Sakura was laughing. There were tears at the corner's of her eyes and her face was flushed. A half eaten ramen bowl sat before her. The Uzumaki devouring bowls on her left and Hatake reading porn above an empty one on her right.
"Mid sentence!" She laughed, a hand clutching her ribs and the other half fisted and covering her mouth, chopsticks hanging loosely from her grip. "You know I can't tell if Team Seven has the worst luck or the best." She said, finally calming. Hatake raised an eyebrow at her. "Everything always goes to shit, but then we're always saved just in the nick of time."
"It's totally true!" The Uzumaki agreed between mouthfuls of noodles. "Do we get into these situations because we're Team Seven or do we survive these situations because we're Team Seven?"
"Such is the fundamental question about the meaning of the universe." Sakura added, her smile aching her cheeks.
"Maa, it's almost like my cute little students don't think I'd be a good Hokage." Hatake drawled, his voice teasing in a way that made the Uzumaki grin, but Sakura picked up the layer of actual insecurity beneath it. She sobered, setting down her chopsticks and turning to look at the man seriously.
"Kakashi." She said and he glanced up to blink at her. "You would be a fucking fantastic Hokage." Her tone was entirely earnest.
"You totally would!" The Uzumaki agreed.
"I'm just happy you're not going to be put under the kind of stress leading a war would bring."
…Was Kakashi blushing?
There just the lightest dusting of red visible, just at the edge of Hatake's mask. Sakura stared.
She hadn't ever seen him blush before. Frankly, it hadn't even crossed her mind that he was capable of it. A smirk crossed her face. She'd already made it her mission to make New Kid blush as often as possible, it wouldn't be hard to extend that to Hatake too.
After all, what's some friendly teasing between friend. Just friends.
A soccer ball sized hole had appeared straight through the training ground wall.
Sakura stared.
Aside from the fact that the wall was over three metres thick of solid stone, she could also see the hole continue through the trees on the other side, slowly getting thinner and thinner until it finally stopped about the length of a football pitch away.
Shiranui whistled behind her.
"What was that?" He asked, voice tinged with awe.
"A kekkai tōta." Sakura replied, still a little numb with shock at actually being able to produce such a thing. "Water, wind and lightning combined."
"How long have you been trying to figure that out?" He asked.
"About three years." She mumbled. "Though two of those were spent just learning how to use wind release." She turned wide eyes on the man. "That used up a third of my available reserves."
He grinned. "Wanna bet you can halve that?" She grinned back at him and turned, holding her hands in a diamond in front of her face and concentrating.
Every shinobi was naturally suited to producing certain nature transformations, these being their affinities, but that did not mean they weren't capable of producing others. For example, F-rank jutsu were considered jutsu that anyone could learn and produce easily. They were usually only small, like filling a water bottle or starting a campfire, and usually used an inordinate amount of hand signs. Fire being her hardest to produce element, it took Sakura twenty three to use the ANBU scroll burning jutsu.
Very few shinobi in history had managed to master all five elemental transformations. Sakura was quite determined to become one of them.
Unfortunately, the basic process of learning elements that weren't your affinity- at least according to the process documented by the Nidaime and if you wanted to use them as proficiently as your own affinity, which for Sakura meant producing the pure thing without handsigns- was not dissimilar to learning to punch mountains but much, much, much slower. The movement of the chakra had to be carved into your pathways until it felt completely natural to use, something achieved by performing a jutsu of that transformation over and over and over again. Shortly after joining the ANBU, Sakura had started with her easiest to perform non-affinity element. Wind.
Combining that into her storm chakra frankly went against everything they knew about kekkai genkai. The accepted theory of these was that certain people were born with the ability to produce combinations of elements, finding that they came naturally to them. Sakura's storm chakra was an example of this, whilst she didn't follow the common logic of kekkai genkai being passed though family lines, she found the chakra far easier to produce that simply lightning or water on its own. It was a known fact that people can only combine elements they have affinities with.
Sakura disagreed.
Chakra swirled between her hands, the lightning charged water cooling and hardening into an unbelievably sharp point, a hair thin senbon made of something that Tristan would describe as solid plasma spinning faster than the eye could see.
