A/N: Thank you calcu22, May525, soul of the kitsune, and NatNicole for the reviews! Thank you new followers and favoriters. I'm sorry it took so long for the update, just had a ton of deadlines to meet for my thesis this past week. But hey I'm almost done now, so yay!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto! Sadboiz.

Sunari peered out the porthole window of her nook, and halfheartedly watched as the late afternoon sunset overtook the world below her. A gentle breeze blew in, tousling the boyish clumps of deep brown topping her head and dusting sand gently on her tawny cheeks.

The orphanage, she learned, stood in a relatively busy part of town. There were always people passing through. There had to have been a marketplace or something nearby, because the jittery buzz of people bargaining away at the same time every day was becoming a constant trademark of her steadily progressing life. She was starting to get annoyed by it, because recently she couldn't stop feeling that buzzing and whirring.

Those Spidey senses? It's like they kept getting stronger and stronger, and the stronger they got, the more they constricted her. If she had to describe the feeling, it would be like having the veins and arteries that made her human become twisted, clogged, flooded, and squeezed by some extra essence that made her inhuman, all at once.

And yes, she figured out what that extra essence really was. Not Spidey senses, not some weird sixth sense, but it was chakra. Chakra, a distinguishing characteristic of all people born into the Naruto universe, that, when used the right way, could transform a person into a god.

And she felt it, all the time.

Because whether she liked it or not, she was stuck in the Naruto world, and some lousy benevolent being or whatever decided it would be a Really Funny Joke™ to drop her down there like she got an extra life in a video game.

Well, technically Kishimoto might be that "benevolent being." But Sunari was fairly certain he did not write whoever the hell she was into the original series. That, or she was so minor that she didn't even deserve on-screen time.

Speaking of that, whoever the hell named her had to have been a bleeding nationalist. "Sand girl"? Come on.

(Somewhere in the Kazekage Tower, Rasa sneezed.)

Honestly though, being a minor character sounded like such a better option. In as unobtrusively of a way as she could manage, Sunari wanted to make a point to avoid the Plot at all costs. She was not touching it, not going near it, not even breathing the same space as any of the canon characters involved in it.

She wouldn't admit it to anyone who asked, but she was scared as fuck of the butterfly effect.

She knew this world would end up okay, if all went according to plan. Yeah, people would die and some rabbit lady in the moon would try to literally suck everyone's life energy into a tree, but all that was eventually justified because of the longlasting peace that came afterward.

…aaaaand low key because the main character got a billion power-ups that literally happened in the span of like three days, but hey, Sunari couldn't complain.

And yeah, maybe when he had a kid or two, shit would hit the fan again. But that would be after everyone got years of peace and never-before-seen worldwide cooperation.

But the point is, this story had a happy ending. Even if everyone had to go through traumatic shit to get through it all alive (because they'd literally be dead if they didn't), the main players made it out okay.

And for all that she enjoyed playing RPGs, she was terrified of making one wrong move that would cost this world everything.

Kishimoto was merciless, and whether he did or didn't play a part in crafting the world around her, his original plot had so many building blocks and meticulously-timed encounters that literally just her existence could have ruined all of it.

No, instead of butting in, she would take on a different societal problem present in this world. Knowledge about proper mental health care was so outdated, she didn't even know what they did to take care of the ninja who came in traumatized after every mission. The answer: probably nothing.

PTSD and a buttload of other illnesses were most definitely a thing in this world, and even though she hadn't made it far enough in her other life to get an official degree to treat them, she planned to bust her ass out in this one to make sure there was some working semblance of mental health care set up here. Because these ninja, these people? They deserved better. They needed better.

So maybe she wouldn't save lives by killing off the baddies, but she could save the lives of the ones who did. She couldn't keep them safe on the battlefields, but she could keep them safe from the darkest shades of their minds.

She just had to make sure she didn't treat any of the canon stars.

It was a good thing she was in Suna, then. The Plot never swung around these parts of the world unless Naruto needed some kind of character or jutsu development, and she could probably train a more well-established ninja to treat the Kazekage and his family.

God knows Gaara needed psychotherapy, horrendously.

Still, she couldn't believe how she hadn't figured out her universal exchange before that calamitous encounter with Hisato. She kept berating herself for it, because she literally got a copy of the local Suna newspaper every single day for her writing exercises. Michi always gave her full sheets so she could practice as much as she wanted to, but somehow she never noticed the mentions of Sunagakure, the Fourth Kazekage, or just straight up ninja.

She shifted her gaze downward at the latest sheet Michi had left by her little nook. She grasped it in her hand, scanning it with her stormy black orbs.

