A/N: There's a miniscule bit of angst in one scene

Also discussions of bijuu-fucking. Like... that's a thing that happens and you should probably be aware of it.

o.o.o.o.o

Sakura has made a name for herself by the time the Chuunin Exams roll around. Granted, most people have just taken to calling her 'The Deathless' since she rarely introduces herself as Sakura anymore, but still.

(She doesn't want to steal her younger self's thunder. The currently-twelve Sakura needs to make her own way in the world without having to deal with being in the asshole Sakura's shadow.)

She shows up to the exams wearing all white, as she's gotten used to doing, something flimsy and civilian looking that nonetheless covers up almost all of her seal tattoos. The diamond on her forehead is present, and so is the curling, vine-like V-shape of the seal across her clavicles; the last tattoo that isn't covered by fabric is actually on the inside of her skull, so that clearly isn't going to show up regardless of what she wears. She's brought along a white parasol, even, which is like… weirdly good at convincing people that she's harmless. Parasols, man.

Her shoes are practical, though, and underneath all the white fabric is toughened brown leather armor, at least for her torso and legs. She doesn't really need it to survive, but it makes things easier in regards to getting people to take her seriously, and people are still really finicky about modesty. She prefers the first, since all her storage seals and whatnot are on her body, and they don't really transfer when she just regrows things from scratch. She kind of wishes she could reattach her hair like she can everything else, but it's too dead for that. Eighty years of almost no one to fight let her get a length she liked, and the hair that usually reached to her legs was now up in a ponytail that left it just barely hitting her hips.

She has two goals for the Exams:

1. Do not let anyone die. Mostly don't let tiny Sakura and her friends die, but just overall try not to kill anyone that isn't on the shit list.

2. Give Orochimaru his memories of the future.

Sakura likes this list a lot, and has decided that the best way to accomplish a large portion of it is to personally stalk her younger self, while sending shadow clones to do the same for everyone else she's worried about. She won't get noticed by genin (though she'll have to keep her distance from the Sandaime), and she's basically all anyone's going to need in terms of defense. She wonders how the genin will react when she jumps in to stop any to-the-death fights.

Gaara is the first attempted murder she encounters, which isn't a surprise at all. He's about to crush some genin from… hm, Amegakure, apparently, and doesn't seem very happy with Sakura's interference. The fact that her interference so far has amounted to poking the sand coffins and then pointing and laughing as it all falls uselessly to the ground is probably a factor.

"You are not a genin." He says, staring at her. "What are you?"

"Well, immortal, for one thing." Sakura says it brightly, bouncing on her toes. She hears the Ame genin scrambling to get away behind her. Gaara ignores them, and so do Kankuro and Temari when they see that their brother is more interested in Sakura. "Also, totally awesome."

Gaara's eyes narrowed, and without warning, sand short forth to envelope Sakura and begin to slowly squeeze.

Sakura releases a tiny bit of chakra vibrating at just the right frequency, and it all falls down to the ground, completely useless for the next several minutes, just like with the Ame nin.

"I know Shukaku's powers inside and out, kid." Sakura tells him, tilting her head. "But I'm curious, what is he telling you?"

Gaara frowns, and Sakura can guess that there's something being said that's out of the usual. She doesn't know what, though. She's not a mind-reader; that was always more Ino's schtick.

She wonders how tiny Ino-chan is doing now.

"You are… not a jinchuuriki." Gaara says slowly, "but you have done something similar with…"

"Kaguya." Sakura interrupts. "Yeah, I've got the old bat's soul stuck inside me. She's a megalomaniacal ass, basically. Great opinions on tea and tea ceremony, though, and hella powerful."

Anko would probably like her, if not for the whole 'trying to steal all the chakra back by trapping people in an endless genjutsu" thing.

Kaguya mostly sleeps these days, like the bijuu did in their hosts so often. Sakura hadn't trusted her enough to give her time outside the seal like she had for the bijuu, so Kaguya doesn't have much to do other than rage at Sakura, and that got boring after just a handful of decades. So she sleeps, knowing that her presence is what forces Sakura to stay alive for century after century, and that for that reason, she will never know freedom.

"Don't kill anyone in here, okay?" Sakura asks and tilts her head. "You might kill someone I like, and then where would you be?"

"I wo—"

"Ah ah ah!" Sakura wags a finger at Gaara. "The correct answer is 'I would be on your shit list, Sakura-sama, and that concept is terrifying so I will do my best not to kill anyone.'"

