakura shushed him as a couple of guards rounded the inside of the perimeter for a patrol. They were speaking in hushed tones.

"What a spectacle. All this while there is a war waging on the borders," One of them said, disgustedly.

"They say he will be the Yondaime, you know."

"But it's just speculation. There were also talks of the next Hokage being an Uchiha."

"You believe that drivel?"

"You don't?"

"Sarutobi is all talk. He ain't doing the clan a single favor."

The voices petered away gradually. Sakura looked at her accomplices, and nodded as a mission go signal.

She shifted into a normal stride and made for the entrance of the shrine. Kakashi and Obito followed on her heels, concealed in the shadows. Rin stayed behind as the lookout. If anything went amiss, she was to find a way out.

The Naka Shrine was inside the Uchiha District, on the outer edges of the village. People were either at the celebration or inside their homes, so dodging the patrol guards had been fairly easy. They just needed to get through the couple of guards stationed at the entrance of the shrine now.

Playing her part, Sakura looked around the poorly lit street like she was lost. It didn't take long for one of the guards to take notice.

"Hey! You! You can't be in here," A boy that could be no older than twenty yelled. "Are you lost?"

"Um, yeah. I was invited to a wedding. The Uzumaki wedding." Sakura approached him, stepping into the light of the burning logs propped up on the stonewall.

"You are a far ways off from the reception hall," The second guard said, coming up behind the first one. They were both now close enough that she could make eye contact with no obstacles.

Bingo.

Sakura immediately honed in on their eyes and grasped the flow of their chakra. With calculated discretion, she began redirecting their chakra, slowly but effectively dulling their vision to the surroundings.

"Oh," She exclaimed, in the next moment after she had successfully cast the genjutsu. "My apologies. I must've taken a wrong turn. Do you know how I could get to the reception hall?"

"You're not from around here, are you?" The first guard asked, considering her warily.

"No, sir. I've traveled from Whirlpool for the wedding."

"Go straight down this street, then take a right when you see the Banyan roundabout. The streets will be better lit from that point, so just keep going straight. The reception hall will be impossible to miss, I'm sure."

"Very poorly timed though," The second guard offered. "You've probably missed most of the shindig by now."

"I better hurry then," Sakura said, starting to turn around.

"Wait a minute," The first guard demanded, abruptly. Sakura froze in her steps, but turned around swiftly to avoid suspicion.

She was prepared to combat if it came down to it.

"Does everyone from that cursed village have funny hair?" He said, a twisted smile playing on his lips.

"What are you on about?" The second guard said, grimacing.

"Look at her. She's got pink hair! Just like that Uzumaki freak with her awful red hair."

Sakura clenched her fists, but spoke calmly, "No, we happen to be in the minority."

And I'm from Konoha, you moron.

She turned around and started walking away before they could get another sentence in.

"I just don't get it."

"What?"

"Namikaze could have any girl in the village. Why is he marrying that ticking time bomb?"

"That bastard is pretty ruthless himself. I've heard some wild shit about his stint on the Northern border."

"Hm, sounds like they are well-matched actually."

Sakura tuned out the rest of the conversation as it got more and more disrespectful. When she was far enough out from them, she slipped into the shadows. She found Kakashi and Obito easily, and together, they started making their way back to the entrance.

The two guards were still deep in discussion about things that were clearly not their business. Sakura wanted to smack them upside their heads, but slithering into the shrine undetected was the priority right now.

Under the genjutsu, the guards were not able to see Sakura, Kakashi, and Obito, as they tiptoed past the entrance right under their noses. There was some satisfaction to be had from that.

There wasn't much inside the compound as it turned out, only the lone structure that housed the shrine. The three of them wordlessly trudged up the stairs leading up to the shrine. This area was just as poorly lit as the streets so even if there were other guards in the premises, it was not going to be easy to spot them.

They managed to make it to the side of the shrine entrance, with Sakura in the lead.

"I don't have a good feeling about this," Obito whispered from behind Kakashi, who was standing behind Sakura. She turned to look at Obito and held her index finger against her mouth to tell him this was no time for talking.