"Fourth Kazekage declares truce with Iwagakure; shinobi uneasy but hopeful"

At least after all of that happened, she was able to pick up on the fact that she had a steady supply of news coming in each day to reground herself, one that she's certain Michi didn't realize she was actually absorbing for information gathering purposes.

With that, she was able to establish the general time frame that she had been dumped into. Sunari was definitely in a period after the Third Shinobi World War, which she informally deemed "that time when Madara's insidious plots sucker punched everybody and turned Obito into a little shit." She wasn't sure if Gaara had been born yet or not, but if he hadn't already, well...he'd be on the way soon.

And once he did, she would absolutely stay indoors after dark. Forget not messing with the plot; she just straight up did not want to die a bloody death by sand.

She was roused from thoughts about a small boy betrayed by his uncle when someone suddenly appeared by her nook and grabbed her attention.

"Sunari-chan! How are you feeling today?" Michi chirped cheerfully.

Internally, she rolled her eyes. She loved Michi, but honestly the woman had to get off her back about her reactions to what happened last week.

She specifically did not think about how she was feeling, because the answer was that she felt like shit. Like the world pulled a rug from underneath her, and she fell into a long and cataclysmic hole into some new universe with no way of getting home. Like she was overwhelmed by guilt and sorrow and regret because she would never see her parents, her brother, her friends ever again. Like she was abandoned by whoever gave birth to her from the very second she came into this world, already deemed unlovable enough to give away.

Like she was ready to break down, and stay broken.

But nope, she didn't think about how she was feeling. She closed up all that junk, wrapped it in a box, and shipped it to a faraway place so she'd never have to see it again, because those feelings already had their run with the whole Hisato incident, and she wouldn't be letting them make an encore any time soon. She couldn't give a fuck about what Michi thought, at least on this topic, because no way in hell would she let anything take her over like that again.

If her normal panic from a world bound by laws of physics was bad, then the one that came through here mixed with chakra and weird magical powers was nothing short of pure, unadulterated agony.

But Michi didn't have to know that. So instead...

"I'm feeling good as always, Michi-sama," Sunari replied with an equal amount of superficial cheer, "Can I go outside and play today?"

Michi gave a playful frown. Sunari knew what the answer was going to be, even before she asked it.

"Not today, Sunari-chan. Today, it's too hot and I don't want your skin to burn. You're still much too young to go out there!" Michi proclaimed while wagging her finger.

Sunari sighed. It was always the same answer, wrapped in different cutesy disguises every time. She had a thought to write all of them down just to keep a record of the absurdity for future laughs.

Sunari pouted, hoping to keep up the "disappointed but cute child" act. "Okay, Michi-sama. Can I at least come out of my nook today? I haven't really gotten much exercise recently."

"Exercise?" Michi tilted her head in confusion, "My dear, you're only five months old. You don't need exercise!"

Ah fuck, Sunari had to remember to not do that thing where she forgets she's not twenty-one anymore.

But before she could castigate herself further, Michi followed up thoughtfully, "...But I suppose because you've been so good recently, you can leave the crib today!"

Sunari had to quash the excitement that rose in her body and in her face, because hot damn Michi was behaviorally conditioning her and it was working.

To an extent, Sunari supposed that all child rearing was some form of behavioral conditioning. But this was some straight up Pavlovian shit, and if she didn't know any better, she would have thought Michi was trying to train her for something. It was pretty messed up actually, the more Sunari thought about it.

That's why she didn't, and let Michi carry her out of her crib and place her on the floor by her feet.

"Just be careful of the others," Michi warned with that tone that was just a little too genial. "They're still a little tired from last week."

Sunari hummed in confirmation, and padded away gently, Michi following until another orphan's cries stole her away.

Sunari knew that was a lie too. The moment her roommates shuffled back into their shared living space after the Hisato scene, she noticed immediately that all their chakra signatures got cold and closed themselves off from her.

She wasn't a fool. It might have been years since she was actually a child, but she knew ostracism when she saw it. And these kids, they were avoiding her like the plague.

She wasn't sure what caused it, because it wasn't just one or two of the orphans. It was all of them. It maybe had to do with the fact that she scared off one of the biggest donors this orphanage had seen in years.

...Yeah, it was definitely that.

But well, she didn't mean to! Wasn't it normal for babies to have fits when they encountered strangers? They must have understood, didn't they?

Hisato too. The man was a piece of garbage, but if he was going to run away from adoption because of a crying fit, what made him think he could even adopt one in the first place?

