Sakura hated nearly dying. After the fifth time, she stopped being scared and mostly just started getting annoyed by the whole thing. Yeah, oh no, her guts are everywhere, blah blah blah. She just took care of it and got on with her life.
So when the S-rank missing-nin, nicknamed "Chariot,", stabbed her through the chest she really didn't do much other than grunt. Been there, done that (with one of her own fucking teammates) and she had more than enough chakra to knit the whole thing up again in a second. She briefly considering closing the wound with the bastard's arm still up in there but decided that would be a level of psychological warfare her new partner would be uncomfortable with.
Fucking Council of Elderly Dipshits had to stick her with a little chan baby, some offshoot of the Hyuga family, to keep an eye on her. It really meant she had to wipe the kid's ass on the mission considering they contained the basic chakra levels of a tadpole and as much control over it as a drunk Naru-
Well, it wasn't good for Sakura, who had been working alone for a few months up until now. She didn't want a new team or a new partner, but her past made the new government of Konoha unduly worried. She was one of the most powerful shinobi in the world and also hated the new Hokage - not a winning combination.
Chariot stumbled back a few paces, staring in wonder as her chest healed without a scar. He glanced up at her forehead and hair, checking to see if she was "The Sakura" or whatever nonsense they called her, but she was wearing a full mask and hood because she wasn't a complete idiot. Pink hair was a target and vanity could only get you so far. Ino would probably shudder at her ugly (but entirely functional) uniform but Ino was dead and Sakura didn't have the luxury to think about what she would have wanted.
She came at the asshole again, using a chakra scalpel to go directly under the skin and start cutting up muscles. Methods like that allowed her to bypass some amount of physical and chakra armor, which made fights easier in the long run. People thought that green chakra couldn't hurt them but that's just because they lacked imagination.
The fight was pretty standard after that. Chariot lost feeling in his arm, tried to set her on fire, and retreated to the trees after leaving a clone behind. She quickly threw a senbon through the fake guy's throat and gave chase, only to find Chariot's dead body stuck to a tree with dozens of kunai.
Fuck. The kid definitely didn't do that one.
She quickly glanced at the plethora of pointy objects sticking out of her target: they looked to be ANBU and ROOT issued. It was an ambush, but she doubted it was for him.
She retreated from the tree into a clearing behind her. Twenty figures dropped with her, surrounding her; above her head, the Hyuga kid started to laugh.
Sakura discovered she hated actually dying much more than nearly dying.
She woke up covered in blood.
That wasn't too unusual. The weird thing was her only wounds were on her wrists - what looked to be self-inflicted cuts. None of the stabs or burns or lacerations that had eventually brought her down in the forest.
She healed herself quickly, clean cuts like that barely taking any effort. Her chakra levels were low. Scratch that - her chakra levels were full and her chakra pool was half her usual. She felt like a genin again, wiped out after healing one person. She also lacked the familiar weight pressing in on the back of her forehead.
She was in a bathroom, small. White tiles, kinda bloody, there was a knife on the ground. She realized she was in a dress (not one she owned) without weapons and grabbed it. There was a mirror over the sink, but when she looked there was a stranger looking back.
Long, long pink hair. Green eyes without visible dark circles. No cuts or bruises. Blank forehead. Cute makeup.
When Sakura was young, eleven or so, she dreamed that she would grow up to look like this. Weak. Untested. Like a civilian. Sakura glanced down at her(?) arms - no muscle definition, no scars except for the cuts she had just healed, and her dress was impractical for any function except clubbing. And dying, apparently.
She had a small piece of paper stuck to her ankle, a monitor seal that was slowly disintegrating. She ripped it off to take a closer look but it burst into flames. Even without the specifics of what it was, Sakura could infer that someone was trying to keep a close eye on her.
Sakura quickly masked her chakra and slowly poked her head out of the bathroom. She didn't know exactly what was happening and she really didn't want to draw attention to that fact.
It looked like she was in a typical Konoha apartment. A civilian one, based on the fact she couldn't pick up on any traps or seals. There were a few scattered pictures, mostly of Sakura when she was younger, sometimes with her family and one with Ino.
Except Sakura had burned all her photos and lived in standard shinobi housing. And her apartment was full of traps.
A stalker? Possible, but the pictures were all in frames and placed around the apartment naturally, no effigies or shrines in sight. There were medical textbooks on the shelves, floors, and counters. Looking through another doorway, she saw there were some on the only bed on the apartment.
She cautiously moved towards the window in the bedroom and looked out to see -
To see Konoha, but not. It was big, bigger than it should be. Civilians were laughing on the street, and it looked like there was a police force roaming around instead of patrolling shinobi.
A police force with black hair.
Sakura burst out the window and scrambled to the rooftop of her building. This was strange, but she could always rely on one thing to center her. The heart of Konoha. Hokage Rock.
