Kakashi was eating dinner when the masked ANBU agent arrived, but years of training meant that his own mask was already up by the time they stepped through the open window.

He sighed, not especially surprised, but somewhat disappointed. "Naruto or Sasuke?"

It was usually Naruto that he had been sent to covertly check up on in the past, but now that he was the official adult supervising both orphans, he'd imagined the check-ups might increase accordingly. He didn't think it would start on the very first night, though.

The ANBU agent's tiger mask gave away nothing, but the silence stretched a beat longer than it usually did before they said, "Haruno Sakura."

"Sakura?" Kakashi frowned. Sakura had parents to contact when there were problems, and aside from being a little weak at the physical side of things, he hadn't noticed anything requiring official intervention. "What did she do?"

"She disappeared. Approximately one hour ago."

"No…?" This was so bizarre that Kakashi might have assumed it was a prank from another jounin, if not for the fact that ANBU never joked. "She was at the cenotaph only," he glanced at the clock on the wall, "half an hour ago."

The ANBU agent's head tipped forward ever so slightly and there was an almost imperceptible change in the atmosphere of the room. "Do you mean your training session?"

"No, it was about half an hour after that." Possibly she stuck around or doubled back? Kakashi thought back to earlier that afternoon, when he had finally let his new students go home and rest. "She must have doubled back; I remember seeing her leave with the other two." She had been trying to talk to Sasuke, and Naruto had been trying to talk to her.

"So far, that makes you the last person to see her, Senpai." The ANBU agent said it carefully, but Kakashi understood the implications well enough.

He racked his brain for every little detail from their interaction. "I was at the monument from approximately sunset to twilight. Sakura arrived around then, greeted me and said she was there to pay her respects to the fallen. She did so, silently, for about one minute, and then I left."

"And did anything about her seem odd, or off to you?"

"I've only known her for a day, but she seemed much as she did earlier during training." Possibly slightly less…tempestuous, without her teammates influencing her mood, but definitely not a flight risk. "Are you sure she isn't just taking the long way home, or something?"

The agent shook his head. "Her mother said she arrived home shortly before sunset, left almost immediately after telling her she would be 'back in a minute,' and then failed to return. She says it would be completely unexpected and uncharacteristic for the girl to run away, and that she expressed no doubts or regrets about becoming a genin. Unless something happened today?"

Kakashi shook his head. "The whole team passed my personal evaluation, which was hardly gruelling. I was going to submit the paperwork tomorrow." He nodded at a scroll on his desk, which the agent promptly pocketed.

"We'll review this report and submit it on your behalf, if you don't mind."

He shrugged, aware that there was only one safe answer. "Sure, that saves me a trip. But wait-" the agent, who was about to turn and melt back into the night, paused, "-where do you want me?"

"What do you mean?"

"In the search party." He grabbed his weapons holster and tugged on his gloves. "Are we going to the cenotaph, or do you have a fresher trail than that?"

"Senpai." The agent seemed torn between professionalism and deference. "You cannot be part of the search party."

"She's my student."

"If your timelines crossed, that means your trails also crossed. If you get involved in the search, our ability to establish a clear timeline of your involvement will be compromised."

"My involvement? Just to be clear, am I under suspicion here?"

The agent shifted uncomfortably, probably wishing they had jumped back out the window when they had the chance. "We simply want to establish the facts while the disappearance is still recent."

"A twelve year-old genin who has been missing for less than an hour isn't just 'recent,' it's barely actionable. Why are you assuming the worst so quickly?" His heart dropped. "Did you find something that suggests foul play?"

"No. But between the Haruno family's insistence that this is suspicious, and some concerning intel from other villages…"

Kakashi raised an eyebrow.

"...that I cannot elaborate on unless you receive the necessary clearance, we have good reason to suspect this is an abduction, and the Hokage wants to act swiftly. That's all I can tell you, Senpai. Good night." The agent ducked back out the window, leaving Kakashi alone once more.

Dinner had gone cold, but he was no longer hungry. His new teammate had not only gone missing, but the village had mobilised within an hour of receiving the report. If it had been Naruto or Sasuke who had disappeared, they might not have noticed until the next morning. And by the sound of Tiger's explanation, even half an hour might be far too late.

"Where the hell have you gone, Sakura?"

ⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵ

Despite the clear warning to stay out of the way, Kakashi went to the memorial cenotaph early next morning. Sakura's air scent was completely obliterated, and even her ground scent was faint now, criss-crossed by dozens of others; but Kakashi's nose was sharper than most, and he also had a tracking dog to aid him.

Pakkun hadn't had a chance to meet Sakura before, and Kakashi didn't have anything of hers to use as the target; but he mostly needed the pug to confirm the baffling information that Kakashi's own senses were telling him.

"It just…stops." Pakkun's doleful eyes were wide with consternation. "There's a scent here: female, I'd say, wearing Floral Green shampoo and a day's worth of sweat. Her trail reaches the stone and then ends. No blood, no dander, not even a footprint, Boss." He raised his head to look up at the canopy of trees. "Did something snatch her off the ground and carry her off?"

Kakashi shook his head. "Unclear, but the response time was faster than average. There would have been an air trail when the first responders arrived, and based on their trails, it doesn't look like they had anything to follow, either."

"Weird," his dog commented. "Who was she?"

"She is Haruno Sakura. One of my new students."

Pakkun cocked his head to the side. "Maybe she ran away after you failed her?"

"I didn't fail this team." Maybe Sakura wouldn't have been out in the evening if he had failed Team 7.

"Huh." If Pakkun had an opinion on that, he kept it to himself. "Well, unless you need anything else…"

Kakashi shook his head. "No, you're dismissed."

The dog disappeared in a puff of smoke, and Kakashi was forced to head back into town with several more questions and no answers at all. He had told Team 7 to meet him on the bridge at seven; a respectably early time that Kakashi had never intended to keep himself. But unless another ANBU agent arrived with a lead, he had nowhere better to continue his search for Sakura. And if she didn't arrive, Naruto and Sasuke would have questions, and possibly even information of their own.

He loitered at the bridge, watching the people of Konoha as they went about their lives. Despite the quick response from the Hokage, most of the village seemed blissfully unaware that a young girl had gone missing last night. Or perhaps she'd already been found safe and sound at a friend's house, and they just hadn't thought to put her poor teacher out of his misery?

At six fifty-eight, Sasuke arrived on the bridge. Kakashi wanted to ask him questions immediately, but that would lead to Sasuke asking him questions, and it would be better if he only had to do it once, after Naruto arrived. Or not at all, if Sakura did.

At three minutes past seven, Naruto arrived, and there were no pink-haired girls with him. He looked Kakashi up and down like he was a ghost. "You actually turned up on time! You were just testing us before, huh?"

"I don't know what you mean," Kakashi said, eyes still following every inch of movement around him. "An old woman really did need help with her bags yesterday."

"You said a black cat crossed your path and you had to go the long way," Sasuke pointed out.

"Oh, right."

"Where's Sakura?" Naruto seemed to realise their group was still one short.

"About that…" Kakashi began.

"She probably assumed you would be super late again, and slept in," Naruto chuckled.

Sasuke sniffed. "She probably got sent back to the academy, or just quit outright."

"What makes you say that?" Kakashi examined the boy closely. "Did she say something to you?"

Sasuke shrugged, reverting back to his usual moody silence, but Kakashi pressed him. "Sasuke, this is serious. Did Sakura mention anything to you about quitting, or being afraid that she'd be sent back to the academy?"

Both boys were watching him as closely as he was watching them, now. "No," Sasuke answered, at the same time that Naruto said, "What's wrong?"

He took a deep breath. Possibly Sakura's disappearance was still a secret, but if so then last night's ANBU agent should have made a point of saying that. He decided that the boys needed to know about their teammate, even if he wished more than anything that he didn't need to be the one to tell them. "Sakura went missing last night."

Silence hung in the air for several seconds, until Naruto raised his hand like this was a class. "What do you mean 'missing'?"

"Apparently she was expected home shortly after training, but didn't arrive. Her parents are worried; they say it's not like her."

"It's not," Naruto frowned. "She complains about her parents a lot, but I don't think she'd run away from home. Where would she even go?"

"That's what everyone is trying to figure out. And time is usually of the essence with disappearances, so if you know anything at all-"

His sentence cut short when he spotted something pink in his peripheral vision. He turned eagerly, but this person's hair was more like a light puce than cotton candy fluff. The middle-aged man sporting it was making a beeline for him, followed by a chestnut-haired woman with rings on her dress.

