If You Can't Beat Them

Chapter Two

It wasn't an accident that Sakura was practically dropped into this universe, yet that didn't make it any less of an inconvenience.

Inner Sakura liked being put on the backburner of her host's mind, to do as she pleased. It made her even more happier when she didn't have to go along with the charade of being a boy crazed fiend, especially when the pinkette grew out that of that annoying phase.

Thank fuck for small miracles.

She wasn't some kind of non-human entity that had been implanted into the pink haired girl when she was just a babe like that fox demon container. But, the only people who were really aware of her presence, and what she was capable of only included the short list of her host's parents and the medic-nin who were in charge during the pinkette's birth. It was a known secret within the Haruno clan of her existence.

While she wasn't some kind of chakra powerhouse, she was fortunate that Sakura was someone who practiced good control. However, the only con of that particular ability was that it was often overshadowed by the needs of her teammates. They came first, always. While her host seemed to steadily become restless with the lack of activities to keep herself busy, she on the other hand had grown bored and as a result shifted into a dormant state.

Though, as aforementioned, she wasn't particularly complaining over that. If she wasn't needed, then she was more than contented in taking the backseat whilst her host got on with her life with no real assistance was required.

However, given the abrupt change in circumstances, she found herself being thrust into the firing line. Literally.

It must have been a sub-conscious defence mechanism for her to be able to fully take over her host's body, the only other time this happened was during her fight with Ino. She took a sweeping glance of her surroundings, heavy clouds of smoke billowed around her wildly with debris and dust sprinkling over her. It was only after her vision started to clear and when the ground gradually ceased shaking that she noted that she was nestled in a deep crater, leading her to assume that she must have fallen from a considerable height. As far as she could tell, the level of destruction as result of the impact had crippled the surrounding local vicinity.

Inner looked upwards to the sky with narrowed green eyes. How cliché, you son of a bitch.

"You there, put your hands up where we can see them!"

She was cut from her inward cursing to see a line of armed men pointing their machines directly at her. The pinkette did a quick headcount, tilting her head to the side in contemplation. There were roughly just over ten surrounding her, anticipating further orders to potentially shoot her if needed. The longer she focused it seemed clear to her that she was near the outskirts of a nearby city with no charka signatures anywhere.

"I'm not going to ask another time, girl. Hands up or we'll shoot you down!"

The green eyed girl merely complied with his demand, her hands raised beside her head. She watched on as the leader, she presumed, motioned for his men to follow as they approached her in caution. She noted

The brunt lifted some kind of device to the bottom half of his face. "I can confirm that we have identified the energy source." He paused for a moment, extracting his hand from his side pocket to show some kind of injection. Upon seeing that, she felt her left eye twitch in annoyance. "Roger that. We'll bring her in."

Though, she had no intention of going along with this charade. Inner waited impatiently until they were close enough, her poker face carefully remained intact. It was apparent that no further communication was necessary, with the leader keeping a close eye on her.

She merely stared back, black spots slowly consumed the sclera of her eyes until it fully bordered the green irises. He furrowed his eyebrows, faltering in his step until he stopped. Inner inclined her head, not breaking her stare for a second.

"Everyone stand down," He called out the command, a slight glaze casted over his eyes.

"Sir, we have orders to bring the girl in. The boss is not going to be happy if we come back empty handed—"

It wasn't until he took out his gun from its holster, raised it towards her that his men started to question his motives. However, they didn't get a chance to question him before he pivoted on his heel and fired away until the solider who spoke up could only stare helplessly at his leader. A puddle of blood already starting to leak from his fatal wound, the life in his eyes snuffed out in an instant. In a matter of seconds, he collapsed from the single gunshot. It was only after the period of suffocating silence that he lowered the gun to his side.

"Anyone else who disobeys my orders will join him, any takers?" There was a moment of shuffling amongst the group, their grips on the weapons slackened as startled stares were exchanged between them. They struggled to process what had just happened before their eyes. However, none moved to argue back in aid of their fallen comrade.

