chapter 2

Bizarre noises had her head turning from left to right so frequently she had to cover her ears. It was so loud. How could people, they were still human weren't they, stand all this racket? Sakura stepped to the side of the public walkway to avoid a larger man with what appeared to be rocks growing from the sides of his face.

If they were human, she had never seen humans like this before. It was surreal and more than a little disturbing. It reminded her of some of the more grotesque experiments Orochimaru had done on both civilians and shinobi alike.

After parting ways with Todoroki san in the park she began exploring this new world by simply walking around. Every few paces she sent her chakra out looking for anything or anyone familiar to her, but she found nothing, no one. It seemed wherever she was, however she got here, she had come alone.

"Shisou, Naruto, Kakashi sensei." She whispered the names of those most dear to her as she made her way to a bench on the side of the walkway. It was too much. She needed to think. She needed to sit down.

Her head still in a bit of a daze, Sakura watched people walk by her bench, listened to them talk to one another and wondered at the differences between this place and Konoha. What had Todoroki called this place? A city? A city called Musutafu.

"Musutafu." Sakura had never heard of a village called Musutafu before. "Shizuoka Prefecture of Japan." She continued to mutter to herself.

"Mind if I sit here?"

Sakura turned her head to the right. An elderly woman was smiling kindly at her.

"Of course not, please sit down." Sakura smiled a fake smile back at the old lady, scooting a little more to the other side giving the woman enough room to set down her bag.

"Beautiful day out isn't it? Still a bit cold for my bones but that will change soon. Soon it will be warm and we will miss the slight chill in the air." The elderly woman began the painful art of small talk.

Inwardly, Sakura grimaced. She had never been very good at small talk, didn't see the point in it...hated it really. Sakura nodded politely with a small grunt of acknowledgement.

"Fine day to skip school, hum?" The old lady leaned over and nudged Sakura playfully in the side.

Sakura tensed up momentarily, willing herself not to react, her hand dropping back down to rest once more on her leg, her fingers twitching. Careful, she scolded herself. I must be careful here. She hadn't felt any familiar chakra signatures while she had been walking, in fact...she hadn't felt any chakra signatures.

It didn't make any sense. Every living thing had chakra, civilians, shinobi, plants and fish. However, she could find no chakra here but her own.

Everything, everything about this place was...disturbing to her. Sakura swallowed. She felt sick. She didn't understand how there couldn't be any chakra in a world that had so much life in it. Unless, she wasn't in her world?

"Did you hear me deary?" The old woman had moved to the edge of the bench seat, leaning forward and peering closely at Sakura, the ends of her legs dangling over the side. "I just asked you if you were skipping school girl, did you not hear me?"

"Oh!" Sakura shook her head and refocused her attention on the old woman beside her. "Forgive me, but I do not go to school anymore. I…"

The old woman cut Sakura off mid sentence. "Don't go to school? Why ever not? Don't you know how important it is for a young person such as yourself to get a good education, a good and safe handle on their quirks?" The old woman hopped off the bench and picked up her bag as a large metal rectangle came slowly down the street.

"My bus is here." The woman dug through her bag quickly pulling out a card to hand to Sakura. "I can tell, there is something about you child, something intense. Not sure what it is though, oh well! If you change your mind about being a hoodlum, come visit me hum?"

"Hoodlum?" Sakura blinked in surprise. "Child?" She was an adult kunoichi for kami's sake. What was wrong with these people?

"I don't know what your quirk is my dear, but you don't want to grow up to be a villain do you?" The woman asked her, her eyes shining and twinkling as the metal contraption pulled up in front of the bench and what appeared to be doors opened up before them. "You've a good heart I can tell, don't go down that road my girl, some roads are dead ends."

Sakura watched the old woman hobble onto the metal 'thing', blinked as the metal doors closed behind her and watched the 'thing' move slowly down the road to what Sakura could see was another set of benches with people waiting.

"Quirk? Villain?" Sakura's stomach rumbled once more reminding her she hadn't had anything to eat or drink yet that day. Rising to her feet she looked around. She had passed several food stands during her walk and several large glass fronted boxes that she had seen people put paper into, like the paper Todoroki had given her, and drinks had popped out.

Perhaps she could find one of those again. She was hungry but she wasn't sure her stomach could handle any food right now, besides, she had her soldier pills if she needed them. It wasn't ideal to use them for hunger but it would suffice, at least until she could get her bearings.

Walking down the more familiar sidewalk Sakura, still acutely aware of her surroundings, looked for one of these drink dispensing boxes. She saw a few bunched together but there were several people already in front of them and a few waiting for their turn. Not yet confident with her new surroundings, she kept walking, looking for a less occupied box.