Except Hokage Rock had four faces, ending on Minato, Naruto's dead dad. No Tsunade, no Danzo. What the fuck was going on?
"Kai," she shouted, but nothing changed. Could it have been the sharingan? Danzo himself might have come to kill her but she doubted it - he was old, frail, and she didn't sense him in the forest during her attack. There was no one else who had the sharingan, but it was the only explanation for what she saw.
But even worse than what she saw on the rock was what she felt. A familiar chakra signature was quickly closing in on her apartment.
Kabuto. Going fast and silent, but she knew him too well to be fooled.
He was supposed to be dead. She clearly remembered killing him. Who brought him back, and why was he allowed to wander Konoha? She couldn't have gone back in time - it wouldn't explain her old body, her young chakra, or the pictures in her apartment.
Kabuto was climbing the stairs. Sakura crawled back into her apartment, threw on a jacket to cover her wrists and bloody dress, and slammed the door of the bathroom shut. She stuck the knife, what looked to be the only weapon in the apartment, to the inside of the jacket with chakra. If she needed it quickly it would be there.
She wasn't sure how well she would fare against Kabuto with her chakra levels. Along with that, the only way to beat a man who made himself essentially impervious to injury was to be the same, and now she didn't have her seal. She could still heal her wounds but fatal ones would be a lot more difficult to take care of.
She had the knife and any medical textbooks on the ground, as well as her own two hands. No gloves, which was unfortunate, but she could make this work. She had a feeling Kabuto wouldn't be expecting her as she was now.
She heard a knock and composed herself, throwing on a smile. She opened it a crack, face held back enough to dodge any kunai or senbon thrown in. Kabuto looked worried and confused for a second before kindly smiling, hands thrown up in a classic sign of surrender.
She tried not to glare but probably failed, considering how much she genuinely wanted Kabuto to choke on his own blood. He didn't seem surprised at her reaction either, which meant he had come for a fight.
"Ahh, Sakura-chan, I know you're angry and I am really quite sorry that your application was rejected from the hospital staff. Maybe next time! How about I take you out for a conciliation lunch?" Her hand stopped on it's unconscious journey to the knife. Rejected from the hospital? She ran the fucking thing when she wasn't on missions. The nurses called her Sakura-sama, and Kabuto was definitely not her nurse.
She shook her head slowly. Whatever this was she wanted to part of it. Kabuto working at a hospital really only spelled disaster, and in a way she was glad that she had been rejected. But where was she? A genjutsu, or something even worse? The environment was fully realized, every detail as real as the next, and her head felt completely clear.
The only other explanation she could think of was an alternate universe. A world different from her own in minute ways. Like, for example, the attack of the Nine-Tails on the night of Naruto's birth.
If that never happened, or it had been contained, it would explain Minato being Hokage instead of being dead, the village being full and clean, the Uchiha clan surviving. Danzo had orchestrated the massacre under Sarutobi's nose, but it's possible Minato was able to prevent the incident.
If Danzo was dead or neutered it would explain Kabuto's presence as a hospital worker in Konoha, but she couldn't rely on Danzo's death anytime soon. Her enemies always had a way at coming back in the most inconvenient moments.
An alternate universe where Sakura hadn't been a gifted medic-nin. An alternate universe where her wrists had been slit and she wouldn't have had a way to heal them. An alternate universe where Sakura had died at the same moment another Sakura had been betrayed and killed by her Hokage.
Okay. Fine. Yeah. Sure. Naruto had done weird shit when he was alive, now Sakura was doing weird shit when she wasn't. This was truly the only natural conclusion to the clusterfuck of Team 7.
She was distracted by her thoughts when Kabuto mockingly knocked on the door again to catch her attention. "Are you sure you don't want to go to lunch with me, Sakura-chan? It will be fuuuuuun," he sang. Was this how Kabuto acted when he was genuine? Because it was exactly the same as how he looked when he was lying his pasty little ass off.
"Look, Kabuto-san," Was that what she called him? Fuck. "I understand you're trying to be kind-"
"Trust me, it's really no hardship to take a pretty girl out to lunch, and my only motivation isn't necessarily kindness."
Sakura threw up in her mouth, just a little bit. She was ready to refuse again when Kabuto's eyes sharpened on the wrists of her jacket and he took a small sniff. Medic-nin always knew the scent of blood. Kill him? Too messy.
"Look, Kabuto-san, if you insist I won't say no again. Just let me get dressed real quick." Sakura gave a fake giggle and slammed the door, retreating to her bathroom first. She washed off the rest of the blood from her wrists, now thoroughly staining the jacket and dress she had been wearing. She went into her bedroom, found another dress and jacket, and threw them on. There weren't any more weapons in her bedroom, so she moved the knife to the new jacket before heading back out into the hall.
