A/N: This chapter took way too long, and I'm not completely happy with it, but I couldn't keep fussing over it forever. I know I say this every second chapter but thank you for the reviews. Feedback is a great help when writing this story.

Birthdays were a foreign concept to Sakura. The Akatsuki rarely celebrated events like that, and even if Kisame or Konan felt like doing something small for her (Konan because she wasn't keen on utterly dehumanizing Sakura, Kisame because he thought it would liven things up) she doubted Pein would allow it. Besides, she didn't even know her actual date of birth, so what was the point?

The problem with having no birthday was that Sakura never knew what age she was. The only indication she got was when her clothes stopped fitting her, and that could take years. By roughly calculating the date the Akatsuki found her, she was able to get some idea of how much time passed, but she still didn't know if they had found her as a four, five or six year old.

It didn't usually matter to her. Whether she was six or seven her target still ended up with a kunai in their head. But as time passed, certain important events happened in Sakura's life, and she realised that giving herself an age during these events helped her remember them. So she decided that she had been five when the Akatsuki found her, and used that to create a timeline. It probably wasn't the most accurate timeline, but it did help her remember certain experiences. There weren't many memories on that timeline, but the few that were on it were of great importance to Sakura.

The first time Sakura almost died in a fight, she was six years old. It was a simple assassination mission; a strong jonin from Iwa kept interfering with Konoha missions and it was costing the village customers and money. They wanted him dead, but they didn't want Iwa to retaliate, thus the Akatsuki were hired.

It should have been easy. Sakura was paired with Juzo Biwa, an Akatsuki ally and former jonin of Kiragakure. He alone should have been able to take on one Iwa shinobi; Sakura was just sent for back up. But this Iwa shinobi put up a much greater fight than either of them had expected.

They cornered him on a rooftop in a small country village. Natsu Mitokado was a short, middle aged man with greying hair and grey shinobi armour. He certainly didn't look like a jonin deadly enough to be a thorn in the side of Konoha.

He remained calm even as they charged. Juzo went straight for him while Sakura ran to the top of the roof. She let Juzo attack him first; trading kunai and blows, and then when she saw an opening she leapt down and struck. He barely dodged her first two strikes so she felt confident enough going for a kick. But to her surprise, he caught her leg as it lashed down towards his head and flung her away.

Slightly dizzy, she landed next to Juzo, who had also been pushed away. Natsu had managed to force them back enough so that he had time to weave hand-seals and when he inhaled Sakura knew what was about to happen.

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!"

A great ball of scorching hot flame rushed towards them, and Sakura hastily made her own hand-seals.

"Suiton: Suidan no Jutsu!"

Without nearby water, Sakura relied only on her chakra reserves to strengthen the jutsu, and she knew straight away that it wouldn't be enough. Luckily, Juzo had gotten a similar idea and quickly repeated her jutsu. Together, the combined force of the water they expelled was enough to counter the large fireball.

As the jutsu started to fade, Sakura made more hand-seals. If this shinobi was a talented fire style user then water jutsu were her best bet. Her chakra reserves weren't massive but she could probably do a good few water jutsu before she ran out of energy.

"Suiton: Hahonryū."

She fired the torrent of water at him, only to see him already making hand-seals.

"Doton: Doryūheki!"

She frowned as he spat out mud, creating a solid wall of earth that blocked her jutsu. Not only was he talented at fire style, but he was able to use earth style jutsu without any earth. That was worrying.

Juzo charged at him again, dodging and blocking the fire balls he spat out. Despite his talent and reserves, Sakura noticed that Natsu's fire jutsu was weaker this time around. Perhaps the earth jutsu had taken its toll on him after all.

His defence had gotten sloppier too, and when Juzo landed a punch on his face Sakura heard him grunt. Another two punches and a kick sent him flying backwards, and he collapsed on the roof. Sakura watched as he tried getting to his feet, clearly disoriented. She slipped below the roof and crept over to him, bursting up from behind him and dragging him down. She got one hand around his neck and attempted to snap it, but he resisted with surprising strength.

While her small stature was useful for deception and tended to throw opponents off balance, it did make things like strangling and wresting difficult. All Natsu had to do was stand up and she could no longer touch the ground. He threw her off him and jumped to the top of his earth wall. She didn't let him rest, firing streams of water at him. His earth wall crumbled, but he remained unharmed.

