Sakura stared down at the bloody, fleshy mess that was the Uzumaki. She shared a look with Tiger.
"You're the fastest and infiltration is my specialty." She pointed out. He nodded.
"I'll get him to Konoha, you follow Sai and gather as much information as possible, then proceed as you see fit. If possible capture Uchiha Sasuke."
"Understood, Taicho."
"Do you need a clone?"
"I have the birds." She replied, shaking her head.
"Good luck." He and the Uzumaki flickered out of existence. Sakura swiped her thumb over the blood clinging to her healed forearm and sped through hand signs. A bird appeared in a puff of smoke.
"Take me to the one I had you watch." She pointed in the general direction. "Three caterpillars."
"Eight!"
"Three."
"Alright." The bird said, launching into the air as it muttered about slave drivers. It circled for a moment before flying in a single direction. Sakura activated full stealth and followed. Only stopping to pick up a small picture book from the crater.
The pursuers did not notice she had followed them. They did not notice her moving through the well hidden entrance behind them.
"You're late." Her ears picked up and she froze just before she turned the corner. She backed up a few steps and pressed against the wall. "Orochimaru, did you forget about how you were going to teach me a new jutsu this afternoon?" The voice was undoubtably the Uchiha's. He had the same soft, prideful way of speech even if it had deepened considerably.
"You fail to mind your mouth, as always." Kabuto grouched, genuine annoyance in his voice. Sakura's lips twitched upwards.
"Oh do calm down please." Orochimaru said. "Instead of training I happened to come across a little present for you. He's a shinobi of the Leaf, just like you. I figured you could bathe yourself in nostalgia, talking about your old village."
The Uchiha snorted.
"Greetings, my name is Sai." The New Kid said. "You must be Uchi-"
"Get lost." Uchiha interrupted.
"Even when I force myself to smile, it seems I am the type of person who ends up being hated." The New Kid said, voice a little lower than usual. Sadness? Annoyance? Arousal? Sakura couldn't tell. "And Naruto-kun didn't seem to care too much for me the whole time, too. But you know, in comparison to Naruto. I think I'm going to be able to get along better with you."
A spike of chakra. Someone gasped for breath as they fell on their ass.
"Sasuke-kun!" Admonished Kabuto.
"It would be a good idea not to tease Sasuke-kun too much. You see he's even harder to deal with than I am." Said Orochimaru.
"And I don't care to deal with trash like him." The Uchiha said, the slide of fabric accompanying a movement.
"Naruto-kun told me quite a bit about you, it seems he's been looking for you the last three years." New Kid pressed, his voice wavering in time with his panting.
"Oh, I guess I remember someone like that."
Sakura had to withhold a snort. It was said with such pompous nonchalance that it was unbearably fake.
"We're going Orochimaru."
"Naruto considers you to be almost his own true brother, that's what I heard from Sakura-san."
"My brother. I only have one, a certain man I have to kill."
"Anyhow I'll be leaving now, Kabuto use these to compile a bingo book." Orochimaru said, tone full of exasperation.
There were the sounds of walking, the sounds of a shunshin and the sounds of rustling pages. The problem was that Sakura couldn't know which sound was who and she couldn't risk stepping into the line of sight of a Sharingan user.
"These are ANBU, the Hokage's personal troop division. These are copies of the profiles of its members." Kabuto exclaimed. "And it would seem to be the real thing."
There were another two sets of steps leaving.
Sakura had to follow. That was the ANBU list. She couldn't leave it.
She risked it and ducked around the corner. The Uchiha wasn't there. She followed the footsteps that resolved themselves into Kabuto and the New Kid. Kabuto had the envelope in his hand.
Convenient.
Kabuto lead the pair, knowingly and unknowingly, to a small room with a bed, desk and adjoined bathroom.
"This is your room." Said Kabuto as he placed down the all important ANBU files and lit the single candle. "When we don't have anything for you to do, we expect you to quietly behave yourself in here. If something comes up we will call on you."