It didn't make sense. But Sunari was in the Naruto world; nothing made sense here.

She (slowly) made her way down the stairs, lamenting the lack of an accessible ride down yet again, when Takuma nearly bowled over her tiny body running up the opposite direction. He stopped just before causing the both of them injuries that would last for weeks.

In his usual taciturn manner, he held her gaze before nodding curtly. She wasn't sure why Takuma still acknowledged her, given that he was affected by her unfortunate bout with Hisato too, but it was nice to know that someone was at least neutral to her.

Because yeah, maybe she had twenty-one years of life experience behind her, but that didn't stop her from feeling lonely and unwelcome around everyone in the house not named Michi. She hadn't liked that situation any more than the kids had, but at least they weren't alone when they tried to share their opinions about it.

After a reasonable amount of seconds passed, Takuma continued his ascent up the stairs, leaving Sunari to move onward with her pitiful descent.

She swore that she would think of some way around this awful downward journey in the future. When she got big enough to actually do shit other than crawl and breathe, she would build some contraption that would prevent suckers like herself from ever having to suffer themselves to this fate again.

She was in the midst of imagining ziplines of padded baskets hanging from the ceiling above the staircase, when she felt Takuma's mountain-like chakra pause, and curiously enough make its way back down the stairs. He moved in front of her so that he was a few steps below her.

Then, he pulled out a scroll from his pocket and unrolled it. Sunari could make out some kanji characters on the sheet, but she didn't have the vocabulary yet to know what it read. Takuma placed it flat on the floor, and Sunari realized just what he was doing as he bit his right thumb and raised his hand to slam it down on the scroll.

She felt a small surge of chakra as his hand made contact with the kanji, and watched a cloud of smoke emerge from the scroll. It cleared, and hovering above the parchment was what looked like a small wooden child with a brown tattered cloak over its body. It had segmented arms and legs that looked normal enough, but what stood out was its O-shaped mouth full of razor thin needles. Though none of them protruded past the lips, they remained visible to those who stood directly before it, as though warning of a threat.

Or beckoning a challenge.

The real kicker though, was the matted maroon hair that topped its wooden head, and copper-colored buttons for eyes.

Sunari laughed internally, even though she was captivated and terrified at the same time.

His first piece was an autobiography.

Contrary to her knowledge of the doll, Sunari gave Takuma a quizzical look, as though to ask what on Earth he was doing holding his hands up behind a large doll that looked ready to kill her. And why too; she was actually curious about that.

Takuma gave the slightest upturn of lips, and responded, "His name is Saisei. He's a puppet, and I made him two months ago."

...That answered everything and nothing. And really, rebirth? Takuma would never see the irony of his creation. But the boy was practically beaming with pride, as much as his stoic self was capable of beaming, so she didn't pester further on it.

Instead, she questioned, "Why am I meeting Saisei?"

He didn't answer verbally, but his fingers danced and Saisei staggered gently before moving forward in her direction.

Sunari flinched on instinct, and guarded herself with her small meaty arms.

Like that would do much to save her from getting pierced a million ways by a million senbon.

But Saisei didn't attack her. It came close, and using its anthropomorphic arms, hoisted her up and carried her close to its torso.

Sunari caught a brief whiff of willow and varnish, before Saisei started moving again. She peeked her head out to look at her surroundings, and saw she was being brought downstairs in a manner much too domestic for the dangerous puppet, Takuma following behind closely.

When they reached the ground level, Takuma had Saisei drop her down lightly on the floor. She looked up to see Takuma stand solemnly behind his puppet, like a pillar supporting a masterpiece.

Sunari felt...oddly touched by this act of kindness. Takuma really didn't have to go out of his way to help her, she would have made it downstairs eventually.

Her heart started swelling for this little boy who was so nice, so kind to her when everyone else was horrid and cruel, and she couldn't help herself from bursting, "Thank you Taku-"

A senbon shot directly at her face, and she nearly tripped over herself to avoid a 1-millimeter hole in her forehead.

Her heart swelled again, replacing the gratitude and warmth from seconds ago with acceleration and indignation. She glared angrily at Takuma, with all the betrayal and fury she could muster in a facial expression.

He just smirked, and uttered, "Training starts today."

Sunari's face fell blank, and shook her head in confusion. What?

His face dropped into its typical impassaive demeanor, and he asked, "Do you like this puppet?"

She paused, and bowed her head briefly.

Takuma continued, "Do you want to learn how to use one?"

Sunari's onyx eyes lit up, and she looked directly into Takuma's amber, searching for evidence of a lie or a joke.

There was none. He was being completely serious.