Sakura clasps her hands in front of her and smiles a little wider. She wonders if she looks appropriately ethereal and weird in her wispy all-white ensembles in the middle of the forest. She hopes she looks like an elf in a fantasy movie; long pink hair is conducive to that sort of thing, right? "And if Shukaku tries to argue, just remind him that I've fucked bigger and badder bijuu than him into the ground."

Temari and Kankuro's eyes widen, and they end up spluttering and making various offended noises that teenagers are prone to. Gaara's eyes, instead, narrow as he stares at Sakura.

"What does that mean?" Gaara asks, looking Sakura in the eye. "What does the word 'fucked' mean?"

Sakura abruptly remembers that, while Gaara is very well-versed in the violent side of child-unfriendly subjects, he's probably had much less exposure to the other part of the dark side. He's never had adults that are willing to make dirty jokes or are liable to leave out adult reading material, and his older siblings aren't close enough to take it upon themselves to explain.

"Had sex with." Sakura says, figuring she might as well tell him. "Attempted to bring each other to orgasm by stimulating sexual organs and erogenous zones of the body. Traditionally penis-in-vagina sex, but let's be real, there's a whole world of strange positions and stranger kinks out there, and I've enjoyed plenty of them."

Gaara blinks. "And you managed this with a bijuu."

"With multiple bijuu," Sakura corrects, "though not at the same time, since they consider each other siblings and that would be gross. And they're capable of taking human form if they so choose, though they usually choose not to, so yeah, it was possible."

She considers not saying the next part, but really, it's just too much fun. "And I usually topped, too, which for Gaara's sake, I will explain as meaning that I was the dominant one in the moment."

There's some dying-brain noises coming from Temari and Kankuro now, mostly little strangled whimpers that are less "save me" and more "graaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHGHGHGHG SHUT THE FUCK UP."

"Well," Sakura claps her hands again and smiles. "I'll be getting out of your way now, but remember! I'm watching everything, and if you break my rules, I will not hesitate to interfere."

"It is not against the rules of the exam to kill." Gaara says.

"Who said my rules were the same as the exams?" Sakura snorts, "I'm not affiliated with Konoha, or any village, really, not officially. I'm not telling you not to kill because you'd get kicked out of the exams. I'm telling you not to kill because killing people is going to piss me off."

"And if you're still wondering what little ol' me can do, even after seeing me negate the main attack for one of the strongest people in the forest with no problem at all…" Sakura smiles sweetly and punches sideways into the tree next to her. The point of impact explodes, loudly, and the tree starts to wobble.

When it falls towards Sakura, she is ready, and catches it with one hand, still smiling at the Suna Siblings. She hefts it up and down a few times, letting it stay airborne for a few feet before dropping back into her palm. "I'm the strongest fucking person on the planet right now."

Gaara's eyes narrow, and then he turns to go. "Temari, Kankuro, we're leaving."

Sakura waves goodbye with a smile, and promptly disappears into the trees to keep following them.

o.o.o.o.o

Keeping her tiny self alive is significantly more difficult. Tiny Sakura is on Team Seven, and Orochimaru's an unpredictable and wily bastard even on his nicer days.

This is not one of his nicer days.

It isn't even one of his nicer decades.

Sakura only really survived the first time because of luck. She's determined not to let her tiny self die now just because she's careless and might have changed something weird.

As Orochimaru spots her tiny self while monologuing at the genin team, these suspicions are proven right. Orochimaru hadn't paid much attention to Sakura the first time around, being much more interested in the Sharingan and the Kyuubi. Sakura, a little almost-civilian with nothing special about her other than pink hair and perfect chakra control? She was nothing compared to the boys, not in Orochimaru's eyes.

(Not in anyone's, really. She was still a little bitter that it had taken Tsunade herself to turn her into the monster she could be, needed to be.)

When Orochimaru sees tiny Sakura, he drops out of whatever battle he's playing at with the boys and jumps down to stand right in front of the little girl that's shaking in her sandals. She looks tiny, and pathetic, but there's terrified determination in her eyes and in the white-knuckled grip she has on her kunai, even as she stares up at one of the Sannin.

"Oh? What have we here?" Orochimaru muses as he dodges yet another set of attacks from Sasuke. "You aren't the woman that got into my compound and yet… the similarities are uncanny."

