"Sasuke is in pursuit of Gaara and the others from the Sand. Sakura, you're to nullify the genjutsu on Naruto and Shikamaru and the four of you will track down Sasuke."
"Four?" Sakura asked, endlessly thankful the henge covered the burning flush on her cheeks.
"Summoning no Jutsu!" He used the back of a dead body to perform the seals. A puff of smoke and a burst of sound indicating the successful summoning. Standing delicately on top of the corpse was now a tiny, adorable, hideous pug. It somehow projected an air of regal pride even as it exuded the same air of exhausted laziness as its summoner.
"This guy, Pakkun, will be able to track Sasuke down by his scent." Said Hatake. The pug stared. Sakura stared back. She dropped the henge.
Some things were more important than dignity.
"It's an honour, Pakkun." She said seriously, a hand held over her heart. The summon radiated smug satisfaction.
"Hehe, looks like you got a smart one, eh Kakashi?" The pug chuckled. Hatake sighed.
"Just get to work."
She made her way to where the Uzumaki and the Nara were lying. A hand sign and the Uzumaki was waking, but she simply glared at the Nara. She poked him. Pakkun bit his ankle.
The pug was quickly worming its way into her cold, empty heart.
"You heard the man, Nara." She said.
"Bah! I refuse! Who cares about Sasuke!" Nara grumbled, only to be once again bitten by the pug.
"Basically the entire village." She deadpanned.
"What's going on?" Uzumaki asked. She looked over at him only to freeze at the sight of Maito punching a sound-nin through a concrete wall.
Sakura locked up in pure terror. She didn't move. Didn't breath. Didn't even dare to blink as the man straightened into a 'heroic' pose. Thick muscles rippling under green spandex and vivid splatters of red over his face and knuckles.
One second.
One and a half.
Two.
Nothing.
Sakura relaxed abruptly. A sigh of sheer relief leaving her as not even a whiff of hormones appeared. She was not inexplicably attracted to the man.
This body may be attracted to males (admittedly a surprise after sixty three years of Tristan finding his same gender just a little gross, even if- statistically speaking- she probably should have expected it) but at least it didn't have completely terrible taste.
She eyed Hatake, noting a subsequent increase in the heat of her cheeks and a not insignificant speeding of her pulse.
Mostly.
"Now I'll restate your mission! Once you've heard it, escape through that hole. Chase after Sasuke, join up with him and stop him. Then, take him away to a safe location." Hatake ordered, a husky note to his voice that sent-
God dammit puberty!
"What happened to Sasuke?!" Uzumaki yelled.
"I'll explain as we go!" Sakura said; deciding just to fuck it, run away from her problems, grab the orange ball and take a running jump out of the hole. A distant part of her lizard brain registered Pakkun clinging to the back of her dress with his teeth and the Nara jumping after them.
They leapt through the trees, the pug taking point as Sakura gave the other two a run down.
"Suna and Sound have launched a joint attack on Konoha, the spectators of the chūnin exam finals were put under a mass, sleep-inducing genjutsu as they attacked. Gaara freaked the fuck out after he was hurt by Sasuke and was then taken- presumably to somewhere safe- by his siblings. Sasuke went after them. We are going after Sasuke."
"I gotcha! So that's what's been going on." Uzumaki said. "Sasuke's getting ahead of himself."
"So! Why am I being assigned out like this?" Complained the Nara. "It's a shittin' chore!"
"Too bad, it's what you get for being competent!" Sakura replied. "Now what's the plan, team leader?" She asked the Nara and he scowled.
"This way!" Pakkun growled, shifting directions suddenly. Sakura followed with a grimace. "Pick up the pace! From behind, two squads with eight, no… one more, nine men are chasing us!"
"Already? Man you've got to be kidding me!" Said the Nara.
"Don't look as if they've got a fix on our true position yet but they're closing in on us quickly while on the lookout for any surprise attacks."
"Shit! They're probably all chūnin level, if they catch with us, we'll be annihilated!"
"SHIT! Well if that's the case then shall we ambush 'em and do 'em?!"
"We'd certainly have a great advantage if we were to ambush them! Even if they're twice our number so long as we could surprise them…"
"It's no use. They're subordinates of Orochimaru, former Konoha shinobi, you know." Interjected Pakkun.
"Fuck, I thought we might have been able to pull it off, but I guess not then." Nara said.
"What does that mean?" Uzumaki asked.
"If they're former Konoha shinobi then they're probably extremely familiar with the geography of the land and have practiced mock combat for this battle. Even with that, the ambush might still be advantageous to us but there's too many unknown factors." Nara explained. "To begin with, the enemy's a shinobi squad that's been picked for this plan, where as we have an idiot, an injured kunoichi, a dog, and the best guy at running away, me!"
