Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto and this is non-profit fanfiction.
A/N: Children with too much freedom test the limits by doing silly things. Naruto follows this example. Children who have to follow rules and lack freedom will look for it. Sakura basically was always following someone else's rules, at the risk of being killed if she deviated from them. Thus she has learned to follow rules but to always look for loopholes. Since she's a double agent of enemy countries, she's already a target as soon as one of them suspects her of working for the enemy/betraying them. In that situation, all she can do is to seek refuge in another country that can find her useful and protect her against the other 2 while giving her a new identity. And she's gonna work for it…with her new allies and the secrets she intents to discover and offer on a silver platter to whatever power will offer her what she wishes for.
Or how a double agent Sakura is put in a situation comparable to that of Kabuto and follows a very gray moral compass…
Elemental clones require a good amount of chakra, so they won't be used until academy graduation. Shadow clones are similar but transfer memories instead of being made of elemental chakra.
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Chapter 4
The summer holidays were a very welcome rest period for Sakura. One month during which she could finally have more time for herself. She greatly appreciated her afternoon naps to refill her energy for the second part of the day. She also had gotten time to adjust to her mother's absence following the dismantling of the Root and the securing or disposing of its' agents by T&I.
Sasuke had completely lost all trust in Konoha after the reveal about his clan's genocide. Thanks to Sakura's lessons on hiding his emotions and never revealing his intentions, he managed to keep a poker face in front of Konoha's authorities, but inside he knew what they wanted. Good, loyal soldiers to do their dirty work for them without asking questions. Encouraging trust and friendship to create bonds between soldiers which would tie them to the village.
The only people to betray Konoha were people who had lost their ties to the village like Tsunade or who had never had any to begin with. Orochimaru had a very loose moral compass from the beginning from what little information was available about him and his two teammates, the ones who could keep him in line, had deserted or had become a traveling hermit with very loose ties left to the village. Jiraiya, the leader of the genin team of the Fourth Hokage, had lost everyone in his genin team, his favorite teammate had deserted and he had no family.
In the end, creating bonds with the people chained to Konoha was a good way to be chained too. Naruto was only loyal to Sakura and liked the Ichiraku family, but he wasn't tied to the village with strong bonds like a friend loyal to the village or a clan. Sasuke had lost his whole clan to Konoha's machinations. Sakura herself was tied to no place and wasn't loyal to anyone that she hadn't chosen herself. She was very secretive by necessity and distrustful. She would never have told Sasuke her lack of loyalty for Konoha if he hadn't been prepared and tied to her beforehand. She had specifically groomed him to trust her and then dumped the bomb of Konoha's implication in the Uchiha genocide on him when he was ready to trust her, emphasizing on the Root's role in grooming Itachi to be loyal to Konoha over his own clan and family and turning him into an attack dog.
Naruto had never completely trusted anyone before Sakura. He had never shown his true self even to Ayame and Teuchi, only to Sakura, the only person who empowered him and gave him the keys to his own success. He had stopped trusting the Hokage when Sakura had proven him that he had a lot of potential but the academy was wasting it and that the Hokage did nothing to help him overcome his weaknesses, never gave him a tutor like he had for his underage grandson, and had never tried to adopt Naruto or to entrust him to anyone who could have given him the emotional support he needed or at least a place to call home – not just a place, a person who would be his home. He had easily latched onto Sakura the moment she had told him that he was worth her efforts and defying her parents' prejudice against him and then she had slowly given him more bits of truth about her real motives. But she had helped him when no one had done it. She had spent time with it outside of her job when no one had done it. She had gone beyond what was requested of her and befriended him when no one had done it to such degree. She had made him what he was and for this he'd always follow her and be grateful.
Naruto and Sasuke had started on the wrong foot but over time they had learned to accept their differences and cooperate, they had bonded over the challenges offered by Sakura and they had been each other's second safe person.
Naruto and Sasuke's home were with Sakura, wherever she'd go, whoever she'd side with, whatever trouble she'd put herself into. And Sakura had begun trusting them in return, offering them comfort, learning to like them as people, not just as tools. She couldn't tell them everything as long as they were in Konoha, but when they'd get out of there, she could tell them more about her.
After summer break, their classes started again and they had less time to chill, to go to Ichiraku and eat Teuchi's cooking. Sakura had used this month to spy on Iruka again, trying to identify the object of his interest in the Ichiraku family. If it wasn't Naruto, then it had to be Ayame or Teuchi. Ayame had grown up in Konoha and lost her mother to the attack that had led to the Fourth's death. She had never known any other place and had no kunoichi training. Teuchi, on the other hand, was a mystery. Where did he come from? Had he ever been trained as a shinobi? His personal files looked fabricated. Either he was a Root agent like her or a foreign spy. If he had been part of the Root, he'd have tried to take Naruto in and to enroll him before Sakura had been assigned the mission to bring him into the organization. This only left the foreign spy who was discreetly gathering or relaying intel…or an ANBU without a past who kept an eye on Naruto for the Third. Which one was he? Konoha agent or foreign spy?