Tiny Sakura tries to attack Orochimaru, breaking her frozen concentration and aiming for a femoral artery. It's an attack of desperation, because it's clear after the boys that Sakura has no chance, not in a frozen hell. But she tries, because a cornered animal will do anything to survive, and she aims as she does because Sakura is nothing if not brainy.

Orochimaru stops her with little more than a hand on her head, stopping her rush almost before it gets started.

"Tut tut, child, didn't anyone ever tell you not to interrupt your elders?" Orochimaru scolds, his other hand coming up to grip tiny Sakura's chin, fingers digging into her cheeks. "Add a few years and training, and I wouldn't be surprised if—"

"If she turned into me?"

Silence crosses the clearing, if only momentarily. Even Naruto stops yelling to look up at the woman standing high in the trees.

Sakura the Deathless smiles down at her team, still children, and the man who had somehow become her best friend for literally centuries.

And then he ditched her.

"Hi!" Sakura calls down, waving. "It's been a few months, hasn't it, Chi-chan?"

Orochimaru's face spasms minutely. "Don't call me that."

Sakura pouts. She also takes a step forward and drops out of the tree she's been standing in, plummeting several dozen feet before she hits the ground.

She has to push Naruto out of the way as she walks forward, and that prompts him into moving.

"Hey! Who the hell are you and why do you look like Sakura-chan!"

Sakura ignores him, focused solely on Orochimaru and her tiny self. "Told you I'd find you again."

"This isn't really the best time," Orochimaru says, like she's trying to invite him out for a coffee in the middle of a business meeting, rather than interrupting him while he's busy destroying a trio of children.

"Maa, is it ever the best time for anything?" Sakura brings up one hand to cup her chin, and cradles her elbow in the other. "I mean, what if the best time doesn't exist, but something still needs to be done?"

"What do you want?" Orochimaru asks, finally turning to fully face her, and releasing her tiny self in the process.

"Don't kill them." Sakura says, moving to cross her arms across her chest. "These kids? No death, no permanent injury, nothing of that sort."

Orochimaru's eyes flick to Sasuke, and Sakura snorts. "That's reversible. For me, at least, not for anyone else. Even Jiraiya wouldn't be able to break that sucker open or take it off, but let's be real: I'm better."

"You have a high opinion of your skills."

Sakura flashes forward into Orochimaru's space, and while he does bring up a kunai to stop her own, it's clear in his eyes that he understands just how outclassed he is at that moment. She smiles as she pushes the kunai a bit closer to his chest, making her superior strength obvious. "I do, don't I?"

They disengage and skid back a little, and Orochimaru glances from her forehead to her arms and nods to himself. "Tsunade's techniques?"

"Amongst others." Sakura answers; it's enough to confirm his suspicions, but also to raise up more. Orochimaru has ways to negate some of Tsunade's abilities; if Sakura were limited to Tsunade's alone, she'd be a much easier opponent for him to deal with. By implying that there's more, she's made it clear to Orochimaru that there are things he doesn't know and doesn't expect, and probably doesn't have a counter for.

He will, once she gives him his memories back. Basically anything she developed prior to his death, he has a counter to, and she has the same for him. But even with his memories back, she's going to have eighty years of developments to mess around with. Her fuuinjutsu may have developed the most, but she didn't exactly slack on the rest.

"You're a dangerous woman."

So are you, Sakura doesn't say, because Orochimaru's relationship with gender as a concept still hasn't reached the point where he can just throw his hands up in the air and say 'I don't care anymore.' He still thinks of himself as wholly male right now, no matter the body he inhabits, and will probably take it as an insult.

(The Orochimaru that Sakura knows still uses 'he,' but is otherwise very… indifferent, when it comes to gender and sexuality and any number of things.)

(He kind of doesn't give a shit anymore.)

(Gender was a social construct, and what was the point of a social construct when all of humanity was dead and society no longer existed anyway?)

(The point is, he'd laugh at the 'so are you' comment.)

"I know, right?" She says instead, and finally turns to Naruto, who still hasn't stopped shouting. "I have the same name as your friend there, since parents who have pink-haired children tend to be rather unimaginative in their naming skills. You can… you can call me Sakura the Deathless."

"A presumptive epithet," Orochimaru notes.

"I'm not the one that chose it," Sakura shoots back, because she wasn't. "You think I would have gone with 'Deathless' if I'd had a choice?"