She could still see the guards at the entrance from where they were hiding. As long as they didn't make a sound, Sakura was confident the three of them would be able to get away without getting caught.

She turned to look at Kakashi and Obito again. They nodded in understanding. Sakura slinked through the shadows and made it to the front door. She expected to have to neutralize a sealing jutsu or two, but to her surprise, the door was held close by only a simple latch. She worked the handle to unlatch it easily, and looked to the side where Kakashi was peeking, waiting for her signal. She waved a hand to call them over.

Soon, they had all stepped into the shrine room and closed the door from the inside.

It was pitch black. Not even a glimmer of the moonlight made it in because the room had no windows.

"Hold on." She heard Obito whisper.

"Katon! Kindle a Spark Jutsu," Obito whispered, taking a deep breath and blowing onto the tip of his index finger. A small flame danced into existence, lighting the room in a flickering, orange glow.

Sakura blinked to make sure she was seeing right, because surely, there had been a mistake.

The room was completely empty.

"Huh," Kakashi voiced, not sounding very surprised or put off.

"Er," Obito faltered, looking confused. "Maybe they are renovating?"

"No, no, no," Sakura mumbled, racing around the empty space. When she couldn't feel anything spatially, she put her palms on the concrete, trying to detect any special chakra infused area.

"What are you doing?" Obito asked, warily.

"I'm checking to see if there's any opening. Either this place is a decoy, or there has to be a seal some—"

Sakura abruptly stopped when she felt an unfamiliar chakra spike around the wall across from the front door.

"What is it?" Kakashi asked.

"It's here." She dropped to her knees, urgently patting down the floor. "It's a complex seal."

"What is it?" Obito asked, inching closer to Sakura.

"Shouldn't you be telling us that?" Kakashi said, accusingly.

"I don't know what's in there! I have never even stepped foot into this shrine."

"What?" Kakashi gawked at him. "So you don't even know for sure if this is where they keep the records?"

"Well, everyone says they are kept here. But you're only allowed in after you come of age. I thought it was some boring library or something."

Sakura considered ripping the tatami mat off and cracking the floor open, but that would be too reckless. Using blunt force may damage whatever the seal was hiding. She racked her brain for a solution; anything that might neutralize the seal, or even just clue her into what sat under this floor.

The answer came from an unexpected source when the door burst open.

"What the hell! Stop whatever you're doing!" The perpetrator, a third guard with scraggly black hair who looked older than the first two, said menacingly. He must have lit the sconces outside, because they were bathed in brighter light with his arrival. "Why are you trying to break into the clan meeting place?"

Nice!

It's a meeting place.

So the records were definitely somewhere behind this seal.

"Is that you, Hatake? And Obito ?" The guard hissed, then turned to Sakura. "Who the hell are you?"

Obito stepped forward, and spoke calmly like nothing out of the ordinary was going on. "She's a visitor from out of town. Kakashi's cousin. I was just showing her around the Uchiha District."

"You've got to be shitting me," The guard swore, looking at Obito incredulously. "This isn't your personal playground, you dimwit. Get the fuck out of here!"

"We were just on our way out," Obito said, defensively. "Come on, guys."

The guard stepped outside to make way for them through the door.

Damn, she thought.

They were going to get away with this. Sakura had to give it to the kid.

Kakashi was the first one out. Sakura followed, throwing an apologetic look at the guard. It was when Obito was crossing the threshold that the trouble began.

"Where do you think you're going, you rat bastard?" The guard barked, grabbing the back of Obito's collar and lifting him off the ground.

"Let me go!" Obito flailed, hands flying back to dislodge the grasp the guard had on him. "I said, let me go, asshole!"

"You know how this goes. You gotta pay the price for the shit you stir," He said, with an ugly sneer on his face.

Sakura saw Kakashi's fists clench to her side. She instinctively grabbed his wrist. When he looked at her, she shook her head. Obito was probably going to get a slap on the wrist, but if Kakashi got mixed up, there was no guarantee that things wouldn't escalate.