It was so strange to her. No chakra signatures, seemingly no danger, just people going about their business without a care in the world.

Peaceful. It was so eerily peaceful.

Just as she spotted a lone box that looked similar to the others she had seen, a man came running around the corner of what looked like a run down abandoned bar and a bookstore with a plastic bag gripped tightly in both of his hands. Paper sheets, like the ones Todoroki had given her earlier that day flew out behind him as he shoved his way past Sakura into the rush of the busy sidewalk.

Sakura stood in place and listened to the screams of others around her. What should she do, what could she do in this place. Were their rules here that would get her into trouble if she stopped the man? Did she really want to make herself so visible?

...could she stand there and let him get away with this, do nothing?

"Please, someone help us, please!"

Sakura spun on her heel to see a woman holding an infant to her chest, tears streaming down her face.

"My husband, he, he killed him and robbed our store. Please someone, a hero, anyone please stop him!" The woman cried out, slumping down the wall to the ground, her infant held fast against her chest.

Why wasn't anyone doing anything? Sakura didn't understand, they were just standing there, waiting...waiting for what? The thief was getting away!

Sakura licked her lips, her head turning back to the woman and her baby on the ground surrounded by well wishers. Words, they were just words. They offered her comfort but no solution. Her husband was dead and they just stood there doing nothing while the criminal got away.

"What is wrong with this place, everyone here is crazy." Sakura muttered under her breath as she pushed chakra to the soles of her feet and leapt into the air running up the side of the building, one hand digging through her pouch at her hip for her shinobi wire and a kunai.

With practiced ease, she tied the end of the wire roll through the end of her kunai, cocked her wrist once she had the thief in her line of sight, with the rolled ball of wire in her other hand coating it with her chakra, she set her mark. Counting her speed in her head as she gauged the distance…he was so slow. She caught up to him in no time.

"One, two, three…" Her wrist snapped forward, her kunai went flying, and the thief fell face first into the pavement on the busy sidewalk, wire wrapped around his ankles, immobile.

Sakura dropped down from the side of the building and pulled another kunai from her pouch, cutting the wire and pocketing both kunai and wire back in her pouch. Bending over she picked up the bag of money and walked it back over to the woman and her child.

"Here. I can't do anything about your dead husband but…" Sakura began but paused as a man with blood down the front of his shirt stumbled awkwardly into view. He was holding his arm against his chest.

"Shi chan! Shi chan! Are you and Kenma okay!" The man dropped down beside his wife and child.

"Yes, oh Haru, I thought, I thought you were dead!" Shi broke into fresh tears, one arm around her husband, the other still holding their child. "...but your arm, he still shot you and…"

"Move, please. I'll heal him." Sakura pushed the woman aside gently. "Take a deep breath now." She instructed the man called Haru.

Chakra glowed green from her palms and fingertips as she moved them slowly over Haru's injury. Little by little his wound healed right before his eyes. Sakura sat back and smiled at the little family.

"Did you see that?" Someone behind her asked their friend in a loud whisper.

"Who is she?" Someone from the other side of the walk way asked someone else.

"See, nothing to it right? You'll be just fine. Make sure to move it slowly at first and…" Sirens in the distance made Sakura pause. So loud. Everything was so loud here.

"Thank you so much!" The woman handed her son to her husband and hugged Sakura forcefully. "What is your name hero, please tell me. I've never seen you before."

"Hero?" Sakura didn't understand. This woman thought she was a...hero?

"You there! What do you think you're doing! Get away from that woman, we have some questions for you little girl!" A booming voice echoed over the street.

"Little girl?" Sakura rose to her feet, her fists at the ready, prepared for the next threat.

"Wait! You don't understand!" Shi rose to her feet and held her hands out to the Hero that had just arrived at the scene. "She saved us and healed my husband, she's a Hero and…"

Black and purple mist engulfed Sakura swirling around her, hiding her from sight.

"What the heck is…" Sakura felt herself being pulled backward into the void. "Hey!" She tried to reach out, tried to grab onto anything to keep herself from falling back but…

Sakura fell to her hands and knees, pushed herself up from the ground and jumped to her feet.

"How did you do that? Do you have multiple quirks?" A raspy voice from her left asked her in a commanding voice.

Sakura stood completely still. Where was she now? What sort of jutsu was this, was it a jutsu, a teleportation jutsu maybe, and who were these people? One of them didn't even look human, even less human than the oddities she had seen in the park. He was misty, like the mist that had…

"It was you, you're the one who teleported me, weren't you?" Sakura licked her bottom lip. These two were different from the others, different from Todoroki or that old woman on the bench.