"It sounds like a fairy tale." Orochimaru tells her, and his hands are forming seals. "And what fairy tale is complete without a treacherous snake of a villain?"

A barrage of snakes bursts from his sleeves and heads in her direction.

"Like, at least eight of them, off the top of my head." Sakura responds immediately. "Little Red Riding Hood, Momotaro, Cinderella,"

She casts a wide-impact medical technique that makes a swathe of the snakes shrivel up and die as the moisture is sucked out of them.

"Snow White, Goldilocks, Urashima Taro,"

Orochimaru's gotten Kusanagi out in the time that Sakura's spent avoiding his smaller summons, and the sword ends up almost skewering her as Orochimaru controls it from a distance.

"the Little Mermaid, the Big Bad Wolf, the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter—"

YOU DARE BRING THAT TRAVESTY UP IN MY PRESENCE?

Kaguya howls with rage and slams herself against the golden bars of her prison in Sakura's soul. It is a gilded prison indeed, and Kaguya is usually content to sleep, or at least to act like the refined princess she once was, but…

"FOR FUCK'S SAKE, WOMAN!" Sakura yells, staggering to the side and digging the heel of one palm into her eye. The voice is loud and surprising, and it's enough to startle her. "IT'S BEEN FIVE HUNDRED YEARS, GET OVER IT!"

Orochimaru pauses in his attacks, clearly a little more interested in the fact that Sakura is yelling at nothing than in ending her there and then.

(He can't end her, of course, but he'll try nonetheless.)

Filthy child born of a worm-ridden womb and a flea-bitten cur, rotten oyster flesh and—

"It's just a fucking fairy tale!" Sakura yells, deliberately ignoring the four people that are still in the clearing around her. Why haven't the genin run? Why are they still here when S-ranks are playing? "Grow up!"

—an insult to my name and title, nothing but yellow-bellied lies and rotten—

"I hate her so much…" Sakura moans, dropping her head into her hands. "She can be okay sometimes, but she's such a conceited bitch when something sets her off."

There's silence for a few moments, broken only by the ambient noise of the forest, some breaking debris as someone shifts their weight, and Kaguya's endless anger. Sakura's not sure what she's expecting, but a tiny hand patting her ribcage isn't it. "I'm sure this person sucks, lady."

Sakura looks down to see Naruto, who is indeed patting the highest part of her that he can reach. He'd probably be going for the shoulder if he were tall enough.

"She tried to take over the world once," Sakura tells him, not even questioning Naruto's decision to not be suspicious of her anymore. "I stopped her, but she's still mad at me."

"Did one of those stories make her mad or something?"

"The bamboo cutter one. It's… complicated." Sakura pauses, "I'll maybe tell you in a few years. You should probably run away before Orochimaru remembers you and your friends exist. He's a Kage-level ninja, and even though I can fight on his level, you're just genin."

Orochimaru has definitely remembered that the genin exist, but if she's keeping him silently frozen in place with some modified Nara techniques, it's not like he'll really—

He breaks out.

Just as Naruto is promising to leave and get to the Tower safely, Orochimaru breaks through Sakura's hold and lunges for Sasuke, successfully latching onto Sasuke's shoulder with his mouth and planting a Curse Seal. It's even in the exact same spot as last time.

And then Naruto of course forgets that he's supposed to be helping his friends run away, and instead charges Orochimaru. The man is apparently done playing, because he just slams a palm into Naruto's stomach and plants that fucking annoying disruption seal, and Naruto collapses to the ground, groaning.

Sakura watches the whole thing play out in less than ten seconds, and then comes to a decision.

She rushes over and slams a knee into Orochimaru's stomach. She follows it up with a hammer to the back of his neck so she can make sure there's enough downwards momentum for her real goal to work.

She punts him.

Across several miles of forest.

Just straight up kicks him in the abs while he's on his way down and propels him away.

"Get fuuuuuuuuuuucked!" She yells after him, despite the fact that he almost certainly can't hear her from how fast he's going. She'd be surprised that it wasn't a clone of some sort, but she knows that he prefers to plant seals in person, and she hadn't seen him switch out after the seal on Sasuke.

Sakura hears whimpering and looks over the see her tiny self. The girl is trembling and staring down at Sasuke, occasionally looking over at Naruto, and still less often looking up at the adult Sakura.

The adult Sakura struggles with her guilt for about three seconds, and then sighs. "Let me see them."

