A/N: So, due to all the amazing Naruto fanfics that I've seen on here, I decided to try my hand at it. So welcome to my first Naruto fic ever!
On another note, this story strays from the manga around chapter 450 before going into a timeskip as you'll soon see. Also, I've tinkered with the geography of the manga a little bit. Originally, Konoha is more or less in the very center of Fire Country. Here it'll be closer to the sea that's due east of them. I don't think it's going to affect the story much, but I wanted to let you guys know if there happen to be any die-hard (including me) fans reading this. I'll stick as close to canon as possible, but we all know that life tends to throw us some twists and turns along the way. :D
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and let me know your thoughts!
xx LCF
Disclaimer: Naruto does not belong to me, if it did then Sasuke would've realized how stupid he's being and Sakura wouldn't have cried so much and returned to the image of badassery she was in the beginning of Shippuden.
Edit 5/6/18
Hello everyone! It's been a hot minute, yeah? Well I'm back and happy to say that I've been revisiting the earlier chapters of Storm and with the help of my beta, mumblemusings, have cleaned up the grammar and tweaked some minor details to be more to my liking.
Storm
Prologue
It was late when Sakura made her way to Tsunade's tent.
She'd been released from her rotation a mere handful of minutes ago, and she'd wasted no time in getting back to her mentor.
Most of the villagers and shinobi were in bed by then; everyone exhausted from the slow, but steady, restoration of the village. Pain's attack had been devastating and had completely obliterated everything. And Sakura just knew that if Tsunade-sama didn't wake up soon, then there would be more than a few people willing to strike in their moment of weakness. However, as imminent as that threat could be, helping Shizune with Tsunade-sama's recuperation was her immediate priority.
She made sure that her shishou was stabilized, and that all her vitals were checked every few hours. A switch of an IV here, a little probing with chakra there; and afterwards Sakura would open her medical texts and sit near the futon—reading up on the nervous system to make sure that nothing was wrong with her mentor's. It was all she could do.
It was all anyone could do, really.
The moment Shizune and she had a chance, they'd immediately gone to work on their dear Hokage and mentor. They healed everything that needed to be, and injected her with several boosters to help with the severe chakra depletion she suffered from.
Despite all this, Tsunade-sama remained in her comatose state, and after it was all said and done, Shizune announced that the only thing left was to let her rest if there was to be any hope for her to regain consciousness. This hadn't surprised Sakura in the slightest. After all, Tsunade-sama had handed over nearly all of her chakra to Katsuuyu in order to heal all the villagers.
With the state that the village had been reduced to, and with Tsunade-sama out of the picture for the time being, an emergency council meeting was held almost immediately after Naruto had managed to defeat Pain. A vote had taken place to see who would temporarily take the title of Hokage until Tsunade recovered from her comatose state. And to Sakura and Naruto's dismay, Danzou had been elected—and by the Daimyou, no less. When she'd first heard the news, Sakura couldn't help but think that there was something seriously wrong if anyone thought that that man was fit enough to be village leader. Hell, even Kakashi-sensei with all his bad habits would have been better suited for office.
Lost in thought, Sakura approached her shishou's tent. One that matched all the others that currently made up their village. However, before she could reach it, she suddenly paused in her tracks as a sense of unease that caused the hairs at the nape of her neck to stand on end.
Green eyes studied the surrounding forest warily. It was eerily quiet, and not a single sound filled the air. Not even the usual cries of the cicadas that loved to fill the summer evenings with their shrieking songs. All was still, and it put her on edge. Pink brows pulled together in worry as she tried feeling out for the guard; growing fierce when she found no signs of the ANBU. Not even the tiniest flex of their chakra. So where were they?
There had been at least half-a-dozen stationed within the past few days, all going through rotation in pairs as they guarded their fallen Hokage. They'd just switched rotation at midnight, from the missive Shizune had left her not even twenty minutes ago. There was no way she'd get the time wrong. The ANBU guard were nearly as crucial to Tsunade's survival as she and Shizune were.
Immediately, Sakura went on the defensive. Her gloved hand slipped inside her holster and withdrew two kunai. Something wasn't right, but before Sakura could come up with any kind of theory, a sudden flare of chakra within Tsunade's tent caught her attention.