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"Sakura! Welcome! Why did you come without Naruto today?" asked Ayame.
"Hi! I'd like to talk about Naruto to your dad."
"Okay? Is everything alright?"
"Yes, but I'd like to know a bit more about how Naruto was in the beginning, when he had no one and when he was just a boy who he had made a deal with."
"I see. Dad! Sakura wants to talk to you! I can handle the restaurant for a while!"
"Coming!"
He came out of the storage and brought Sakura to a place where no one could spy on them. This already confirmed her suspicion about him being a spy.
"So, what did you want to discuss with an old cook?" he asked on a falsely reassuring tone.
"I wanted to tell you something about Iruka."
His facial expression became serious.
"Oh? What about him?"
"He left me a message I've found suspicious. A rolling stone gathers no moss. Be careful of your daughter's company, Teuchi. He might be a spy from Iwa and your daughter could be suspected of sympathizing with the enemy by assimilation…"
He narrowed his eyes.
"I see. Thank you for bringing this topic to my knowledge, Sakura. I'll make sure to protect my daughter from harm."
"You're welcome. Your ramen is too valuable to Naruto to let you lose your daughter and close shop."
"I've always noticed you were a sharp one, but you impress me even more. I guess you've tried to find out more about him?"
"This is confidential information. I'm not allowed to tell you anything more. I shouldn't even have told you anything at all but I don't want Naruto to suffer when I could avoid it."
"I understand. I'll try to reason her then. May she listen to me…"
"See you later, Teuchi."
Sakura left in a body flicker, leaving him alone in the back alley that was hard to spy on without revealing oneself. So she was right. Now she needed to find out who he worked for…
X
In the days following her reveal, Iruka remained a teacher at the academy but his foul mood coincided with Ayame's. She guessed they had broken up. Which meant that Teuchi didn't work for the Hokage, or the teacher would have been arrested and brought to T&I. This left the minor villages, Suna, Kiri and Kumo. She doubted the idea that Teuchi worked for Iwa. He would have probably gotten a word from Iruka if that had been the case. He would have known that Sakura was on their side, from Iruka's perspective.
Kiri was in the middle of a civil war, isolated from the rest of the world. They probably didn't care too much about Konoha and needed all their agents in the fight. Teuchi had infiltrated Konoha a long time ago and never left. He couldn't work for Kiri at this moment.
Suna was a possibility, they were allied to Konoha but their relations with the Daimyô of the Land of Wind were not at their best due to competition over missions. Konoha offered more competitive prices because it needed less importation to sustain its' population than Suna, which relied on money from contract and the quartz trade to import food, water and other necessities like weapons.
Kumo was an old enemy of Konoha. It had killed the Second Hokage, was always looking for potential bloodlines to kidnap or lure with better living standards for their prey.
Minor villages would look for anything that could get them a bit more influence and stay in the shadows until an opportunity would arise, not willing to go to war with Konoha.
Teuchi befitted the behaviour of a minor village's agent more than any major village's, but Kumo was known for its' trickery in luring its' prey into a sense of false security like the Hyûga incident that had caused the Third Great War. They were absolutely capable of sending a low level shinobi with great infiltration and adaptation capabilities on a lifelong mission in Konoha to give them information about potential targets, children's conversations about their clan or other useful stuff that no one would value much except for Kumo. Teuchi could be a great source of mundane information that could be deciphered and used to follow Konoha's daily news and other such small events that could facilitate more qualified spies who would make the actual moves like kidnappings, stealing secrets and all the high rank mission stuff. Someone like Iruka was in a good spot to identify the best kids to target for bloodlines and other useful potential, while Teuchi was a good source of ground level information, and with the restaurant he could help transport illegal stuff or people as orders for the shop.
X
Sakura's second year of academy was less eventful than the first. She continued to spy on Iruka from afar, trying not to get caught a second time. She identified a second Iwa agent thanks to this shadowing, the mother of his next girlfriend. She was probably the same kind of agent as Teuchi, a deep cover, ground level agent enabling other, better positioned ones to make moves.
There was an incident with the Aburame clan, one of their children disappeared overnight and the accusations were directed towards Kumo but they were countered by a diplomatic meeting on neutral territory which resulted in accusing Iwa instead and going back to the status quo with Kumo.
The buzzing of agents during this period of tension had revealed a Kumo agent during Sakura's shadowing of Iruka. She confirmed her suspicions about the woman from the Cloud a few weeks later when she saw her give a file to a person who had come to give a mission to Konoha as a cover.
