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Story: [Squirrel's Luck]

Summary: Sakura's team fails to pass their jounin-sensei's test, and the Genin Corps loom high and daunting. But Sakura was always too stubborn for her own good.

Genre: Adventure, Romance

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Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

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Failing wasn't something Sakura was used to.

She hadn't always succeeded as gracefully as she would've liked, and she hadn't always been victorious, but she didn't fail.

Except she had.

Sasuke had ended up on Naruko's team, which hadn't really been much of an issue. After all, even if she was a girl, Naruko was kind of-... Sakura wasn't really sure that the girl even really understood that boys and girls were different. She could be kind of weird like that.

Sakura not ending up on Sasuke's team hadn't been a failure. A set-back, yes. But it wasn't like anyone else worth worrying about had gotten the position in her stead, and it wasn't really a failure from her side of things even if that would've been the case.

No, the failure came in that all of their jounin-sensei were allowed to hold a separate extra exam for them after graduation. And her team had failed.

She was pretty sure that their jounin-sensei hadn't wanted to take on a team and had as a result been extra-harsh on them. However, in the end, that was irrelevant. The jounin-sensei decided on the test, and if the Hokage accepted that then that was it. Sink or swim, it was up to the genin to impress.

They'd failed to impress.

They had two choices, really. They could resign as a ninja and live the rest of their lives as civilians, or join the Genin Corps. It was an individual decision, though their jounin-sensei had at least been merciful enough to explain to them what being part of the Genin Corps actually meant before leaving them to it.

The Genin Corps were where hopes and aspirations went to die.

To summarize, once a person landed themselves in the Genin Corps they were on their own as far as development went. No teachers to guide them, no steady teammates to grow stronger alongside, a whole slew of crap-missions that nobody else wanted to deal with, and the steady risk of being used as cannon-fodder in an emergency.

There was something called the Chunin Corps, from which ANBU oftentimes recruited, but most of the ninja who made it that far were either apprentices to other ninja or paper-ninja who only held the chunin-title because they needed the security-clearance that came with it. The odds of a ninja managing to go from the Genin Corps and into the Chunin Corps was about one-in-a-hundred, and that was including all of those managing to become technically-chunin by paperwork.

The odds of someone actually managing to go from the Genin Corps into the Chunin Corps proper? Was more akin to one-in-a-thousand. And the only real upswing they'd find in that situation was a higher salary and slightly less-shitty missions, along with the ability to choose at least some of their own teammates.

As for the odds of being recruited into ANBU? Their jounin-sensei couldn't even begin to imagine how low they'd be. Though he did point out that ANBU wasn't exactly a nice place for anyone, and that the longest anyone had ever managed to survive in their shadowy ranks was two decades – which had apparently also set one hell of a record.

There was of course always the option to retire from ANBU after being recruited, but half the people who did that went around the bend within a few years simply because they'd forgotten what it was like to live normal lives. So, if anything, retiring tended to lessen their expected lifespans.

Either way, this left Sakura with a choice.

Admit to her failure and live the rest of her life as a civilian. Or join the Genin Corps and spend the rest of her life working herself to death for the sake of Konohagakure, one way or the other.

The sensible choice would be to admit her failure and return to her – no doubt secretly relieved – civilian parents in disgrace, and then continue on with whatever life had to offer from there, which likely would include a long and reasonably wealthy life as a merchant. Or to be married off to the highest bidder by her very practical parents, but that wasn't very likely unless she somehow ended up getting tangled in court-politics instead of honest trade.

So obviously, Sakura signed up for the Genin Corps.

She'd never been very good at admitting defeat gracefully.

XXX

All three of them went into the Genin Corps.

Within the first three weeks of trudging through sewers and pulling weeds, one of them turned in his resignation. There was a bit of a holdup due to the contract he'd signed when actually entering the Genin Corps, but the end result was that he was gone by the seventh week.

Her second almost-teammate was still going strong from what little Sakura had heard of it, along with several others of their former classmates who'd also failed their jounin-sensei's test.

Sakura hated it.

She hated the stench of the sewers, she hated the lazy clients who picked their noses instead of doing their own damn work, she hated seeing new faces everywhere she looked until she gave up on even trying to strike up conversation with them, and she hated the understanding that everyone looked at her and said 'career genin'.

She didn't have any amazing talents, she didn't have shinobi-contacts, she didn't even have friends at this point, and there was no way out of this hell-hole of a job except surrender.

