Warnings for Spoilers of Everything. I'll be doing a lot of interconnected referencing to lots of different series. Avengers, Thor, Naruto, Captain America, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Probably others, who knows.

Anyways - this is my foray into both a multi-chapter story and a crossover.

So, real quick before we begin and if you would be so kind as to give me a moment of your time. I want to say that this story was inspired by Girl-Chama's Shortcutting Redemption. It is by far the best Naruto/Avenger's crossover I have read on this site and more than just a well executed crossover it's a really fantastic read. With a solid and engaging writing style the story is an intriguing study into the interaction between characters and cultures. I highly recommend that if you haven't read it yet you should leave right now and go school yourself.

Even if that means not reading this first.

However, when you come back, please enjoy.

Sakura was reeling her chakra back from the Strength of a Hundred seal, black marks retreating rapidly from around Obito's limbs into her own, as the first gush of acid hit the ground. Crouching down, she grabbed Obito just under his arms and kicked off as hard as she could, vaulting them up towards higher ground. She miscalculated his weight and wasn't quite able to dodge all of the downpour. Her arm screamed where her shirt had proved a poor armor, the sensation of her skin dissolving into agony.

Some acids can eat through flesh within seconds, she thought distantly in the part of her brain not firing off pain signals. It can take less than a minute to burn past fat, muscle, and even bone if left untreated or treated incorrectly.

They landed poorly, even with Obito trying to help right their course. They both hit the ground and scraped their way to a dusty halt. Sakura felt grit biting into the burning trenches still eating ever deeper into her arm. She struggled to her feet, stumbling, and tore off her vest, kicking it away. Her nails sunk into the seam of her right sleeve next and ripped the fabric free, shucking it to the side. She tried to assess her arm, but her entire body convulsed, limbs trembling in shock.

Sakura curled around her arm, reluctant to touch it, letting the instinct to protect the area overrule her medical training. She should already be treating herself, she thought, already be fixing what was broken. She managed to glance down the length of her limb and regretted it, because at least a moment ago she had had hope that she would be okay, had faith in the abilities that her master had given her. The flesh was damaged from her wrist up her forearm and across part of her bicep too, spattered in a pattern like paint might be flicked from a brush. The tattoo like marks of her seal made their final retreat to the rhombus on her forehead, pulling away any residual power and leaving her feeling hollow and incapable of movement. The release also took away the overbearing awareness of her cells and while the pain wasn't lessened, her tolerance for it grew as her body struggled to manage.

"Are you okay?"

"...water...I need water..." her voice was high and desperate. She thought she sounded younger, like the twelve year old she had so adamantly tried to leave behind.

Obito touched his hip, but he didn't have his flask on him, stripped as he was to just a pair of standard issue trousers. He crouched down instead and slammed two fingers into the loose rust colored dirt. The ground hardened into rock and dipped into a smooth bowl. He performed another unknown technique, an odd twist of his fingers while whispering whatever it was too softly to hear. The air became instantly humid in the space of a breath and the bowl filled quickly, like magic. Sakura fell to her knees heavily, caps cracking, and splashed at her arm, again and again and again. And then had him refill it to start the process over.

During the past five years of her life she had been punched by arguably the strongest woman in the world, been impaled by a poisonous sword, and also had been the unfortunate recipient of Naruto claw-slapping her aside while transforming into the Kyubbi. In all these circumstances she had had the instantaneous satisfaction of instantaneous healing via chakra, whether her own or someone else's. Wounds were always painful, but there had always been an end in sight.

Acid was an entirely new world of medical discovery and as she assessed her available energy she saw no solution.

The water wasn't soothing as she thought it might have been. Each new handful splashed over her and irritated the already raw nerves as it rinsed away contaminants. She felt her stomach roil from the pain and mulishly she thought that it was a good thing she hadn't eaten anything besides soldier pills in the past two days. She chanced another look at the damage and only just managed to strangle an angry sob before it could be born. Her arm looked like it better belonged to an anatomical dummy.

