I'm gonna start replying to comments on here since it's easier as I'm on my phone.

Indigo2004: man, first comments are always important and yours was so sweet :D The update schedule isn't a fixed thing. Life's busy right now so I'll update when I can, but the short chapters of this fic will make it a lot easier to update often. If I update it's always on weekends, mostly Saturdays. As to what's in the scroll… don't think I've forgotten about that… but we won't be finding out quite yet!

Kimchi: misspellings are my bread and butter lol But that's fine by me. I don't get paid for writing so I'm not obligated to spellcheck everything a gazillion times, hands down the most boring part of writing. So, this goes to anyone reading, in comments, unless it's a really repetitive spelling mistake and NOT a typo, please don't mention it to me (or most authors) cuz it's generally very annoying. I'd much rather get criticism for something I've done wrong in the story than a freaking typo. Nevertheless, glad you're liking it!

Guest who left me the long review (you know who you are): that review was literally so heart warming. Like, you started reading my stuff back when I was writing twisted??? That's insane!!! I literally feel like printing this review and taping it to my wall lol

The search for new teammates went about as well as one could have expected – that is to say: not very. Sakura had been checking her ad on the bulletin board frequently, but so far she had only been greeted with scrawled slurs.

Meanwhile, with every passing day, her piggy bank got emptier. This should've been cause for concern and yet none of it seemed to really register. Sakura was resigned to eventually having to return to her parents, though the prospect frightened her, the shame of the imagined encounter overwhelming. She didn't want them to see her, not after what she had done. It was quite practical that she was barely hungry anymore; her expendings in the way of food were minimal so she'd last longer in her shitty apartment.

On the fifth day of this, Sakura woke up to tapping on her lone window. A bird with a missive waited outside, and to Sakura's dread, she recognized it at once. The hokage had summoned her.

:

They're burning all the witches,

even if you aren't one.

They got their pitchforks and proof,

their receipts and reasons.

–T. Swift

:

Sakura gulped as she waited in front of Tsunade Senju's office. She had already handed in her mission report a week ago, upon her return, a report which had detailed the events of Ren's death.

Sakura hadn't seen Tsunade back then, having turned it in at the mission desk, so it was impossible to say what the woman had thought of it all. Since her headband hadn't been taken and she hadn't been imprisoned, Sakura had assumed that the hokage understood why she'd done it… but now? She wasn't so sure anymore.

What if Tsunade had changed her mind? What if she'd decided it wasn't worth keeping someone like her around? Sakura wouldn't have been surprised if people had lobbied to have her punished, and why would the hokage bother to expend much energy in fighting them for a meager genin like her?

It was with these doubts whirring through her head that Sakura watched the office doors open. A woman with short, black hair poked her head out. She smiled at Sakura encouragingly. "You may come in now."

"R-right." Sakura got up from her seat and hesitantly entered the godaime's office.

She had already been here before, of course, but never alone. It had always been in the company of her team, when they were about to be assigned D-ranks. Admittedly, Sakura had only been on team four for a few months – Ren had died on their first C rank; she had killed him – and somehow that thought was enough to completely break her nerve. Ren. The last time she had been here with him, she hadn't been a murderer and he had still been alive.

Sakura forcefully shook herself out of it. She tried to take in the office instead. It looked the same as always – large windows framing a heavy mahagoni desk, lime green floors and a few knickknacks here and there, but mostly quite clean and orderly. Medical texts were on closeby shelves and there was another desk in a corner which seemed to be used for paperwork unloading purposes.

Tsunade Senju herself was every bit as formidable-looking as Sakura remembered her to be, only today she seemed even more intimidating than usual. The woman seemed to be finishing some paperwork as Sakura

stood there, and the more time passed without her saying anything, the more discomfited she grew. The black-haired woman who had called her in gave her an apologetic look. Sakura tried to look casual as she waved her off, and then it was back to waiting, back to thinking of Ren.

Finally, Tsunade scrawled one last flourish on her paperwork, then carelessly pushed it aside as she threw her pen on the table.