Sakura slammed a kunai butt into his temple and he dropped. She wasted absolutely no time binding him in ninja wire so that any attempts to escape would ultimately be useless, remembering the formidable healing he showed off during their duel and not risking that it was not working just because the teen was unconscious. She rolled him over, patted down his pockets, and slipped the door key into her flak jacket. She turned to see New Kid with his hands in a seal and a bear drawn on a scroll in his lap, eyes flickering over the room for sign of her.
She deactivated the transparency jutsu and his wide black eyes jumped to her. She smiled sheepishly.
Sakura threw the unconscious Kabuto into the bathroom, slammed the door closed, and slapped a- very expensive- sound dampening seal on the door. (She was vey lucky the missions with the Uzumaki were basically all S-rank, she might have had to budget if she suddenly went back to D or C ranks.) It would be easier to just kill the teen, but she didn't want to risk pissing off Orochimaru anymore than she was already going to. She was mostly banking on the Sannin's indifference to putting in the effort to find her to escape at the end of this.
"Sorry, hedgehog!" She said, walking over to the bed to snag the ANBU files and shove them deep into her pack. "I always forget that jutsu's activated." She leant over the teen's shoulder and looked down at the painted bear. "That's really incredible. If I wasn't a shinobi that's the kind of thing I would get as a tattoo, you know?"
His eyes went dramatically wide and they glistened with unshed tears. It was kind of disturbing. After a week of millimetre changes the difference was stark.
"You would really get this tattooed on you?" He asked, his voice much higher pitched then normal.
"If it wouldn't get me killed to have such identifying marks, absolutely." She said matter of factly. She wouldn't, tattoos were too polarising in too many social circles, but New Kid didn't need to know that.
"My chest feels warm." He said, looking down at the picture.
"That's happiness, my friend." Sakura walked over to the table and sat down at the edge of it. "Now, I am here to give you a choice. As far as I see it, you have four options.
"Option one." She held up her first finger. "You stay here, I leave, when Kabuto wakes you free him, tell him an intruder came, took the ANBU files and you fought them off. You'll probably be killed without the files but maybe not.
"Option two." Her second finger went up. "You precede with your mission to kill Sasuke, I take the ANBU files and will not interfere with the battle, then I'll do my own thing with whoever is left.
"Option three." Her third finger went up. "You simply leave. I have probably ten minutes or so of work to do here but after that you'd be welcome to accompany me back to Konoha, or you could go wherever. I'm happy to say that Sasuke killed you if you wanted to move to Iwa to paint birds or something.
"Option four." Her fourth finger went up. "You attempt to capture Sasuke. I aid you in this endeavour, I'd reckon there's a fifty fifty chance we'd succeed, though the moment Orochimaru shows up we're ditching. Then we leave and again you could go wherever."
The New Kid seemed very overwhelmed. Only noticeable by the tiniest draw in of the brows and parting of the lips.
"Why would you lie about my death for me?" He asked and she grinned.
"Well, for one, I'm pretty into free will. People are much, much more interesting when they're not just bowing under the choices others make for them, and you don't seem like you've gotten much of a choice otherwise." Her grin turned scheming. She wasn't lying. She did always find it interesting the kinds of options people would choose, even if she didn't actually let them go through with those choices. "And secondly, my taicho ordered me to proceed as I saw fit after entering the compound and gather information, so if I see fit to lie to the Hokage for a friend and stop at the hot springs on the way back to Konoha that's perfectly within my mission parameters." She frowned. "I would totally lie for you even if it wasn't, I just wouldn't stop at the hot springs."
"There is a fifth option you haven't mentioned."
"There is?" She asked.
"I could attack you and take the files, thus ensuring my original plan comes to fruition." He didn't sound particularly serious about it, more like he was just evaluating all his options, but she still felt a hot spike of anger all the same. New Kid was on thin ice, his usefulness draining more and more every time he mentioned turning her personal information of people she cared about to the enemy.
"No." She said, voice firm.
"It's simply an op-"
"I'm telling you, it's not." She hissed. "You try to even set a finger on those files again and I promise there won't even be a fingernail left of your body when I'm done with you." Killing intent filled the room but she pulled it in quickly. Leery of setting off anyone's senses.
"Why do you care so much about them?" New Kid asked, his eyes wider than normal.
