A (girl) who has been through bitter experiences and traveled far enjoys even (her) sufferings after a time.
For something that felt like an eternity, Sakura felt nothing but pain.
It was of a fiery sort, radiating out from the stinging puncture wounds on her wrist and trailing through her limbs and into her torso. For all of the poisons she'd learned to track through her body, it was not difficult to feel this venom-like chakra pulsing through her veins—but it was the hardest thing she'd ever done to stay conscious as it wreaked havoc upon her.
Sweat began to bead on her forehead, and she could hear as her twin yin seals simmered the liquid, so activated was her chakra. She clenched her fists together so tightly that they ached, and grit her teeth in hopes that it would steady her.
In her belly and head the pain was at its worst, churning there in those pools of chakra that were her massive reserves. Bile rose from her stomach and into her throat, and she fell to her knees as she tried to stand from the chair. Vomiting anywhere wasn't ever fun, and doing it on the floor of her master's personal chambers should've been a grave humiliation, but as she heaved it onto the cool stone tiles she felt nothing but the pain.
Well, at least if she made it through this, she would have a new bar set for Stupidest Fucking Thing I've Ever Done.
Orochimaru knelt, and she was vaguely aware of his hand on her back as it rubbed in slow, wide circles. Never before had he touched her with such kind intent, and though she felt as if set aflame down through her fingertips and toes, his strange, paternal comfort reached her, resonating in her heart.
She had someone who believed in her now. She would not die here when finally she'd had something like this in her grasp. As pain began to overtake her, she gave one final push of her own chakra—infused with that of the first Hokage—through her body, and then fell unconscious.
To say that her state was dreamlike was accurate enough, but often it dipped into nightmarish. Behind her shut eyes she saw scenes of indescribable beauty and others of horrific visions. There were flashes of snakes of all colors and sizes, and she watched as they lashed out or bit down or constricted around their prey. Around every corner of hallucination her heart pounded in fear, so terrified was she of encountering that tall man from the Hashirama-cell injection. He was nowhere to be found, though, not even as clouds in the sky flew by at lightning speeds, the sun and moon rising and dipping in the blink of an eye. Toads, some as big as mountains, leapt overhead, casting their colossal shadows across the land. From a misty forest emerged a staggering amount of fat slugs, streaked blue and white, radiating warmth and comfort as they slowly inched past.
"Sakura," their voices cried in unison, "why have you chosen such a path?"
She stared. To save everyone, she thought plainly, but the slugs merely kept to their pace and trudged on, eventually slinking out of sight without any indication if her answer was an acceptable one, were it even heard at all.
In a flash, she stood before a dark cave. A snake of enormous size sat before her, the length of it incomprehensible coiled in swath after swath. It stared at her so intently that she felt her very soul was scrutinized, being weighed against some ancient and all-knowing standard she could never hope to understand.
"The time is nigh, child," said the snake, her voice booming so deeply it echoed painfully in Sakura's ears. "When all is lost, find your way back to me. There will be much to discuss."
That was all Sakura knew of this strange realm, because when next she opened her eyes, she was lying in the small medical ward of the hideout. A monitor somewhere behind her beeped at regular intervals, and on the bed beside her, Karin slept with her face buried in her arms, leaning over from a stool taken from one of the labs. Weakly, Sakura smiled and put a hand on her head. Her arm felt heavy, the movement so sluggish that she questioned if she really had made it through the procedure.
Well, she thought, if this is the afterlife, I guess it's not so bad.
She had made it, after all. It took only a few minutes for Karin to wake and fetch their master, who monitored Sakura's condition for a few days before discharging her from the ward. If it hadn't been for her final self-healing burst, he told her one day, she may not have pulled through. That hazy, dreamlike quality slowly faded—or perhaps, it simply became her new normal. On her wrist appeared three straight lines arranged in a way that made Sakura think of a windmill. Orochimaru would explain that this was the Cursed Seal of Earth, and already she could feel its potential, though unlike the cell transfer it would not give her any passive boosts until activated.
Activation itself became the focal point of her training, as expected. With minimal effort she could reach the first phase, and whenever those stark black lines appeared on her skin, her power was so vastly increased that she found herself craving more. It was working as intended, she knew, as the seal's potency grew the more it was used. Orochimaru would only permit spars against Kabuto while in her cursed form, though Karin's reaction to the shift in chakra always made her eyes go wide and her face go red—she wouldn't be much help even if she were allowed.
But one morning, her master approached her and declared that he would be her sparring partner for the day. She'd trained with him plenty, especially in the art of swordplay, but there was a strange air about him that quickly turned deadly as he squared up and, without warning, lunged at her with incredible speed. She'd barely had the time to dodge, activating the first phase with ease. Her reaction times were S-rank, according to Orochimaru, while in this state, but still he came at her with such speed and fury that she found herself on the defensive. From her back she sprouted her wooden snake arms, and formed blades that shot from their mouths to add to their arsenal. She weaved in and out of Orochimaru's attacks, sending her own attacks when she could, but they were much too slow. She'd never seen him move quite like this, but then she remembered all of the atrocities he'd orchestrated, and she began to worry.
From where or when he'd produced it, she could not say, but she saw the metallic glint of his sword catch in the sunlight, and with a gasp, something within her changed. Where her throat met her head the blade's edge hovered, shaking wildly with the force of his struggle as Sakura had taken it in her hands and held, keeping him from sliding it up into her chin and through her skull.