"Geeze," the woman muttered, staring at the paperwork with disgust. Straightening, she cracked her shoulders a few times and stretched her arms, torso popping loudly in the silent room. Tsunade seemed unbothered by this. She took a swing from a flask on her desk and then –finally – turned toward Sakura.

On her part, Sakura tried to meet her eyes without looking terrified.

"Now," said the blonde, authority in every line of her being. "Onto my next order of business – you."

"Y-yes?"

"You've quit your team." The woman's golden-brown eyes were staring at her like a hawk.

"Yes. I… I figured it was for the best."

"For the best," Tsunade repeated, eyebrows raising. It was then that Sakura realized the woman was pissed . "For the best? The hell kind of reasoning is that, Haruno!"

"I figured I… I didn't deserve to be on that team…"

"And you decided that on your own, did you? Clearly genin these days have more say than the hokage, don't they?" Sakura shook her head frantically even as Tsunade produced the pamflet she had posted on the bulletin board. "Then tell me, what is this?"

Sakura stared at it, lips parted shakily. "I-it's and add. B-because after I handed in my resignation…"

"Which you did without consulting with me first–"

"Yes, I – I wasn't aware…" Sakura stared at her sandals. "I'm so sorry."

Tsunade huffed. "Look, Haruno, I like my ninja with some spunk and initiative, yes, but you're in no position to be stirring the pot right now. Your best bet to fixing this shitstorm was by talking things out with your teammates and getting them to use their name's sway to support you." Sakura's eyes widened even as Tsunade continued, "but you just had to go and throw that possibility out of the window by resigning, didn't you?"

Wait… Tsunade was right! Oh, god… she was such an idiot… Sakura doubted her teammates would've had any understanding for her situation, but still. She felt so stupid .

"Can't I… uh, void the resignation?"

The hokage frowned. "Do you think we would be having this conversation if you could!? No. Now that you've left the team voluntarily, there's no way the Hyuga and Inuzuka clans will let you rejoin."

"I… I'm so sorry ma'am," Sakura repeated.

"You shouldn't be apologizing to me!" Tsunade yelled. "You've effectively ruined your career, Haruno!"

Silence.

Hands shaking, Sakura gulped, though her throat was locked and she found she couldn't swallow. From the corner of her eye, she caught the black-haired woman looking at her with pity and felt even worse. Sakura quickly glanced back to the hokage.

The blonde was biting her lip. "Don't give me that look, kid." Her tone had softened.

Sakura tried to school her expression, tried not to sound like she wanted to throw herself out of the window. "Yes, hokage-sama."

There was a silence. "Alright…" Tsunade said after a while. "Well, since you've already gone and impulsively made things worse for you… there's nothing I can do at this point but encourage you to get a new team."

Sakura nodded mulishly. "But in the meantime, what do I do? Can I go on D-ranks again?"

Sighing, Tsunade propped her cheek against her hand.

"Well… currently I don't have any available genin teams I could put you on, but I can switch you around different teams for missions."

Sakura nodded dully.

"You'll need a more permanent solution if you intend to take the chunin exams though," Tsunade added. She looked up. "Do you?"

Sakura froze. Her goal had always been to eventually make chunin, yes. But, after… Ren? Did she still want it? But what else was there to do? She'd already finished the Academy…

"Well, in any case," Tsunade told her, "if you do want to make chunin, you'll have to wait a year until the next Academy class graduates, or I suppose, till a member of another genin team is permanently indisposed so you can take their place."

Sakura grimaced involuntarily. Being the replacement of a dead person or an invalid was the last thing she needed. Waiting an entire year wasn't very appealing either…

"Isn't there another way?"

Tsunade sighed.

"I suppose if you could convince two members of the genin corp to join you, Haruno… though I advise against it; you wouldn't get a jonin sensei in that case."

Honestly, the lack of a jonin sensei would be very much appreciated. Sakura did not want a repeat performance of team Ren and her role in ending it…

Carefully, she nodded. "I understand… hokage-sama."

Later, as she left the office, she heard Tsunade mutter to her assistant about not getting paid enough for this shit. The black-haired woman's reply eluded her. Shoulders hunched and head cast down, Sakura bolted from the tower.

Desperate to get to her flat and away from the street (she'd forgotten to hengue herself), Sakura had been too preoccupied to notice she was being followed. And then it was too late.

