Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto and this is non-profit fanfiction.
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A/N: This is a kind of Cold War version of Naruto. Don't believe everything that is said or written. Don't believe any character's point of view to be the truth. No one knows the truth, only a small part of it. Maybe watching Spy x Family has given me too much will to write an actual ninja (as in spy in Japanese) story. And sometimes, spies are not on the side they're expected to be, or they're on no one's side, only choosing the winner at the end of the chaos.
Power levels will remain tame, like OG Naruto.
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Chapter 1
This was the end of her career. Missing an arm and an eye was a dead end for a kunoichi. She couldn't even become a candidate for seduction missions later on with such a maimed body, nobody would fall for it – at least, nobody worth using a secret agent for. No man would think that a woman with a missing arm and eye was a civilian in this trade and no one would trust an unknown kunoichi enough for her to achieve anything.
Someone entered her room. This was probably how she would die. Killed as a nameless child in a place where no one would bat an eye, or experimented on until she would become useless and tossed like trash to be incinerated in order not to leave any traces.
"Good evening," said a man with an aura of authority. "Since you have been disabled in such an incurable way, I cannot assign you more missions of the type you were used to accomplish. But I have another use for you."
He let the tension grow for suspense.
"You will infiltrate the academy and watch the two assets of Konoha, make sure that they can serve the Hokage. I will leave you the files of your targets. You will enter their lives as Sakura Haruno, daughter of two chûnin ninjas without a clan. You will aim for the top of the class and since I have found the academy standards to be insulting, you will approach these targets with the goal of training together to become real ninjas and not just advertisement.
"Teach them only the techniques that you can entrust them with and find a way to justify your knowledge. Your parents could have taught you all these techniques, but you will be limited to regular techniques available to clan-less chûnin. They have infiltrated the library and checked what techniques are believable for the common ninjas already.
"Do not show everything you can do even in taijutsu, genjutsu, bukijutsu and shurikenjutsu. Keep it to a level reasonable for a clan-less child with chûnin parents, same as ninjutsu. Make sure that your targets come to you for training and further progress, earn their trust. When they will completely trust you, teach them everything else.
"Be careful with ANBU, do not give them a reason to look at you twice. You will have to learn social skills to pass as a normal academy student.
"For this mission, you will be given a prosthetic arm based on the puppets from Suna that has been improved to fit your needs as well as a Konohan design. Our research department has also developed new gadgets. You will be given a special eye patch that will help you a lot when you are sent on the field. Since you like mysteries, I will let you find out what it can do by yourself. You will have to use a permanent genjutsu to hide your prosthetic arm, which will train your chakra capacity and the quality of your illusions.
"This is a deep cover mission that will last until your death. Make sure to create a character that you will be able to maintain for your whole life. A slip-up could cause an investigation of my activities and we do not want this kind of trouble. Farewell, Sakura Haruno. We will never see each other again as ROOT agents."
The man left the room and a surgeon entered with his team, a prosthetic arm in hand. He had gray hair and round glasses. She would remember his face forever, as the face of the man who caused her even more pain than when her arm had been cut. But for now, she fell unconscious after her pain tolerance had been exceeded.
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She woke up in a pink bedroom, stuffed animals all around her. She already hated this room.
She remembered the contents on an illusion that had been imprinted in her memory, the files of Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha, the two best assets of Konoha, the faces of its' future. Her targets.
Now, she would have to learn how to look like a normal eight year-old girl who does not attract much attention in her usual behaviour while keeping an air of competence that would draw the attention of the two boys and lead them to come to her for training.
She would also have to learn to use her left arm and discover what her eye patch had in store for her.
'What a program,' she thought.
She started by re-learning how to write and draw with her right hand in order to be able to use barriers and seals as well as to have a believable level of hand writing for a home tutored child of eight years old.
Later in the day, she followed an academy girl, Ino Yamanaka, and observed her behaviour which she decided to base her character on at the beginning, slowly making it evolve into a real kunoichi in a way that would not warn anyone potentially watching her.
Back at home, she started to imitate the girl and to give it her personal twist, more tomboyish.
Then she ate with her parents, a brown-haired man with sharp eyes and a sick look and a violet-haired woman of great beauty. Their names were Hayate and Yugao and they were twenty-five and twenty-three, the woman had become pregnant very young during a deep cover long running mission and had just come back to Konoha with a daughter. Her husband had been assigned to cover the fact that Sakura was not raised in Konoha with a bullshit story about them meeting for her mission reports and falling in love, which lead to her pregnancy due to the lack of regular contraception shots that kunoichi received from their first period. The husband didn't even know Sakura wasn't Yugao's daughter. Only her mother knew where Sakura came from.
This would be an incredible challenge and Sakura was ready to face it. After all, she was still alive and not a test subject for ROOT. She was going to be the best investment Danzô had ever made. At least, on the surface…