She ignores tiny Sakura (actually, she picks the girl up and sets her to the side), and passes a glowing green hand over each boy. They're in danger, but not as much as she'd feared when she was at this age the first time; they're actually better off than she expects even now. With a second pass, she heals the absolute worst of the damage, and watches as some of the trembling subsides.

"That's the most I can do without disqualifying you," Sakura says, which is a horrible, awful lie, but her team needs the experiences they'll get in this forest. "Good luck with the rest of your exam."

"Wait, but what about—"

Sakura's gone before tiny Sakura can finish, and she really hopes that the girl cares for the boys the same way she did the first time, and that all the rest of the confrontations in the forest play out similarly enough that she doesn't have to worry about dead Konoha genin popping up when there shouldn't be.

The forest has… a number of fairly important interactions. Some of her first real, proper introductions to her classmates (and Team Gai) as proper shinobi and not fellow Academy students had happened here in the forest. She hopes she hasn't messed that up somehow.

o.o.o.o.o

Karin is… small.

It's not… it's not that Sakura expected her to be any bigger than the other children, but Sakura hadn't met Karin until several years later; she had no memories of Karin at this age. Moreover, Karin had outlived a significant portion of the world's population, and Sakura had well over a century of adult Karin in her memories due to the Uzumaki vitality that kept her alive.

But right now, Karin is smaller than Sakura expects, and her teammates are dead (Sakura's fault, really, since she didn't want to interfere with Sasuke and Karin's first meeting). It might also be her personality, because the Karin that Sakura knew was a terrifyingly aggressive woman when she wanted to be, which was most of the time. Anything she couldn't talk into submission, she'd had chakra chains and plain old fists for.

Tiny Karin is mostly just marching very slowly towards the tower, and trying very hard not to die. She sniffles, sometimes. Her shoulders are hunched. She avoids trouble using her special chakra sensing technique instead of fighting anyone.

She is, in short, a bit pathetic, but overall rather intelligently avoiding any trouble she can't handle.

"So…" Sakura drawls from a tree branch, leaning against the trunk and making a show of examining her fingernails. Karin startles and looks up at her. "Did you know you're an Uzumaki?"

Something in Karin's face tightens. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Which is just… a textbook "I know but I won't admit it" answer, honestly. She seems to know it, too, but keeps looking directly at Sakura.

Oh. Oh. Sakura actually hit a button. It takes her longer than she'd like to admit to realize that Karin is holding a kunai in a white-knuckle grip that is half fear and half anger. It's just… that stubborn refusal to talk about the past is so Karin that Sakura forgets, if only for a moment, that it doesn't really fit in with what she's seen of the girl so far.

She's probably been taught all her life that being an Uzumaki means being hunted, and the safest way to exist is to pretend that she isn't.

"There's another Uzumaki in the Exams, you know." Sakura keeps talking like Karin didn't just deny her heritage. "He doesn't look it, since he got his dad's coloring, but his mom was a pretty powerful member of your clan."

"There are no Uzumaki." Karin says slowly. "The only survivor was the girl sent to Konoha before the destruction of Uzushiogakure to…"

Sakura's smile widens as Karin makes the connection. Sakura never asked Karin where she got her information in the future, and has just assumed that Karin had read it from Orochimaru's files like everything else, but for the girl to know this young… perhaps her mother had told her more stories of her history than Sakura had thought.

"Uzumaki Kushina died the night of the Kyuubi attack, almost thirteen years ago. No others escaped." Karin finally says. There's a lot of meaning wrapped up into a handful of words, there. She could have figured out any number of things, but Sakura's willing to bet that she's already made the (fairly simple) connection that Kushina was Naruto's mother, that the Kyuubi is now inside Naruto, and that the attack was probably a result of childbirth weakening her seal.

"There's also an Uzumaki over in Amegakure; he's a bit of an extremist right now and making a lot of bad choices, but I can talk to him." Sakura is planning to do a bit more than talk to Nagato, but Karin doesn't need to know the details. Too many seals and too much blood for a little genin.

"And why are you offering to do all this for a girl who isn't even actually a—"

"You are an Uzumaki, Karin, I can sense it."

"I didn't tell you my name." Karin says, and her body is wound tight in a way that betrays all the fear and tension she's carrying inside herself at the moment.

Huh. Seems that the whole 'kind of terrified and weak' thing only applies in combat scenarios. The more this turns into a verbal spar instead of a physical attack, the calmer and more confrontational Karin gets.