She released the technique, sending it shooting forward in a blur from her hands and forming a second hole above the first. This one was about the size of a trashcan. She'd managed to get the rotation to a much higher velocity this time.
Shiranui clapped behind her as she panted. Sweat had beaded on her forehead.
"That was only about nine percent of my chakra." She said with a smile. "And it was much easier than the first time." The senbon was shifting slowly in his mouth and his eyes were considering.
"Normally I wouldn't condone this kind of training, but we're leaving for Lightning to join the war effort in two days." Shiranui threw a tin of soldier pills at her. "I want this under five percent and almost instantaneous before we do."
Sakura nodded and bit into a soldier pill, grimacing at the rush of forced energy, and threw her hands back into position.
She had a lot of work to do.
Sakura woke up to a heavy weight on her brand new blanket in the bed of her brand new house. Rebuilding a village in a world with jutsu's and a military dictatorship perfectly willing to force their citizens to help the construction efforts took surprisingly little time. It also helped that her position as a jōnin gave her priority on replacing her belongings and she now had a slightly bigger house than the one that was levelled.
She didn't panic because she knew herself well enough to know that even if she didn't remember it she would have woken up the moment someone came into her room- the response she had been more than conditioned into thanks to Shiranui's complete disregard for privacy and Hatake's attitude that privacy only existed right up until he wanted something- and that she had just gone back to sleep meant she was fine with this arrangement. Instead she opened her eyes and immediately closed them again as a massive burst of terrible smelling, boiling air is blown straight into her face.
Sakura peeled her eyes back open to see a massive, floppy dog lying on top of her covers. Staring at her with his tail wagging wildly.
"Bull." She greeted, entirely confused by this turn of events. She'd never actually seen one of Hatake's ninken without either Hatake or Pakkun with them before.
"Smart girly!" He greeted back, in his tuba of a voice that the dog rarely used. He also, apparently, had been listening too much to Pakkun. The words blew another wash of dog breath into her face. She carefully pulled an arm out from under her blankets and pushed his head to face another direction. The contact made the giant dog's tail wag even harder and start panting out of excitement.
She considered demanded answers for a moment but Bull just kept getting more and more excited, tail wagging into a blur as she gently petted the top of his head. Sakura sighed.
"Get off and I'll make you breakfast."
Bull was off her bed in a second, tail wagging a mile a minute and now with added slobber trails hanging from his jowls. Sakura stumbled down to the kitchen and spent the morning tossing the giant dog balls of ground beef.
Later, when the ninken had disappeared into smoke and Sakura was feeling less like she'd woken up in some strange alternate reality, she caught up with Hatake just as he was walking between war preparation meetings.
"If you're going to send your dogs to my place you'd better be planning on paying me back for their breakfasts."
He just eye smiled and ruffled her hair and rushed off to do presumably important things. Which meant he never actually agreed to pay her back. The fucking asshole.
Sakura felt the seal click into place midway through draining a random chūnin's chakra. The Hokage, frustrated with the almost complete rhombus and stressed about leaving for the allied forces headquarters the next day, had ordered the shinobi in the village who weren't working to line up and let Sakura drain their chakra until it was complete.
It was an intensely surreal experience.
It was also completely different from finding the seal on her collarbones that Sakura was beginning to heavily suspect was not actually a seal of a hundred but instead just a weird, chakra fuelled Tristan-piggyback.
Not only did Sakura suddenly find herself with her full reserves available, but she found herself intimately aware of how every tiny drop of her chakra was moving and interacting with the world around her. In fact- Sakura frowned down at the hand in her grip, the chakra from the man no longer draining but her signature still mimicking his- she also found herself intimately aware of how every tiny drop of the man's chakra was moving and interacting with the world around him.
She pulled some from the man and it followed easily. She pushed some of hers into his and it blended seamlessly. Whilst it wasn't pleasant, the sensation like bugs under her skin, the difficulty of doing so had completely disappeared. The chūnin looked uncomfortable.
"Um, are we done? I can't feel it draining anymore." The man said, Sakura ignored him to instead look at the Hokage sitting next to her, the woman buried deep under a pile of paperwork she hadn't been able to stop her assistant from bringing from her office.
"Shishou." Sakura said and the woman looked up, glancing at the finished rhombus with a smile.