The commotion seemed to have alerted the two guards she'd cast her genjutsu on earlier. They approached the landing of the stairs leading up to the shrine with alarmingly predatory smiles.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"

The third guard, accosting Obito, laughed. "Nothing new. It's always the orphans making trouble."

Sakura's breath caught. His words reverberated inside her head. A slew of memories she hadn't thought of in a very long time were triggered.

A young boy with hair the color of sunshine getting thrown out of a grocery store by a middle-aged man with a potbelly. "Go shop elsewhere! We don't serve your kind here."

"I'm going to beat your ass, I swear! Let me GO!" Obito was yelling, his legs dangling in the air helplessly.

The same boy being shoved by a teenager with buckteeth. His cruel laughter resounding through the busy market as the boy fell face down into a puddle of mud. Everyone around, including her mother, turning a blind eye to the scene and shushing her when she asked why no one was helping him.

"Let him go." Sakura heard herself say, through gritted teeth. Her eyes were fixed on the gap between Obito's flailing legs and the concrete ground.

Her own voice callously spitting poison, "Naruto's always doing selfish things because he doesn't have a mother or a father, you know. No one to teach him right from wrong!"

"Or what?" The guard challenged. "You want a little taste of this medicine too, little girl."

"Hey, aren't you the girl from Whirlpool? Why are you still here?" The first guard inched closer, squinting his eyes.

"What? I thought she was Hatake's cousin."

Sakura spied Kakashi's hand making to reach for his tanto. She spoke before he could actually pull it out, "Let the kid go, and we'll be out of here."

"So much spunk in this one. Maybe she is from Whirlpool," He said, stepping closer. Obito was starting to turn pale, as he took shallow breaths because of the pressure around his throat. In his struggle, his goggles slipped off his forehead and landed on the ground with a quiet thunk.

"Fine, but only because you asked nicely," The guard said, just as he flung Obito sideways. His small body hit the concrete of the steps and tumbled down the stairs with a series of awful thumps.

The second guard from the front entrance clapped loudly, howling in laughter. When Obito landed at the foot of the stairs, right in front of him, he crouched to grab Obito by his hair and held his head up gracelessly. "This fucker is still conscious."

Barely , she noted grimly.

"Take care of it then," The guard standing in front of her said, waving a hand dismissively. "I can take care of thi—"

Sakura's hand shot out like a lightning and wrapped around his throat, suddenly rendering him mute. It happened so fast all he could do was choke in shock. His eyes widened as he struggled to break free. Her grasp only tightened as she pivoted to face the stairs, swinging his body carelessly. He was taller than her, but the descending steps in front of them meant there was plenty of room for him to hang in the air.

"You b-bitch! " He croaked.

Kakashi was in front of the two guards blocking them before they could make a move. "You really don't want to do this," He warned.

"You like stepping on people, right?" Sakura taunted, staring down at the suffocating man. "How do you like this?"

She shook him like he was nothing but a rag doll, then threw him off the other side of the stairs. He dropped a few feet from Obito, with the definite crunches of bones breaking.

"Who–who is she?!" One of the guards stammered, backpedaling. The other had straight off ran away.

"Someone you should be afraid of," Kakashi said, before this one too hastily ran off.

Sakura rushed down the stairs, and dropped to Obito's side. He was groaning in pain, but fortunately, a quick scan of his body showed no serious injuries.

"Are you okay?" She asked, holding his head up by propping it on her elbow.

"Yeah." He said, with a scrunch on his forehead. Then, his face slowly broke out in a smile. "That was fucking cool."

Sakura let out a thin, reedy laugh. The rage had subsided, and the relief taking over made her feel a little dizzy.

Then, she heard Kakashi say, "We have a problem."

She looked up at Kakashi, and followed his gaze to the very front of the shrine entrance. On one side of the road, there was a good bunch of Uchihas approaching them with a great deal of agitation. On the other side, Rin stood, hunched over her knees, furiously trying to catch her breath.

And behind her, Uzumaki Kushina, dressed in her snow white wedding kimono, looking like a bride to be reckoned with.

tbc

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