Sakura finds that… interesting.

"Well, if you don't want to stay with Kusa, then you can come with me." Sakura offers. "Or you can talk to the Hokage and defect to Konoha if you want; I hear they're pretty open to taking in more Uzumaki."

Karin blinks once. "You're not a Konoha nin?"

"I'm not officially affiliated with any of the villages right now," Sakura tells her. "That may change."

It probably won't, unless she tries to start her own village. Or maybe joins Oto? That could probably work, sort of. Once Orochimaru has his memories back, he's probably going to feel obligated to take care of his fledgling village, and Sakura already knows that she's probably going to be spending most of her time with him after that point. So… she'll probably be a part-time consultant for Oto and Kiri and whoever else bothers to contact her. She doesn't want to be tied down, though, and she sure as hell doesn't want to be anyone's subordinate.

Definitely not Orochimaru's.

"Here," she finally says, after realizing that Karin hasn't actually responed. She tosses down a small scroll the size of her index finger. "Push a bit of chakra into that if you decide to take me up on my offer."

Karin slowly crouches down to take the scroll, never taking her eyes off of Sakura.

Sakura contemplates for half a second, and then flashes forward and shoves her face into Karin's. "BAH!"

There's barely an inch between them, and that's quickly gone as Karin screams a little and jumps back.

"You've got a lot of growing up to do, kid, but I think you'll do fine." Sakura chuckles, and disappears.

o.o.o.o.o

Ino was one of Sakura's best friends for most of her life, and a large portion of her death. Ino had been one of Sakura's most frequent Edo Tensei summons, to the point where the blonde hadn't even been surprised to randomly wake up and see Sakura's smiling face backdropped by the dead remains of a once-great city or some other modern setting.

But she'd also been very firm on refusing to let Sakura copy her memories and take them back in time with her.

"I don't care how much you want me there, Sakura. You're going to have at least a few people you're doing this for, right? You don't need me, and I don't want to take the place of my younger self. It would… she's a child. It would be wrong."

Sakura wasn't so far gone as to betray Ino's trust and do it anyway, so there's an ache in her chest as she spies on Team Ten. Ino's still brash and hasn't had her arrogance tempered by age and experience yet, and she really is little more than a child. Shikamaru and Chouji similarly have elements of their future personalities, but it's all… buried under immaturity.

Sakura wants her best friend back, but it's obvious that's not going to happen. So she'll just have to keep the fun-sized version safe instead.

o.o.o.o.o

The other Konoha teams are more or less the same, and more or less safe even without Sakura's interference. She stops a few non-Konoha teams from dying, but otherwise tries not to get involved too much. She has enough shadow clones running around the place to keep things more or less under control, and—

"Going somewhere?" Orochimaru croons from behind her, arm reaching around to hold a sword to her throat. Again.

"Just trying to keep as many people alive as possible. There's a good chance humanity's going to be existing within a few centuries, you know. Gotta keep the pool of potential survivors as big as possible if we want things to stay interesting." Sakura hesitates, and then leans back against Orochimaru's chest, putting enough weight against him to make it a tactical weakness. All he has to do is take a step back and she'll be unbalanced.

Granted, with the sword there, she'll also be headless, but that's fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.

"You still haven't explained what you mean by the brain." Orochimaru reminds her. He presses back after a moment, refusing to back down, from his perspective.

Sakura wonders how many times he's going to slam his head against the wall when he remembers everything. She knows she's going to tease him about it, which should piss him off like nothing else.

"All in due time, sweetcheeks." Sakura leans her head back to rest on Orochimaru's shoulder (he stiffens, ever so slightly), and smiles as she looks into his eyes. "I'll meet you in the third exam, yeah?"

"Do you plan to hinder my… plans?"

"I'm not going to tell Konoha or Suna about what you're planning ahead of time," She tells him. "But I am going to show up midway through to finally give you that pesky scroll and fuck with your head. And say 'hi' to whomever you Edo Tensei."

Orochimaru blinks, and then takes a full step away from her. Sakura pouts at him, exaggerating the expression as much as she can. "You're not going to stop me from using Edo Tensei."

"Nope."

"Why?"

"Well, it's not like I can't fix whoever's been used as a sacrifice, so long as you don't dismiss the technique before I get to them." Sakura says, which is logical and true but nonetheless makes Orochimaru's eyes widen. "And you're probably going to summon someone super interesting, which is, you know, awesome. The dead Hokage, right? I can't wait to punch Tobirama in the face."