She hated it.

More than anything though, she hated her own stubborn refusal to admit defeat, because the only way to escape becoming a career genin and still remain as a shinobi was to distinguish herself through an absolutely excellent mission-record. And for someone stuck pulling weeds most of the time, that was just laughable.

There were no teachers to ask for help, no senpai to look to for advice, and no supervision for if she screwed something up and managed to kill herself with a backfiring technique whilst training on her own.

She looked up techniques in the shinobi library in the sections that she actually had access to in her position as a genin. She read up on chakra-theory and taijutsu-stances and medicine and jutsu-theory in general.

Her parents weren't exactly supportive of her life-choices, but there wasn't anything they could do about it considering the way her contract with Konohagakure classified her as an adult. They'd briefly tried pushing anyway, going on about how she lived at their house, but a brief reminder that there was such a thing as communal living for genin available dirt-cheap caused that brief stint of excitement to die down blissfully quick.

Sakura didn't really want to move out of her home, but she refused to admit defeat like that.

By the third month, everything started to blur together. Wake up, do shitty missions with faceless people for other faceless people, study at the library, train desperately, sleep. With eating-breaks randomly interjected where she could find the time.

Then, for the first time ever, she got the clearance to go on an actual C-Rank.

In hindsight, she shouldn't have gotten her hopes up.

XXX

It was a simple escort-mission. A small family-caravan that needed to travel through a bit of bandit-infested countryside. Easy enough for two chunin and four genin.

Except somehow they managed to stumble across Iwa-nin in the middle of a very secretive mission of their own. Sakura could tell that it was a secretive mission, because their reaction upon being spotted by Konoha-nin had been to attack with lethal intent.

Three jounin and a chunin. They didn't stand a chance.

What with it having become alarmingly clear early on that they were doomed, Sakura grabbed one of their younger charges and ran for it. It wasn't the most dignified way of dealing with enemy-nin, and she was sure that there'd be people who frowned upon her actions of leaving teammates behind. But her presence wouldn't really matter one way or the other, and the Iwa-nin were clearly aiming to kill the caravan-members too.

Better that she make it back to Konoha to report Iwa's movements, than that she died hopelessly along with the rest of her team. Better still that she managed to keep at least one of the caravan-members safe – they were just a little kid, barely old enough to string sentences together properly.

So she ran.

Not that it exactly helped much considering that she was dealing with three jounin and a chunin. They could track her down easily, and they were both faster and could run for longer than herself, and she was carrying a crying toddler in her arms too. Not to mention that she hadn't exactly escaped their initial confrontation without a scratch.

Still there wasn't much she could do except keep on running. If she got lucky, the Iwa-nin would decide that it wasn't worth the time to track her down, or she'd run into a Konoha-patrol before they caught up with her.

Her only saving grace really was a pathetic stealth-technique that she'd seemingly only managed to master because of her equally pathetic chakra-reserves. It was designed to hide her presence from chakra-sensors, but considering that she was carrying a toddler in her arms and running full-tilt without caring about leaving tracks, there wasn't much chance that that'd help.

There was no point in wasting time covering her tracks when any jounin worth their salt would see right through anything she could manage.

She was going to die, on a shitty mission in the middle of fuck-all nowhere, all because of her shitty luck to stumble across Iwa-nin at the worst moment.

Then again... the Iwa-nin were probably on a schedule. So if she could play keep-away for long enough, or make it obvious to their eyes that it'd take too long to hunt her down and kill her with the rest-...

What if-...?

Sakura let go of her chakra-suppression technique and instead flared it in a very distinct pattern. Konoha's emergency-signal, which was only ever really used to call in nearby patrols for aid.

There weren't any nearby patrols, and she'd given up what little stealth she could manage, but there was a chance that the jounin chasing after her wouldn't actually know that. She switched her direction slightly as if she'd spotted something, and then continued running roughly in the direction of 'towards Konoha'.

If she survived, great. If she didn't, at least she'd tried.

XXX

It was the second day of her run that she finally encountered a Konoha patrol, not that she'd really been expecting an enemy-pursuit after they'd failed to catch her within the first six hours.

She barely managed to report that there'd been jounin-level Iwa-nin before passing out.

By the time she woke up, they were nearly at Konoha's gates, the toddler looked to have been cleaned up somewhat, and someone had bandaged the scrapes that she hadn't bothered with.