I don't have enough to spare for full treatment, she thought, alternatively a patch job will scar it wrong and I'll lose full range of movement.

"Are you okay?" Obito asked, the words foreign on his tongue.

Sakura clenched her eyes shut for a long moment and worked at picking the lock on her jaw. She couldn't let them keep wasting time on this. They had to move forward. She had to do something. Or, do nothing.

"...Yeah. I'm - I'm okay...This is nothing." Her voice trembled, but she hoped she was the only one who could hear it.

"You're a medical ninja, right?" he murmured, "...let's wait till your wounds have healed." He shifted away from her, still crouching, to give her space and privacy. A weirdly kind gesture from what had been a man attempting world domination in the not too distant past.

Everything was so backwards now. She was alone in some sort of mad pocket dimension with an evil man (formerly?) - who was actually Kakashi's old teammate, who everyone thought was dead - and they were looking for Sasuke - her former teammate who apparently wanted to destroy Konohagakure (or rule it?) but was working on their side for the moment - who was in another dimension, having been banished there by the sudden appearance of a bunny eared bitch who seemed incredibly driven towards the singular goal of wiping every single shinobi off the face of the earth.

That wasn't even mentioning dealing with the resurrection of the dead, the disparate factions of several hidden villages and the samurai nation, once caught in age old rivalries and bitter feuds somehow coming together to form a united front, or the tragic deaths of friends and comrades. Hordes of monstrous clones. Demons made of chakra coming together and falling apart. The end of the world as she knew it.

Everything was so wrong.

Sakura felt a nearly overwhelming urge to call out for her mother. A primal desire that she pinched between her lips and refused to even whisper. She allowed that ache to fill her chest for a moment and then released it, tasking herself to regather her wits.

We can't afford to rest, she thought, we have to find Sasuke. Naruto needs Sasuke. The world needed Sasuke. They couldn't win without both of them together. It had always been that way, they were at their strongest when together and her duty was to keep them that way for as long as she could. Like trying to force two opposite magnets together. They were lucky she'd been trained by the strongest woman in the world.

Sakura clutched the wrist of her injured arm and glared down at her reflection in the basin. She knew she didn't have the time or energy to heal anything, but she did have another option. Carefully she began deadening nerves, one by one. Death crept across her arm, her skin losing sensation in chunks, muscles going lax. Not death exactly though, more like dying, the moment of between life and death, held in suspension. The pain flexing its claws within the meat of her flesh began to dull to a deep intense ache. Killing off living cells and purposefully corrupting nerves came surprisingly easy to her, easier than learning to heal had ever been.

I can't numb all the nerves, she thought, something could go wrong and I wouldn't feel it. I can't turn off the circulation either if I'm going to use chakra...I'll have to grin and bear the rest of it.

From the vantage point of their new perch, they could make out more of the surrounding landscape. There were mountainous formations, made from curdled red stone, as far as she could see in every directions. This was an empty place filled with silence and the stench of sulfur.

The portal Obito sustained was closed, spinning hypnotically a dozen feet from them. The ground beneath it still giving off clouds of noxious gas. Obito was huffing softly where he slumped not far from her, the muted gasp of an animal resigned to death. His hair and skin had been bleached white, since the time he had housed the Ten-Tailed conglomeration. The only pigment he had was from his eyes and the blood that spilled like tears down his cheeks. He looked like a ghost with one foot already in the afterlife.

I don't think he'll last much longer the way he is, she thought, we have to hurry. Naruto is waiting.

Sakura reached out and clutched a damp hand around Obito's shoulder, pretending to herself that she wasn't also using the opportunity to lean against him in her exhaustion. She flushed chakra through his shoulder, easing the aches he was feeling and revitalizing his blood with oxygen. It was a simple technique, used mostly to help the elderly and asthmatics, that eased his inhalations and hopefully revitalized him enough to continue. She felt dizzy as she retracted the energy. Too sapped from what little chakra she had been forced to expend without the benefit of her seal.

I need him to hold on, she thought, he has to survive until we get Sasuke back. After that... he can die.