Kabuto was smirking when she opened her front door - either because he could tell she was covering up the scent of blood or because she said yes to lunch. Either way, he was a creep and she wanted this to end quickly. The walk out of the building was silent, Kabuto walking slightly in front of her. It was curious that he didn't perceive her as a threat but it worked out well. Every shinobi's greatest weapon was the element of surprise.
The market outside of her apartment building was bustling, full of food stalls and children. Elders sat playing shogi, vendors shouted their wears, and color burst from every corner. Sakura hadn't seen this Konoha is so long.
For a moment she was lost, eleven again, happy enough to burst. She had so much love in her heart for her family, for her village, for Sasuke. She was thirteen again, abandoned but hanging on, knowing her life wasn't over. Sixteen, stronger, her mentor and her best friend by her side. Seventeen, in the ruins, Sasuke dead at her feet and Naruto shouting curses by her side. Eighteen, alone. Nineteen, dead.
Kabuto was silent as she stared at Konoha for what looked like the first time. She knew it was suspicious but she couldn't stop. This was a miracle. An impossible miracle. Except it was Kabuto by her side, not Naruto or Kakashi or Tsunade. She was in the midst of a village of dead people, and she had no idea who to trust.
All the sights and sounds and smells were familiar. Fantastical.
"Beautiful," she whispered, sincere for what felt like the first time in years. It was beautiful. Kabuto stopped for a minute as well, turning to see what she was looking at but not looking at anything beyond the ordinary for him.
"You've lived here all your life, Sakura-chan," he said. His voice was mild but she knew he was suspicious. She didn't care.
"But have you ever taken the moment to appreciate it, Kabuto-san? Stopping can let you see things like never before." She could smell dango in the air, hear small backyard fireworks going off in the alleyways.
This is why Sakura had never gone missing-nin. Konoha would always be special, her only love. The village could be dark and messy and destroyed but it would be hers.
Kabuto sighed faintly in her peripheral. "You do like making my life difficult, don't you Sakura-chan?"
She went to question him when a few feet away there came a shout and the smell of blood.
Fuck.
She turned to her left where the elders had been playing shogi but were now pointing at an old man holding his leg and making pained noises. There was a kunai in his thigh, directly over the femoral artery. He reached to take it out and she grabbed his wrist in a vice to stop him from being a fucking idiot. He struggled for a second before realizing it would be easier to move Hokage Rock with his bare hands.
"Sir, if you pull that out right now you will bleed to death. Let me handle this." Sakura wasn't going to rely on Kabuto to help so she started preparing on her own. She grabbed whatever napkins she could of the table and grabbed the man's jacket from the back of his chair. She kneeled on the ground, knees protesting because she was wearing a flimsy dress, and started a diagnostic.
The kunai wasn't poisoned and the cut wasn't jagged or tearing anything internally. A slow pull should work, as clean as possible, and then a massive burst of chakra should staunch the bleeding with the jacket as support.
The man was struggling, however, wiggling back and forth. "Why should I trust you? Are you a doctor?"
The bystanders offered no support, simply crowding around in a big circle and making vague exclamations of "Get a doctor!" or "Help him!" Gotta love civilians.
"Sir, I understand your concerns, but do you honestly think you can fix this on your own? Now I need you to hold still, I'm going to numb the nerves in your legs just a little so this won't hurt a bit."
The familiar glow overtook her hands, drawing a gasp from the crowds around her. She carefully laid them on the man's legs. He froze and then relaxed.
"Okay, I'm going to take the kunai out, and I need you to be absolutely still. Can you be still for me?" Sakura had taken to treating all her patients, whether they be civilians or even ANBU, like children when healing them. Most people became senseless when injured and it was really the only way to wrangle them. Some of them didn't like being patronized to, but they found it hard to complain with their lives in her hands.
Inch by inch she dragged the weapon out. The man was still, fingers trembling ever so slightly, but Sakura couldn't notice at a time like this. One hand on the kunai, one hand on the leg, she healed the internal damage left behind from the weapon, hoping to close the artery before she pulled it out entirely.
The process took about two minutes in total, and by the end, the man was really no worse for wear. Kunai injuries were as common as a cold in Konoha and twice as easy to take care of. His pants would be difficult to clean, of course, but that's what life was sometimes. A spider had crawled up her leg while she had been concentrating and she brushed it off. The street was a lot quieter now, had been close to silent during the process.
Sakura took a peek at the crowd gathered around her. She couldn't sense Kabuto and didn't know when he left (Was he searching her apartment? Did she clean the blood?) but she did see people push a little redheaded boy wringing his hands to the front, a kunai pouch on his leg. The culprit, then. She tossed the bloodied kunai at the boy and he managed to catch it with minimal fumbling.