The pinkette blinked slowly, a default expression taking up the vacant space on her face while her eyes drank in the sight of fresh death. She clicked her tongue in annoyance, while she tried to avoid unnecessary bloodshed when possible, but even she had her limitations when it came to controlling their minds. Besides, that self-righteous idiot shouldn't have opened his mouth in the first place.

She stepped out of the crater and faced the city in the far distance. The petite girl moved her head to the side, relishing in the various cracks as she continued to stretch her stiff limbs.

"We will escort you back to the city, ma'am."

"That won't be necessary." Not even sparing him a glance, she lifted up two fingers before her figure was consumed by smoke. It took him a moment or two before he was in control of his own mind, his gaze losing the sinister glint in his eyes. After a bemused glance around, he gritted his teeth with a stream of curses escaped his lips as he dragged a hand down his face.

There were two things that he was sure of right now. One that Waller wasn't going to like this new development, the other was that she was gonna have his head for this.

Being strapped inside of a flying machine filled with strangers—with at least half who occupied her side being identified as well-known criminals—wasn't a situation that she ever thought she would be in. She felt at a disadvantage, not knowing the full extent of what they were capable of doing. Though, they seemed harmless enough, she could not detect any imposing energies from them—aside from the silent man with the abundance of tattoos. However, it was far too early to be underestimating any of them, that was the kind of thinking that would easily get her killed.

While she had no intentions of socialising—though that seemed to be the consensus in the near silent helicopter she couldn't help but feel intrigued by Katana. She could sense the presences lurking within her sword, their souls stripped away from the physical counterparts and forced to remain there for eternity. The solemn ravenette sat beside Flag with an alertness in her posture, not relaxing for a single second. Not that she could blame her, if Sakura was on this kind of mission back in her world—perhaps in some warped parallel universe—she would have been assigned to keep the criminals in check.

Sakura's eyes hardened at the reminder that kept being displayed to her that she was no longer in her world; it was almost as if a bucket of ice water was dumped on her every time reality dawned on her. While the day's events were a blur, at the back of her mind she could not easily forget that the chances of her returning were slim to nothing. As a wave of sorrow washed over her, she inwardly shook it off as she tried to brush off the sharp feeling of sadness. This wasn't the time to be emotional. As her eyes took a sweeping glance around her surroundings, she didn't need any further reminders that this wasn't some sick dream or genjutsu.

With each year that passed as she got older, she no longer felt the presence of the voice that rang through her head. It was a good thing that she was able to filter out her thoughts before they escaped and could not be taken back so easily. Inner was always more of a subconscious part of her, known to be boy crazy—more specifically Sasuke or any pretty boy for that matter. It was only once she had grown out of that stage in her life that she seemed to suddenly disappear, as if she was never part of her in the first place. Sakura acknowledged that while she wasn't the best company to have around looking back in hindsight, she wasn't popular in the slightest growing up.

She stood out, but in all the wrong ways. With her vivid bubble-gum locks that were an eyesore to look at, bright green eyes that were glazed with an overwhelming sense of naivety of the reality of the world she lived in and let's not forget about her forehead—which seemed to be the hot topic amongst the kids when she was much younger who seemed to relish on picking on her imperfections.

However, she could sense something different once she awoke in this world. She could sense something darker that was hiding beneath the thin veil of darkness in her that she thought she did not possess. She was supposed to be part of the good guys, yet there was an unspeakable desire to cause destruction and chaos bubbling up inside of her. She tried to brush off the foreign feeling, thinking she must have mistaken it or something else. That wasn't her, she tried to convince herself.

Sakura could be described as many things, temperamental being one of them, yet she unquestionably wasn't a villain. It wasn't in her nature, if anything that was the polar opposite of who she strived to be. She wasn't perfect, she was well aware of that. Looking back on when she first started out as a shinobi, the qualities that should have been implemented were often forgotten. There were times where she could not help but doubt herself, the fact that she could not defend herself in battle were sufficient in making her question whether she was even qualified to be called a shinobi.