"Yes, I apologize for teleporting you without your permission but I assure you it was necessary. You seemed unaware of the illegality of your actions when you stopped that thief from running away and when you healed that shop owner's arm. I thought it best to bring you somewhere safe. Somewhere the Hero's couldn't get to you." The mist man bowed from what Sakura assumed was his waist.

"Yes, yes but you haven't answered my question." The other man was getting impatient, scratching at his neck restlessly. "How did you heal that man's arm so quickly? I don't know of any quirk that can heal as quickly as that aside from Recovery Girl's." Tomura Shigaraki fixed Sakura with a steady gaze, his fingers stilling on his neck, ready to listen to her response.

"Quirk?" That was the second time Sakura had heard that term. It seemed to refer to some common trait here in this place, a trait she was unfamiliar with. "What is a quirk?" She asked the men before her. They were both men right, even if one of them had a body made of mist. His voice was deep and masculine.

She was out of her element, that much was already clear to them she could tell. It was unwise to let an unknown know how out of place you felt, to know of your ignorance but in this particular situation Sakura knew she simply couldn't fake this. There was so much about this world she didn't know. It made it impossible for her to bluff her way out of this conversation and maybe, if she was clever, she could gain some sorely missing knowledge from these two.

Knowledge that would help her here.

They owed it to her, in her mind, for teleporting her without asking her for permission first, for bringing her here without introducing themselves. They had basically abducted her and were trying to interrogate her. Sakura narrowed her eyes and grit her teeth..

No, she might not be able to hide how out of place she was, but she wasn't a fool either. These men were dangerous.

"How very refreshing. A woman who is unaware of what a quirk is. I'm enchanted my dear. Please, allow me to introduce myself to you. I am known as Master, the person to your left at the bar is my protégée, Tomura Shigaraki. The gentleman behind the bar is known as Kurogiri. It is a pleasure to have you here with us my dear. Forgive me for not being able to attend you in person. An old injury has left me weakened to the point I no longer enjoy the push of society."

The word, 'Audio' blinked repeatedly on the fuzzy box at the end of the long bar. Sakura stared at the contraption in awe. Was it a receiver, like the head sets her team used when they were on recon missions? It was so big and the sound was much clearer than any transmitter she had used before. Was it chakra enhanced? No, she reminded herself, there was no chakra here but her own.

"Master, she refuses to answer my questions." The man at the bar complained to the talking box like a child. "I want to know how she healed that man so quickly. A quirk like that is just what I need to move into the first phase of my plan. Make her tell me."

Master? What had the voice from the box said, this Tomura Shigaraki was his protégée, so then that made the man named Kurogiri, his other protégée, no, the way the man spoke, he must be…

"In due time, in due time Tomura. Don't be rude. Kurogiri, get the young woman a drink please. Tomura, control your curiosity for a moment and let the woman collect herself. Can you not see the poor thing is bewildered?" The voice in the box was calm, experienced and sly.

Sakura could almost feel the fingers closing in around her throat.

"Fine." Shigaraki slumped down on the bar stool, his back bent as he picked up the glass Kurogiri had set down in front of him.

"Miss." Kurogiri was beside her at the bar holding an iced drink out to her on a tray waiting patiently for her to take it from him.

Sakura hesitated. She had watched him make the drink, but this wasn't her world. There may be any number of ways to drug a drink here that she didn't know about. She was thirsty but she wasn't desperate. She had the money Todoroki had given her. She could buy her own drink as soon as she escaped these men.

"Thank you, but no." Sakura inclined her head to the misty man with a forced smile. "I'm not thirsty."

"It isn't poisoned, if that is your worry, though I suppose only a witless fool would trust someone they didn't know, much less were unable to see." A low confident chuckle filled the small dim space between Sakura and the transmitter.

"As to your question my dear, a quirk is basically a superpower that eighty percent of the world's population is born with today. That percentage however wasn't always that high. In my day the percentage was far less, about fifty percent." Master answered Sakura's question for Shigaraki.

"Superpowers." Sakura was beginning to understand. "So your teleportation power is a quirk." She looked at Kurogiri who remained behind the bar close to Shigaraki.

"That is correct." Kurogiri bowed politely to Sakura. "Forgive me, you know our names, but we have yet to learn yours."

Sakura flushed. "My name, yes well…"

"Who cares what her name is." Shigaraki was getting pissed off. "Master answered your question, now answer mine." He demanded turning in his bar stool to face Sakura, red eyes narrowed. "Unless you're hiding something?"