"What's it like?" She asked, eyes sparkling. "It's designed to dramatically increase your chakra control, what did it do for you?"
"I know everything." Sakura said, her eyes distant. "Every interaction between my chakra and my body down to the individual atom. But it's not overwhelming at all, even though that amount of information definitely should be."
"Fascinating." The woman mumbled.
"But it's not just that." Sakura said and pointed at the chūnin she was still holding hands with. "I also know all of that information about him, too."
The Hokage blinked, as if having just noticed that the line of shinobi were still waiting impatiently and there was an increasingly more disturbed looking chūnin on the other side of the desk. She stood and pulled on her booming speech voice. "Thank you all for sacrificing your chakra and your time tonight!" She cried. "Due to your help one of our village's strongest will be able to unleash her full powers on the front lines and will help lead us all to victory! Now go home, eat well and kiss your loved ones good night for tomorrow, for the first time in history, we unite with the other villages and we fight to save the world!"
They cheered. Sakura just felt a little stupefied as she watched the crowd disperse, the chūnin across from her dropping her hand and walking away hurriedly.
The Senju looked between her stacks of paperwork and Sakura forlornly before sighing in defeat.
"The moment this war ends I'm monopolising all of your time to experiment, got it?" The Hokage said sternly and Sakura nodded. The Senju waved her off. "Go sleep, brat."
"What about ice zap?!"
"Thundersnow!"
"Peircing ice lighting!"
"Freezer burn!"
"All of these are terrible."
"Charged frost!"
"Icebolt!"
"Super-charged hail bullets!"
"Since her original technique is called storm, wouldn't the addition of cold make it a blizzard?"
"But that's just so normal sounding, Shinobu!"
"I'm in favour of blizzard."
"Don't encourage him Pinky!"
"Blizzard release it is!"
"You're all no fun."
"And you two are terrible at names."
Sakura walked through the crowd. Having been thrown bodily out of the tent and told to take a break by Morino, she'd decided to take the opportunity to explore the Allied Shinobi headquarters.
Positioned in between a series of cliff sides, large, bowl-like building's loomed above them, with the ground covered in rows upon rows of canvas tents. All manor of shinobi streaming through the walkways.
It was surprisingly amicable.
Sakura honestly hadn't expected the six countries to be able to cooperate in this manor, but she supposed the threat of the world domination delivered by a man claiming to be a universally feared legend was a motivating one. There were plenty of arguments and dirty looks between the different groups, but Sakura had yet to see any actual fights break out.
She gained quite a few odd looks as she walked- she assumed they were a product of being one of the shortest members of the youngest generation brought to the fight and wearing her pink hair loose and down to the small of her back- but she ignored them and hummed happily under her breath. A skip to her step as she walked. Every cell in her body buzzing excitedly at the prospect of participating in an all out genocide. She was worried too, it was highly likely some of the people she considered hers would end up dying, but Sakura had largely turned that portion of her brain off.
There was no use worrying about sentimentality until the war was over.
A Kumo shinobi had stopped in his tracks and was staring at her with narrowed eyes, the two woman either side of him trying to get his attention. Sakura quirked an eyebrow at him and his expression turned into a delighted smile.
He beelined for her, the lollipop stick hanging out of his mouth and flapping wildly in a way that was reminiscent of Shiranui, and Sakura felt dread pool in her stomach as she tried valiantly to keep walking and ignore the guy.
It was not to be.
"Aiko-chan!" He said excitedly and fell into step next to her. His two friends slotting in beside him with foreboding expressions of realisation on their faces. "I was wondering if you'd show up, but then I thought what if the headquarter's position in Lightning made you too afraid to come as your real self, leading to your inaction during the war, tipping the scales just in the enemies favour, dooming us to never cross paths again and leading you to kill yourself from the shame of your mistakes."
Oh. Sakura recognised the shinobi's insane train of thought. "Shinobi-san." She greeted, tone flat. She'd rather been hoping that in the commotion her identity as the Null-Storm would remain a secret until everyone was safely ensconced in their own countries, but apparently she had no such luck.
"Don't pretend you don't know my name!" He said.
"I'm afraid I forgot, shinobi-san."
"It's Omoi! Omoi!" He insisted, apparently not having changed in the slightest.
