When Sakura awoke it was to an annoying beeping noise, the scratchy feeling of over-washed linen and the sight of a sullen Uzumaki sitting by her bedside. She was in a hospital and like any good shinobi, especially good ANBU, she felt the immediate and irrepressible urge to escape.
This attempt was far more successful than the last and she got to sitting with only minimal difficulty, the last of the anaesthetic making the world spin strangely and her limbs feel oddly detached from herself.
"Sakura-chan! You're awake!" The Uzumaki cried and she suddenly had her arms and lap full of orange and yellow, effectively cutting her escape attempt short.
"Hey, Naruto." She said softly. "I'm glad to see you're alright." The boy wilted in her arms, returning to the plastic chair next to her bed with a crushed expression.
"They got Sasuke." He said, voice dejected. "We weren't fast enough and they took him."
"That's alright, I'm positive you did your best." Sakura said, patting a knee comfortingly even as her eyes traced the room for escape options. "We'll just have to get him next time."
"I don't know." Uzumaki whispered, like he was sharing a massive secret rather than perfectly reasonable doubts when faced with their success history. "I just… feel like I don't understand him anymore."
Sakura paused from where she'd been rummaging through the various cupboards and drawers, looking for her stuff, and turned back to him with a frown. She weighed her options for a moment. On the one hand, she really just wanted to leave, grab a smoothie and go see if she could find Hatake or Shiranui to bother. On the other, Uzumaki was genuinely distraught about this and simply walking out on him would make their friendship suffer.
She wasn't really attached to Uzumaki, not in the way she was attached to a few others in her life, but she'd put a lot of effort into their friendship and she did feel some affection for the boy. Uzumaki was like a particularly well trained working animal. She'd put effort into shaping their relationship into one he'd be dependant on positioning herself as his emotional support so she could reap the rewards of such a relationship when he was politically powerful (he was he son of the fourth, favoured by the past and current Hokages- not to mention the Kazekage- and would be ridiculously powerful at his peak. Him making his dream of Hokage just seemed inevitable). That effort had taken time which had led to her feeling possessive over what she'd built and experience a spillover into genuine camaraderie. What had, at first, been grating and obnoxious had grown on her to become endearing. His enthusiastic overeagerness and determined optimism now made him seem more like Labrador than a brightly coloured wasp.
"I'm afraid I don't get what you mean." She said, the decision obvious. She couldn't throw years of work under the bus just because she was grouchy, no matter how tempting smoothies were.
"It's just…" Uzumaki looked unsure before becoming suddenly determined. "Why didn't he come back after killing Orochimaru? After killing Itachi? What's he driven by? Why is he going so far for any of this? I don't get it!" His eyes were glassy as he spewed his frustrations. Sakura blinked back at him.
"Do you need to?" She asked and he frowned, confused.
"Of course! He's my friend, isn't he? Shouldn't I understand where he's coming from?" Uzumaki seemed genuinely perplexed and Sakura hummed, grabbing the bundle of clothes and weaponry and placing it on the bed, hiking herself to sit on the bedsheets and stare at him seriously.
"It's impossible to completely understand another person, Naruto." She said and he seemed to wilt. "Everyone has different experiences, everyone has different ways of thinking and everyone has different feelings. Even two identical twins who were never separated from birth will have slightly different perspectives from each other. And you know what?" She smiled. "That's what makes humans so amazing!"
"What do you mean?" He asked. "If we can't understand each other how can we ever live together peacefully?"
"What makes Konoha so great? Why do we have such a great track record compared to, say, Kirigakure?"
"The trees?"
"Teamwork!" She replied and he smiled sheepishly. "But why is teamwork so effective?"
"Um, because it lets people use their unique abilities in conjunction with each other, maximising their potential?" The Uzumaki said in the manner of someone repeating a phrase that had been belted into their head. She nodded.
"Exactly! If I put you and Shino on a team and told you to capture a giant rhinoceros, could you work together to use your individual, unique abilities and capture that rhino far more quickly and efficiently then you could have each done on your own?" She asked and he nodded, expression pinched. "Do you understand the mechanism behind Shino's bugs? The exact relationship between him and the hive, or how he controls them during battle?"
"No, not at all."
