Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto and this is non-profit fanfiction.
A/N: Swaying Sasuke is easy. But making Naruto and Sasuke work together is another story… And more spy stuff.
The academy 3 will be swapped for something else or removed. They're too convenient and make writing a story with stakes impossible. If your characters could always swap with an object, why would they ever be in danger? Transformation jutsu is replaced with normal disguise, appearance-altering genjutsu becomes a B rank technique, physical transformation into another similarly proportioned human is an A rank infiltration ninjutsu and shape shifting is an S rank yang nature ninjutsu. The clone technique is a visual genjutsu quite easy to perform so it stays, it can be improved with the use of fake shadows and noise to become a B rank genjutsu and with fake physics (like shooting a pebble while moving, cracking a branch, overall interaction with the environment) it becomes an A rank genjutsu. It becomes S rank when it affects the sense of touch since it's hard to differentiate from a solid clone and can easily set up the enemy for a kill.
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Chapter 3
Out of school hours were when Sakura brought Naruto to an empty training field. They started with a field in which the boy was actually doing well – sneaking. Naruto, in order to gather attention on himself for his deeds rather than for something he had nothing to do with that happened before he was born, had resorted to pranking the people of Konoha, especially those who overtly disliked him. This was the reason for his need to hide at Ichiraku ramen every once in a while after one of his misdeeds had brought negative attention on him.
Since he had entered the academy, the boy had been under the responsibility of the Hokage, which meant that he had to adjust with his pursuers being actually worth something at tracking and that they were faster than him.
Now, Sakura wanted to hone his skills to make him a sabotage and sneaking expert, thus their training started as challenges to push him always further in his art, as he called it. She gave him a secret mission like replacing the flour of the baker with refined sugar, leading to his learning of refining methods to make sugar that looked like flour – in the end he had decided to mix sugar and flour together to avoid the obvious reflects on sugar grains and the different feel to it, but he still managed to make the bread taste sweet.
Another time she asked him to put slime in the shoes of the policemen who had caught him a few times and who had spanked him when he was still a civilian. His memory of faces was surprisingly good. He never forgot the faces of the people who had offended him and of the people he had pranked. She honed this too by encouraging him to prank people further down memory lane like these people who had annoyed him more than two years ago. His snickering when he watched them put their shoes on would get him caught, so she forced into his head the idea that he had to make sure to be impossible to suspect and thus not watching the results of his pranks and laughing in the vicinity.
As his skills and imagination became scarier and scarier, she decided to start him on chakra control. This would help him a lot, so she sat on him to force him to stop moving for a while and told him the basics of the exercise. She repeated the process each time, since if she didn't immobilize him, he wouldn't be able to stay still for five minutes. The leaf sticking exercise took him one month to get correctly, after which he had gotten the feel for it and she got him to the next one, tree climbing.
A week later, he was able to stand and walk along a tree, so she told him to try running. At the end of the month, she started him on water walking.
Meanwhile, her own training continued after Naruto and she parted ways. She had been able to reach her old proficiency in handwriting and drawing, using classes to train these skills, and when she was alone in her room, she focused on controlling her left arm in a more natural way. Due to constantly using chakra to fuel the genjutsu, she was passively expanding her chakra reserves, but she also worked on advanced chakra exercises. Her chakra control was already perfect, so she tried diverse applications of it.
One day, she saw a cat playing with a wool ball while an old lady was knitting a scarf. She decided to toy this idea in her chakra control applications and tried to make a ball of chakra that could sustain itself and rotate rapidly without exploding. It occupied her for the month it took Naruto to master the leaf sticking exercise and she managed to complete the rotating chakra ball.
The next month, she decided to further her yang nature transformation. She could already reinforce her bones and muscles, which was key mandatory for Root agents going on missions with potential fights, so she decided to work on elasticity. This would increase her physical abilities and give her a new skill that could be used in many situation, like unlocking a door with an elastic arm, swinging her weapons at the end of armwhips, all kinds of funny things to imagine.
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Sasuke was pissed. He didn't know who had kept ruining his food for the past two weeks, replacing the sugar he put in his tea with salt, then the honey with caramel and the tomato sauce with red pepper sauce – Sakura found it tasteless. He was fuming and he suspected Naruto but he had been unable to catch him or find any proof it was him. He was ready for harvesting…
"Sasuke, did something bad happen?" she asked when she saw his upset face.
"…Why do you ask?"
"Well, you look like shit today," she replied, having adopted Naruto's speech habits to some extent.
"Your friend is getting on my nerves with his pranks. I swear I'll catch him next time!"
"What happened and why do you think he did it?"
"My salt turns into sugar overnight, my honey into caramel and the cherry on top…that asshole replaced my tomato sauce with pepper sauce! That's not even tasty! I can't take it anymore!"
His eyes bulged in anger.