Sprinting, Sakura wrenched open the flap and saw—-not her mentor coming to, but a cloaked figure in a bone-white mask hovering above Tsunade's prone form with a raised kunai, ready to strike down the unconscious woman beneath him.
Root, something whispered in the back of her mind, recalling the small bits of information she'd learned from her time with Tsunade and with Sai. And if Root was here, it was only on Danzo's orders.
Red invaded Sakura's vision, and before she could blink, she rushed forward with a surge of chakra and connected the heel of her boot to the side of his skull.
A sickening crack filled the air as she crushed his skull, killing him instantly. But even as the masked nin fell, five more suddenly materialized behind her, forcing her to turn heel and face them down. They attacked without hesitance, but Sakura was quick on her feet, dodging and returning blows as her mind kept track of all of them while simultaneously keeping an eye on her defenseless mentor on the futon. As another operative slipped past her and headed for Tsunade, Sakura flung her kunai at him, but missed when he teleported out of range.
Swinging back around, Sakura didn't waste a second in unleashing more weapons at the remaining nin.
A wave of senbon cascaded towards Tsunade from Sakura's right, and she dove into the line of fire, ignoring the tiny bursts of pain that exploded along her arms as they embedded themselves into her skin. Sakura quickly leapt out of range and yanked the offending weapons out of her limbs before she rushed them and aimed a kick right at the center of their group, successfully dispersing them.
The Root members vanished in a blur, and without a moment's hesitation, she sprinted from the tent and wove a complex jutsu around it to keep her mentor hidden. No one but Kakashi would be able to discover it. She also threw a kunai with an explosive tag wrapped around the handle at a tree several meters from the campsite. It would detonate in ninety seconds, alerting anyone within fifty yards of danger.
With that reassuring thought in mind, Sakura headed east, hoping to draw out Tsunade's attackers that were sure to be waiting in the wings. She wasn't disappointed, and soon enough several Root shadowed her movements as wave after wave of weapons came at her. Sakura leapt from branch to branch at random, hoping to shake them off and guiding them as far from her shishou as she could and closer instead to where she knew her fellow shinobi would be.
As she neared an open field however, something blunt struck her back with incredible force and sent her careening. A gloved hand shot out and took hold of a protruding branch of a small tree, using her momentum to swing herself back around. She focused her chakra, and in the next second uprooted it before launching it at them. The masked nin scattered once again, but before she could take a breath, one was upon her. Sakura pushed off against the ground and flew straight towards her assailant, landing a chakra-charged fist on his chest that left him crumpled on the ground.
Panting heavily as she took cover, a blast rang clear through the air and Sakura began to feel the beginnings of fatigue stir in her system. But as tired as she was, there was no helping the fury that raged in her heart, because these men, Danzou's men, had made an attempt on Tsunade-sama's life.
White-hot rage filled her anew and she clenched her jaw severely before a wave of vertigo settled over her, hicausing her to lose her footing and stumble. Sakura looked down at the punctures on her arms, taking note of the angry red ring that surrounded the jabs.
Poison, she thought grimly before she began to rummage through her medical kit for something to stave off the effects. Sakura recognized the symptoms of the poison, and it wasn't a lethal one, but it did tend to leave those afflicted with it immobile. It wore off after several hours, but she didn't have that kind of time.
Her gloved fingers found one of her remaining syringes from the day and pulled it out, revealing the translucent blue liquid that indicated it was a chakra booster. She slammed it into her thigh, wasting no time in plunging the liquid into her veins. It wouldn't heal her, but it would help mitigate the quick-acting poison that had covered the senbon and give her a little more time. But even as the numbing sensation began to fill her body, nothing was capable of putting out the flames of her ire.
When she was younger, Sakura had found it difficult to kill. But now, nearly a year after that fight—the one with Chiyo-obaa-sama against Sasori of the Red Sand. The one that had showed her what a true battle between seasoned combat veterans was… That she had needed to kill or be killed—well, Sakura had not only grown as a medic, but as an exceptional kunoichi of Konoha, the Village Hidden in the Leaves. The very same village that Sasuke-kun had defected, that Naruto vowed to protect, and that Danzou was now pulling further into the shadows with his actions as Hokage.