"Right! Because you don't need to perfectly understand a person to work together with them, you just need to respect their differences and have the compassion to listen and take into account their own feelings and experiences." She said, Uzumaki had a look of dawning hope on his face. "Finding peace with each other isn't about thinking exactly the same, but instead about understanding that you will never fully understand a person, that their unique perspective doesn't hamper your relationship, but instead broaden it. Every single person on this earth has something that's purely their own to give. Cherishing what makes us each different and being cherished for our differences in return is what makes the bonds between us truly special.
"At least, that's just my personal perspective on things, as a friend I would cherish getting to hear your own sometime."
Uzumaki looked lost in thought so she took the opportunity to dig out a scroll with a fresh change of clothes and dress in the corner. A more civilian outfit, she found herself clad in a soft yellow sundress that's short skirt stopped conveniently above her thigh holsters. Ninja sandals strapped on and Kusanagi slung over her back, she felt suitably like she hadn't been unconscious in a hospital room for days. She tied on her forehead protector, put her hair into a quick bun and grinned at the Uzumaki.
"Come on, Naruto. I'll shout you lunch if you assist with my daring escape." She said and he smiled at her, looking far more cheered than he had a few minutes ago.
"Careful Sakura-chan, should you be moving around already?" A voice drawled from the doorway. She turned shot a poisonous look at the slouched man. Hatake did not look up from his porn.
"What the medics don't know won't hurt them." She said, echoing his own response to the question.
"Unfortunately, the Godaime needs to see us." He said, closing the book with a clap. "I'm on strict orders not to let you walk until you've been checked out, so…" A wheelchair appeared in front of him.
"I refuse." Sakura deadpanned, his eye turned into a puppy dog look.
"You'd make me disobey the Hokage?" His voice comically shocked. Sakura opened her mouth to argue back but something in his expression stopped her. His eye was a little too lined, a little too pinched, and there was an unusual weight dragging down his shoulders. A terrible feeling rose in her gut and she clicked her mouth closed, huffed in annoyance and plonked down onto the seat, shifting Kusanagi between her legs.
A lump landed on her lap as she did and she blinked. It was a teddy bear, perfectly generic looking and around the size of the average baby. It looked like the kind of thing you'd win off an incredibly cheap carnival game.
Sakura loved it.
She positioned it against her side and found a completely genuine grin on her face.
"Off we go then, my lazy chauffeur!" She said with a flourish and Hatake twisted the wheelchair to point out the door, calling behind him.
"C'mon Naruto."
They headed for the Hokage's office, Sakura finding she actually quite enjoyed being able to sit back and relax for the journey. She resolved to put off getting her leg checked out for as long as possible.
The white-haired Sannin's summons were outside the office and refused to share any information with a very confused Uzumaki, causing the twisting in her stomach to only grow worse. It didn't help that she could see Hatake's hands tightening out of the corner of her vision the closer they got to Hokage tower.
They entered the office to find the Hokage, New Kid, the Hokage's assistant, a series of toad's and even the Hokage's assistant's pig all wearing morose expressions. New Kid in particular, despite his face being almost entirely blank, looked extremely concerned for Uzumaki. Hatake pushed her wheelchair over to one side, next to New Kid, and leant against the handles. His knuckles were white.
"So this here boy's Jiraiya-chan's pupil?" The old toad asked. Sakura eyed the creature warily. In the civilian world old meant fragile, but this was a ninja toad. In the ninja world, old meant dangerous.
"Yes, this is Uzumaki Naruto." Said the Hokage, her eyes looking suspiciously close to tears. "The 'destined child' I supposed." Sakura's eyebrows furrowed.
Did this world have prophecy?!
"A grandpa frog now? What gives?" Uzumaki said, showing his usual amount of tact.
"What your tone Naruto!" Snapped the Hokage. "This is one of the great head hermits of Myouboku Mountain, Fukasaku-sama! He came all the way here to help you!"
"Head Hermit Toads, if you wanna get all formal." Said the toad. "Anyways, you're Jiraiya-chan's pupil, yeah?"
"Chan?… Chan?! What, do you think Ero-Sennin's your summoned animal! What the hell's old wrinkly frog's problem." Sakura wondered if Uzumaki was completely incapable of reading a room, or if his odd perceptiveness was striking again and he was simply getting aggressive to distract from the fact the room felt like a funeral.