As he landed on the ground, Sakura could see him breathing heavily. She felt herself relax slightly as Juzo grabbed his sword off his back. The Kubikiribōchō, one of the seven famous Kiri swords, was very much a large butcher's knife in the hands of a master swordsman. Now that Natsu was tired out, she could let Juzo finish this and then they could head back to base.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"

Well, shit.

As the dust cleared Sakura took in the sight before her. A massive spider covered in earth hovered protectively over Natsu. Juzo paused in his advance, staring up at the spider in shock. The spider lunged, and he quickly sliced at it with his blade. They were soon engaged in slashing and dodging each other, which gave Natsu time to get to his feet again. Sakura sighed and focused her chakra.

"Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu."

The illusion she cast around him was basic at best, but seeing a vision of his dead comrades should give him a shock, and she wanted to end this quickly. While he was distracted with her genjutsu, she ran over with a kunai, ready to stab it in his brain and finish the fight.

She was surprised that he hadn't managed to break her genjutsu yet, or perhaps he had and was waiting to surprise her. She didn't plan on giving him that opportunity. She brought her kunai down and just as it was about to make contact he turned and grabbed her hand.

She was prepared for this with another kunai in her left hand, but the shock that went through her when he touched her caused her to drop both of her kunai. Her right arm, held firmly in his grasp, felt hollow and she could feel her chakra surging out of her.

He was absorbing her chakra, and he was doing it at a very fast rate.

She'd been briefed on her target before they left, but no one had mentioned that he could absorb chakra with a touch. She tried punching him but her left hand went dead halfway through the strike and it fell limply at her side.

She felt her legs give out and she fell to her knees. Natsu kept a firm grip on her arm, and as her chakra flowed out of her she felt her vision growing blurry. She tried to say something, anything, but she couldn't find the energy to speak.

This wasn't how she wanted to die. She didn't want to die in a backwater village by the hands of a routine target. She still had so much she needed to find out about herself. This couldn't be the end…

She heard the familiar sound of metal hitting flesh, and suddenly Natsu's head was rolling down the roof. His face was frozen in a shocked impression and his body fell on top of Sakura, covering her in blood. Sakura pushed him off her and pried his cold fingers off her arm. When she stood up her legs were shaky. That had been far too close for her liking.

"And here I was thinking you were here to assist me, not the other way around."

Juzo stood above her grinning, his broadsword still dripping blood. It was clear that he was joking, but his words worried Sakura.

"You're right." she murmured. "Pein-sama won't be pleased."

"What, that you needed my help? It happens to the best of us, that's why the Akatsuki have partners."

"I'm not Akatsuki. I'm a weapon. That shouldn't have happened, and when a weapon doesn't function right, you either discard it or you fix it."

"So what, you're saying Pein might kill you over something as small as this? The guy's dead, the mission is complete, so what if you had a close call?"

Sakura stared at him, waiting for the penny to drop. She knew she understood when his eyes widened.

"Are you serious? He'd punish you over something as simple as this?"

"I almost lost. That never happened before on a mission, so I'm not quite sure what he'll do."

"Well then… Why don't we keep this between us?"

He put his hand on her head. It was a nice gesture, if she ignored the giant sword on his shoulder that was still dripping blood. The offer surprised her somewhat. Compared to the others she hardly knew him and she didn't quite understand why he cared.

"I'd appreciate that." she replied quietly, unsure if this was some sort of trap.

He nodded and moved off to dispose of the body. She stayed tense for a minute until he left, then relaxed when she realised that he had no ulterior motive. How strange.

She understood that she should report the incident to Pein, but honestly she was already angry at herself that it happened, she didn't need his added disapproval.

She'd been growing arrogant, thinking that her strength made her invincible. Her skills were a gift that saved her life; they weren't to be taken for granted. She shouldn't have grown complacent and underestimated her opponent, because she'd almost paid the price today.

Soon they got back to base. Sakura had a few days rest and was sent out on another mission. After a while her memories of the fight got blurred, and she forgot a lot of the details. But she never forgot the feeling of terror and helplessness when she realised she was going to die.

It was a long time before she came close to losing another fight.

When Sakura was seven years old she killed her first Konoha shinobi.

In one way, it was strange that it took so long. There had been a few protection and information gathering missions where Konoha shinobi had interfered, but for some reason Sakura found it easier to just punch them away rather than kill them with a kunai. She'd beaten some of them unconscious when she needed to, but her first instinct with a Konoha shinobi was never to go for the killing blow. It was odd, but the missions still got completed, so she didn't worry about it too much.