Lack of an enemy-pursuit or not, Sakura hadn't wanted to risk stopping to bandage them on her own, too convinced that she'd simply keel over in a faint – and then die of hypothermia or something – the moment she slowed down.

When they finally arrived, she gave a much more detailed attempt at reporting the situation to the Hokage, who frowned sympathetically and didn't look all too pleased with Sakura's selfish decision to run away rather than die pointlessly.

Oh, he certainly mimed the right words of reassurance in regards to her having made the best choice considering the situation, but he looked disappointed in her lack of bullheaded determination to succeed despite the odds.

Sakura didn't particularly like the Hokage. He was kind of a pretentious asshole with his Will of Fire and the importance of one's teammates. Sakura hadn't even known her teammates' names, and neither had they known hers. There wasn't much point in learning things like that when they were all interchangeable genin as far as everyone else were concerned.

A Genin Corps member who tried to befriend their coworkers during work-hours was considered rude. If they became drinking-buddies outside of work, then fine. But friendships weren't really encouraged in any way in the Genin Corps, and placing the life of a teammate over the success of the mission was a good way to get excommunicated.

Sure, the Hokage's words might've rung true if Sakura had been part of a jounin-sensei's genin-team. Friendships in those tended to linger even when they'd been officially broken up due to promotions. But for a member of the Genin Corps who rarely if ever saw the same face twice at her work-place? It just wasn't feasible.

So, for the Hokage to direct that kind of disappointed look her way, as if she'd somehow screwed up by not dying with the rest of her temporary teammates? Sakura couldn't really bring herself to like the old man much.

She might hate to fail, she might hate the idea of ever surrendering. But more than anything else, she hated the idea that she should simply allow herself to get killed for no goddamn reason.

That didn't mean that she could be rude to her superior however, so she kept her face as blank as she could manage, and pretended as if she agreed with him.

It wasn't that hard. She'd been pretending to be nice to people she didn't like for years now. That was just good manners.

XXX

The biggest change in her schedule after barely escaping the rest of her team being massacred by enemy shinobi, was that her parents finally decided that Sakura obviously didn't understand what she wanted to do with her life.

To some extent, Sakura could understand where they were coming from. After all, civilians didn't encounter enemy shinobi and barely escape with their lives. They lived comfortable lives with some minor complications.

Then again, there was a certain toddler who would disagree with that statement.

Civilians encountered enemy shinobi just as often, and unlike actual shinobi, they generally didn't survive the experience.

For all that Sakura didn't really feel very charitable towards their Hokage, for all that she hated being stuck with the shitty missions that nobody else wanted, for all that she'd kept going out of sheer stubborn refusal to admit defeat. More than anything else, Sakura didn't want to become a victim.

If death was so inevitable, then she wanted to be able to at least do something with her life before getting killed. Even if that was simply to alert the rest of the Village to the threat.

Her parents disagreed, and Sakura moved into the communal apartments of the Genin Corps.

It wasn't ideal, but at least she no longer had to listen to her parents whining about how they didn't raise her to be so foolish.

XXX

One of the main reasons that ANBU recruited so heavily from the Chunin Corps was the anonymity of it.

The genin with a jounin-sensei would participate in the international Chunin Exam in order to further Konoha's prestige and earn their own place in the ranks. Genin Corps members who advanced to chunin however, were always field-promoted.

After all, a genin with a jounin-sensei had a lot of opportunities to learn impressive techniques to intimidate opposing Villages and awe future clients. A genin from the Genin Corps would be lucky to figure out a handful of techniques in total, and that was just too pathetic for Konoha to risk showcasing their abilities to the rest of the world.

So whilst Sakura was certainly aware of the Chunin Exam that'd just kicked off, it wasn't the kind of awareness one had from something that concerned themselves.

Then again, her current mission involved three other genin and a chunin wandering around outside of the Forest of Death, just to make sure that none of the prospective future-chunin tried to cheat and dodge back out of the forest in order to recuperate in safety.

It was a C-Rank, and the only reason it was that high on the list was that their presence had actually been needed twice in the past. Twice, in all the many years that similar exams had been held. And during those two times, the full extent of excitement had been a statement of 'go back in there or get disqualified'.

They were really only there to prevent some clever genin from finding a useful loophole.

