Blood, blood was everywhere, in everything, smoke from the explosives were heavy in her lungs and chakra from the fallen buzzed in the air. There was a painful screeching in the air, like long cat like nails against a chalk board. She screamed in pain as she covered her ears and tried to block the sound out.
She woke with a start as the memories came back to her. Looking around though she couldn't believe her eyes, she was in a hospital bed, clean as a whistle and her wounds were healed and her body felt more alive and awake than ever before.
There was a gasp. "You're awake!" Looking up she found a skinny thing before her, an obvious civilian volunteer by the gown she wore and the way she had her hair and makeup fixed up. She ran from the room before she could process any more though.
Looking around, she knew exactly where she was, she'd been in this building more times than she could honestly count and she knew it better than she knew how to do the alphabet backwards.
There were flowers surrounding her though, many vases of flowers, with balloons and get well cards surrounding her like she was in the Yamanaka's flower shop. Some looked just bought while others looked like they had seen better days. Her body was hooked up to machines that she barely remembered existed; from what she could recall all of these machines had been thrown out the day Tsunade deemed them impractical if they had Medical-shinobi. The sheets were crisp and paper just like the gown she wore and her body was heavy from lack of use.
How long had she been out. "Ah so you finally decided to join the land of the living I see". It would seem that her answers would come faster than she expected.
The man was tall with lightly tanned skin, like Naruto. His hair brown with barely there grays that gave him an elderly look, his face had few folds and creases. His eyes tired and worn from the work he surely had to do on her.
"Doctor". She acknowledged. He seemed to grasp at something for a moment before he pulled a chair from the table across the room. Sitting down next to her bedside he picked up the clipboards from the side table and pulled out a pen.
Why was she getting a civilian vibe from him?. "How are you feeling?" Alive. "Much better.. How long was I out?"
He seemed to question himself whether he should answer her or not before he actually gave her the answer. "Two weeks, when we got to you we had actually thought you dead, your pulse had been so slow and so weak that we barely felt it … Your body didn't react well to the surgery so we had to force you into a coma to heal."
Surgery? What surgery? He grabbed her arm checking feeling her pulse before placing her arm back down and pulling out a pen and musing out loud. "Strong heartbeat, vitals are coming in strong, bruises are gone, the more superficial cuts have healed nicely".
He looked away from his clipboard to call in a nurse. A different one came in, this one she knew all to well. The elderly raven haired nurse had been around before Tsunade had ever left Konoha. "Ah Leiko I need you to assist me I must check on her stitches".
Something seemed to snap in the elderly woman's dark eyes as she looked her over. What in the world was going on, Leiko didn't help in the rooms anymore, she helped with all the paperwork. As they lifted the blanket and her dress he began to muse aloud once more. Really did he have to read his notes aloud.
"Stitches are processing well, the healing abilities from the patient are reminiscent of a seasoned shinobi".
Goodness would he shut up. She looked over to the nurse who seemed equally as annoyed as her. He stood back as Leiko fixed her dress and blanket for her. There was a knock on the door and the doctor allowed them entrance. "It's open".
A few men walked in that she didn't recognize, they gave off strong chakra signatures though, just buy that she could tell they were all well trained and seasoned shinobi. The one that exuded the alpha-male complex though stepped closer to her bed. He ignored her as he faced the doctor.
He looked to be in his mid forties, his hair thick, brown and cut to his shoulders. He wore a Jounin vest as well. The problem was he just didn't look familiar.
"I understand that the patient is conscious is she well enough to speak?" The doctor nodded his head before he turned his attention to Leiko. "I must insist that the nurse stay though just in case, from what I'm seeing on paper she's healthier than a new born babe but from the experience in the operation room, I would feel better knowing that there was someone in here to help in case any emergence happened".
That was suppose to be him as the doctor he was suppose to stay in the room when the patient was being interrogated, not the nurse. If her limbs didn't feel so heavy she'd cross her arms in agitation.