This mission was an information gathering mission. She was sent to steal a scroll from a temple located near Kirigakure. It contained some forbidden jutsu or other, Sakura didn't bother asking, and the temple it was hidden in was heavily guarded. Another routine mission, she'd infiltrated Kiri and its surrounding lands plenty of times and she had yet to be caught.

Other than the fight and the kill, Sakura remembered two details about that day. The first was that her trousers didn't fully fit her. She'd recently outgrown her old pair, and Ame didn't have tons of shinobi clothing her size, so instead she'd been making do with a pair of normal trousers that were a size or two too big for her, tied tight with a rope she'd found.

The second detail she remembered was the mist. Mist in Kiri was hardly unusual, but the mist on that day was so heavy that at first Sakura thought it was a trap. After a while she concluded that the mist was just naturally thick that day, which made it harder for her to move quickly through the area. She was so busy trying to navigate the dense fog that she didn't notice the quiet until it was too late.

She found the first body about thirty meters away from the temple. Judging by his robe, shaved head, and lack of shinobi gear, he was one of the temple's guardians. The closer she got the more bodies she found. Some of them had wounds that were from weapons Sakura recognized, but some looked like they had been mauled by animals. She hoped she wouldn't have to fight against any summons.

When the temple finally came into view, she could see a group of shinobi walking out of it. No doubt they had come to steal the scroll, and for whatever unfortunate reason they'd chosen to take it the same day the Akatsuki sent her.

She counted three shinobi, two men and a woman standing in front of the temple. More were still coming out of the entrance, and she couldn't quite sense how many were still inside. From what she could sense of the three in front, they all had high levels of chakra that reminded her of ANBU, despite the lack of uniforms.

The mist suddenly got thinner and the shinobi in front noticed her. She expected some hesitation, maybe a question about why a child like her was wandering alone, but instead he lunged straight for her. She jumped up and spun over him, kicking him in the head. He skidded into the dirt, down but probably not out, considering the protective headgear he was wearing.

The second man slashed at her with a hand of kunai. She leant back, feeling the wind as the kunai whipped by her face. The attack had thrown him slightly off balance, so one kick was all she needed to knock him away.

She threw an exploding tag, forcing the three shinobi to scatter while also stopping the others as they attempted to leave the temple. From what she had seen the three shinobi she was fighting didn't have the scroll, which meant it was probably still in the temple. She ran for the entrance, only to screech to a halt as a beam of energy scorched the ground in front of her.

The two male shinobi lunged at her while their female companion tried to follow up her strike with a genjutsu. Slightly irritated, Sakura broke the genjutsu and caught both of the shinobi that lunged at her. She spun around and flung them away as far as she could. The woman looked ready for another attack, so Sakura focused on weaving her own genjutsu around her.

She could feel the shinobi attempt to break the genjutsu, which was currently freezing her to the ground. She broke it just in time for Sakura to cast her second genjutsu, and caught off guard the woman nearly fell unconscious. By that time Sakura was close enough to punch her in the face, and then she really did fall unconscious.

She turned to the temple as three new people charged out. Two ran straight for her, and she almost missed the third because he was so small, but at the last second she saw the scroll clutched tightly in his hand.

The two remaining ones charged at her, but she caught both of their fists and held them with ease. She could tell they weren't expecting that, but Sakura herself wasn't expecting a kick to the face in return. The resulting taijutsu battle was short and soon they both lay unconscious next to their female comrade. Sakura quickly took off after the short shinobi, and it only took her a few minutes to catch up with him.

She easily dodged the kunai he threw, but the large black and white tiger he created from paper was a little harder to defeat. When she managed to punch it in the face it melted into ink, splattering all over her hand.

Interesting. She'd never seen a jutsu like that before. It was almost like summoning, except they seemed easier to both create and kill.

Another tiger (Or maybe it was a lion? She couldn't tell) lunged at her from the right. One chakra-filled punch was enough to turn it back into ink, but she had to jump off the tree as she hit it. When she landed on the ground she heard a surprisingly high pitched voice say:

"Ninpo: Choujuu Giga."

More of the ink-creatures lunged at her, only this time there were enough of them to swarm her. She tried killing them with kunai but apparently they weren't weak enough to melt from a simple attack like that. She dodged backwards, grabbed her sword off her back and began rapidly stabbing them.

As she finished the last one off she heard the sound of a sword being drawn. She flung her own sword at the noise and as she finished the last of the creatures off she grabbed a kunai. She had expected him to dodge the sword, and as he lunged she parried his thrust with her dagger. As their blades met she got her first good look at his face, and what she saw surprised her.