"Because if I hadn't taken it out before we got here, I would be one of them." She said, not actually revealing anything beyond what you could find out in the village gossip rounds, and his eyes widened even further. "And I couldn't take out all of my teammates."
"There is a sharp pain in my chest when I think of my actions." He said and she smiled softly.
"That's regret. It means your sorry. Thank you." She said and he nodded, eyes narrowing infinitesimally in DETERMINATION.
"I want to capture Uchiha Sasuke to take him back to Konoha for the sake of my teammates and friends."
She almost audibly sighed in response, feeling a wave of disappointment at the answer. She'd been looking forward to throwing New Kid at the Uchiha and seeing how long he could survive, but orders were orders and her best chance of capturing Uchiha was unfortunately with help so she made sure to cheer happily instead.
"Alright! Oh, I nearly forgot." She rummaged through her pack and threw him the small book.
"You found it." He said, holding it gently.
"Don't worry, I didn't look through it, your porn stash remains unseen." She winked.
He blushed. Just the tiniest dusting of pink on the tips of his ears and across the tops of his cheekbones that was oddly adorable.
"Totally a hedgehog." She muttered and walked over to the bathroom door.
She threw it open to find Kabuto still tied up but with his ear pressed to the wood. He collapsed onto the ground and lines of red appeared down his arms.
"Where is Uchiha Sasuke?"
"He should be done with his training about now and back in his inner chamber. There are a large number of rooms strewn throughout the lair. If you end up looking in each as you go, you might find him." Kabuto said, a nasty grin on his face. "Still, if you aren't careful, you might chance upon a snake as well. Orochimaru keeps his quarters in about the same area, after all."
"Thank you for your honesty." She replied and made to swing the door into his face but halted it at the last minute. She slowly swung it back open, eyes narrowed consideringly. "We're not going to kill him, just show him he power of love and friendship and punching and take him back to Konoha. And just because you healed me." She then pushed further inside the room with a foot, stopping him from taking the door to his face, and then slammed it closed.
Sakura turned to New Kid.
"Alright, I don't suppose you have any way of finding him? My birds are useless underground."
"I do." He then bent down and drew a clean scroll and ink, painting tiny mice all over it before holding a seal and releasing them. They sprinted out the door and ran in different directions. After around five minutes or so he opened his eyes and nodded.
She grinned. As they left she locked the room door, kindly leaving the key in the middle of the floor.
"Keep your chakra level until the fight, if we get into a bad situation I can emergency shunshin us out but it'll use most of my energy reserves." She said as she followed him down the corridors. "My stealth doesn't work against the Sharingan so count that out, but if you provide long range support I'll be able to hold him off from your position. And a reminder, Orochimaru shows up, we take the first opportunity to leave."
He nodded.
They spent the remainder of the jog in silence, until they came across a door and he stopped. She gestured for him to go ahead. She had no chance sneaking up on a Sharingan user as she was.
He painted a series of snakes and sent them crawling in.
"Who's there?" Came the soft voice of the Uchiha.
"Caught me redhanded. Still, I've already acquired the upper hand." New Kid said.
"What is it that you want?"
"I intend to take you back to Konoha!" He answered, the beginnings of a genuine smile on his face. "Although I did originally come here in order to kill you, I want to work to make my own decisions with the support of my friends."
"Friends?" The voice whispered. "You woke me up to talk about friends?"
He'd been sleeping? Sakura scowled. She hadn't even considered that possibility considering it was mid-afternoon and still very, very bright outside. She totally could have grabbed him whilst he'd slept.
Ah well, at least the fight should be fun.
New Kid pumped chakra into his technique to counter the Uchiha's own surge and the building exploded. Sakura grabbed New Kid and punched upwards through a chunk of rock to land them both on top of the caved in stone.
"You live up to your reputation." New Kid said. "To be able to overpower my jutsu is quite something." He straightened and stood beside her. "But I am not alone."
"Ah, is it Sakura?" The Uchiha said, Sharingan pinwheeling lazily.
"Sasuke-kun." She crooned mockingly, a mimic of the night he left. Maybe it was because of her time with the New Kid but the way the Uchiha's brows furrowed just slightly in anger was immediately obvious.
"Does that mean the others are here as well?"