Sakura's mind was whirling, scenario after scenario forming and melting and reforming behind her eyes.
"After that analysis, there's only one thing we can do now. We need to create a diversion that looks as if we are going to ambush them. One of us will have to remain behind and delay them by faking an ambush."
"A decoy." Sakura said, her voice flat as she thought.
"That's right, if they're stalled they won't be able to locate the remaining three. If we do this right we'll be able to throw off the trackers, but the one who stays behind will probably die." Nara said, his tone grim.
"No." Sakura interrupted, the Nara opened his mouth to argue but she barrelled on. "Triple bluff. You set up a fake ambush posing as an actual ambush whilst I go full stealth and actually ambush the fake ambush."
He paused, frowned. "They'll be looking out for something like that, the ninth member is likely specifically set up to prevent those sorts of attacks."
"Quadruple bluff, clone fake ambushing the fake ambush so I can ambush the ninth and then ambush the fake ambush." She said, Uzumaki grew increasingly confused looking whilst the Nara's brows furrowed in thought.
"You would be better spent at the fight." Nara argued.
"I don't have the chakra reserves to deal with Gaara." She countered. "After the initial attack I'd just be a liability."
"And just Naruto won't?!"
"He'll be with Sasuke. They can win." He voice portrayed absolute confidence. The preteen's panicked expression lessened in response to her calm.
"Alright." He nodded, though he looked a little pale. "Quadruple bluff." Nara and Sakura stopped, Uzumaki and Pakkun following a half second after.
"I don't really understand but I'll be depending on you guys!" Uzumaki cried. Sakura turned to him, a serious expression on her face.
"Naruto. If you and Sasuke work together, I am absolutely sure you two could achieve anything." She said. He nodded once, face filled with DETERMINATION, before turning and jumping through the trees.
Sakura ran her hands through the signs for a water clone. Henged mottled, erased her signature and moved into the very top of the leafy branches. Her clone followed behind the Nara- who was laying a false trail of 'paw prints' with a bundle of sticks alongside his own steps- and somewhat dampened its signature. It made a show of being stealthy at the level of a moderately competent genin. Not enough to fool a chūnin looking out for sneak attacks, but enough to make said chūnin believe they were sincerely trying. Nara placed a trail until he came upon a clearing and stopped at the far edge of it, an unusually thick copse of trees to his right.
Sakura took the hint and her and her clone disappeared into the foliage, the clone perching behind a trunk and peering 'sneakily' around the wood whilst Sakura fitted herself above it and activated the transparency jutsu. She wouldn't be able to move whilst she needed to stay hidden, but she would be virtually undetectable whilst it was active.
The group of enemy shinobi appeared- predictably eight of them- and approached Shikamaru from the front, immediately falling for his shadow trap. Likely, they just didn't care. They expected the ninth to keep them safe.
Sakura watched as a stealthier shinobi appeared behind her clone, slapped a hand over its mouth and drove a blade through its chest. It dissolved to water at the injury but the real Sakura was already dropping. Her blade was already flying through his neck.
The body dropped, headless, and Sakura wasted no time in throwing herself towards the first of the eight, finding three already dead from kunai to the hearts. She sliced through two before a third figure appeared, taking out the remaining three just as the shadow jutsu failed and Shikamaru fell to a knee.
"I finally caught up to you." Asuma said, straightening with a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
Interestingly enough, despite the man's conventionally good looks and 'strong' actions, Sakura felt no attraction to him. Was it because of his strange relationship with Yūhi? The lack of blood? Something to explore later.
"Asuma, why?" The Nara asked, voice shaky and weak with a mixture of shock and exhaustion. Sakura looked down at the kid and the hero worship on his face, suddenly hyper aware that for all his smarts he was only twelve. Had that been his first kill?
"You did good, guys, but for the time being you're done." Sarutobi said, almost entirely ignoring Sakura but including her in the stand down order. She pulled her lips back to expose her teeth and pointed her sword at the man.
"I am nowhere close to finished. Point me to where I can be of assistance or I will find somewhere myself." She demanded and the jōnin frowned but in a way that was more considerate than patronising.
"How are your reserves?"
"Sixty eight percent." She said, causing his eyebrows to rise. Wether from the significant amount left or the exact number she didn't know.