"Very well she can stay, just as long as she doesn't speak of this to any others". The man responded. That was laughable. Leiko gossip, she was the one who was always shushing everyone in the hospital, even the patients.
The doctor left with nothing more than a fake smile, what the hell was going on here? That was not how a doctor acted. That was not protocol.
She glared daggers at his back and the shinobi took his place in the seat next to her grabbing her attention away from the incompetent man. His next words though caused every bone in her body to shake in sheer terror.
"Miss my name is Uchiha Fugaku I am the Chief Captain of the Konoha Police Department".
Uchiha Fugaku as in Sasuke's father? As in the man that had planned to overthrow the Hokage and elders.
A sudden memory seemed to hit her then, the memory of the beautiful woman that had somehow found her way onto a battlefield turned graveyard.
'... there are many who did not chose to die but they did. They died so this war could come. … I will send you back to stop those innocents from dying …'
That woman truly had sent her back in time, she had just though it had been some crazy dream her mind had come up with since she was loosing blood rapidly. A hallucination caused by severe blood loss. She settled back into her own mind completely forgetting that there were others in the room with her. That she was completely stuck in what she was suppose to do in this sort of situation. There had never been any training for a mission like this because there had never been such a case for a mission like this. Time travel was not possible, there was no need to create a training for something that was nonexistent.
So what does one do when placed in this sort of position, well normally she would have said make sure she'd somehow become rich and all-powerful. The thing was that there were one to many butterflies she could step on by doing such a thing. Also if that woman had the ability to pull her back in time she was sure that somewhere, somehow she was also watching to make sure that the task was completed.
What was she to do? What was she to do?! It wasn't as if she could escape this time, she didn't have that sort of power. Nobody did.
Well not nobody, obviously there was someone, thing. … Hell she was sure that if given another chance at life Uchiha Obito could have figured it out, what with him and Uchiha Madara giving him the ability to manipulate time and space.
'Miss, Miss are you alright?' She snapped back from her thoughts as she refocused on the matter at hand. She had been sent back in time to set things right, to save innocent people from dying. Dying by the hands of this mans eldest son and heir apparent.
Well it would seem she'd have to take baby steps with this mission, treat it the same, but be very cautious about stepping on those butterflies.
Looking over to the older shinobi she focused on her heart rate and her chakra signature, calming both of them as she was sure they were in haywire.
"I'm fine Sir". Don't give away that you already know of him, one could only imagine what he'd think if she knew who he was already.
He nodded his head at her. "Do you know your name?" Of course she did, she might have taken a few hits to the head and everywhere else but it didn't mean she lost her memory. The problem with this question though was that she couldn't exactly just tell them she was Haruno Sakura. There already was one of them somewhere in the village that was merely the younger version of herself. If they found this out she was sure they'd start asking all the right questions that she had no true answers to. Also knowing that Danzo was still around and the Uchiha Clan was still intact there was a very big possibility that they'd try to get as much information about the future out of her. Still she didn't have enough time to truly come up with a back up plan meaning she'd have to wing it from here.
Taking a deep breath she noticed the pain it took and realized that she wasn't completely healed, her ribs felt heavy. This was odd, nobody ever left this hospital with pain from what she could remember.
"Are you alright Miss". She was asked this time by Leiko as the older woman came up to her with a glass of water. Because that was what was going to help her ease the pain.
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes she pushed the glass away from her shaking her head as she replied. "No but thank you" and looked over to the Uchiha. "My name is Sakura Sir". He crossed his arms as he nodded his head, he continued. "Now Sakura-san normally I would have sent someone else to speak with you but under the circumstances I believed it best if I did it personally".
"I don't understand Uchiha-taicho what circumstances do you speak of?" He looked a bit stuck on whether he wanted to answer her or not now.
"The guards at the Konoha gates found you … You just appeared out of thin air as they told my men, and from what I've heard from the guards, my men and the medics, you looked as though you came from a war zone. … Do you remember what happened to you?"