"Just us. Naruto tried but our taicho had to take him to hospital after a fight on the way here and Kakashi was already in the hospital when we left. Team Seven luck, you know how it is." Sakura waved a hand dismissively. "But Sasuke-kun! I just want to say I was watching the fight at the valley of the end." His expression pinched. "And I'm proud, you didn't kill Naruto. Maybe you aren't a hypocrite.
"But you know what else you aren't?" She said, drawing and pointing her chokutō at the teen. Her voice went dangerously flat. "A Mangyekou Sharingan wielder. And that means I can beat you."
New Kid had pulled out a scroll, brush and ink, retreating to the back of the fighting area. Completely trusting she would keep the Uchiha away from him.
Sasuke moved in a blur of movement but Sakura tracked it, swung under the arm he raised and slashed her chokutō towards his kidneys. Sasuke pivoted, ducking backwards to dodge and drew his own blade. Sakura danced backwards as he gave chase, dodging blows rather than blocking them, as ink created animals slithered and scurried over the ground.
Just as they swarmed up Sasuke's legs she stepped inwards and blocked a swipe with her sword, intending to follow it up with a fist to the gut.
It didn't block. The sword simply went through her chokutō.
Sakura leapt backwards and stared in horror at the half of a sword in her hands. She looked back up to a smug looking Sasuke, who was bursting lightning chakra out of his body to destroy the ink animals.
"Your choice of defence. Quite the mistake." He said, lightning crackling around him. "You see, this sword, Kusanagi, I hold here is a little special. It's the kind that can't be blocked." The lightning chakra wound down.
Despite its resemblance to her own enhanced state, it seemed to prevent him from moving and instead do an area of effect attack. It was a pity for him she was a lighting type. She took the opportunity to throw off her shoes.
"Does it conduct chakra?" She asked.
"Of course." He answered, as if any other answer was inconceivable to him. She smiled, threw her sword to the side and dumped the sheath.
"I'll be taking that one then." She said, and spread her elemental transformation over herself, feeling the familiar buzzing of energy hastening her cells.
Sasuke's eyes widened but he was quickly distracted by a swarm of birds, having to swing wildly at them with a lightning coated sword and jump backwards to avoid their attacks. Sakura took the opportunity to dash into his guard, slipping in between an attack and smashing one palm towards his sword welding elbow and the other towards his stomach. He avoided the elbow hit and but got caught on the gut and went flying.
It shouldn't injure him- giving him a burst stomach was not conducive to capture- but it would wind him.
She darted forwards at the same time as three man-sized ink-wolves came in from the other three cardinal directions. Sasuke braced and, just as they were about to hit, he threw out another wave of lightning chakra from all over his body.
The ink wolves melted but Sakura had been expecting it. She channeled the electricity into her hands and down through her feet and into the ground, the move causing cracklings of lightning through her own blue rings of storm. It was exceptionally difficult to do, even most lightning users couldn't achieve it without taking some damage, but this was the kind of shit Sakura was good at.
Sasuke's eyes widened and he attempted to throw himself backwards but Sakura had caught the wrist of his sword arm and slammed her other hand into its elbow. The careful pulse of pressurised chakra bent the arm violently in the wrong direction and he screamed, dropping the sword. She caught it and twirled, aiming for a non-lethal thing slash, but he managed to just barely through himself backwards to dodge it. A good pain tolerance then. Sakura wondered how, exactly, Orochimaru had been teaching him.
Eyes wide and brows pushed low in anger, he grabbed the bottom of his broken arm and pulled it straight with another bitten off scream, even as she chased him from rock to rock. She was pretty annoyed that without ink monsters attacking him he was faster than her, easily reading her movements with his Sharingan, but she supposed that was why she hadn't planned to do this alone.
Sasuke launched forward, good arm aiming to punch at her. His eyes spun in dizzying circles. She moved to 'dodge' but really just kept him in line with the ink monkey that launched itself onto his head, clawing at his shoulders and pulling at his bad arm. Sasuke freaked and started sparking bursts of lightning wildly from seemingly random tenketsu. Sakura rammed the end of the sword towards his temple at the same time she pulled the sheath out of the back of his… belt?