She found herself almost expecting for someone to say that there had been a mistake. That she wasn't meant to be in Team 7. She was the odd one out of the group, the sore thumb for everyone else to see. When she was twelve and freshly graduated from the Academy, that Sakura had no idea of the horrors that were lurking outside the gates of Konoha until they were assigned their first official mission. The pinkette was, without fail, always pushed to the side to safety whilst Naruto, Sasuke and Kakashi sensei were fighting for their lives and the sake of completing the mission. She reached a point of no longer wanting to a liability. She didn't want to be seen by her enemies as a vulnerable weakling that could be used to gamble for their lives in exchange for hers.

There were moments when she wished she could go back to the genin days and take her training more seriously. Hell, her teachers could not praise her enough for her high academic grades, but being book smart was never going to be enough in the end. On the other hand, she had to consider the timings of it all, Tsunade sensei proved to be a vital contributor in helping her train to be stronger. Although she was a sadistic teacher who was prone to being violent, the fact that she must have seen some kind of potential within her helped to maintain the resilience to keep on going, to always strive to better herself and improve.

She was brought back to reality when she could vaguely hear Harley nattering away in the background, there wasn't something quite right about that one. She couldn't put her finger on what it was exactly, as if there was a screw loose in that one or maybe more. She seemed to relish in the promise of adding to the body count of this mission. Speaking of this ambiguous mission–it was more of a superhero gig than anything else, so it didn't make sense to draw a group of individuals together who committed crimes that only benefited them with the expectation that they would simply work together without a complaint. She couldn't squash the unsettling emotion that swelled up in her gut that something wasn't right about this, call it intuition or maybe it was just a generally shitty situation anyway so nothing good was going to come out of this.

From the corner of her eye, she could tell one of the soldiers was shooting her a death glare, at first she brushes it off with a vague understanding that he must hate her like the others. However, there's an overwhelming wave of hatred that radiated from him whenever his eyes landed on her – which were much more evident than when he looked at the rest of the criminals she was saddled with. The pinkette couldn't understand the pinch of guilt that washed over her but merely pushed it to the back of her mind.

As they flew over the city in disarray, isolated fires roaring with life in pockets all over as clouds of smoke fuelled the air in the abandoned place. She could only wonder who could have caused such havoc, mulling over a plan in her head over possibly sending a few clones over to check.

"Look at the pretty lights!" Harley cooed as she watched out of the window, though the conversation that soon followed merely became background noise. Though, that didn't mean to say that Sakura wasn't paying attention. It was vital that she grabbed all the information that she could get her hands on, being in the weakest position of not knowing anything—including her somewhat quirky makeshift 'teammates', if that's what they're supposed to be anyway.

Suddenly, the voices were cut short when it soon become apparent that there was an attack being aimed at the helicopter with a rapid succession of gun fire. It didn't take long for sparks to fly before the damage caused the machine to be thrown off course as it was sent downwards until it tumbled over, sending the occupants to spin for a good minute or so before the helicopter abruptly fell on its side with gravity pulling it back to the ground. Smoke immediately flooded the interior, the criminals stepped out as it was merely a slightly bumpy ride.

Soon, they were all walking through the deserted streets. Sakura taking up the rear as she observed her surroundings, aware of that fact that she was being surveyed by nearby soldiers who gave off the impression of being stationed to watch her. She was vaguely surprised to note the one who practically shot her a stink eye throughout the journey over was amongst the few to watch over her, but thought it was best to think nothing of it.

She had noticed Digger and Slipknot speaking in hushed tones, it didn't take a genius to know the topic of the conversation. Sakura had caught onto the words 'mind games' until it was drawn back to the bomb 'conspiracy' that the former gave off the impression of being dead set that it was merely just to act as a deterrent rather than taking the form of a real threat to their lives. The latter of whom she was vaguely aware of, though just like the rest of them—she would rather keep interactions to a strict minimum.