Of course she was hiding something, she was a shinobi. She almost scoffed in his face.

"Chakra. I healed him with my chakra." Sakura told him truthfully without offering up anymore information about herself.

"Chakra, what's chakra?" Shigaraki asked much like she had asked what a quirk was.

"I thought so." Master's voice nearly purred as it came out of the audio. "What a positively perfect find Tomura. You've done well. So well in fact I don't think you've grasped the extent of her usefulness yet."

"Really? She doesn't look like much but she did run up that wall pretty fast, and she healed that guy's arm with little effort so…" Tomura began scratching at his neck again. "Why perfect though, what's so perfect about her? She's a medic, nothing overly important about that class. They stand in the back and heal the hard hitters, useful, needed of course but not entirely essential." What was so perfect about her? He didn't understand.

"Do you recall the stories I used to tell you Tomura, of the shinobi of the past, the ones who could raise the water level of rivers to do their bidding, who could raise the dead with life energy and command them against their foe?" Master asked Shigaraki.

"Of course Master but that's just…" Tomura slid off his stool and took two steps toward Sakura who took three defensive steps back, her eyes narrowing to slits. "...you mean to tell me you think she's a ninja?"

"Look at the way she's dressed, see how she holds her hands, her arms, her eyes. Come now Tomura, don't tell me you haven't noticed it, that thrum of constant energy coming off of her?" The voice was clever.

This man, this Master, could feel her chakra...through that device?

Tomura glanced at the monitor, then back at Sakura his eyes wide. "Chakra, life energy? You mean she can manipulate chakra, that's how she healed that man?"

"I think you'll find she can do much more than heal Tomura." The voice paused as though thinking over his next words. "It would be best to find out now though. If I'm correct, and I think I am. We can not let her leave, we must convince her to join us. To join you. She will be the weight that tips the scale of all our future plans Tomura."

Sakura didn't like what she was hearing. 'Shinobi of the past'. What was that supposed to mean? Did they not have shinobi here? Who didn't know what chakra was? Sakura watched Shigaraki, he was hesitating.

"Tomura. Attack her, but be careful, remember the tales I told you of the shinobi centuries ago that could use the life force of the earth, prepare for anything." Master warned him. "Kurogiri, if it appears Tomura will lose then…"

Shigaraki scoffed. "Lose? To her? Really Master, she's…"

Sakura didn't let him finish his sentence. It was clear by their talk they meant to keep her there against her will, that they would use her in some evil plan. For what she had no idea, she didn't need to hear anymore. She had to get the hell out of there and fast.

Sakura leapt up into the air, her fist cocked, slamming it down where Shigaraki stood, her chakra infused fist glanced off the side of Shigaraki's face, sending him flying across the room. Sakura's fist struck the bar, cracking the oak wood and the floor below, the bottles along the back wall behind Kurogiri shattered from the force of that simple impact.

Kicking off the wreckage of the bar she spun and ducked as Tomura lunged for her, his fingers outstretched toward her face.

"Stronger than I thought." He mumbled to himself as he too spun and turned, following her to the other side of the bar.

"You haven't seen anything yet." Sakura narrowed her eyes as her attacker struck out yet again, this time with his leg tripping her neatly to the ground.

"Got you." Tomura smiled as he fell over her, his fingers brushing the side of her skirt.

Sakura watched in horror as her pink medic skirt fell away into dust. She had let him trip her to give him false confidence but this, she hadn't expected that. 'Quirk', that's his quirk her avid mind told her as she flipped him over and off of her slamming him up against the wall, pinning him to the wall with two kunai she pulled swiftly from her pouch.

"Chakra infused kunai." Sakura stepped back from the wall so she could keep both Shigaraki and Kurogiri within her line of sight. "You won't be able to disintegrate them, or pull them out."

"Very good." The voice from the box commended her. "Just as I expected, kunoichi."

"Kunoichi, yes. I'm a kunoichi." Sakura nodded to the transmitter, and to Kurogiri. "I'll be going now." With a quick jerk of her fingers she pulled the wire taut.

"You attached wires to the knives?" Shigaraki frowned. "Why?"

"Kunai, Shigaraki san." Sakura corrected the man much to his annoyance.

"Same thing." He frowned. She had gotten him. She had pinned him.

"If I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead." Sakura paused with her back to the door to the room. "I don't kill unless I have to." She opened the door with her hand behind her back, the other hand holding her wire.

"See ya." Sakura pulled her wire as she shut the door, the kunai pinning Shigaraki to the wall, fell to the floor with a clatter, then slid along the surface and under the door to the bar to follow their owner.