This chapter is dedicated to Bad Habits, who has asked repeatedly to read a chapter from Sakura's point of view. I trust it satisfies.

Sakura: Damage

Haruno Sakura was pissed. Scratch that; she was absolutely livid. Orochi-asshole had done something to Naruto which messed with his jinchuuriki seal, burned their spare Heaven scroll and bitten Sasuke-kun on the neck. The bitemark was oozing darkly and a disturbingly seal-like pattern was emerging on the nearby skin, which gave her some form of justification for what she was about to do to Naruto, since he was the fuuinjutsu expert.

The shock tag brought the blond rudely back to consciousness.

"Gaa!"

"Shut up; you shouldn't have fallen unconscious in the first place," the pinkette snapped irrationally. "The S-class sadist put a seal on Sasuke-kun that is starting to look a little like his sharingan."

"Lessee," Naruto slurred, body twitching in odd places as the lightning bounced around his system. "Ooh. Nasty. Can't fix it instant; can buy time." He produced a paintbrush and eyed his spasming fingers mournfully. "S'gonna be piss-poor, but it'll give us time for somethin' better."

The 'piss-poor' solution involved stripping Sasuke to the waist and painstakingly painting symbols and squiggles over his torso, then activating the resulting mess with a few handseals.

"Tha; done," Naruto mumbled, ears twitching. "Now we hide. Don' wanna get ambushed while fixing him."

The blond's drunken stagger irked Sakura no end, but between them they somehow managed to ferry Sasuke into a small cave created by the roots of one of the massive trees. Once inside the kunoichi allowed Naruto to set up a new and improved seal perimeter while she scanned the darkening seal on Sasuke's neck with the most advanced diagnostic jutsu she knew.

"It's a cancer," she whispered, horrified, when Naruto returned, still twitching but far less severely. "It's made up of these little tumours-" she pointed at the three comma-shaped marks clustered beside the bite "-which replicate and pump out corrupted chakra and the poison Orochimaru injected into him. The poison is a cocktail of steroids, depressants, mutagens and at least a dozen other chemicals, most of which are illegal, addictive and highly damaging to the body's more delicate tissues. The cancer is trying to propagate throughout his body, probably to make him dependent on the chemicals produced so he would be easy to manipulate. Addicts will do anything for their next fix." She paused, remembering fondly for an instant how she'd used Azuma's addiction against him. That had been a very clever little ijutsu, in her own opinion. "Some of these drugs are used in interrogations or to brainwash sleeper agents. The total combination is more likely to kill him than anything else!" the pinkette fumed, working herself up to a rant.

"Get me a rabbit an' I'll fix it."

"Sakura spluttered, brought up short. "What?"

"Seal transfer; it ain't set yet. A rabbit," Naruto repeated helpfully, the stress he was under only discernible by the degeneration of his speech patterns into slum vernacular. "Hurry though; not much time left."

The plan registered and Sakura ran, letting her body take over as her higher mind gibbered about the terrible damage the sannin had inflicted on her precious Sasuke-kun and how it could effect the Last Uchiha's chances of siring children.

We'll save him! Her inner shouted over her rising panic. We'll catch that rabbit, Naruto-nii will fix him and Sasuke-kun will be ever so grateful we saved the future of his clan!

Inner Sakura was the one who first insisted on Naruto being their big brother, as well as constantly advocating violence as a way of solving any and all problems that arose. Sakura herself preferred more subtle means of retaliation, but there were times -like now- when she itched to bludgeon a problem into submission. At least I did catch Orochi-asshole with my tenkutsu hiccup technique; I hope he blows himself up. She'd only clipped him in passing, so it would take a while for it to spread through his system. A medic might be able to delay the effects, but the results would bloom in all their glory when the snake sannin attempted any particularly large jutsu after the next few days grace period.

Rabbits proved to be oddly scarce; She had to make do with a squirrel. As the pinkette hot-footed back to camp she desperately hoped it would be enough.

The inside of the cave stank of blood and ink when she arrived. Naruto accepted the paralysed squirrel, shaved a patch of its fur off with his tanto then carefully positioned the bare patch over the poison seal on Sasuke-kun's neck. "This will be messy," he warned her, then activated the seal matrix.

There was a purple flare, a scream that chilled her blood then Naruto was struggling to subdue a mutant hell-squirrel that had somehow acquired fangs, horns, extra-long claws and very disturbing body markings. "Kill it! Kill it!" the blond squeaked, fending off the rabid rodent. "Sakura help!"

It took a great deal of killing -Sakura herself nearly had a heart attack when it got up again after being impaled on a kunai- but when it finally stopped twitching the pinkette incinerated it with a minor Katon jutsu.

"I am never going to mock Sensei's squirrel phobia ever again," Naruto muttered, swapping his wounds with disinfectant. "How's Sasuke's neck looking?"