"I said watch your mouth! He's Jiraiya-sama's teacher, a great and wise figure who taught him hermit-style ninjutsu!"
"Haha! Ero-Sennin! Ya got the same attitude as yer master, kiddo!"
"All right, old toad, what do you wanna tell me?"
"Where do I start…" The toad's face crumpled back to devastated. "Guess I'd better just say it. Jiraiya-chan was killed in battle."
Sakura's breath caught and she unconsciously leant forward in her seat. Whoever had killed the white-haired Sannin would have to have been monstrously strong.
Her hearing picked up the almost completely inaudible, unnaturally controlled breaths behind her. The sound of someone forcing themselves into calm.
Had the Sannin and Hatake been close? She supposed it made sense, the pervert had trained the fourth and the fourth had trained Hatake after all. He would have been the shinobi equivalent of a grandson or a nephew to the white haired Sannin.
Sakura shifted under the guise of taking the weight off her leg, just 'coincidentally' touching the bare skin of her neck to where Hatake's thumb was sitting over the front of the handle. She flickered her signature to mimic his and back again, the flow of warmth starting and stopping in question.
The thumb, and Hatake's breathing, froze for a moment before it shifted to press further into her skin. She flickered her signature back to mimicking his and enjoyed the warmth. As she hadn't gotten to since the night Monkey died.
A night she had deeply regretted since, considering she'd clearly freaked Kakashi out and inadvertently stopped the chakra sharing altogether. It was like she'd gotten addicted to having long, hot baths filled with expensive bath bombs and the best fragrances every night and then she'd cried in it and covered the bathroom's floors with blood and entrails and her bath had run away forever as a result, leaving her relying on nothing but cold buckets of water for her cleanliness.
She listened to the retelling of the fight even as she kept half an ear focused on the way Kakashi's breathing was evening out and becoming more natural. Once it had stabilised the thumb disappeared but she kept her signature matching his- half in hope, half in invitation- and couldn't stop the way her hands' grip on Kusanagi relaxed a little when the thumb returned halfway through the toad's retelling.
"During the fight Pein crushed poor Jiraiya-chan's throat. Before he fell for the last time, he left one final message." The old toad whipped of his cloak and turned around, revealing numbers carved into his back.
There was a conversation happening around her but Sakura was stuck on the idea of toads having a concept of nudity. Most of the intelligent seeming toads wore some kind of clothing, was modesty a concept in ninja toads? Was this old toad doing the equivalent of flashing for toads? Did he have a significant other that should be getting mad at this?
…Did toads have significant others?
Then the Hokage was telling the story of the 'destined child' and Sakura was absorbed again. Apparently this world did have prophesies. What did that suggest about free will? Did Sakura's presence affect it or was she also destined to exist?
Unfortunately for Sakura, the tale ended fairly quickly and everyone but her was ordered to leave. She mourned the loss of the warmth as Hatake left. The Hokage gave her a quick examination, glowing green hand being kept pressed over her leg as she went through a series of stretches and movements, and proclaimed her free to walk on her own if not to train before she had a more in depth scan. In a show of pettiness, Sakura left the wheelchair behind as she left, her brand new teddy bear clutched against her chest.
The itchy discomfort of her scalded chakra system had slowly come back during the process, making her moodier than usual. It was something she hadn't even registered had disappeared when she was absorbing Hatake's chakra, but now was painfully obvious.
Sakura headed home grumpy, mind whirling through what she'd learn about the fight. There was something niggling about it, some suspicion she should be able to put the pieces together, but she just couldn't pin it down.
She scowled.
(Hatake found her that night and drained the rest of his reserves before disappearing, from that point onwards he started once again finding her every night they were both in the village.)
Sakura rapidly began to settle into a routine. She had a specialise eating plan, frequent doctors visits and scheduled shifts like a paper ninja.
The guard duty was not completely unenjoyable, it was set up so that for each twenty four hours there were four teams of four. Two for each twelve, the two squads swapping between guarding and taking a break every two hours. For the most part the squads used those breaks to train, running drills and throwing themselves into spars. It mean that whilst Sakura spent a very boring six hours a day in full stealth, perched in the rafters over the Hokage's head, the continuous amount of time spent like that wasn't long enough to be physically uncomfortable and she was able to spend a lot of time honing her skills.