The majority of the soldiers were at the front, their weapons held at the ready for any sign of enemies. Within the span of a minute after the pair nodded at one another—she assumed that was supposed to be the cue to go—the tall scruff had attempted to create a distraction, punching the nearest solider with his choice of weapon thrown towards the dark haired assassin whilst Slipknot did not hesitate on orchestrating his escape plan.

While there was a marginal chance she could get caught, however given this was a golden opportunity that she may not see again she thought it was best to make a small exception against the self-preservation instincts she had. Sakura decided to use this distraction to her advantage, producing a few clones to scout the area. Making sure that no eyes were aimed in her general direction, she gingerly slipped into an alleyway and wandered just enough so that the smoke would not be close enough to alert anyone yet not too far that she couldn't just slip back into their company.

With the hand formations being completed in quick succession, the clones appeared in clouds of smoke. With an exchanged nod of mutual understanding, no words were necessary. In less than a millisecond, she returned back just in time to witness Slipknot's head being blown. Needless to say, he evidently didn't get very far before the bomb nestled in his neck was activated. Given by the paled look on Boomerang's face as he grimaced at the sight, it seemed that the theory he was trying to work out was proved right there and then. Though, he quickly got over it as he eyed up the silent Katana in an appraising manner.

Death wasn't something she was unfamiliar with. It was an inevitable part of life, a fate that no one could run away from. It was also fundamental to integrate into strategies from her experience with past missions—take Sasori for example, for one thing that egotistical bastard definitely had it coming. But he was a murderer who did not have a single trace of empathy or remorse for his actions nor for the devastating aftermath that never failed to follow, then again to be a member of the infamous Akatsuki–it was a sort of unspoken requirement to be a sociopath in some form or another.

It was a no-brainer to see how Flag was egging on the others, to gauge their reactions as he asked who would be next to have the bombs in their necks triggered. Though it was only when it was made apparent that he was making a quick headcount that he noted that she wasn't anywhere near the others. He looked ready to burst a vein until she wavered through as if she had never left.

He pointed directly at her. "Don't think this doesn't apply to you too, kid. Stick with the rest where I can see you otherwise you'll end up wishing you listened when you had the chance." Then he turned on his heel and motioned for the rest to follow, not waiting—or caring for that matter—to hear her response. Katana moved away from Boomerang at the first chance she got, motioning her head for him to listen to Flag's orders as she disregarded his pick-up line.

"We need to get you a bell or something," Floyd commented airy, giving her a look that she barely had the time to decipher.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She kept her gaze straight and her face cautiously composed, though she couldn't help but slightly recognise the tone that Kakashi sensei would sometimes use on her when she was younger. But he didn't say anymore on the conversation before he moved over to speak with Harley.

"I'm gonna kill him." She heard him mutter, the conversation didn't take long before a few other people were added to the murder plot. Though, she couldn't find it in herself to take it personally that he evidently didn't trust her enough to reveal his murder scheme. She was a nobody in this world, there were no background checks available because there wasn't any information to begin with. Thus, she was a complete and utter stranger to these people.

But she wasn't one of them. And that's something that damn well going to stay that way as long as she could help it.

A/N: So, this is kinda where Inner Sakura becomes OOC, but I wanted to incorporate her into this. Also, key to note that the Sakura I'm using in this is at the early Shippuden stage, pretty much around the time Sasori is defeated and the end of that arc. Just because I'm more comfortable writing about this Sakura that I'm more familiar with. Plus, there'd no doubt be so many canon errors if I even attempted writing the present Sakura so I'm not gonna risk it. (Sorry to anyone who wanted an older Sakura.)

So, there wasn't much interaction just lots of thought processing, so it's not all that interesting unfortunately for those who prefer dialogue but there's more planned out in future chapters. It looks like there might be one more chapter or two, depending on if I'll split it on the actual SS plot. Then afterwards, it might just be drabbles, maybe even a side-plot for a marvel crossover if I could even make it work. Or just make a separate fan-fic about it, who knows. I might wait until Justice League comes out to see whether they'd play any part in this, or it could just stay exclusively to SS.

But lastly I just wanted to say thanks for the support so far, I really do appreciate it!