Still, as C-Ranks went, it wasn't a bad one. In the two months since Sakura's first disastrous one: she'd been flirted with by clients older than her father, ruined one of her favorite outfits beyond recovery by having a bandit spray blood all over it, ruined another outfit when a kid puked on her, and nearly broken her hand when she'd resorted to punching a bandit with a steel-helmet in the head.

Her hand had thankfully made a full recovery, and it'd mostly just been painful. Apparently her ceaseless training had born fruit on that front. She could now punch steel without completely disabling herself in the process. It just hurt like hell.

So, in comparison to Sakura's track-record with C-Ranks, this one was very much on the pleasant side. Wandering around in a mostly unpredictable way to keep anyone from dodging their patrols, and pretending like she was actually paying attention to her surroundings.

Oh, she was paying attention to her surroundings. Her act came from that she was making sure that anyone who saw her believed that she was treating the situation like wandering around in an active war-zone. That way, even if they failed to detect anyone, their mere obvious hyper-vigilance would make even most chunin very hesitant about trying to dodge past them.

A good act was more important than actually paying attention. It literally said so in their mission-parameters.

Regardless, it was-...

"Something's coming-...!"

Red.

There was a dead chunin were there used to be a live chunin.

Sakura hadn't even had time to blink.

Another genin raised their kunai, and died.

There was a ninja among them, pale skin and bored expression, the Killing Intent was pressing down on her.

They didn't stand a chance. This wasn't-... Sakura ran.

The Forest of Death might have a horrible reputation, but she'd rather be eaten alive by tigers than sit around and wait for the enemy shinobi to murder her.

She wasn't even really aware of flaring her chakra in the emergency-signal until a kunai hit her in the shoulder when she was almost at the forest's edge.

The kunai hit her with enough force to knock her legs out from under her, and if its aim hadn't been slightly off, she would've died instantly. The emergency-signal stuttered and died as her body instinctively reacted to having the breath knocked out of her, and Sakura saw her chance.

Instantly clamping down on her chakra, as if there was suddenly no longer a living person lying by the forest's edge, Sakura kept her breathing as silent and unnoticeable as she could manage.

Faking death wasn't exactly covered in the Academy, but hopefully it'd prove useful against a shinobi who was likely on a time-schedule that hadn't been improved by Sakura flaring an emergency-signal whilst in the vague neighborhood of several elite jounin.

Sakura didn't want to die.

Even if that meant acting cowardly, even if it meant abandoning her teammates, she just really didn't want to die just because she got in the way of a jounin who decided that it'd be easier to go through her than around her.

She wasn't really sure of how long she remained there. It felt like hours, but that was unlikely.

"Ah, is this the one who made the signal? Too bad-..." Sakura sat up, and the voice stuttered to a halt. "Y-You're alive?"

Sakura turned around to see the stunned Konoha-nin behind her, wincing as she jostled the arm that didn't seem to be able to move under its own power. "Yeah." She agreed, her voice breaking slightly. "Gonna need a-... a medic though."

The shinobi who'd arrived blinked at her stupidly for a moment, before rushing to her side whilst shouting for a medic.

Still not the worst C-Rank she'd gone on. Definitely in the top five though.

XXX

Turns out, Orochimaru had infiltrated the Chunin Exam. As in, the S-Class missing-nin and former member of the Sannin, had infiltrated Konohagakure.

Four genin and one chunin. The chunin had been unfortunate enough to be good enough to detect Orochimaru's retreat but too weak to survive the man's attention, so he'd died first. Sakura hadn't been the only survivor this time though, since apparently Orochimaru had thought it more important to dodge the alerted patrols than it was to kill off two genin who were too terrified to move underneath his Killing Intent.

Sakura had saved two lives by faking her own death.

At this rate, Sakura found herself vaguely relived that nobody actually talked in the Genin Corps, otherwise she'd probably be forever remembered as 'that girl who ran away'. She wasn't ashamed of it, but she couldn't really bring herself to be much proud of her track-record beyond that she'd managed to survive it.

Thankfully, she wasn't actually going to have to deal with the security-checks of the aftermath, seeing as she was confined to the hospital. She could move her arm again. Kind of.

The medic-nin seemed convinced that she'd make a full recovery, but they'd also told her that if Orochimaru's kunai had hit her an inch differently in either directions then she'd probably have died. If not instantly from her spine being severed, then from blood-loss of her arm being more or less completely detached from the force of the blow.