The problem, however, was her increasingly growing brutality as the days went by.
She found herself having to consciously avoid using chakra-enhanced punches, automatically lunging for fatal points and having to turn away at the last second. It was becoming more and more difficult to simply end the fight when the spar was finished.
She considered begging to be let out on a mission, but held back. As much as the Hokage was aware she was a psychopath that enjoyed killing- the psychological evaluations in this world were actually competent- admitting to needing to kill to the point where she was worried she might end up attacking her own comrades would simply make her a liability and Sakura would inevitably be thrown into a padded cell in psych.
So instead, to distract from the increasingly aggravated monster inside her, she focused on making her enforced time within the village as productive as possible.
The first step to doing so was trying every restaurant in the village. She dragged any number of tagalongs with her, dipping into her frankly ridiculous amount of savings to shout people meals.
The second step was losing this body's virginity. Sakura was curious and she was a few days away from seventeen with a body that- whilst distinctly petite, short with lithe muscle and delicate bones instead of significant curves- could no longer be mistaken for a child's. Sakura had no moral hangups about putting on one of her skimpier outfits, heading to a bar and letting the attractive older man with the honey coloured hair pick her up.
Considering the age of consent in this world- at least in the villages, the more rural you went the more backwards civilians became and it wasn't uncommon for girls to be married off as soon as they got their first period- was fifteen and her status was a jōnin likely meant no one would've have been prosecuted if she'd had sex earlier- even if it would have been heavily frowned upon and the other party probably would have been lynched by Shiranui and Hatake- no one else would have any issues with her decision either. Well, no one she needed to listen too.
Sakura absentmindedly pulled the cigarette out of the man's mouth before he could light it.
He groaned and slid further into the bed. "Tracking?" He guessed, voice half muffled by a pillow..
"Assassination." She corrected, grabbing Kusanagi from the bedside and padding across the room to pick up her clothes. She distantly noted that the pile had more weaponry than fabric and eyed where she'd propped Kusanagi.
Was she being paranoid?
She dismissed the thought. She was in ANBU, of course she was paranoid. It wasn't like she hadn't killed people whilst they were distracted having sex before.
"Can I use your shower?" She asked and the man under the mass of blankets made a vaguely affirmative sounding grunt.
She showered, dressed, and slipped out the bathroom window.
Sex was… different in this body. As Tristan he would orgasm and he would feel good. Simple, straightforward, easy to understand. Sakura, however, had come twice during the experience and yet felt entirely indifferent to the whole business.
She sighed and dug a pair of cookie dough balls from the freezer, absentmindedly grabbing a second pair when there was a soft thud on her living room windowsill.
The freshly baked cookies in one hand and two glasses of milk in the other, Sakura headed for the dining room to see Hatake already sitting at a chair, porn in hand. Kusanagi left in the kitchen. She settled into the chair next to him, putting down the cookies and automatically taking his outstretched hand, signature mimicking his. There was a strange tension in his shoulders but she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts and the itchy feeling of the monster under her skin to read into it.
Sakura relaxed into the chair and let her mind quiet. Her eyes flutter shut and her more murderous impulses lessen.
The comfortable silence reigned as Kakashi's chakra drained and the cookies disappeared.
All too soon, the warmth settled down to an enjoyable hum and in the next second Hatake had disappeared in a swirl of leaves.
She frowned. It had been a while since he'd shunshined away.
Sakura watched the group bundle in from the rafters, the Uzumaki practically bouncing where he stood as they waited for the messenger to return with the old toad.
"We should get Sakura and Sai, as well!" He proclaimed and the Hokage shook her head.
"Sai is out of the village on a mission. Sakura is busy." She said and Uzumaki scowled, pacing with agitation. Sakura smiled as Hatake casually scratched his chin and used the movement to disguise looking over the ANBU in the rafters. He wouldn't be able to see her, but he would be able to spot the other three. Considering there were four guards on the Hokage at all times, he could likely guess she was there.
Sakura wasn't entirely sure how Hatake knew everything that happened in the ANBU but she was half sure he was bribing the commander. Or the commander was trying to bribe Hatake back into the shadow ranks.