"You must be Mr and Mrs Haruno," Kakashi said, unsure of the protocol. Handshake? Bow?

It was clear the Harunos couldn't care less about pleasantries. "Hatake Kakashi?" The father said, looking him up and down.

"Sir."

"Do you," the man leaned in so closely that Kakashi could see every shade of the dark purple bags under his eyes, "have any idea where our daughter is, or what happened to her?"

It was Obito's death all over again, with his many relatives grilling Kakashi about the sharingan, and whether Obito had really been in the right state of mind to bequeath it to him. Or worse, Rin's death, when he couldn't even tell her family how she'd died (mostly because it was classified, but partly out of shame). He tried to remember how to talk to the grieving and afraid.

"Unfortunately, I know very little; probably even less than you at this point. I take it Sakura is still missing?"

The mother nodded stiffly. "We were told you were the one to see her last."

After investigating the cenotaph he hadn't held out much hope of this changing, but it didn't make the moment any less comfortable. "That's correct; I ran into her at the KIA memorial, but left shortly after, and nothing seemed unusual about Sakura when I did."

"What was she doing at the memorial?"

"Visiting the fallen, apparently." He wished this was happening somewhere other than the busy bridge. Hell, he wished this was happening in a dank interrogation room, as long as it meant he didn't have to look Sakura's parents in the eye. "I'm sorry I don't have more information than that."

"It doesn't make sense," Mr Haruno shook his head. "She never visited the memorial before. I can't even think who she'd want to visit, except maybe my brother; but he's been gone for years, and she never visited before."

"Did you tell her to meet you there?" Mrs Haruno asked suddenly, and her expression could have stripped paint. Even Naruto was looking at him with a little suspicion.

"Definitely not. As far as I knew, she'd left with the rest of her team and was already home by that point."

"She did come home first," Mrs Haruno confirmed, "but she left almost immediately after, and I don't believe it was just to go pay respects to her uncle."

"She probably went back for her weapons."

The adults turned to Sasuke, who had spoken so quietly that Kakashi wasn't even sure he'd wanted to be heard.

"Pardon?" Mr Haruno asked politely.

Sasuke scowled. "Kakashi probably didn't abduct Sakura, or tell her to go back out to the forest. She forgot to collect her weapons after our afternoon training session. She must have finally remembered and doubled back."

Kakashi chose to ignore the 'probably' remark. "Why didn't you say something at the time, when you were all leaving?"

The boy's scowl deepened. "Because I didn't want to talk to her." He glanced at Naruto. "Or anyone else."

"Jerk!" Naruto shouted. "That means Sakura went missing because of you!"

Sasuke's eyes briefly flickered with something like fear, and Kakashi stepped in before anyone made a bad situation worse. "No, Naruto. It isn't Sasuke's fault just because he didn't mention Sakura had forgotten her weapons, any more than it was Sakura's fault for forgetting them in the first place."

"What about 'ninjas who abandon their friends are worse than trash'?" Naruto continued to glare daggers at Sasuke.

"I didn't know she was going to get lost, or kidnapped," Sasuke snapped.

To Kakashi's surprise, it was Sakura's mother who came to the boy's defence. "That's right; the only one to blame for our daughter's disappearance is whoever took her. If she went back to the forest to collect her weapons, then at least we know it might have been an attack from an outsider, rather than something planned by someone she trusted." She turned to Kakashi, jerking her head slightly in the universal gesture of 'can I talk to you privately?'

He followed her and her husband a short distance, trying to ignore the boys' eyes burning holes in the back of his head.

"First of all, I would like to apologise for accusing you of…involvement." Sakura's mother bowed stiffly.

That word again. "I'm just glad to have the misunderstanding cleared up."

"I just don't understand who would take her, or why." She swiped at her unshed tears before they could fall. "She's not a tactical asset. She's always been…pretty." Both parents closed their eyes against the horror of the implication. "But she doesn't have any intel, or any other reason to take her or…"

"Or keep her," Mr Haruno supplied quietly.