The Kumo agent she had been shadowing was a middle rank one, the kind that was involved in chûnin rank information. By following her longer, she identified her contact, the owner of a small music shop near the academy.
Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto had started learning to play an instrument, giving her a reason to go to that shop, looking for musical advice. She had started giving unimportant information to the lady to gain some trust and to identify herself as a potential agent in the academy with connections to two assets of Konoha.
At the end of the second year, Sakura had made contact with the chûnin agent from Kumo, securing an agreement over inside info on the clan heirs and Naruto. She had made it clear that she wanted to get a pass for Kumo if things went South, showing her interest in the village hidden in the Clouds, and waved her connection to her boys under the kunoichi's nose, baiting her with an easy, cooperative transfer of the Konoha's assets to Kumo. This would have to wait longer though. Academy students were forbidden from leaving Konoha and genin teams had to wait for their leader's approval to be allowed on missions outside the village.
During this time, she had taught Naruto and Sasuke a good portion of her ninja skills.
Sasuke was good at taijutsu, fire and lightning nature transformations, his genjutsu was passable but not refined, his shurikenjutsu was good and he had started weaponizing his dizi flute, using it to cast appeasing genjutsu that could lull one into sleep or into a forced tranquility that made one drop their guard. His dizi flute could also be used as a blowpipe to shoot poison darts.
Naruto was good at sneaking, sabotage and heavy ninjutsu. He would do well with a summoning contract. His skills in combat were decent but not on the refined side. He was the muscle of the trio. His instrument was a dagu, a big drum played with two drumsticks. The logistics around it's carrying during fights was still an issue, but the instrument was fitting his energetic personality and his love for loud noise and it was a great battle instrument. Its' weaponizing was still a regular object of brainstorming in the group.
Sakura had picked up the yueqin, a local banjo with higher notes that fit well with her chakra strings training as it was a plucked strings instrument that needed only one hand to move, allowing her to move only her right hand to play, leaving her prosthetic arm in a static position. She started to learn how to control weapons with chakra strings while playing her instrument, giving the illusion that the sound was the weapon. Other than that, she had integrated her elastic yang nature transformation to her fighting style in conjunction with her controlled weapons, giving them more reach and making the directions of attacks less predictable, although she could only change her arms into rubber, not her legs or torso.
Her other general abilities covered barriers, a bunch of ninjutsu of all categories and elements she had gathered over two years in the Root and diverse non-combat seals that she had found useful and simple enough to learn during the same period. She was a jack of all trades, master of none who could adapt to any situation but didn't excel anywhere. She had learned the mystical palm technique, the most basic healing and diagnosis technique, very useful to heal her wounds or her teammates' with the dangerous nature of some of her Root missions. She had so much experience over her teammates in an organization that only trained efficient spies and assassins that her superior and varied skills were a given. She had spent two years training, learning skills and going on these missions without anyone to protect her that she had to make sure to be self-sufficient in order to survive, and her two years of academy had given her enough time to improve her skills.
X
In the second half of her academy years, the trio focused on the boys' strengths while hiding their weaknesses, the most effective way to make them competent as fast as possible in what they would be good at before spending time as genin under a team leader working on their weaknesses when they would be under closer watch.
The trio made sure to use barriers to ward their training area, informing them of the presence of intruders and showing a genjutsu to those outside the barrier, keeping their secrets safe from spies. When intruders were spotted, the trio would pretend working on academy skills or to train with their instruments. It usually worked fine.
Once, they had nearly been surprised by a particularly good spy who had discovered their trick, but Sakura's experience had encouraged her to listen to her gut feeling and paranoia, both of which told her that someone had managed to cross the barrier without activating the silent alarm.
At the end of the academy, the teams were made based on synergy. The three of them were immediately put in the same team as they had displayed a great synergy and group mentality with each other but never tried to sympathize with others.
Their team leader was Hizashi Hyûga, head of the branch of the Hyûga clan, twin brother of the clan head.
'Oh fuck…' thought Sakura. 'This will be a problem…'
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A/N: Don't beat me up! It's not Kakashi and I needed to involve the Hyûga clan in one way or another. I really need the Hyûga clan to be directly involved. Sakura aims for Kumo, after all, and there's another reason for me to need a Hyûga as their instructor and team leader. It will push them even further in their sneaking skills, make them all paranoid and increase their distrust of Konoha that sent them someone who could watch them on missions and who has strong ties to the village. The Hyûga clan is heavy on rules, but Hizashi isn't as stuck up as Hiashi, so he won't be totalitarian levels of surveillance. Hizashi is marked, which means Kumo won't want him. But he has a son and two nieces, one of which is doomed to be sealed with the Caged Bird seal if they both stay in Konoha…
And this brings up another question. If there are no Bijû to seal, then what did Minato die for?