He was around the same age as her. His blank expression matched her own, and although his eyes didn't look as dead as hers he did seem unusually calm for a child. She'd seen plenty of kids his age before, but this was her first time meeting a shinobi this young.

She took in his pale skin, black eyes and Konoha hitai-ate. Her head started throbbing.

"Who are you?" she asked, determined to stay focused despite the headache.

"Why is your forehead so big?" he replied, a fake smile on his face.

She recognized that smile, had worn a similar one countless times, but the question still riled her slightly. How could he even tell her forehead was big if her bangs covered most of it?

"I said…" she muttered through gritted teeth, pushing his sword further towards his throat. "Who are you?"

He leapt backwards and deflected her kunai. She saw him make a hand-seal and the next second he had disappeared, leaving an inky outline behind. She threw exploding tags into all the nearby trees, forcing him to stay fighting her. A roar came from her left and another ink creature attacked her. She dodged it just as he appeared on her right and slashed at her with his sword. As she dodged his swipe, he spoke.

"Sai."

His next swipe was clearly aimed to disarm her. She let him whack the kunai out of her right hand and with her left she punched him in the face. He crashed into a tree and didn't get up.

"Sakura." she said. "Now give me the scroll."

"I can't do that." he replied, and although he tried to hide it she could hear the fear in his voice. "This is my first mission and if I don't complete it I'll be put to death."

"That's funny, because the same thing will happen to me if I don't get that scroll." Her curiosity was growing stronger, but she ignored it along with her growing headache.

As she walked over to him he made a feeble attempt to defend himself with his sword. She grabbed it out of his hand and pressed the tip against his throat. At that point, he seemed to become resigned to his fate. All shinobi went into a fight with a win or die mentality, and despite his age this boy was no different.

She hesitated. Although not as skilled, this kid was like her. A child soldier of sorts, from Konoha no less. Were there more like him out there? Were there more like her? Even as she saw his hand reach towards his pocket, she still didn't push the sword further.

Was he from the same place that had created her? Did he know the reason why she had been abandoned in the middle of Amegakure?

His hand reached the scroll and she pushed down on his sword.

She watched as his hand stilled, as blood came gurgling out of his mouth and how he choked on it. She watched as he struggled to breathe, hand still twitching towards the scroll, and then she watched as the light left his eyes and he stilled completely.

Once she was sure he was dead, Sakura turned around and threw up.

Her head was pounding, she felt dizzy and she didn't understand why. She dragged herself over to a tree and rested against it. It was just another kill. She'd killed children before and none of them had even been shinobi. Why was she overreacting?

She closed her eyes and thought back on all the children she'd killed. There were the ones who she'd killed as part of Baiu's training. There was the boy that had tried to alert his village to her presence. There was the girl who had screamed as Sakura killed her mother and stared blankly at nothing while Sakura killed her. The list kept going on, and the more she thought the more she remembered.

As she thought back on her previous kills it became easier to breathe, and her heart slowed down to its regular rate. Eventually she felt well enough to push herself off the ground and walk towards the body. She carefully ignored the boy's face as she reached down and took the scroll. Her headache was starting to become less painful.

Whatever had caused such a big reaction, it had been temporary. She already felt much less shaken, and with the scroll clutched firmly in her hand, she felt up to leaping onto one of the nearby trees. Her main worry now was that Zetsu had been spying on her, but he normally had more important things to do than keep an eye on her. Unlike most of the Akatsuki members, she had Pein's trust.

She could hear noises coming from the direction of the temple, which meant other shinobi would be here soon. She spared one last look back at the boy that had shaken her up so badly.

Sai. His name was Sai.

She took off in the direction of Ame, leaving his corpse slumped limply against a tree.

Around the time Sakura turned eight years old she killed her first Akatsuki member. It was probably one of the kills that weighed least on her conscience, mostly because she knew he deserved it.

Pein had discovered that someone inside the Akatsuki was leaking valuable information to outsiders. He assigned Sakura to discover the mole, which took a while. Spying on the Akatsuki was difficult, and they were all very cautious people. After many weeks of investigation, Aoi Yakushi finally slipped up. She was tailing Kisame and his partner on a mission when she saw him slip a piece of paper into a tree.

Once they were a safe distance away she pulled it out of the tree. It was short, and written in an unfamiliar code, but it was definitely suspicious.