She had just hit him, sending him tumbling into unconsciousness and towards the ground, when he disappeared and reappeared being carried like a sack under one arm by Orochimaru, Kabuto appearing next to him and looking down at the very beaten up boy disapprovingly.
Sakura sheathed her new sword, body-flickered next to the now standing New Kid and grabbed his arm, quickly covering him in chakra in preparation for an emergency shunshin. Bless the sweet, smart kid, he'd settled his chakra to make it easier for her as soon as she'd appeared next to him.
"That wasn't very polite." Orochimaru said, voice strangely bemused.
"Maybe, but to be fair we didn't kill him." She said. "Just gave him some lessons on not using lightning against a lightning type. And spacial awareness."
Orochimaru's head tilted. "True."
Wait, he was actually buying into this?
"But you also took his sword."
"Then he should get it back." She said determinedly. "You gave it to him, right?"
"Yes." He replied warily.
"Then this is a great lesson about taking care of his things." She said. "I mean you gave him what is the clearly the coolest sword in existence and he just drops it mid-battle?"
"You did break his arm quite violently."
"Then he should work to break my arm in return. He'll never be a good body if he just comes crying to you every time something goes wrong!"
"He has become more entitled lately." Orochimaru nodded, eyeing the mass destruction of what likely used to be a very expensive base.
"Exactly! Letting me keep the sword and making him battle for it will teach him independence and humility. And we promise to kill lots of Akatsuki if you let us leave!" She held up her available pinky and gave a winning smile. New Kid held up his own available pinky alongside his typical bland expression. "Pinky promise!"
"Don't be daft girl!" The man snarled, Kabuto leant closer to him and whispered. It was a good thing Sakura had such fantastic hearing.
"She was the one who killed Sasori and Deidara." Orochimaru's eyes widened.
"You're the boiler?!" He exclaimed. Sakura grimaced.
"Is that what they're calling me? I'm far more partial to Null-Storm myself." She said.
"You're the Null-Storm?!" The snake Sannin's eyes zeroed in on the scars on her cheek.
"…no?" She tried. He just smiled, a vision full of teeth.
"We'll let you two go." He snarled and Sakura felt the relief settle into her very bones. "But we'll also tip off Akastuki!"
"No!" She yelled but they were already gone in a wave of fire. "Assholes!"
"I though they didn't want to help Akatsuki?" New Kid asked, packing up his gear as she begun to pick her way towards her shoes and sword pieces.
"They don't. Akatsuki is filled with the kind of chauvinistic, contemptible people that will hear 'this girl killed two of your members' and think 'I want to throw myself at them to test my strength!', so they'll likely all line up one by one for me to kill them now."
"I do not understand."
"That's a good thing, that means you have more common sense than pride." She strapped on her shoes and wrapped her pieces of chokutō up in a torn off sleeve. "Unfortunately, the really strong people of the world often start strong and only get stronger, meaning that they're almost never beaten and gain an overly inflated ego. Once someone comes along to challenge their sense of self by being stronger than them, they either self implode and give up entirely or they throw themselves at the challenge over and over again until they win and the world is righted one more."
"So they are idiots."
"Yep! The people to truly worry about are the ones who used to be weak but have become strong through hard work. The people like Sasuke. They remember what it was like to be beaten into the dirt and they will fight all the dirtier because of it. Uchiha hasn't quite worked out fighting dirty yet, but I'm fairly certain that's because of puberty rather than his actual personality."
"That may be true. Even members of ROOT have grown strange as they hit the later teen years."
"You say that as if you haven't."
"I have not noticed any changes."
"You spent the entire mission getting into pissing contests with Naruto, purposefully riling him up in an attempt to prove your manly superiority."
"I… haven't, haven't I?"
"Rethink your behaviour of the last few days against the best possible chance of success for the mission."
"…I have behaved illogically."
"And that's a good thing. Logic only fails when there are emotions in the mix, now you just have to be able to figure out what those emotions are."
"I will do my best."
"I believe in you!"
"I see." The Hokage said. "And the reason it took so long to make it here?"
"Fatigue and the need for remedial hot water therapy, Hokage-sama." Sakura replied, voice monotone and face blank.