Orochimaru looks like he just walked into his office after someone had turned everything upside down and glued it to the ceiling, and then pretended that it had always been that way when questioned. "Why?"

"He won't remember why." Sakura assures him, "But I do."

Because the asshole said I couldn't do it, and yet! Look at me, back in the past like a boss!

"I… see," Orochimaru said, in a manner that indicated that he did not, in fact, see what she saying at all. "So you won't interfere with my plans beyond the planned resurrections and the fight associated with them?"

"And the Jinchuuriki." Sakura adds, "Though I won't really get involved there other than at the very end, unless someone actually starts dying."

"Because…" Orochimaru prompts, since Sakura hasn't really made a huge effort to be difficult and secretive, beyond the nature of the whole brain thing.

"It involves bijuu-fucking." Sakura says, because in for a penny, in for a pound, right? "They can take human form, did you know? I mean, the last time I saw the Kyuubi…"

Well, Kurama was fun.

Orochimaru's face passes through a handful of expressions. "You plan to have sexual intercourse with a tailed beast."

"Well, they can change shape so the genitalia's compatible, and everyone's a consenting adult, and some of them are pretty hot, so…" Sakura shrugged. "I mean, adulthood's a mindset that just kind of plateaus after a while, you know? Five hundred years old or fifteen hundred, we're all grown-ups."

Orochimaru doesn't seem to know how to respond to that. Sakura doesn't blame him, not really. He's so used to holding all the cards and knowing all the possibilities that someone like Sakura is very much out of left field for him.

"So… see you then?" Sakura says hopefully, like she hasn't just confessed to the desire and history of making the beast with two backs with an actual tailed beast.

"…I suppose so, if you have no plans to interfere." Orochimaru says.

Sakura disappears with a smile.

o.o.o.o.o

Isobu is pretty much exactly where Sakura left him. There's a small café in a small town a small distance from Konoha, which glass walls and cozy armchairs. Isobu's in one of those armchairs, reading a book. There's a stack of even more books on the table next to him, so many that it reaches up higher than his head.

"I'm done with my errands," Sakura says as she takes a seat. She smiles at the server that pauses by their table, "Can I get a mocha latte?"

"No problem," The woman says, and is gone a moment later, presumably to make the mocha latte.

"Did it go how you wanted, Nee-chan?" Isobu asks.

"More or less. I'm going to put off on getting Shukaku and Kurama until the third exams." Sakura drums her fingers against the table. "More dramatic that way."

"Isn't that kind of mean to Gaara, though?"

"Shukaku's going to behave himself," Sakura says, and there's something terribly knowing in her voice. "He's an ass and he knows it, but he's not going to keep torturing Gaara. He's better than that, now."

"So he already remembers?" Isobu asks, "Or do you need contact directly?"

Sakura blinks at the child-sized bijuu next to her. "What do you mean? Shouldn't you know?"

"Obito's control made everything a little hazy," Isobu confesses, "I don't think I was aware enough to remember anything."

Sakura reaches out to pat his head. "That's fair. Sorry I couldn't get to you earlier."

"It's okay, Nee-chan. You did your best." Isobu says, leaning into the hand that's resting on his head. "Besides, I didn't really have to go through more than a week of it this time, and you got rid of at least a year of it for Yagura."

"Well, my chakra contacted Shukaku's when I disrupted the sand control technique, so it's a moot point on that front. He should remember either way." Sakura shrugs and leans back in her chair.

"That's good."

"How is Yagura, by the way?" Sakura asks. "You went back at night, right?"

"He's doing okay, but he's kind of stressed and feeling super guilty about everything. He's relying on Mei-nee-chan and Ao a lot." Isobu looks down at the table while talking about Yagura. "And I left the anchoring seal you gave me here in town so I could come back in the mornings and wait for you, just like you said."

"Where'd you leave the books?" Sakura asks, just as her drink arrives. She takes a sip when Isobu answers, and hums a little to herself; there hadn't exactly been a lot of access to good coffee in the future.

"In the car, with my clothes and all the other stuff I can't take with me to Yagura." Isobu reaches out and drops the keys into Sakura's waiting hand.

"Well… how do you feel about a road trip?"

"Where to?"

"I'm thinking Ame or Kumo. Your pick."