"Do you want my help? I could easily make you good enough to catch him and counter-prank him," she suggested with a smirk.
He opened his mouth with a scowl, hesitated, closed it, looked at her smirk and mimicked her expression.
"If you show me that you can do it, I'll agree to you training me."
"We have a deal. Join me at six under the big tree. I'll show you."
"Alright. You better not waste my time."
"I never waste anyone's time. Time is the most valuable resource in the world."
He nodded in acknowledgment and they went on their separate ways.
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After setting up Sasuke to witness her catching Naruto in a prank – that she had been the one to order –, she got his attention. They started training separately from her and Naruto and in two weeks, she served Sasuke an easy victory over his rival. He had been successfully hooked.
Then she used the excuse of lacking time to fuse their training sessions and make them training partners. It started badly. Very badly. To the point that she had to keep them from fighting all the time over trivial things. Eventually, they started to get along due to getting used to each other, at which point she could actually start making progress.
The boys' emulation was incredible, pushing them well over their usual amount of effort. Their progress rate improved by thirty percent, they only needed three weeks to learn what should take them a month. Their rivalry became more friendly over time.
At the end of the first year, Naruto and Sasuke had become friends and were able to work in perfect coordination with each other and to follow Sakura's lead in every challenge she came up with for the three of them.
They had been going to the last two New Moon Festivals together, gathering information, watching suspicious activity, trying to identify anyone watching them. They also sneaked illegal items to the stand owners as more training for their future.
They were ready for the next phase of the plan.
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"What? How did you discover that?" asked Sasuke in the sign language they had created together.
"I've been looking for information since the beginning of the year," answered Sakura in the same way. "How would a whole clan be killed in an hour in the middle of the afternoon, inside the village, at a time when everyone but you was in the Uchiha district. The circumstances were too perfect for it to be natural. Why did the ANBU arrive only after the scene? They have sensors who should have noticed the beginning of the massacre, they couldn't miss something as obvious as tens of people dying in a localized part of the village. It was set up by the authorities to get rid of your clan."
"But why would they have spared me?" he signed back, his emotions flaring.
"Because they needed your brother to take the fall in their stead and Itachi liked you, didn't he?"
Sasuke paused for a moment, sat down on the grass, his fingers penetrating the ground in anger. The wave of emotions passed and his expression went back to normal.
"You mean that they brainwashed Itachi into killing the Uchiha clan?"
"Sasuke, I've been a Root agent for two years. I know what kind of things they do. And recently I've suspected that Root had recruited Itachi for this exact goal. He was already in ANBU and wanted to protect you, to protect the village. From there, it was easy for the leader of Root to offer him further training, which is the Root term for brainwashing its' agents into serving Konoha over their lives, their families, and into obeying the leader's every order."
"Then why do you speak of all that? Weren't you brainwashed?"
"Because I've been trained to resist brainwashing before getting myself recruited into the Root. And I've learned a sealing technique to nullify the Root seal that keep its' agents from speaking."
"But you're the same age as Naruto and me! How is that possible?" he signed, emotions transpiring in his attitude.
"Because I was raised to be a spy."
"By whom?"
"By someone who doesn't like the Konoha leadership."
The hook was completely secured when Sasuke's eyes told her what she wanted to know. Sasuke was now ready to follow her anywhere. How easy it was to get the trust of a nine year-old boy betrayed by everyone around him if you promised him that he could get back at them by following you…
Sasuke, Naruto, both were now her followers. Her agents. Mission complete, but not for Konoha, not for Danzô.
'A rolling stone gathers no moss. Why should I stop and live in one place when I can keep rolling and getting what I want without consequences or responsibilities?'
Sakura was a spy. She had infiltrated Konoha very young, showed some talent for the ninja arts and been recruited into the Root like many orphans with a gift for chakra. The Root had trained her, failed to brainwash her – but they didn't know that. She had failed a mission and been given an even better one. She thanked Danzô for scouting her and cutting her work of finding her way into the ninja forces of Konoha to gather information. She now had the two most valuable assets of Konoha in her pocket, was out of reach of her home village and free from Danzô, who had been disposed of last night by ANBU after the Hokage had discovered his kidnapping of Torune Aburame and Fu Yamanaka. She had seen them be accompanied to their respective clan districts last night after hearing Ino talk about a commotion in the Yamanaka clan that morning.
Sakura was free, and she had Konoha's prodigal sons on her side. She could now orchestrate their escape from this village where she'd be in danger all the time. But before that, she'd have to get her hands on more secrets to trade for her safety in a place where her talents could be put to better use…
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A/N: The first arc is complete, Sakura has gotten Naruto and Sasuke's absolute trust and friendships. The second arc can now start: finding valuable secrets to trade for an entry into another village where she wouldn't be constantly at a risk of getting discovered and executed for her actions…or…there are worse fates than death, you know…?