Sakura hadn't found this commentary very reassuring, but medic-nin knew their stuff, and she was lucky to have moments of even limited cognition in between the pain-medication and the blinding pain of a whole lot of broken bones, so mostly she just didn't think about it too much.

It was easier to sleep like that.

XXX

A month later, she was out of the hospital.

Not back on duty, seeing as moving her arm too quickly still made her wince, and that her fingers on one hand were about as dextrous as if she'd gotten caught in a blizzard. It wasn't anything that could be cured better at a hospital than it could be cured at her own apartment, so they'd sent her home.

Thankfully, medic-leave was always paid for when it was even indirectly related to one's duties as a ninja, so she wasn't in any danger of losing hot water any time soon.

The final part of the Chunin Exam was also in mid-swing, but Sakura wasn't-... Even if they were technically her colleagues, she couldn't quite suppress the sting of jealousy at the thought of the genin with a jounin-sensei. She'd work together with them, she'd trust them at her back any day, and she'd defend them to the utmost of her abilities – and no further, because Sakura wasn't crazy enough to believe she could face down S-Class missing-nin in a fight, and she had no intention of dying pointlessly.

However, the idea of going to cheer them on? To watch the flashy techniques they'd learnt under the steady hand of a jounin-sensei? To listen as passionate ideals, that she couldn't care less about, clashed together?

Sakura knew she had a temper, just like she knew that she was probably too stubborn for her own good. And the idea of visiting that arena and watch as former classmates showed off how far they'd come since they'd passed their jounin-sensei's test where Sakura hadn't?

Her apartment was pretty easy to clean, but she liked her furniture whole and functional, rather than embedded into her apartment's walls.

So she was ignoring the Chunin Exam. She was in fact going so far as to treat herself to a nice cup of tea in her apartment, seeing as most everywhere else in the Village were buzzing with excitement about the whole thing.

A shinobi with a headband with a music-note on it appeared in her window, kunai raised as they smashed through the glass.

Sakura hurled her filled tea cup at his face, and then triggered the traps she'd set up on the window-sill whilst she threw herself behind the table.

Orochimaru had infiltrated Konohagakure in the middle of a Village-wide alert to keep on their toes. Sakura had watched two people die a mere couple of feet away from her on a routine mission.

She felt about as safe within Konoha's walls as the average hen in a fox-den. And she planned accordingly.

There was a noise a bit like a dry twig snapping, along with a distinctly wet sound. The scream of pain barely registered, as Sakura finally got her hands on her gear.

Leaping to her feet, she found a humanoid shape nailed to her ceiling with a dozen sharpened poles the size of her arm, and a second ninja dragging themselves up to her window.

She kicked the second ninja in the head. It felt a bit like kicking a melon. Hard, but mostly wet.

The same dull cracking-noise, the same wet sound, and then a lackluster thump of an unmoving body hitting pavement.

Glancing out through her window and ignoring the – red red red – blood dripping down from the corpse nailed to her ceiling, Sakura tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

Turns out, they were being invaded.

"Fuck my life."

XXX

Survival in a war-zone largely came down to luck.

There was definitely a strategic element to the situation, but – beyond the strategic elements usually present in any kind of battle – that mostly landed itself under 'common sense'.

For example, if an enemy ninja waded through other ninja, you didn't charge straight at them and hope that they'd be spontaneously overwhelmed. Instead, you instantly went the other way in order to look for an allied ninja who waded through enemy ninja in a very similar manner, and then you pointed them in the direction you last saw the enemy ninja in question.

Sakura kind of lost count of the amount of traps she set off, and the amount of weaker ninja she helped dog-pile. She could however still perfectly recall the dozen-or-so near-misses she'd had with an enemy ninja way out of her league noticing her.

She wasn't exactly proud of using allied ninja's failed attempts to dog-pile an enemy in order to retreat safely, but in total she'd managed to aim something like thirty jounin-level allies at the elites of the enemy. Which had probably kept a lot of casualties down in the long-run.

Once a ninja reached a certain level, genin became about as effective at hindering their progress as particularly annoying flies. So, instead of dying pointlessly for the sake of perhaps distracting the enemy for a few moments, Sakura had gone and fetched the ones who could actually bring them down. And then traded for the genin-level enemies that they'd in turn previously been wading through.