Out of nowhere, a pair of hands grabbed her from behind and a cloth pressed against her lips. Adrenaline spiking, Sakura thrashed to break free from the bruising grip, but it was to no avail.

No. No. This couldn't be happening.

She stared ahead wide-eyed, met the eyes of a woman inside a clothes store. The woman just stared back and did nothing, even as Sakura kept thrashing and trying to scream. In a matter of seconds she had been dragged by rough hands into an alley. A small, shadowed alley that seemed to scream "please mug me". Sakura tried resisting all the way, but it was futile; a few more steps and she saw a manhole cover being pushed aside. The dark hole seemed to want to swallow her and she thrashed all the more. No. Not in there! No! But her struggle was a losing battle.

Strong hands pushed her down from above and yet others pulled at her ankles from below, from within the manhole. Sakura clung desperately to the cobblestone floor, but it wasn't enough. Someone crouched down next to her and pried her grip off, finger by finger, until with one last thrash she fully let go. The last thing she saw as she was sucked into the black hole was the woman inside the store, who had kept folding clothes, and then – darkness.

Pitter-patter sounds barely registered in her panic, but the putrid smell of the sewers was hard to miss. Sakura thrashed blindly, trying to at least see her assailants, but she was completely immobilised and it was too dark. Someone tied ropes around her hands, felt herself being pushed to the ground, on her knees. And she realized right then that this was it. Someone would hurt her and no one would come to help. She was on her own.

:

They're burning all the witches

even if you aren't one

so go ahead,

and light me up.

–T. Swift

:

"Stop resisting," someone hissed into her ear. This only made Sakura thrash all the harder, until the person next to her locked an arm around her head to keep her firmly in place. Sakura glimpsed dark hair and the shine of something golden in her peripherals. She also realized that whoever was keeping her in place wasn't much taller than her… but a lot stronger.

In the resulting silence, she heard her own ragged panting and the dripping of water – and then a voice. Male, not too loud, unnervingly calm.

"So we've finally found you."

Sakura tried to crane her neck to see whoever was speaking, but the person holding her held on tightly.

"I was beginning to think you'd been swallowed by the earth, Haruno. Luckily, we saw you today." Sakura bucked, trying to see who was talking, and the voice paused. "Yami, let her go, if you like. From what I've seen, it doesn't look like Haruno will be able to put up much of a fight."

At these words, the grip around her loosened and then 'Yami' shoved her forward. Sakura stumbled and almost tripped, catching herself just in time. She was now free, but it didn't feel like it. Pushing hair out of her eyes, she quickly turned to stare at her assailants. The first person she saw, Yami, was perhaps the biggest surprise. Both familiar and unfamiliar – a childhood tormentor she hadn't spoken to in years, Ami Kageyama now stood before her, expression stoic. Large golden earrings framed her face and the hair she'd always bragged about reached past her knees.

Sakura's eyes strayed away from the unwelcome sight, darting around. She could make out the darkened shapes of others surrounding them. None stood as close to her as Ami, but from what she could see they were all in their teens. That was good. No adults meant less danger, right? For all that she tried, however, Sakura couldn't place the person who had spoken.

"Why am I here?" she ventured.

No one moved. Every member of the group seemed to be waiting for something, their narrow-eyed gazes not straying from her even an inch.

Then:

A chuckle. "You're here because we brought you here."

She whirled around to stare at the speaker, to finally put a face to the voice, and found that she couldn't. He, whoever he was, was barely visible, a lanky figure leaning against one of the sewer walls.

"Would you be so kind as to answer some questions?" he continued.

Sakura gulped.

"What questions? And who are you?"

"Questions such as… why did you kill your jonin sensei?"

Sakura backed away. "I-it was a hopeless situation, I had no choice."

"You had no choice? Ah, don't be boring. We won't judge you here."

The ominous statement reverberated through the dark tunnel. It was clear that this was the group's leader speaking, and with every word out of his mouth Sakura was getting more anxious. What did he want from her?

"I didn't do anything wrong," she said desperately. "Leave me alone!"