Sakura examined the Last Uchiha as thoroughly as she had chakra for. "One tomoe is completely gone, another is much paler but the third is only slightly weakened," she told Naruto grimly, "and the chemical are being replaced -if slowly- as we speak."

"Hmm." Naruto's face took on a familiar expression that set her nerves on edge and made even her inner nervous.

"Uzumaki Naruto, I know that face. Talk."

"Well, the seal is full of both corrupted chaka and poison, and the poison is what enabled the chakra to be corrupted, since it messes with his mind, right? And it's designed to make him serve Orochi-teme, which is why it has brainwashing chemical in, as well as acting as a chakra booster."

"Ye-es? Go on," Sakura pressed.

"Well, if I opened the block Orochi-teme put on my jinchuuriki seal, the rush of youki coming out to restabilise my system could be channelled into Sasuke's seal, burning out the poison and corrupted chakra without deactivating the seal itself, which is beyond my current capabilities," Naruto babbled out in a rush, then cringed.

Sakura's forehead developed a tic and she was just about to bawl him out for coming up with such an utterly moronic solution when a scroll she'd read on cancerous growths leaped to the forefront of her mind.

"That might actually work," she conceded slowly, lowering her fist. "Tumour are usually more sensitive to toxins than normal tissue anyway so you may theoretically be able to burn out the disease without giving Sasuke-kun chakra poisoning. Especially since you can actually control the youki toxicity a little now."

"So, yes?" Naruto ventured tentatively.

"Yes," Sakura said firmly. "What did the sannin do to you anyway"

Naruto shed his gore encrusted kimono and pulled up his jumper and armour. "It's a Five Elements' Seal. My jinchuuriki seal is a Six Point Binding, so the overlap of odd- and even-numbered seals completely shuts off my access to Yoko. Which totally screws up my chakra control because Old Foxy's locked inside my navel gate, so shutting him off leaves me a gate short. Plus, his youki's been trickling into my system since I was born so I'm adapted to it and not removing the seal soon could damage me. Youki's strange stuff, though, not like chakra at all, so there may be some odd side-effects for teme. Shouldn't kill him though; I can channel more yellow ki in afterwards to help him heal."

Naruto's youki could be red or yellow in addition to the standard orange, which Sakura deduced was similar to chakra being made up of mental and physical ki. The red energy was the toxic stuff, while the yellow reinforced the body. Naruto often used the yellow energy to give them a boost in a fight or help her with field healing.

Sakura thought about it. "This is a 'lesser of two evils' thing, isn't it? At least your way the fox can help us predict the side-effects. Do it."

"Okay, but I'll pass out afterwards so my system can adjust properly."

"For how long?"

Naruto shrugged as he laid Sasuke on the ground and set up a smaller seal perimeter around him. "I should wake tomorrow morning, maybe? I bounce back pretty quick. Watch out 'cause Sasuke's likely to be, er, not himself when he wakes up from all the chemicals and chakra bouncing round his body."

"Noted." Sakura watched as Naruto closed the barrier with both him and Sasuke inside it.

The blond pointed at the tags set out at intervals among the scrawled symbols painted on the earth. "These seals will absorb the extra chakra released when I do this so as not to draw anyone or anything else here while we're out of it. Once charged they'll act like the flash-bangs I used against team eight that one time, except they'll hold a combination of chakra and youki. That means they'll be very potent, so make them remotely detonated, please? I don't want you going blind."

"Hai," Sakura agreed. One of the lesser Rules was, you do not argue explosions with the fuuinjutsu and kyakujustu specialist; or do you want to blow yourself up? Sasuke had only disregarded that rule once, and Sensei had said he had been lucky to survive his mistake. Explosions were unforgiving.

"Okay, ready," Naruto muttered to himself, carefully removing his top and armour so the seal on his stomach was clearly visible, along with some nasty black bruises on his ribs, spine and abdomen. "Get set and... go." He placed his left hand on the half-faded seal on Sasuke-kun's neck as the fingertips of his other hand glowed and he made a twisting movement over his stomach.

The explosion of blue around the seal was swiftly followed by an aggressive flare of vivid orange over his entire body, which the blond channelled into Sasuke-kun's neck. The Uchiha's eyes shot open and rolled back into his head as his spine arched violently. The scream tore from the black-haired boy's mouth like a knife to the eardrums and kept on going as wisps of purple around his head and shoulders were burnt away by fiery orange and utterly consumed. Then the scream stopped, the youki faded to yellow and retreated and Naruto collapsed on his side, skin pale and clammy. "Score," he croaked.

