A/N: Yet another Sakura-centric development story. I've decided to put a twist on her usual characterization by making her a little bitchier. Let's hope she's still endearing.

I'm still in the process of re-writing UB because I couldn't stand reading the old chapters.

Also, this story falls in the odd canyon between head canon and AU. The time stamping should be incredibly obvious though, so I'm not going to even going to bother with a blurb on that. It will be written in 3rd person limited, and I'm trying to stay true to the characters. I appreciate any advice.

After the complete bastardization of Kishimoto's female characters (oh, that ending), I needed to create my own sort of canon. All of the main characters (Sakura, Sasuke, Naruto) will receive proper character development.

Prologue

She had made it.

She had made it through that stupid forest, past those creepy weird guys, and the scariest snake-like freak that she'd ever seen. Granted, she didn't see snake-like guys particularly often, but still. The guy was shiver-inducing by anyone's standards, tossing out jōnin level jutsus between taunts with little more than a flick of an inhumanly purple tongue. Memory of the scene made her shudder, the movement sending her already aching muscles into a small series of painful spasms.

She glared down at her legs, wrapped almost thigh-high in red-speckled white bandages she had managed to apply after stumbling into the stadium. She couldn't wrap any more layers without badly affecting her mobility, and she wasn't enough of a masochist to re-wrap the damn thing all over again. Glancing around though, she realized that she had come out on top for once-most of the candidates were either in hospital rooms, having failed in obtaining both scrolls or had forfeited their right to continue and wrapped in enough gauze to mummify while waiting for a room, or attempting self-administered first aid with the kits the nurses-medics, she corrected herself after recalling a lecture-had given, as none of the genin were allowed professional help before the preliminaries.

She frowned. Just the thought of having to go through preliminaries in addition to exam itself was sobering, to be sure. It wasn't as if the Forest of Death was a walk in the park; its name had to have significance, didn't it? Why should they be punished for other teams' lucky successes? It was unfair in the truest sense of the word, and she was still having trouble coming to grasps with it.

She glanced over toward Naruto, whose mood seemed to, as the minutes rolled by, frequently switch between excited anticipation toward the competition and anxious antipathy toward the red-haired Sand-nin freak they had been so unfortunate to meet earlier. Though if she really thought about it, as far as strange people went, he wasn't that bad, minus the psychotic killing intent and especially compared to the other members of her team. She just couldn't remember his name.

Geren? Fara? A presence suddenly registered at the corner of her mind, and she whipped around, only to find the boy in question staring at her. Their eyes, however, didn't meet. His jade eyes, so freakishly similar to her own, looked distant, almost as if he was staring beyond her. Feeling a little foolish, she hesitantly followed his gaze.

He was staring at Naruto.

She felt oddly angry all of the sudden. While she didn't particularly like Naruto, that didn't mean that she was comfortable with the interest. Interest, she knew, that would result only in casualty. She almost felt like going over to warn him, but doubted that her warning would have any effect on the blond, beyond causing the conflict to grow more open and dangerous.

She wouldn't lie and say that she didn't feel helpless right now. Sasuke-kun was suffering and-she shivered, recalling the tingling she felt when his hand grasped hers- didn't want to be helped, and Naruto was a idiot who couldn't be helped, and she was just a girl that... that wasn't able to help. The hand of cards she had been dealt just didn't lend itself to her feeling particularly confident at anything. Why hadn't she read more? Known more?

The answer hit her hard. There was no way she could have prepared for this. Life just wasn't predictable, unless you were Nara.

And yet, they all had to try anyway, had to attempt to beat the odds, when there was little to be gained and everything to be lost. She glared down at her leg again, willing it not to scar. She wasn't old enough to branded.

That fate was reserved for other people, she thought absent-mindedly as she stared at an unlucky former exam hopeful, whose limbs looked beyond repair. A dark-haired woman kept on examining the misshapen flesh, as if a calculating scare would make the impossible possible.

Looking heavenward, the pink-hair girl snorted. Indeed. As if. Even if Ms. Dark-Haired managed to repair his limbs, he'd never be able to move the same again, and probably never be able to use chakra, if any of the books she had read were true. She flexed her own hand, reveling in the feel of her own chakra running through her veins. It was amazing to think that the sensation had been foreign at one point in her life.

She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself. Everything would be okay. Someone would help them. They wouldn't die.

She could feel the lie in her mind, a smidgen of dirt on a clear expanse of tile. She could no longer be placated as if she were a child. She had seen first hand the creep that had defiled Sasuke-kun. Orochimaru, she remembered with disgust, that snake. To have the audacity to bite him and just... leave? Just... leave them scared shitless, shaking like children? The image of purple skin would never leave her mind, she knew. Not that much ever did, but this image burned.

As soon as she thought about it, the very image came to the forefront of her mind, almost causing her to fall off the wooden bench she had settled herself on. Realising that she was shaking, she began taking deep breaths again, breaking up the bunches in her chakra flow. After a minute, she was able to think calmly again.

They all sat like prey.