"Wait, hang on, you're the Null-Storm, yeah?" Said the dark skinned girl, in almost the exact same loud and belligerent manner as the boy talked. Sakura wondered if they were siblings. At the very least they must have spent a lot of time together. Perhaps the three had been a genin team?
"Yes." Sakura confirmed, knowing there was no real way of avoiding it. "I hope that won't be a problem?"
"There are more important things to focus on that petty feuds." The light skinned one said, exuding an air of calm professionalism in almost the exact opposite manner of the chaotic energy pouring off the other two.
"Fair enough. I'm Haruno Sakura, it's a pleasure to meet you all." Sakura greeted with a grin.
"Is is true you killed three Akatsuki?" The belligerent girl said, eyes wide and feverish in their excitement, and Sakura blinked.
"I suppose, though Kakuzu was more like putting a dying animal out of its misery. I'm also not sure how you know that, to be honest."
"Aiko-chan don't be modest!" The boy cried, throwing an arm in the direction of her shoulders that Sakura smoothly sidestepped. "Everyone knows about the pink haired Konoha girl that killed so many Akatsuki they put a fifty million ryo bounty on her head!"
"They do?" Sakura asked, looking around at the strange glances she was getting in a new light.
"They call you the Boiler." The professional one added unhelpfully. Sakura grimaced.
"Not the prettiest nickname."
"Why do they call you the Boiler?" The belligerent girl asked.
"Aah. My nature transformation sort of… boils flesh if I pump a lot of it into a person at once." Sakura said, the boy looked a little green whilst the belligerent one became even more excited. The professional was completely impassive. "Sorry, but I don't think I caught your names?"
"Well, of course you know mine thi-"
"Do I?"
"I just told you!"
"I must have forgotten, shinobi-san. My apologies."
"It's Omoi! Don't forget it!" He was becoming increasingly more agitated. Sakura smiled innocently.
"Strange name for an idiot." She said, the belligerent one started laughing.
"I'm Karui! Please to meet'cha!"
"Samui." Added the professional one.
"Wanna come back to our tent and play a few rounds of cards?" Belligerent one asked. Sakura smiled.
"Sounds like fun."
And that's how Sakura ended up spending the night among the Kumogakure forces. She wasn't sure what she was expecting but the reality was surprisingly pleasant. Rather than the anger and outright disgust the Raikage had shown- she asked a few subtle questions and found out that was apparently just the default of his personality- most of the Kumo-nin seemed to view her as a sort of fun ghost story to scare the newbies with.
She also made a rather significant amount of money by betting on and showing off her signature manipulation and stealth abilities.
Sakura stood at the front of the division ranks, her hair tied up in practical braids and flak jacket securely fitted over practical shinobi blacks. The 'shinobi' hitai-ate was positioned across her forehead and she stared solemnly up at the five figures on top of the cliffside.
A member of division three, under Hatake, they were going to be positioned directly on the frontlines, with the job of stopping the enemy's approach over the land. The division was filled with close/midrange fighters, lots of heavy hitting ninjutsu users and Taijutsu specialists with a focus on speed.
Immediately to her left stood Maito (a given to place with Hatake) followed by Lee (a given to place with Maito). Sakura couldn't help but notice the giant green man was looking distinctly pale.
The Kazekage begun giving what was likely a very motivating and rousing speech. Sakura wouldn't know as she was distracted by Maito collapsing next to her.
"Gai!" Lee cried, clutching the man's shoulders and wailing, effectively blocking the medic who'd pushed through the formation to treat the man. Sakura poked Maito's face with a shoe.
"You alright?" She asked. The man abruptly burped and sprung back up to standing- taking with him a Lee that was still clutching at his shoulders and crying- a brilliant smile on his face and a thumbs up thrown.
"I have never been better! I was simply momentarily overcome by the sheer brilliance of youth surrounding us!" He thanked the medic- who returned to their position with an extremely dazed look on their face- and stepped back into place. Sakura patted a patch of the man's shoulder that didn't carry a crying Lee and smiled reassuringly. Or at least she hoped that was what appeared on her face.
"So long as you're okay."
And then they were moving, advancing into their positions and headed towards the enemy.
A feral smile twitched at the edges of Sakura's face.