Oh did she remember, war was something that couldn't be washed away from your mind, nothing would ever make her forget what she had seen in those last few weeks. So how was she going to pull this off, she couldn't just outright tell them that she was in a war, there were no villages in war with each other at this moment. They wouldn't even believe that she had been ambushed by rogue-nin. Wounds from an ambush were completely different from wounds from a war. There was also the problem with telling them how she ended up at the gates without them locking her away from being utterly insane.
"... I'm sorry sir. … I don't know". Yeah she didn't know how to answer him without telling him everything. Always tell the truth, but don't ever forget about the loopholes, yup that's what they taught her.
It seemed to be working to, the bad things about Uchiha-shinobi is that they were bred and trained to be able to see the lies even without their Sharingan. "... Very well then. … What was your name again". He was looking for her family name, she could tell right off the bat that he smelt the fish in the air.
She had one she couldn't give though. "It's Sakura Uchiha-taicho". He seemed to catch that she was unwilling to give her family name. "Where do you come from Sakura-san?"
Places they have no contact with right now due to conflict of beliefs and the location of the country. "I am from Oni no Kuni Sir". Returning back to 'Sir' would give the impression that she was intimidated by him, giving him the belief that he had the upper hand in the situation.
"Oni no Kuni, do you remember why you came here?" Why did she come here, because she was chosen to save him and many others. "There are no shinobi there so I decided to venture to an allied nation that could teach me in ninjutsu. … After departing I don't remember much".
She really didn't remember what had happened from getting from point present time to point past time to point hospital room. Everything was still a bit foggy and bleak in her mind.
He merely stared at her and she knew he was piecing things together that he could. For the most part it was a possibility that she was from Oni no Kuni and it was true that there were no shinobi there and there had been cases of children being sent to allied nations from smaller countries to study ninjutsu.
There was a look though in his eyes, in Leiko's eyes that made her feel self-conscious about herself and not her story. Something about herself was off and she was unsure what it was, she knew in her gut that her story was believable and unquestionable.
"Sakura-san". The Uchiha Chief began only to stop mid-sentence as Leiko interrupted him. "Forgive me Uchiha-taicho but I believe that the young Miss needs her rest now".
He looked away from her for a moment to regard the nurse before turning back to her once more. "Very well then, Sakura-san please let me know if you remember anything, we don't want this to happen to anymore children".
Children? He called her a child, while he was a good twenty plus years her senior that didn't mean she was a child. Children were innocents that knew nothing about war and death. She had to much red in her eyes to be called a child.
She nodded her head in agreement, she was exhausted, and her limbs were still sore and heavy right now.
And she felt itchy, the material didn't feel good against her skin. She watched as they turned away from her and the older nurse, leaving them for the time being.
"Sakura-san you look uncomfortable, would you like me to prepare a shower for you?" Leiko asked as she moved forward. She'd never heard her so nice before.
She nodded her head, regardless of the off personality, it was a nice change compared to the Leiko in her time. "That would be lovely thank you". She tried to move her wary limbs, heavy like the weights that Tsunade had her train with in the beginning, a sore reminder of all that hard training to what she went through to get to where she was today.
In the end though she was weak and tired and it took the help of the older nurse to get her out of the bed. Not realizing the extreme height difference between the two. Had she been in the right mindset and better equipped for such a situation she would have definitely noticed it then.
She barely comprehended the sight of her body, like any teenage girl, any kunoichi she knew what her best aspects were when it came to her body, like most she did stare at herself in the mirror burning the image of herself into her own mind. A war-torn mind though cared little for sexuality and vanity, preferring to ignore the image of their bruised and broken bodies then to see the results of their survival and choices.
The water was nice, it was like a bottle of room temperature water, the problem was the bruises, the drops that hit them hurt more than anything she could remember. She decided that so far her time in the past was more than just a little uncomfortable for her.
It was when she came out of the shower and drew up a towel around her body did she decided to chance a glance at herself. Despite the fogged mirror though it was the reach it took that made her stop and look, really look at what she could see.
She was a child again.