There'd been a lot of fighting going on, and thankfully Konoha's genin outnumbered the genin of both Suna and Sound combined, meaning that they'd gotten a lot of effective use of Sakura's favorite tactic of ganging up on an enemy and hitting them until they died.

For all of its laughable simplicity, it'd been devastatingly effective.

XXX

The Hokage was dead, and apparently Sakura was the only survivor in the Genin Corps of her former classmates.

There'd been seven of them in total who hadn't resigned within the first six months. Out of thirty people, nine passed their jounin-sensei's test, fourteen decided to go civilian, and seven stuck with the Genin Corps. Well, one now, seeing as Sakura was the only one of them who'd managed to survive the invasion.

She only knew about there having still been classmates among the ranks because an ANBU-member had told her about it.

Turns out, invasions were hell on manpower. Which was why Sakura now had an invitation to join the infamous ranks of ANBU.

Their reasoning was a mixture of tactical know-how, dedication to training, her record of surviving her team getting in over their heads, and her actions during the invasion. She hadn't been the only one to approve of her tactic of aiming elite ninja at each other rather than waste her life trying to stop them.

Normally, ANBU would've probably only begun considering her after a field-promotion to chunin, but being as strapped for manpower as they were – and without an acting Hokage who'd prioritize the field-promotion of genin – they'd taken a look into the Genin Corps as well. And Sakura had fit the bill.

Should she pass their 'entrance exam', she would officially be field-promoted to chunin – for her 'distinguished actions during the invasion' and her 'excellent mission-record' – after having spent a total of six months in the Genin Corps.

Which was why Sakura was currently in the middle of watching an old man drown in his own puke. Assassination was the name of the game, and having the man drink himself to death had been as viable an option as any.

After all, it was supposed to look like an accident, not an actual assassination.

Just a tiny bit of paralytic in his drink, along with two pillows to prop his head up, and now all she needed to do was stand by and watch him drown. Which was taking a bit of time, but she'd anticipated as much and brought a book to distract herself with.

She was pretty sure her ANBU-escort were both exasperated and amused with her foresight on the matter, though it was hard to tell through the masks they wore.

XXX

Despite everything, being part of ANBU was surprisingly stress-free.

Sure, she killed people for a living, and sure her missions were an awful lot more dangerous than beating up a few bandits every now and then. But that was just it. Sakura always knew what to expect.

Not down to the specific details. But she generally knew if a target would have the money and inclination to hire bodyguards long before leaving Konoha, and she never really had to wait around for them to make the first move. She could make the first move whenever she wanted, as long as she'd investigated what she'd actually be getting into.

It was a bit like comparing keeping pace with someone with longer legs than herself, always having to awkwardly jog to keep up, and being allowed to set her own pace – even if it was even faster than the awkward half-jog.

She kind of liked it actually.

Yes she killed people for a living, yes she'd killed off civilians who were even younger than herself, yes she'd stabbed a man who was begging her to spare his grandson and then stabbed the grandson too. She wasn't exactly proud of it, but it was for the Village, and she'd found that she was actually rather fantastic at compartmentalizing the whole situation.

She wasn't exactly 'content', but then she couldn't really remember what that'd felt like. She hadn't felt like that since-... since somewhere around when she'd first met Ino.

She hadn't even thought about Ino at all for nearly seven months now, let alone Sasuke.

Sakura stared up at the ceiling thoughtfully, not particularly bothered by the businessman sobbing to himself in a corner as he bled out, and decided that she was actually kind of embarrassed about the whole Sasuke-situation.

She couldn't even recall what his face looked like, and she'd broken up her longest and only real friendship over him. Had he really been that pretty? Or had she just been even more stubbornly competitive back then than she was now?

Either way, it felt very much like the actions of a kid, and Sakura would rather not be associated with them at all. Not that she would be, considering how the only people who interacted with her these days were people behind masks. Personal history wasn't something ANBU-members investigated between each other.

Even if it wouldn't have been very hard to stalk one of her coworkers back to their house and reveal their identity that way, that kind of thing would've not only been borderline-treasonous, it would've also been breathtakingly rude. ANBU were faceless ninja without any history, to acknowledge otherwise was a bit like digging up blackmail-material on the Hokage. Not that Konoha actually had a new one of those yet.

The businessman's sobs finally stopped, and Sakura turned to watch the last bit of life leave his body. Then she was finished.

Target observed dead, target clearly the victim of an attack, and no traces of the one who'd actually done it. Now she just needed to get back to the Village without stumbling across the rest of the man's bodyguards.