"Yes...you'd show me?" she answered hesitantly.

Takuma then gave that little not-smile again, and nodded. "Then it's settled. I will teach you what I know of the Puppet Master jutsu," he appraised her, and slightly frowned, "though I'll probably have to show you how to use your chakra first."

Sunari tried to give off a vibe like this ninja training regimen wasn't that big a deal, but inside she was ecstatic. Since learning that that she was in the Narutoverse, she attempted using her chakra in the ways she remembered from the show. She had tried channeling it to her stomach, her hara, where ninja mixed their physical and spiritual energies, but that ended in an epic fail. Instead of producing chakra like she wanted, she just gave herself a stomachache for the rest of the day.

She hadn't even guessed Takuma was capable of doing ninja things. She always knew that he had a little more chakra than all the other kids, but she hadn't see any indication prior to this that he knew jutsu.

But that was okay. It didn't matter too much to her because she was going to learn how to be a ninja.

Ignorant to Sunari's inner excitement, Takuma intoned sternly, "We have to protect our home. You and I, we have to keep our siblings and our mother safe. So be ready."

He brought two fingers up in what looked like a hand seal. Sunari felt another surge of chakra, and the puppet disappeared in a puff of smoke, almost as quickly as it appeared.

Confused by the sudden declaration, but enthusiastic from thoughts of training, she affirmed, "Okay."

Sunari thought chakra strings were one of the coolest things on the show, and like hell she would give up the chance to learn how to use them. Being able to dish out chakra strings to move stuff without touching it? It was the closest thing to telepathy she could get in this world without overpowered purple eyes, and finally her lazy ass wouldn't have to get up to do shit anymore. She could just bring everything to her.

Takuma nodded, and turned to walk up the stairs again.

It did cross her mind, though, that it might be a little dangerous being taught by someone who made a puppet with a mouth full of needles, but maybe he wasn't that bad. Even if he just tried to kill her.

She started crawling toward a couch near the door, where she could sit comfortably and feel a cool nighttime breeze, when she caught a glint of silver in her periphery. With an unprecedented and honestly illogical amount of speed, she dodged the senbon that embedded itself into the spot on the ground she had just occupied, panting as adrenaline overtook her again.

She changed her mind. It would be that bad.

Sunari doubled her neck around to find the perpetrator, and there he stood on the staircase with a slightly amused grin and arms crossed in front of his chest.

"Always be ready," he remarked simply before actually walking away.

Sunari checked her chakra sense to make sure he was fully up the stairs and engaged in another activity before she turned her attention away.

That little brat. She would get him back for this one day.

But in the meantime, she let go of her small frustrations and finally made her way to the couch. She settled in, and stared outside as the chakra-enhanced buzz of people dwindled down. Finally, people were calling it a day and she could have some peace. Her chakra...nerves or whatever, were stinging a little more than usual today.

She rested her eyes and leaned as far back into the fraying green couch as her little baby body could.

Today was a good day. She had space to think, she had oriented herself to her time and place, she was going to learn cool ninja things, and she maybe had someone she could call a friend.

Her thoughts were filled of memories from a lifetime ago, of invisible threads of control and powerful magic spells and leaping across trees at breakneck speed. She smiled to herself, content in knowing she would soon know the ways of the ninja. Even if she had no plans of being one.

Then, a huge wave of something sinister and evil washed over her entire body. It filled her veins and resonated with the chakra in her body, pulling and pushing at it at the same time. It suffocated her, and she could have sworn she heard whispers of hysteria and screams of a dying woman.

The last thing she remembered seeing was the shade of the sunset sky, fading from warm purple and orange to deathly black.

In the newborn intensive care unit of the Sunagakure hospital, Rasa held back tears as he embraced the small, undersized child in his arms. His name was Gaara, and Karura loved him so much.

Karura...

No. He was alone now. He would have no time for emotions, and Karura's sacrifice would not be made in vain. For her, for Suna, this child would become the greatest weapon his village ever wielded, and he alone would shape it to his will.

He stilled the tears leaking from his eyes, and his face grew rigid. He looked into the pale aquamarine eyes of the red-haired infant warbling below him, and had but one chilling thought.

His youngest son was a monster.

A/N: This chapter was a lot, I know! But basically, we see the extent of Sunari's foreknowledge and what she plans (and doesn't plan) to do with it. Of course as we all know, things don't always go according to plan. Also that she's having some difficulties with chakra, is starting to pick up a little bit of Michi's character, and is horribly hypocritical when it comes to mental health.

Thanks for reading! Reviews would be super appreciated if you have the time and desire :)