Kakashi tried to choose his words carefully. "Is it possible she stayed over with a friend and lost track of time? Or maybe she just went somewhere quiet to clear her head for a bit? Becoming a fully-fledged ninja can give plenty of people second thoughts about their choice in career." And if he was honest, Haruno Sakura had seemed like the type to quit the life early. He wouldn't have been surprised to hear she had joined the academy in the first place just to get close to a certain black-haired boy.

"Not Sakura," Mr Haruno said. "She's wanted this her whole life."

"Can I ask…why?"

"She doesn't seem like a career soldier, does she? And possibly she won't be any good at it, but she's always been a determined little thing." He smiled sadly. "Mebuki and I grew up in a satellite village a half hour or so west. Both our families came to Konoha when we were Sakura's age, hoping to earn more money on less risky missions. And we thought it would be a better place to raise our family, when the time came. Truth is, we would have been overjoyed if she chose a quiet life as a civilian, but she wanted to prove the Haruno family belonged here, in The Great Konohagakure."

"I didn't know that." The one and only time he had asked Sakura about herself, her response had been less than eloquent, and he'd formed his private judgments and hoped she could at least keep up with the boys.

"She doesn't like to talk about it. She was born and raised here, but our old life in Shida Village makes her feel like an outsider." Haruno Mebuki's expression briefly showed all the fear and grief she had been trying to hide behind more productive emotions like anger and suspicion. It reminded Kakashi of his father's face when sending his only son off on his first dangerous mission.

"If there's anything I can do…" he started awkwardly, but it sounded empty, the kind of thing people said at a funeral when the person was already dead and there was nothing anyone could do anymore.

Mebuki's expression clouded over again, becoming a mask of steely resolve. "Find our daughter. Bring her home. And kill whoever took her in the first place."

ⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵⴵ

Sakura learned the ropes quickly.

She cried a lot at first, but it changed nothing and quickly grew tiresome. Karin was patient, waiting for her to get the last bit of hope out of her system before attempting to teach her the rules of her new life Inside. It felt like days had passed since she first fell through the ground and into this hell, but Sakura didn't grow hungry or tired, and even though they simply stayed crouched in the little cave between stone pillars, her muscles only ached a little. Mentally, the monotony was still torturous, and by the time she had pulled herself together she was practically begging Karin to take her somewhere new.

"First things first; what do you have on you?"

Sakura wiped her face, assuming there was several days' worth of snot and tears caked on it.

"No, no, I mean what's in your pockets? What did you bring with you?"

"Oh, er…" Sakura unclipped her weapons holsters and emptied her shiny new blades on the rocky ground. "Just these, my forehead protector, and my clothes."

"There are nice," Karin inspected the weapons before returning them to their pouch and tucking them carefully in a dark recess of the cave. "You should hide them here for now, until you can defend yourself well enough to keep them."

"How am I supposed to defend myself without them?" Sakura argued, feeling very vulnerable all of a sudden.

"You have ninjutsu and taijutsu, don't you?" Karin said, storing some of her own bags in a similar fashion.

"I guess…" She tried to remember her classes at the academy. She had only just graduated, but now it all felt so long ago, and so…theoretical.

"You'll learn quickly. Pain and time are great teachers. And you'll experience a lot of both here."

"Great…"

Karin appraised Sakura's chest. "Does your bra have an underwire?"

Her face burned, and that seemed to be answer enough for Karin.

"Shame. I know a few older kunoichi that would have bartered for a new bra; myself included. You'll probably need an upgrade yourself before long."

"I don't plan to be here that long," Sakura said, but it rang so hollow that Karin didn't even bother to argue with her. The older woman had explained the time dilation effect as best she could, and after a few days Inside it was clear that even if a search party found her immediately on the outside, it could still take a long time from Sakura's perspective.

"Alright, no point putting it off much longer." Karin stood up from her crouch, brushing dust off her knees. "Let's go introduce you to The Others."

"Really? That mob that tried to kill me when I first arrived? I know, no killing," she added, when Karin opened her mouth to correct her. "But seriously, why not just avoid them?"

"For the rest of your life? Better to make friends and hopefully avoid going insane from boredom. Come on; if you're lucky, they won't take much. Your clothes and shoes are too small for anyone else, anyway. Oh, but you might want to leave the forehead protector and tie back your hair. Better yet, cut it off and we can barter it."