Life was pretty okay, as far as Sakura was concerned.

XXX

About a week before Tsunade's official inauguration, Sakura was faced with the very real understanding that her time in ANBU meant extra-training.

Not just in new techniques and learning new things on missions as she went on them, or even the 'first hazing' she'd been put through upon her recruitment. ANBU required as close to perfect control of one's emotions as was physically possible.

Sakura wasn't overly fond of exactly how violent that bit of training could become, but considering some of ANBU's recruits came from ninja who'd had jounin-sensei, she could understand the need for it. ANBU wasn't a genin-team of friendships and ideals, it was a place of anonymity and duty.

Emotions were a distraction, and distractions got yourself and your coworkers killed.

At least it gave Sakura the incentive to finally stop fidgeting with her recently-cut hair. It'd been getting in the way, and she didn't regret it, but it was so weird to not have long hair anymore having had it for several years now.

Even if that incentive mainly came in the form of being punched hard enough to make her worry about losing teeth.

She was ANBU, she'd survive it.

XXX

Tsunade's inauguration brought with it a certain other thing as well.

Or rather, Sakura kind of stumbled across an old classmate whilst in the middle of wandering around aimlessly on one of her rare days off.

She wouldn't even really have noticed if the girl in question hadn't suddenly decided to run up to her, exclaiming about how cool it was that Sakura had reached chunin.

Sakura hadn't even really noticed that she wore her chunin-vest that day until that moment.

"You're the only one except for Shikamaru! Come on, let's celebrate!" Naruko grabbed her arm and started pulling. "I know just the place! They're the best!"

Sakura felt something weird settle in her stomach. Kind of like apprehension, kind of like relief, and kind of like she wanted to cry for some reason? Her eyes wouldn't move from watching the blonde drag her along, and Sakura couldn't really find the words to deny the girl's obvious cheer.

It felt weird, having someone touch you without intent to harm. Sakura couldn't remember the last time-... Maybe back when she'd still lived with her parents? Were they even alive after the invasion? Sakura hadn't ever actually gotten around to check on that. What the hell was wrong with her?

The rest of the day slipped by in a daze.

Naruko chattered brightly at her, apparently just so happy to have someone to talk to that weren't her teammates. Her teammates being Sai and Sasuke, as in, a creepy weirdo and the gloomiest kid in the world. Her sensei wasn't much better, what with being habitually late, always reading porn in public, and just generally being an opportunistically sadistic asshole.

Naruko had a lot of opinions on her team. Most of them were at least a little bit hilarious to listen to, and even if Sakura wasn't a big fan of ramen normally Ichiraku's was nice though. Warm somehow.

She gave up on keeping up with Naruko's consumption of ramen almost immediately though, and ended up spending what must've been hours just listening to her talking about all of the crazy stuff her asshole-team got up to.

By the end of it, Sakura had nearly managed to get used to the way she kept relaxing whenever Naruko touched her. It was still a bit weird, but Naruko had a very nice smile, so it wasn't a 'bad' type of weird.

XXX

Her parents were alive. Their home had long-since been repaired of any damage it might've suffered. And Sakura would still rather watch a man drown in his own puke than listen to her mother badger her about how she ought to give up on being a ninja.

She didn't leave them an address to contact her at.

She wasn't stupid. If they needed to get in contact with her for something important, they could go through the mission-desk. The fact that the mission-desk would be more likely to laugh at her parents than actually forward general complaints about 'giving up on being a ninja' did indeed play a major part in that decision.

Ichiraku's without Naruko was a bit blander than she remembered, but it was nice enough.

And-...

Sakura took a deep breath and pretended like she wasn't breaking out in cold sweat.

And Sakura was currently being indoctrinated into a secret and technically-treasonous part of ANBU.

It'd been nearly a month, and Sakura had started getting oddly unsurprised about her training-regime. She'd been expecting almost everything they threw at her in fact, and it'd taken her looking up where in the world she'd heard anything about ANBU training-regimes before she'd figured it out.

Despite common belief, Sakura would prefer a good book on history to a romance-novel, and whilst history was a very... subjective thing, when it came to ninja, there were certain parts that'd actually been recorded.

Things like the founding of Konoha, the founding of the other Villages, the founding of ANBU, and the disbanding of Root. It was the latter one that she recognized her training-regime from. As in, the book had briefly mentioned some of the horrible things Root-operatives were subjected to in the name of training 'perfect tools', in order to drive home why it'd been disbanded after the Third Shinobi War.