Sakura nipped over the perimeter -the seals of which had glowed neon orange throughout the procedure and were only now cooling to umber- and swiftly worked her most sensitive diagnostic jutsu. "The tumours are completely gone," she confirmed, relief making her body sag towards her patient. "What remains of the chemicals is mostly broken down and should be flushed out of his system in a day or two. Thank kami that worked." She examined the seal itself, which was now the bright red of a fresh bruise and was tender to the touch. "Seal structure looks to be intact, but all the corrupt ki is gone. It's full of youki now; it almost glows with it. Whatever the seal was supposed to do with the corrupted ki it will probably do using youki instead, which we will have to watch out for."

"Good," Naruto croaked. "Better bound to me than Orochi-teme."

"Bound?" Sakura repeated suspiciously. Her seal knowledge was negligible, but even she knew what slavery seals were.

"'Splain later. Yoko needs to fix me: internal damage," Naruto sighed before passing out. The pinkette paled at that news and dashed to his side, hands frantically signing a more generic diagnostic technique:

He ruptured all kinds of things when Orochimaru dropped him after he lost the youki protecting him and they've been getting worse ever since! He even has a spinal fracture and I electrocuted him, made him help me with Sasuke! He was dying and I never even bothered to check him for injuries! Stricken with guilt, the kunoichi unsealed the blond's bedding and made him as comfortable as possible before doing the same for Sasuke-kun. Then she ate lunch -more ration bars- and tried to rest up a little.

Unfortunately the lack of things needing to be done just left time for her deep, bubbling and bottomless fury to rise to the surface. Both Naruto and Sasuke-kun had been taken out, their strengths targeted precisely. The pinkette was intensely protective of her team-mates as said strengths were also glaring emotional weaknesses.

Sasuke-kun's kekkai genkai was intensely valuable to Konoha, yet village law dictated he was not allowed to live outside the Uchiha compound. Worse, non-Uchiha were not allowed to move in either, leaving the quiet, stoic boy to live alone amongst the ghosts of his former family. At least he's not living in the clan mansion anymore; the apartments by the compound gates hold no terrors as they were empty at the time of the massacre. The reverence he was held in by the civilian population only isolated the Uchiha further; it had come as a shock to Sakura to learn that Sasuke-kun considered Naruto to be his first and best friend when they had never even had a proper conversation until after graduation. The pinkette had stomped down on her infatuation then and there, choosing to be a friend as well rather than continue to pursue him romantically. It wasn't like she had friends to spare, either.

The situation was completely the opposite for Naruto: his burden made him the most despised person in the village. The only civilians who treated him like a fellow human being were the people at the ramen stand and the geisha in the hanamachi. The latter actually treated him like family; Sakura had felt terribly plain and unsophisticated watching her blond team-mate tease beautiful women in elegant kimono who laughed at his jokes and teased right back, fluttering fans and eyeing him flirtatiously. That one D-rank mission had opened her eyes to the reality that there was far more to Naruto than she had realised possible. If he'd been born female he'd never have become a ninja at all. They love him down there. I would never have realised that Naruto liked to flirt, play cards and sing without them all pushing him to show off with them.

Of course, each boy also had similarly contrasting relationships with their source of power. In a complete reversal of how they were perceived by the village, Sasuke hated his kekkai genkai as much as Naruto cared for his tenant.

The sharingan was a responsibility and a burden to Sasuke: his brother had used a forbidden variant of it to slaughter the rest of his clan and torture him. Worse, its entire power lay in theft and deception, copying what others had worked hard to learn or create and layering illusions to ambush the more technically gifted. The hypnotic factor -making others, do, say or forget things- was just as bad to Sasuke's mind. To the Last Uchiha the sharingan was a cheat, a tainted tool rather than a proud heritage.

Conversely, Naruto rather liked the Kyuubi bound in his gut. From what the blond had let slip Sakura thought the bijuu sounded like a very bad-tempered warrior who had been forced to retire in his prime, hated teaching 'snot-nosed, hard-headed brats' -a direct quote- but pragmatically recognised that doing so was necessary. Both harsh and consistent, the nine-tailed fox was a surprisingly capable tutor and knowledgeable on a wide range of subjects. Naruto was expected to remember and understand everything Yoko threw at him but the blond never flinched from the day's lesson, no matter how dull or bizarre.

Knowing their quirks and secrets made her team-mates precious to her; being unable to help them or take revenge for their injuries made her furious.

Deciding to put her energy and malice to good use, Sakura stripped herself and her unconscious team-mates of any and all trap supplies and set about building a minefield to utterly crush anyone dumb enough to come after her boys.

A/N: Sakura, meet the public. Readers, meet Sakura. Keep your distance, please: she bites. Sakura is acharacter with massive potential that is barely touched on in canon until after the timeskip, and even then she is pretty much Tsunade mk. 2. In fact, team seven in canon are pretty much the sannin all over again with 'the man with a thousand jutsu' replacing 'the professor'. I think this is a cop-out and have therefore made life more difficult for myself as a writer by making Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto into truly unique ninja. And yes, there will be more Sakura in future; this is not an interlude.