The old toad and his living wheelchair moved into the room, the toad looking curiously between the assembly. The toad hopped up onto the Hokage's desk and Uzumaki handed him a sheet of paper.
"We've cracked the code Ero-Sennin left on you!" He exclaimed.
"The real one isn't with them?" The toad asked and Sakura's brows furrowed, a niggling in the back of her brain telling her that she should know the answer to this, but she didn't know why.
"All right Papa Sennin, what do you think?" The Uzumaki asked, visibly growing more and more distressed the longer the toad didn't say anything. "Does it make sense to you?"
"Dunno." The toad said. "This' too vague to give a definite answer."
"Okay," Said the Nara. "But what was your first thought when you read it?"
"I've already told you all I know about Pein, these are men who've revived themselves from the dead, I ain't going to start makin' guesses."
Sakura tilted her head. It sounded similar what to Sasori-
She froze. They were puppets. The real one wasn't with them because they were all puppets, just being controlled by another body from a distance somehow.
She spent half a second changing her hair black before she jumped off the rafters, landing next to the group in a crouch and stopping her transparency jutsu.
"Hokage-sama." She said tonelessly. Uzumaki jumped wildly and twisted to look at her, as did the very frazzled looking member of the cryptology department. The Nara flinched but Hatake, the Hokage and the old toad simply turned to look at her entirely calmly.
"Sparrow, you have something to say?" The Hokage said, curiosity in her voice.
"Sasori of the Red Sand used human bodies as puppets." She explained and the Nara sucked in a breath in realisation. "From the Hermit Head Toad's description of the fight and the clue, it sounds as though Pein is using something similar to the Yamanaka clan techniques and controlling the dead bodies as puppets."
"The real one isn't with them!" The Nara proclaimed. "They're all just puppets, being controlled by one man, that would explain their shared knowledge and ability to share lines of vision!"
"Anything else to add, Sparrow?" The Hokage said.
"No, Hokage-sama."
"Return to your post." She said and Sakura swept her transparency jutsu back on, leaping into the rafters.
"Who was that? Why was there an ANBU in your office?" The Uzumaki said.
"Sparrow is a member of my guard." The Hokage replied, the Nara was muttering under his breath.
"You have bodyguards?" The Uzumaki asked, tone genuinely incredulous.
"I'm the Hokage." She deadpanned.
"So long as we cannot get to the main body, we won't be able to defeat Pein, but if we could figure out the mechanism behind how the man is controlling them, we might be able to track it back to the source and take him down." The Nara said. "We likely won't be able to figure out any further until the interrogation and autopsy is complete, but they should be informed of the new revelations."
"I'll leave that to you, Shikamaru." She said and the Nara nodded, heading for the doors. The Cryptology member trailed after him.
Uzumaki made a scene, but the old toad headed it off before it could become a real problem with the promise of more training.
The guards disappeared and the Hokage swiped a bloody thumb under her desk. Barrier seals slamming into place.
"This is an S-rank mission." The Hokage said, her voice and expression serious. "Completely off the books and purely between us."
"Another favour." Sakura said and the woman nodded.
"What do you want in return?"
"I'm not sure." Sakura replied, tipping her head. "How about an IOU?"
"Fine, but it has to be reasonable." The Hokage said and Sakura nodded acceptance easily. "Shimura Danzō is too dangerous to be allowed to continue but he is also too powerful to be taken down legally."
"You want me to assassinate him."
Sakura almost smiled against the wave of relief. It looked like the monster would be fed after all. Her skin had started feeling too tight for her body and food had had begun tasting like anything from cardboard to lemon juice. Even as she watched the Hokage images of the woman's throat slit and the fresh blood on Sakura's hands were playing behind her eyes.
She needed this.
"Yes." The Senju said. "I want you to kill him inside the ROOT headquarters, make it look like an inside job, and then make enough commotion 'escaping' to allow me to send an ANBU squad to investigate."
"With only thirty percent of my chakra available." Sakura sighed.
"I have faith in your abilities."
"It's going to be a big favour." She warned.
"I could make you my successor?" The Hokage said hopefully, Sakura snorted.
"You're not getting out of hell that easily, Hokage-sama."