"You stopped at the hot springs." The Senju deadpanned.
"Taicho did say I could act however I saw fit." Sakura continued, keeping her voice and face blank.
"I'm docking your pay for this." Sakura couldn't help the way her hand tightened protectively around her cool new sword. The Senju's eyes fickered to the movement and her face became exasperated. "I'm not taking the sword you can keep the bloody thing. I'll dock a c-rank's worth from your mission payment." Sakura's hand loosened in relief.
"And so…?" The Hokage addressed to the room at large, the heavily bandaged Uzumaki predictably stepping forward to be loud and distracting. Sakura briefly wondered what that would look like at old age.
She vowed to never, ever wonder such a thing again.
"We aren't giving up!" He cried determinedly.
"Very well."
Sakura climbed in through the window with great difficulty. She had to essentially go in head first and use her feet on the top of the frame to push herself through. She landed with her head on the ground and the legs flopped over the top of the giant plushy.
After a moment of wiggling, she managed to free herself and pushed up to standing, placing the black and white hedgehog plushy next to the other four on the end of the bed. The end of the bed was now half of the bed.
"Hi sensei!" She said cheerfully before pausing. He was sitting up, which was a much better sign than last time, and he was wearing a suspiciously familiar looking tank top with mask combination. "Are you wearing an ANBU uniform. As pyjamas?"
Hatake glanced down at the top, patted it a little and looked back at her. Zero shame in the lone open eye. "It's soft." She snorted.
It was soft, yes, because they were ridiculously expensive.
"How do you even get them to make them with the mask?" She asked, pulling her customary chair over to the side of the bed from the far corner of the room. For some reason shinobi had a habit on perching on far away walls and window sills when they came to visit people, like they were afraid being injured was catching.
"I threatened to quit." He answered, flipping a page in Icha Icha.
"And now that you're not ANBU?"
"They think I'll come back if they're nice to me." He said and she chuckled, settling into her chair with a yawn. "Who's the hedgehog?"
"New Kid." She said, gesturing to the plushy lazily. "Pokey on the outside, squishy goodness on the inside."
"Does New Kid have a name?"
"He was assigned Sai but I don't know if he actually likes it so I've been calling him New Kid or Hedgehog." She rubbed a hand through her hair, the scalp smarting after having been in braids all day. "He's pretty cool, but you'll destroy him." An eyebrow was raised and a page turned. "He has zero social skills. Zero. Doesn't understand humour or sarcasm or jokes at all."
"Aah." Hatake said, the noise sounding alarmingly excited. "And Tenzō?"
"Tenzō has yet to earn a plushy." Sakura said, gaining two raised eyebrows. "He flubbed his first mission. He's got to gain back some respect." She held out for a half minute. "But he's totally a racoon, soft and cute and friendly until he's suddenly demonic."
"Mhm." The noise was agreeable so Sakura mentally clapped herself on the back for nailing it.
After a few more minutes of comfortable silence spent sitting and staring sleepily out the window, Hatake dropped the book and turned a exasperated eye on her. "Did anything interesting happen on the mission?" He deadpanned and Sakura grinned, pushing forward to lean on her elbows whilst she excitedly explained the past week to him.
"…And I know I couldn't actually see, but I know I hit his neck. I felt the sword scrape bone, so it had have gone almost all the way through but he just returned five minutes later, nothing apparently the matter.
"So then we had this weird creepy bonding session and I convinced the creep to heal my eyes, since otherwise I couldn't go on with the mission and they wanted me around to kill Akatsuki anyway, and he improved them. Drastically.
"It'll be great for missions, but I was already having problems dealing with the sheer amount of movement in Konoha…"
"This time I was the one who befriended and converted New Kid to our side, Naruto didn't pull his weight at all!"
"And then he got all gross and teary eyed because I said I would get a tattoo of his drawing if I wasn't a shinobi…"
"…Kashi, would it be weird if I buried my Chokutō?"
"There's a hill dedicated to weapons in the cemetery."
"So I convinced Orochimaru that Sasuke was a small, bratty child in his care-"
"Not entirely inaccurate."
"And letting me keep his things after he 'discards' them was an appropriate punishment for the boy."