She forged a copy and left it there, bringing the original back to Ame for the cryptographers to decipher. It took a few days (The Ame cryptographers weren't very skilled) but once the evidence was deciphered it was damning. Reports of the Akatsuki's latest missions and details about their upcoming ones, details on the members and their weaknesses, all of it addressed to Sunagakure. There was no doubt that he was the mole.

When she told Pein this he didn't appear upset. He merely nodded, staring out at the rain.

"I was surprised he lasted this long in the Akatsuki." he drawled. "Now I know why. Take care of it."

So she did.

She ambushed him as he was coming back from the mission. She knew that Aoi was skilled with fire style jutsu, so she picked an area with lots of large boulders for cover. One exploding tag made him and Kisame scatter. When they landed, Kisame had a deadly look in his eyes.

"I hope you weren't trying to stab me in the back there, Pinky." he growled. "I'm not fond of people who betray me."

"And yet your partner has done just that." she replied coolly, trying to ignore the large amount of killing intent emanating from him. "He sold us out to Suna. He's a traitor to the Akatsuki."

The killing intent vanished. Kisame didn't bother questioning how she knew about the traitor. The good thing about being a weapon was that no one thought you had ulterior motives. All of the members trusted that she was doing everything for the good of the organization, and they were right.

"So you're here to kill him, huh?" Kisame shrugged. "Then I might as well watch. It's been a while since I saw you fight."

"I'm surprised, I thought you'd want revenge." she said casually, hoping that he'd take the bait and fight Aoi.

While Aoi wasn't one of the Akatsuki members whose power had terrified Sakura when she was younger, he was still a jonin. It would be a lot easier if Kisame helped, but judging by his lazy grin he would rather watch her take him down.

"I think watching a tiny kid like you beat him to death will be satisfying enough."

She was about to make one last attempt at convincing him to fight, but there was a crackling sound behind her and both of them dived for cover behind rocks. Sakura felt the scorching flame even behind the security of the boulder.

When the fire eased, she leapt out and flung a kunai at Aoi. She dived behind another boulder as the second round of fire came blazing towards her. The heat and intensity of the fire, combined with how long the jutsu lasted, had Sakura slightly more cautious than before.

She heard the sound of more fire from her left, and realised that Aoi must have targeted Kisame as well. Only Sakura knew that Kisame wasn't interested in fighting and if Aoi forced his hand, he may have to help her after all.

The next second she felt the boulder in front of her start cracking. Her eyes widened slightly as she noticed the liquid pooling around her feet.

A water jutsu.

She leapt backwards just as the boulder shattered from the pressure. She heard Kisame yell something, and the sound of fighting continued on her left. She dodged a few more highly pressurized streams of water. Judging from the way they sliced the landscape to pieces, the water probably would have cut her in half if it hit her.

She took a second to gather her bearings. Kisame was still trying to be a spectator, but judging by the annoyed look on his face and Aoi's constant attacks he would start fighting back any second now. She saw Aoi reach for his sword. It was coated in a dark purple poison Sakura recognized. Sasori was very fond of that poison, and thanks to his torture sessions she was immune to it.

Kisame however, was probably not. She charged for them as Aoi lunged, and she let him drive the sword deep into her. It still scraped Kisame, so she used the few seconds of surprise her stunt had bought her to find the antidote in her pouch and toss it over to him. Kisame caught on and stuck the needle in his flesh, but he still seemed surprised that she'd thrown herself so recklessly onto Aoi's sword.

Truth be told, Sakura wanted this fight over quickly. So she chose the easiest way possible, regardless of how injured she'd get. Now that Aoi's sword was stuck deep in her intestines, she grabbed it with her two hands and snapped it in two. It cut through her gloves and into her palms, but he was caught off guard and ended up jumping backwards.

Kisame was waiting for him there, truly annoyed now. He swung Samehada at Aoi and in an instant most of his chakra had been drained. He fell to his knees as Sakura walked unsteadily over to him.

She went through everything she knew about the man in front of her. He liked crushing small insects. He'd killed his own brother just to prove he was stronger. His wife was a civilian that Sakura regularly saw with black eyes and bruises. All in all, he was not worth her concern.

"Aoi Yakushi." she intoned, trying to keep her voice steady despite the blood spilling out of her mouth. "For betraying the Akatsuki, Pein-sama has ordered your execution. You have lost, and now you will die."

She tugged her glove tighter until it fit perfectly, and then she smashed her fist down onto his head. It split apart like a ripe watermelon, splattering both her and Kisame. He wiped his cloak clean with surprising delicacy.