She stared into his eyes and saw nothing but excitement there, and a glimmer of pride. When she looked down at her hands, her first thought was that they were not hers at all. Startled, she let go of the sword and leapt back, staring down at her palms as the fresh slices healed in an instant. They were grey—her skin was grey like a stone, all the way up her arms until it disappeared beneath her tunic. She became aware then that her hair had shot down her back, nearly a full foot of growth that hadn't been there before. She reached back and pulled a section of it to examine it, and was shocked to see that it had gone nearly entirely platinum, shimmering with a rosy tint in the rays of light filtering down through the tree cover.
Near the outcropping in which the estate sat, Kabuto had sat up and was watching with great interest. Beside him, Karin's jaw had dropped, her cheeks about the same color as that tomato-red hair of hers.
"When you're ready," Orochimaru called, snapping her from her daze, "come at me again. And do not hold back."
There was no hesitation; she leapt back into the fray, producing her straight sword from its sheath and clashing with the old man. Her speed had increased tenfold, and she matched his flurry of swipes and slashes with her own. In one motion she drew her blade in a circle, sending his flying off into the dirt just as she poised hers at his throat. From his mouth, though, shot a snake that hit her with such force that it knocked her back. Orochimaru sent a kick at her hand, her sword soaring away in a similar fashion to his. He grinned, looking sinister as she'd ever seen him, and came at her with taijutsu now.
But something had changed, besides the obvious of her appearance. The wooden snakes from her back had become real in her transformation, and they'd taken on the stony grey color of her skin as she used two of them to parry and block Orochimaru's blows, the other two keeping watch behind her. In her snakes' jaws she captured both of his fists, and with all of her strength she sent a fierce kick to his chin, staggering him. Before he could break free of her grasp, she pulled him back in and took his head in her hands, pulling it into her upraised knee.
He fell to the ground, hissing in pain as blood poured from his nose. She moved to strike again, but suddenly Kabuto had jumped between them and held out his hand.
"That's enough," he growled, his eyes dark. "Release the seal and revert, Sakura." Then he turned and began to tend to Orochimaru's wounds, ignoring her entirely.
The anger that usually only bubbled inside of her had finally reached the surface, though, and in her superpowered state, she glared at the men. "Think you can just give me orders like that?"
He did not even turn to face her. "Yes. Now simmer down before you do something stupid."
She grit her teeth, reminded by his attitude of being left behind and forgotten time and time again back in Leaf. In her mind's eye she saw clearly that old view of Naruto and Sasuke's backs, Kakashi way out and out of her reach.
"The fuck did you just say?" She clenched her fist, then drew it back.
"Sakura!"
It was Karin's voice, and its panicked tone reached her just before she struck Kabuto through the back. She felt the power drain from her, slinking away and back into that pinwheel mark on her wrist. Her hair shortened to its normal length, and her skin returned to its usual color as her snake-arms turned back to wood. She dismissed them, then fell back to sit in the dirt as Kabuto lifted Orochimaru from the ground.
"Excellent," their master said weakly. "A fine job, my girl. Now that you've gone into this form, it will only get easier to tap into."
"Sir," Four-eyes said, "let's get you inside and fully fixed up."
Sakura sat, shaking slightly as she watched them slowly walked down into the compound, not sure what to feel. The fury usually contained by that inner voice was mostly easy enough to reason with or talk down from whatever ledge she found herself on, but in her cursed form, well, it seemed Orochimaru was right. Karin, ever in tune with other's emotions, came to her side and knelt, wrapping her arm around Sakura's shoulders in comfort.
"You looked really cool," she offered meekly, glancing at her. "And, um, your chakra..."
Sakura warmed a bit at this, looking over at her friend. "What did it feel like?"
"Horrifying," she answered. "But in a way that was, like...hot."
"Like a temperature?"
"I—no, not...not exactly."
Oh.
"Your chakra's always had this edge to it I could never really explain," she clarified then. "It's like...it's trying to prove something, constantly. Angry, kinda, but you never were like that. You're always so nice and level-headed!"
Sakura smiled.
"But just now...that was the first time I ever saw you look like what you feel like."
"Yeah?"
"Oh, yeah," she said, averting her eyes to down at the ground instead. "Your yin seals turned into a red circle on your face, and you had little horns like a folktale demon where the seals usually are. And...your eyes turned black-and-yellow...it was, um..."
"Hot?" Sakura guessed with a laugh, to which her friend merely stammered and stood, suggesting that maybe they should get inside in time for their next lesson, the flush harsh on her face.
The curse seal, she would learn in the next few days, was not something that needed constant practice to maintain or improve. It heightened its host's instincts and strength to such a degree that it could be used without training, making it perfect for emergency scenarios. Sakura, secretly, was grateful for this.
Orochimaru, though, was greatly interested in the personality shift that occurred when she tapped into the second phase. He became downright giddy whenever one of his hypotheses proved correct, and he spent much time with Sakura in the laboratories, hooking her up to machines that read her brainwaves or using his hands to feel at her chakra signature, searching for answers as he was prone to do.
Besides this, her days had reverted back to their usual routine. Meditation and stretches in the main hall at sunrise, their simple morning tea before sparring, their chemistry jutsu experiments in the afternoons, and even her healing lessons with Kabuto and Karin in the evenings—all brought her an immense comfort and a sense of belonging the likes of which she'd never had in Konoha.