"Barter hair?"

"Oh yeah, hair's a great commodity here." She flicked one of her own scarlet braids. "It doesn't stop growing while we're in here, and it makes decent rope and thread. Pretty colours like yours and mine are even more desirable."

This thought didn't comfort Sakura in the slightest, but she dutifully braided her hair and tied it off with some scraps from Karin's many bags. Karin showed her how to tuck the braids down the back of her shirt, to make it harder to grab.

When she was finally deemed ready to meet the mysterious 'Others', Karin gestured up toward the top mesas of stone Sakura had first landed on. "After you."

Sakura stared at the smooth walls leading up to the surface, trying to find a gap the right size to wedge herself in and crawl up.

Karin's smile turned into an incredulous frown as she watched Sakura shimmy a few feet up the walls. "You can't climb with chakra?" She placed a boot on one of the stones Sakura was pressed against. Her foot glowed faintly, and when her second foot joined the first she was standing on the wall, perpendicular to the ground.

"Er…no." Sakura could sort of see the theory behind what she was doing, moulding chakra to her feet to keep them stuck to the wall. But she'd never attempted such a thing at the academy.

"The trick is to keep the chakra at a constant output, not too weak but not too strong, either. And engage your core." Karin poked her own stomach muscles. "Works best the first time if you take it at a run."

"Okay." Sakura was still sceptical, but Karin had started walking up the rock face now, and she didn't want to get left behind. The woman seemed nice enough (compared to the angry mob), but Sakura couldn't afford to lose her as a guide if she did decide she wasn't worth teaching. She grit her teeth, forming the necessary seals to focus her chakra. Then she sprang forward and tried not to think about how much it would hurt if she fell off halfway up.

"I did it!" The surface rock rose up to meet her within seconds, and for a moment Sakura forgot she was trapped in a hellish void prison. "That was surprisingly easy."

"You're a fast learner," Karin observed, and Sakura preened. "Now come on; the others will still be on the lookout, and I don't want them to find us so close to our cache."

All positive feelings evaporated as Sakura silently followed Karin away from their supplies and off in a seemingly random direction.

She heard the others before she saw them, and once again wondered how Karin managed to have such a good sense of direction in such a bland and endless expanse. Perhaps it comes with time, she thought, and shuddered.

When the others noticed their arrival, they rushed to meet them in the same chaotic manner as before. Karin made Sakura stop on a large stone platform, pressing a hand on her shoulder so she couldn't flee.

She bit her lip, ordering herself to be brave; but she couldn't help but give a small shriek as the rabble surrounded her and Karin. She had expected them to attack immediately, maybe try to tear her clothes and hair off her, but what she hadn't expected was for half a dozen people to grab her with rough hands, then press their faces against her and take a deep sniff.

"What?!" Was all Sakura could say, looking at Karin in horror at the bizarre violation. Karin shrugged grimly.

"No fair." A man with black hair and jagged, shark-like teeth raised his head to scowl at Karin. "You had her so long she barely smells like Outside anymore."

This was met with a few murmurs of agreement, and another round of sniffs that made Sakura cringe.

"Where are you from?" A dark-skinned woman with a Hidden Cloud forehead protector asked, tugging at one of her boots. Sakura would have toppled over without Karin supporting her, but as it was she had to hop awkwardly on one leg while the woman sniffed the sole of her boot. "Smells like dirt. Maybe a little grass?"

"I'm from Konoha," Sakura barely managed to squeak out. The others were crowding her legs now, and she fought the urge to kick at them when her other foot was lifted off the crowd. She fell back on her rear, and even with Karin crouching protectively at her side she knew this was a terribly vulnerable position for any woman to find herself in. "Stop touching me, will you?!"

"Konoha," the woman who had first grabbed her foot murmured. "Forests. Trees. Water." Each word was met with a collective sigh.

Something was tugging at the back of her head, and when she twisted to look she almost cut her nose off on the kunai that a man with tinted goggles was using to carefully trim her hair. "Stop that!" she screeched, all reservations about fighting forgotten in her desperation to protect her poor hair. "It took me years to grow it that long!" She threw a punch that would have sent Naruto flying twenty feet, but the man barely flinched.