"You good to get a medical shelter on your own?" He asked the Nara. The boy nodded. "Alright, get on." He flicked his cigarette and crouched down in front of her, Sakura wasted no time in climbing on his back and sticking to his flak jacket with chakra. He nodded once at the Nara before they were flying through the trees, leagues faster than Sakura could have managed under her own power.
It wasn't long before they reached a battle. Suna and Sound and Konoha all mixed together in a flurry of jutsus and attacks. The hot midday sun beat down on the scene relentlessly. Patches of bright summer flowers, strewn over the streets and crushed under foot, mixed in with vivid splashes of crimson. Exploded glass left spews of glittering mess and collapsed walls were screaming maws in the sides of buildings.
Sakura tapped the jōnin's shoulder once in warning before using him as a ladder and spring boarding from his shoulder over the fight, eyes flitting over the battlefield to identify places where her interference would be helpful. She sent out three strings and threw a chakra coated kunai into the air above her.
Her chakra caught four times in rapid succession, swapping with a body here, a pile of rubble there; never staying longer than a second or two in one place. Just long enough to leave a lightning infused wound on an enemy-nin- often debilitating, always distracting- before appearing in the next location. After three rapid attacks her chakra caught on the kunai in the air and she found herself falling, eyes flicking over the battle and three strings being sent out whilst she threw another coated kunai.
She repeated the process over and over again, always throwing the kunai to a different location- often the air, sometimes windows and the tops of buildings when she needed a breather- until the very last enemy-nin had dropped. She let herself fall harmlessly to the ground and assessed the situation.
Nineteen percent of her chakra left. Not a lot but not impossible to work around. A steadily bleeding wound on her thigh and a throbbing in her side coupled with an inability to breath deeply that suggested one of her cracked ribs had been exacerbated into a full on break. Almost every muscle was aching with overexertion. Six kunai, eleven shuriken, her chokutō available. Fifteen allies in her immediate vicinity. A lot of bodies. None of either were the Sarutobi. The position of the sun suggested the battle had taken a little over four hours.
It had seemed no longer than five minutes.
"Heya girly, thanks for the save back there!" Yelled an approaching man. He looked to be in his late twenties and fairly plain looking aside from being quite tall. His face had the familiarity of one she'd seen in a shinobi identification picture but had ultimately forgotten any details about because they were too boring. He was also the man she'd stopped from getting a kidney full of Naginata.
"No problem." She said, voice lacking any of the substance human voices typically had.
Was the pain in her cheeks bruises or a too-wide smile?
She worked on evening out her breathing from gasping and erratic to just shallow. Locked the monster back into the box.
"The name's Okomato Kousuke. Chūnin." He held out a hand. She took it automatically, pumping it up and down. The movement was a bit too mechanical to be normal but it was significantly better than it would have been a minute ago and the man didn't seem to mind. Shinobi were inherently familiar with the rush of a battle. The ache in her cheeks was becoming less strained by the passing minute.
"Haruno Sakura. Genin." There was a little bubbling of life behind her words. She breathed out, relaxed her face completely, and then replaced it with a small, earnest-looking smile. "It's good to meet you, senpai."
He smiled, the expression showing far too many teeth. "I thought all the baby shinobi would be at the shelters, what were you doing to be thrown into this shit show?"
"I was taking the chūnin exams." She deadpanned. His eyes glinted with recognition, then wariness.
"You're one of Hatake's." He stated, a low simmering fear in his words. She added a notch to her 'Hatake was threatening people to be nice to them behind their backs' mental tally.
"That's right." She purred, smile too sharp and eyes too wide. She'd scented the blood in the water. "I don't see any reason why I should tell him about you. Do you, Kousuke-senpai?"
The man paused for a couple of seconds before he laughed, a loud and boisterous sound that rang through the buildings. The monster thrashed angrily in its box, begging her to lash out in response to the insult. All wounded pride at the lack of fear.
Instead, Sakura kept her face neutral and her demeanour friendly. She wasn't an animal. She didn't need to use anything as graceless as fear to control people.
"What happens now?" She asked. "Do we go to another battle?"
"Eager, aren't you." He said.
"Konoha's my village. I don't like people touching my things."
He set off laughing again, a delighted grin on his face.
"You probably didn't notice, but the guy over there," he pointed to a short, blonde haired man with half a hand missing. She had noticed him appearing during the battle but dismissed it as unimportant, apparently that had been a mistake. "Appeared about three quarters into the fight with news. The enemy forces have been pushed back, we were one of the last pockets still fighting. Everyone injured is to report to medical, everyone else to a shelter. The jōnin and ANBU will run a final sweep, but otherwise the village should be clear."
"Ah." She nodded. "To medical, then."