It was the last straw, and in a fit of rage, Sakura's temper exploded forth.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she yelled, the cold tone of her voice unfamiliar to even her own ears. "I thought we were supposed to be on the same side!"
None of the Root replied, her words wasted on deaf ears. After a second, Sakura leapt from her hiding spot to find the squadron that pursued her halted in the middle of the small clearing. Half a second passed before the squad leader broke their silence. His voice was muffled and had that same hollow tone that Sai used to have, but rang clearly in the quiet air.
"You have seen too much. It is for the sake of Danzou-sama and Konoha that we must eliminate you."
"You think that killing me will help Konoha?" Sakura bit back, raising her voice to a yell in hopes that any of the jonin on patrol would hear her. "That assassinating the rightful Hokage will help?"
She could already feel the stirring of chakra from afar and knew that the explosive tag had worked as intended. All she needed was to draw more of their forces out and guide this platoon as close to the jonin camp as she could.
"Danzou-sama is Hokage, and all decisions he makes are for the sake of the village. He is like you. He wants to restore Konoha to its former glory… and bring forth a new era."
Sakura couldn't help the derisive laugh that escaped her. "Danzou is a warmonger! He doesn't care about Konoha. All he wants is to create more chaos than there already is. Do you think that killing Tsunade-sama would bring stability to the village? If anything it'll go into an uproar! Civil war will break out and it will become a bloodbath."
The Root remained at a stand-still. "Our duty is to Danzou-sama. All that he wishes to be done, shall. Because of this, Haruno Sakura, you are deemed a threat to our mission and must be taken into custody or taken out—."
Before he could finish, Sakura hurled a handful of kunai laced with explosive tags at the platoon. She focused her chakra and detonated them just as they fell into range. The force of the blast blew her back, and she quickly shook out the ringing in her ears as she looked up to see the squadron gone, though not without casualties.
There. If that doesn't catch anyone's attention, I don't know what will. She thought.
But just as she started to turn on her heel to leave, she felt several more chakra signatures swiftly approaching the area. As they neared, Sakura could make out a few of them in the distance and saw that they were all Root members.
Maybe that wasn't such a great idea after all.
Soon she was bombarded by attacks as they swarmed her on all sides, and it was all she could do to keep from getting caught. She pressed herself further and continued running east, hoping to lose them as she went. But as she ran, her movement grew more sluggish and her thoughts no longer flowed in a coherent stream.
The poison must be eating through the booster quickly. She slowly realized.
Quickly, Sakura searched for another injection and felt a surge of relief as her fingers wrapped around a second vial. She slammed the second one down, relishing in the rush of chakra that surged through her like a wildfire. Her relief was short-lived, however, as the Root members were gaining quickly. With her boost, she was able to continue to stay just out of their range, and with a surprising swiftness, found herself facing the sea from the top of a jagged cliff.
She came up short just before the ledge, and when she turned, she saw Danzou's operatives circling her like a predator that had cornered its prey. She'd been unknowingly corralled to this specific location.
Sakura was trapped, and she knew it.
But she'd be damned if she allowed herself to be caught and dragged into whatever hell Danzou had planned for her. The last of her explosive tags had been used to alert her fellow shinobi of the attack, her teammates had no idea where she was, and there was no possibility for back-up. To make matters worse, she could feel the effects of the booster wearing off, leaving her panting heavily and almost completely drained of energy. Her arms throbbed as the poison worked itself through her system, and she needed to get away if she had any hope of surviving this encounter.
With little thought, Sakura decided on the lesser of two evils. Before the Root members could realize what she was doing, Sakura flung herself from the edge of the cliff and into the raging sea below.
Searing pain enveloped her as their projectiles embedded themselves into her back, and the last coherent thought she had before she hit the water was how she hoped it didn't hurt as much as it looked like it would. When the icy water finally greeted her, the air rushed from her lungs and an all-encompassing darkness pulled her under.
Haruno Sakura disappeared beneath the raging waters of the sea, and never resurfaced.