Karin shoved the hair cutter away and hauled Sakura to her feet. "That's enough; you've all gotten a good whiff of Outside, and I'm sure you pervs have all established that she's not carrying anything else of value. If you want the hair, you gotta pay the price."

"You think you and the Konoha pipsqueak could take us all on?" A woman with sandy blonde hair and a large backpack sneered, hand reaching for the pink braid that had been pulled free of Sakura's shirt and was now unravelling at the end.

"She's pretty cute, Witch." One man with broad shoulders and a ripped shirt that was little more than a collar clinging to some frayed threads prodded her belly while she was distracted with her hair. "I can see why you kept her to yourself. She ready for fun yet?"

"She's brand new, Jun." Karin raised her voice slightly, addressing everyone at once. "I've been with her since she arrived, and she hasn't been taken out for Medical yet. She's also a freakin' baby, you degenerates."

Sakura opened her mouth to argue that she was twelve, and a genin, thank you very much, but in truth she was very young compared to everyone else. She had thought Karin was old at twenty-something, but the others were older still; and yet even the oldest among them looked pretty good, all things considered. Their hair was starting to grey, their breasts starting to sag, but their faces were smooth and virtually wrinkle-free from what must have been decades without true sunlight.

"You know how this goes, Red. Wasn't too long ago that you were the baby, and you still warmed up to us eventually."

"Even if you avoid us half the time." A woman with short cropped hair and a braided red choker that looked suspiciously like hair scowled at Karin, who scowled back. "Are you going to keep the kid away, too? What if you get taken out?"

"You said killing wasn't allowed," Sakura whispered, heart thumping in her strange, empty-feeling body.

"She means 'taken out' as in removed," Karin murmured back. "The Watcher does it sometimes. He'll do it to you too pretty soon."

"Why?"

Jun smacked his lips. "Gotta get your tubes tied, for one thing. Then you can have all the fun you like with no consequences."

Sakura clenched her fists. "No. No way."

"Don't knock it till you try it, girlie." The woman with the hair necklace gave her a wry smile. "There's only really two things to do in here: fight, and fuck."

Sakura turned to Karin, appalled, but to her surprise the other girl simply shrugged. "Beats sitting around waiting to die."

The others murmured agreement, but Sakura shook her head violently.

"I won't do it! Never!" She had learned about…kunoichi business, back in the academy; but as a civilised village, those lessons were all entirely theoretical. She knew that missions sometimes went badly wrong, but for the most part she had dismissed sex as something she'd only ever do with her husband, and knew that unless she could convince Sasuke to even take her on a date, her lessons would stay theoretical.

"Never say never, Konoha," Karin said. "But I can at least promise nobody's gonna touch you until you ask them to."

Jun looked like he wanted to make another crass comment, but Karin stopped him with a glare. "Partly because if they take it from you now, they know you'll never give it to them later. And partly because I don't heal rapists." She smiled wide, showing all her teeth.

That seemed to have an effect on the others. A few even took a step back from Sakura.

"Jeez, Red, we were just joking!" Jun grumbled.

Karin winked at Sakura. "The group's got a rotten sense of humour, but you're safe from that at least. We may be insane, but we do have standards."

"I can tell you've taken a shine to her, but she'll still need to fight," Shark Teeth said, closing the distance once more. "Don't want to make The Watcher mad."

"True," Karin conceded, and the atmosphere of the crowd shifted. Guessing that this was the part Karin had warned her about, Sakura shifted her weight and lowered her centre of gravity. No matter what the others said, when the first blow came, she didn't want to end up on her back again.

The blow came, the Cloud woman striking her twice in the ribs, and though she was too hemmed in to dodge or parry, Sakura was impressed at her own ability to stay upright.

And then another hit came from behind. Then a brutal kick to her thigh from Jun, and another from Shark Teeth. And then Karin was turning on her too, punching her in her gut and leaving her doubled over and wheezing.

"Sorry kid," she said, stepping back as the others surged in. "But the quicker you toughen up, the more likely you are to survive."

"You said there was no kill-" an upper cut from Red Necklace drove all thoughts from her head except the most fundamental academy training: stay standing and keep fighting until help arrived.

Except, she thought to herself as her textbook punches and kicks quickly turned panicked and sloppy, 'help' wasn't coming.