Sakura was too old to be trained as a proper operative, from what she could gather, but as a liaison within ANBU? As a trusted ANBU-operative capable of helping to cover up the movements of Root? She'd be perfect for it, if a little lower in rank than what could be hoped for.

So Sakura was basically committing treason.

Why did all this shit happen to her?

XXX

The problem with accidentally uncovering a treasonous organization within your own Village, was the fact that in order to properly expose it, your only real option was to talk to the Hokage.

For elite jounin, this wasn't much of an issue. Just tack it on a routine mission-briefing with the Hokage. It might take a little bit of time to get the opportunity to do so without rousing suspicion, possibly more time than what was really comfortable, but it could be done with very little fuss.

Sakura was a nobody.

Worse, she was a nobody who was likely being watched like a hawk by Root, just to make sure she didn't even consider doing what she needed to do.

Any genin could theoretically request to meet with the Hokage. They'd be turned down ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if they didn't present an at least halfway-decent reason behind it – the Hokage's time was quite valuable, after all – but they could request it. Chunin generally landed themselves more along the lines of being turned down thirty times out of a hundred, but as long as they found a mission-report worthy of the Hokage's time they could do like the elite jounin and simply tack on a brief request to speak privately after they'd given the rest of their report.

Sakura's missions were ANBU-missions at best, and not-quite-Root at worst. She didn't report to anyone in person. It was all done with perfectly innocent paperwork that could be easily misplaced by an organization within ANBU's ranks.

Sure, she was technically a chunin, but any request she made to speak with the Hokage would have to pass through a not-insubstantial amount of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy which would be tracked, and which always-paranoid Root would quickly be able to divine her intent through.

Best case scenario, upon requesting a meeting with the Hokage, she would have her request rejected and suddenly have no interaction with Root whatsoever. Worst case scenario, her request would be rejected, and she'd die in mysterious circumstances on a routine mission.

Considering that Root's leader risked execution for treason if Sakura ever revealed its existence – no matter how insubstantial her evidence might be – she was pretty damn sure that they wouldn't risk letting her live.

So not only did she have no evidence to back her up on her claim of treason within the Village, she had nobody to give it to either.

XXX

It was oddly difficult to worry when Naruko was right in front of her.

It wasn't really that Naruko was reassuring, because the blonde was mostly just blabbering on about her plans to strangle her teammates to death. Which was probably disproportionate to what they'd actually done, but watching Naruko wave her arms around in frustration was kind of hilarious, so Sakura wasn't going to call her out on it.

Mostly, it was difficult to worry when Naruko was there, because Naruko was ridiculous and adorable and far too loud to really allow the people around her to think.

Sakura had a vague recollection of her not having particularly appreciated that last bit back when they'd been classmates. It was hard to learn things when you weren't able to hear your own thoughts over the girl's noise.

Outside of a classroom though? In a stressful environment where Sakura was secretly and desperately fortifying her apartment to withstand a siege by her fellow Root-members for when they inevitably realized that she wanted to get away? Where she was potentially committing treason on any mission she was sent to, since she didn't know if it was an actual ANBU-mission or not?

Naruko's loudness was a blessing.

It didn't hurt that she actually managed to make her laugh. Sakura couldn't really remember the last time she'd laughed before Naruko. Probably back before graduation at least?

Though she could do without Ayame smiling knowingly at her whenever she showed up at Ichiraku's and Naruko wasn't there. Or the way Ayame would glance over at the two of them and then dart out of sight to hide her giggles.

Sakura was pretty sure she was the butt of some kind of joke, but hell if she knew what it was.

XXX

A/n: Originally, this was written with two requirements in mind. 1) To play around with Competent!Sakura, and 2) to have Competent!Sakura be separated from Team-7-shenanigans without "breaking apart" Team 7.

I'd read too many fics where Team 7 gets thrown under the bus (no matter how awful of an environment I might agree that they present to Sakura's development), and too many fics where Team 7 sticks together like OT3-glue. So I wanted to play around with something that was neither of those for a little bit.

This combined with a recent urge to write "something with Naruko in it", and thus was born Team 7 "the team of assholes". (Yes, Naruko is kind of included in that one. You don't get to be the prank-master by being sweet and innocent.)