"You're the one who threw it then?" she asked, not really needing the answer.
"I did, but I totally didn't throw it at that man, believe it! I was throwing it at a spider to protect Hana-chan!" He exclaimed. The girl by his side bobbed her head up and down but didn't look at Sakura directly.
Which was good, because Sakura was experiencing a bit of a crisis. All she saw was Naruto standing in front of her, refusing to be guilty for any prank he pulled. Naruto, always trying to protect someone, anyone.
Red hair. Naruto's mom had red hair, didn't she? And if Minato was alive and kicking, it stood to reason she could still be alive as well. She could have had more kids than Naruto. Naruto could have a little brother, friends with Hanabi Hyuga, who practiced kunai throwing in the marketplace with the same foolish attitude.
Fucking Christ on a stick. She couldn't handle this. The scars on her wrists itched and she only had one knife on her. Her hands were covered in blood but she didn't even know where she was. This Konoha was a nightmare even if it was leagues ahead of her own.
It was a nightmare because a shinobi's greatest weapon was information and now Sakura was completely in the fucking dark.
She didn't speak. Couldn't speak. She pulled herself up, chakra levels low after only two healings (it had been so long since she had been this fucking pathetic) and recognized Kabuto pushing his way through the crowd.
"Ah, Sakura-chan, you handled that pretty well! It's amazing," he grinned sleepily, hands waving. The crowd dispersed slowly, some helping the old man stand up and patting her on the back. The street would be back to normal in a few minutes, Sakura was sure.
Now Sakura was sure Kabuto had disappeared to check her apartment. He would have found the blood in the bathroom, but the only real reason he would have thought to check is if he had known there would be blood in the first place.
So Kabuto had slit her fucking wrists then and tried to make it look like a suicide. Fan-fucking-tastic. He realized she survived when the seal burned up. He caused the kunai incident for a distraction, then, and to possibly test her healing abilities.
He wanted to know why she had survived the attempt, to see if she had done it herself. She knew how Kabuto thought after studying his journals and experiments, and he would have no qualms about killing a citizen just to see how advanced she was in using medical chakra.
Now she needed to know why he tried to kill her. She didn't know much about the Sakura of this world, but she doubted she caused too many waves. Something to do with the hospital, perhaps? Any place where Kabuto worked was sure to be full of shit, and if she had discovered something in the hospital it would explain why she got rejected and then got murdered.
He could have also used the rejection as a probable motivation for her "suicide." All of Kabuto's actions always had three motivations and twelve contingency plans, and she doubted that changed from her Konoha.
So, Kabuto was evil. Now she had information. Sakura could work with that.
"Thanks, Kabuto-chan," she squealed, "I learned from the very best." She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the blood on her hands, wiping them on a napkin she plucked from the table. She made herself blush while looking at Kabuto before turning her head to the side. With any luck, he had been investigating her apartment while she had been in medic mode.
Luck held. He patronized at her for a bit, telling her the things she could have done better before turning to the man and finishing up the process. She fawned and grinned and played along. If she played the fool well enough Kabuto might start to think that Sakura had been saved instead of saving herself. Then he would be put on the path of her "mysterious ally," giving Sakura room to start her own work.
If the hospital was fucked then her first step would be to find Tsunade. After that, she could start on where this universe's Danzo was and kill him. Then she would kill Akatsuki. Find Obito, find Orochimaru, find Madara, find Hanzo, find anyone who had ever hurt her family. Easy enough.
She would also dismember Kabuto, just for her own piece of mind.
A tug on her elbow prompted her eyes downward to the Naruto look-alike, tears in his little blue eyes. Carbon copies of Naruto's eyes, really, and it felt like another punch to the gut.
"I'm sorry, miss, but it wasn't me, so don't tell my brother! Or my father! And they wouldn't believe you anyway cause brother says you're not even a ninja anyway so what would you know?" He shouted. Hanabi nodded behind his shoulder. More bluster than brains, another reason to assume it was Naruto's brother.
"Only an idiot gives up being a shinobi!" Another nod. "Only a meanie!" Another nod. "Only a stupid girl!" Hanabi started the nod and then caught herself, giving the boy a glare before shoving him into the dirt.
Fucking children. Sakura brushed past them and made her way to her apartment. She had to find weapons, real clothes, and trap-making materials. She also had to seal the place up entirely; thankfully, she had a bathroom full of her own blood which she could use to make good seals rather easily.
She needed money to buy things, a newspaper, and a mission. Going missing-nin to find Tsunade wasn't an option if her grand scheme was to save Konoha, so she had to find a way to convince Minato that an ex-shinobi was right for the job.
She also needed to track Tsunade down, which meant she had to talk to a lot of people without acting like a stranger who had hijacked Sakura's body. Troublesome, to borrow a phrase.
Well, Sakura had always liked causing trouble.