"Dunk her head in," the voice interrupted. Hands grabbed her and she was pushed to her knees. Before Sakura could do anything someone grabbed her scalp and then pushed her forward, slamming her face into the greenish-black water of the sewer. It broke the surface with a wet splash – and then she couldn't breathe. Water in her eyes and nose, thunder in her heart, Sakura struggled with everything she had to break free, to lift her head, but the hands holding her down were stronger.

Finally, when she thought the burn of her lungs would end her, she was shoved out of the water.

"Now," she heard the leader say over her gasping breaths. "I ask again, Haruno. Tell me why you killed him."

She was panting so much, she was unable to articulate.

"Tell him!" Ami snapped.

"I – I had no choice!" Sakura babbled fearfully. "We were all going to die anyway, I– I did it to save the others, please!"

"Again."

On cue, hands pressed on her scalp and her head met the cold, disgusting water again. This time Sakura's lungs hadn't even been able to recover and the burn started up even earlier, the panic taking over her senses comparable only to what she'd felt during the C-rank, when she'd realized what she had done. This was a visceral feeling, a feeling that awakened something primitive in her, something deeply frightened. She'd do anything just for oxygen.

Finally her head was pulled out again. "Please! I'll do it!" Sakura cried. "I'll explain it! Just… just let me… breathe."

The sewer was silent, but she wasn't dunked in again.

"I'm listening."

Sakura took a deep breath. "It was our first C-rank. With the reconstruction process going on, genin teams often get missions too high above their pay-grade. Ours wasn't supposed to be one, but we got unlucky. It should've been easy – deliver a scroll to river country and come back. It was everything but. Midway we were attacked by nin from Iwa. They seemed to think that we had a scroll that they were looking for, that whatever team was supposed to be carrying the true scroll was a decoy and the hokage had sent an unassuming team with the real one. Even now I'm not certain whether we did have the real scroll. All I know is – we were going to die. They caught us in the midst of a rainstorm. We'd taken refuge in a cave and suddenly these – those psychos appeared and told Ren to give them the scroll. He refused.

"I wanted him so badly to have handed it over, but maybe the scroll was worth his life. Ren was strong, yes, but the enemy nin were stronger. They'd already injured him in more places than I could count and I was sure it was a matter of minutes until he'd finally be hit somewhere he couldn't recover from. He was going to lose." Sakura sucked in a deep breath. He would die, and then we'd be next; the Iwa nin were cruel and merciless, there was no doubt about what they'd do. So I… in my fear I took a discarded explosion tag and threw it at the ceiling. My teammates and I were too far away to have been affected by the cave in that followed, but it trapped the three Iwa nin as well as Ren. I… I hadn't meant for them to die. Just… just create a barrier between us in case Ren didn't win, but… we al heard them as they chocked to death. They died from smoke inhalation. That's how… what happened."

There was a long silence in the sewer. Sakura felt like a piece of trash as they all stared at her. Finally, the leader spoke.

"I believe you, Haruno." Sakura exhaled. "Let her go, Yami."

The hands holding her scalp loosened and suddenly she had no support. Sakura's face would've almost fallen into the sewer water again, but surprisingly Ami caught her at the last second.

When Sakura pushed herself up, she noted that the leader was standing much closer now. Through her hazy vision she could barely make out skin and hair as black as darkness, contrasted by the ominous white of his eyes. Sakura was shaking like a leaf as he stared her down.

"She still hasn't told us what happened," Ami said quietly. "You're sure she speaks the truth?"

The group's leader glanced at her. "Yes. And that's all I need." He crouched down next to Sakura, handing her something soft – a towel?

"Sorry about that, Haruno," he mumbled. "My name's Akira. Feel free to punch me if it makes you feel better."

Sakura stared at him with wide eyes.

"What is wrong with you?" she found herself saying. "Why would you do that to me?"

Akira frowned. "I really am sorry about that, but it was the only way to know for sure that my new future teammate isn't really a psychopath."

Balancing on Breaking Branches

Hey there! How'd ya'll like it? As I said earlier this fic will be dealing with darker themes… as evidenced by what happened in this chapter. so excited to see what y'all think of what happened to Sakura's jonin sensei… do you think she did the right thing?