"Sheesh Pinky, I wasn't expecting it to get this messy. Are you even going to live?"

She'd already sat down and was focused on healing her stab wound.

"I'm immune to the poison so I'll be fine. The fight could have been cleaner but there was no need for it to be. We're right next to Ame so I can afford to get a little scratched up."

"I wouldn't exactly call those scratches little." Kisame muttered.

Sakura rolled her eyes and moving her hands further into her stomach. The poison hurt like hell but it wouldn't kill her. Kisame could go back to Pein and tell him what had happened, and in a few hours she'd be healed enough to head to the base and give a full report.

She felt someone grab her and the next second she was being picked up.

"Hey! Kisame what are you doing? I need to heal myself!"

"And you will kid, but I'm not leaving you out here when the village is only five minutes away. You can heal yourself from the safety of a hospital bed."

"I don't need the hospital! I can heal better than any of those medics. Just put me down! I'm supposed to be a self-sufficient tool."

He'd already slung her over her shoulder and started walking towards the village.

"Don't be so gung-ho about it." She could feel him rolling his eyes despite being carried. "Our leader's had a bad influence on you if you've become this serious. Just let me take you to the hospital and once you're healed we can do something fun. It's been a while since I borrowed you from Pein, and everyone else is so boring."

She wanted to argue, but well… her stomach was killing her, and technically she was supposed to obey Kisame since he was an Akatsuki member. She sighed and let him carry her.

"By the way, try not to bleed too much on my cloak or I'll make you wash it."

"It's your fault." she grumbled, wincing as he let out a hearty laugh that bounced her up and down.

"There we go! You're not a completely mindless goon after all. I know that Pein is a bit of a stick in the mud but you don't have to be so uptight around me."

"You're interfering with my programming." she deadpanned. "Signs of affection and humour do not compute with my system."

He laughed again, and she couldn't help smiling a little herself.

When Sakura turned nine years old, two big events happened one after the other.

The first event happened when she was looking for some food. Her supply near her bedroom had run empty, so she was headed to the kitchen on the floor above her when she heard voices.

She didn't mean to eavesdrop, but spying was in her nature at this point. It was only when she realised that the voices were Pein and Konan that she started feeling a little nervous. But by then it was too late to move, otherwise they would detect her for sure.

"Nagato, you know that there are very few lines left that I will not cross, but this is one of them."

"The man is known to enjoy young girls; this is the best way to assassinate him."

"I have played the part of a whore many times, when it was necessary, but if you're suggesting we let Sakura go on an undercover mission where she could potentially be raped-"

"She's intelligent enough to gauge the situation. Nothing bad will happen to her."

She heard a sigh.

"Fine. But you need to make it clear to her that she doesn't need to let the target assault her. We've spent the last few years emphasizing her lack of worth compared to the mission and you expect her to suddenly gain respect for herself? Tell Sakura that she doesn't have to let him touch her, and then she can go."

Sakura took off then, not bothering to hear Pein's reply.

So her next target was a pedophile. She knew about people like that, but for the most part she'd avoided that side of the shinobi world. Apparently Konan hadn't. Perhaps she should ask her for tips before she left.

Sakura wondered if she should be more concerned. Konan certainly seemed worried, and Sakura hadn't heard her sound that emotional for years. But Sakura couldn't find it in her to be scared. It was just another mission; the only difference would be that her childlike appearance appealed to the man's lust instead of his sympathy. It would be fine.

The mission took about a week. She had to get close to the target without being suspicious, and then she had to let him kidnap her. Once they were at his place he tried hurting her. She let him smack her around a little bit but when he actually tried to touch her she broke his fingers. He cursed and tried injecting her with a drug, but she had come prepared for that.

She grabbed the antidote she had brought with her and plunged it into her leg. Sasori had been ordered to give it to her before she left, and considering how reluctant and graceless he was giving it to her she had no doubt it would be effective. She saw his eyes widen when he realised it was a trap, but he still wasn't ready when she plunged the kunai into his neck.

Another A-rank missing-nin dead at her feet. She wondered if she should feel satisfied that such a piece of scum was dead, but all she felt was slightly nauseous at the thought of his other victims, the ones that hadn't been able to fight back.

The thought stuck with her more than she thought it would, but luckily there was a distraction waiting for her back with the Akatsuki that completely took her mind off her mission. The second event happened the day after she got back.

When Sakura was nine years old, Itachi Uchiha joined the Akatsuki.