"You and everyone else, girly." He said and they begun hobbling (without the adrenaline to numb the pain, Sakura's leg was causing a significant limp in her steps) in the direction of the centres. There was a grief-stricken aspect to his face that made her vaguely wonder who he was distracting himself from by talking to her.
She didn't let him stew, and pulled him into a conversation, the man latching onto the out and gleefully launching into a tale about his neighbour's cat. She morbidly wondered if the thing would be dead.
"Maa, Sakura-chan, this is not what I had in mind when I sent you after Sasuke." A voice drawled from behind them. There was anger in the words that she easily identified as thinly veiled concern. He must have been worried the she didn't show up with the others. Sakura turned with a genuine smile on her face whilst the chūnin next to her jumped violently and cursed colourfully under his breath.
"Carry me to medical, sensei?" She asked, green eyes wide and pleading and her lips pouted slightly. Hatake sighed, scooped her up, and set off across the rooftops, leaving the chūnin behind without another word.
Thankfully, breathing just a touch deeper than was likely advisable with her injuries and feeling the threat of jagged bone in the side of her lung was an affective method of distracting her body from the subsequent burst of hormones.
"Who was that?" He asked, entirely unrepentant about just ignoring the chūnin but with a thread of something darker in his tone that suggested he might actually kill the dude if she reported him mistreating her. This whole invasion thing must have really been getting too him for Hatake to be so open about actually caring about any of his genin.
"I know he told me his name, but I honestly don't remember." She said, lazily watching the blur of buildings pass them by.
"You know the name of almost everyone in the village." His voice was disbelieving.
"I know the name of almost everyone interesting in the village." She retorted and the lone eye blinked slowly.
"Not everyone important is interesting, Pinky."
"Ah! But I find importance inherently interesting."
Silver hair tipped in acknowledgement.
"Naruto and Sasuke?"
"They'll be fine." He said. "The Sandaime was killed by Orochimaru."
She tensed. "Sensei." She said, a warble of stress behind her words. He blinked down at her in apparent confusion. "Please tell me there's a second Sannin miraculously in the village."
"Ah, Jirayia-sama was Naruto's 'super pervert' and he appeared in the battle." He said and she sighed in relief, causing his visible eyebrow to raise critically.
"Kakashi." She said, her voice and face deadpan. "Without the Sannin who do you think would be made Kage? Who in the village would be strong enough and was also trained by a previous Hokage?"
(It had been one of her favourite thought exercises for years before she actually met Hatake. It was a lot less interesting to ponder the changes to the village if the Hokage died once she realised just how committed Hatake was to his 'quirks'.)
He blanched and a visible grimace appeared under the mask. "Never. Say something so horrible to me again."
She snorted and he landed in front of a medical centre- noticeably not the closest but one of the ones mostly likely to be the quietest, meaning she would actually get reasonable treatment despite the relative non-severity of her injuries- set her down, pat her once on the head, and promptly disappeared.
Sakura huffed and went inside.
The next day she found out that Kabuto had disappeared from the cells in T&I.
Sakura stood in the centre of her living room. Head tilted as she eyed the surrounding furniture and knick knacks.
On the kitchen bench behind her there were containers of leftovers from the lunch with Team Seven, two small porcelain urns filled with ashes and a stack of legal documents including the deed to the house, freshly signed in her name.
It was three days since the village had been invaded. Two days since she'd found out her parents were dead. They'd died fighting Suna shinobi in the chūnin exam arena.
She wasn't in mourning. She was capable of feeling love, but it was a twisted, possessive thing. More based in jealousy and obsession than kindness. Controllable. She hadn't loved them. They had been her parents, but they hadn't been hers.
Tristan had made that mistake. Had gotten attached to the warmth and the happiness and the love and acceptance both sets of their parents had offered so readily. He'd been a child without a concept of death and old age, so he'd sliced a home for his parents deep in his greedy, little heart. The loss of them had ached.
She'd known better this time. She'd understood that her parent's would inevitably die before her. She'd enjoyed her time with them, but she hadn't gotten attached.
So no, she didn't mourn, but she still felt strange standing in her own home.
It was quiet in a way she'd never dealt with before. Tristan had gone from living with his parents and five siblings to sharing an apartment with two friends. One of those friends had turned into his wife and they'd quite quickly had three children after buying a house together. They'd both experienced periods of being on their own, her parent's had spent the past two months on holidays, but this was the first time she'd lived in a space knowing no one else was coming.
Knowing it was hers and hers alone.
She tilted her head and brought out a pack of garbage bags. She had some time before the shops closed. Sakura had always had a preference for blue walls.