"It's okay," she said, her voice insistent in between barely controlled gasps. "...We can't waste the chance we got from Naruto."

Obito was tense beneath her fingertips, "Why don't you heal your own wounds?"

"...My chakra has a limit," Sakura said, smirking dryly. "Let's keep going."

This man, Kakashi's teammate, looked up at her from the corner of his eye like he knew her, knew everything about her. Maybe not the superficial things, like her favorite food or the name of her childhood pet, but her core he understood.

"...You feel like you want to help him..." his mouth tugged just a little against the scars that whirled across half his face. She wasn't sure which 'he' Obito was talking about, it could have applied to a number of her precious people.

I would do anything to help them. They're my teammates, my comrades, my family.

"I see," he said, almost a sigh. Sakura wasn't sure if he was reading her mind with his cursed eyes or if the Strength of a Hundred seal, seeping from her skin to his, connected them in more ways than one, but he seemed to understand her intent and unwavering dedication. They had to do this. Sakura felt flush with the knowledge that this man was willing to die to save the world he'd once been so bent on ruling, that this act was his apology to his own teammates for his actions, the only thing he could do, that the tenacity he was expelling matched her own. She felt infected by the thought that she too would give up her life for the ultimate outcome.

"Yeah," he was smiling now, boyish almost, similar to the rare smiles Sasuke had granted Team seven in his youth. "Let's do this."

"Alright!" Sakura lifted her injured arm and pressed her palm into his other shoulder, rooting herself firmly and anchoring him to the ground.

Her task was to maintain the floodgate, keep the seal holding back her three years of chakra wide open. Obito drew the chakra out and controlled it himself, as if their networks were one and the same. His control wasn't as fine as hers and she had to help hone the transition between them. It was more of a mental exercise than anything else, an internal urging, directing the chakra towards him.

The portal flickered and reappeared before them, twisting open. The energy rushing out of her grew more demanding, the portal to this further dimension requiring more to remain open. Great dunes filled the circular window and hot gold sand began to pour free like an hourglass. In the very far distance there was a solitary figure, the one darkness in a land of sunlight.

"It's this one!" Obito shouted.

"Sasuke!" Sakura screamed at the same time, louder than him. "Over here! Hurry!"

Sasuke turned towards her, already running.

Sakura didn't need to see the portal beginning to shrink, she could feel the tide of her chakra ebbing under the strain to connect the two far reaching dimensions. Obito was bolstering the window with as much of his own chakra as he could, but he'd been mostly tapped from the last dimension they had investigated.

"...this is bad..." Obito choked out, portal whirling smaller and smaller, wavering insubstantially.

As fast as Sasuke was, Sakura knew with terrible clarity that they weren't going to be able to hold out, that he wasn't going to make it. Closing her eyes she dug deep into her seal, following the pathway down into the core of her chakra system, the sea of her chakra. She wasn't a Hyuga, but she could almost envision the overwhelming nothingness where her energy had been. Three years of scrimping and saving, gone. She felt like her insides could echo.

If I can just get Sasuke to this dimension, she thought, Kakashi could bridge the final gap. We just have to keep it open. Just. For. One. More. Minute.

She dug into the emptiness within her chest, scraping and praying to find anything that might keep the portal open, any hidden pocket or missing vein.

Anything! Please! Anything!

And then there was something.

What she found was not chakra. This energy filled her mouth with the taste of salt. Life force.

Life force was thicker than chakra, if she had to describe it. It wound out of her slowly, reluctant to leave her body, as if asking "Are you sure?"

She pushed and pulled, bullying the power through the seal even as her body began to break down around her. Obito jolted at the addition of power, wrestling it into some usable form, his scars had started weeping blood, painting half his face crimson.

"Sakura..." the marks they shared glowed harsh and bright, white now instead of purple, as the portal dilated sharply, not meant to be held open by such means. It crackled at the edges, swelling out of Obito's control. He struggled to hold the door open as the technique mutated before them, almost with a life of its own.

"...keep going..." she ordered as previously healed wounds began to reappear across her body, phantoms from the past come to haunt her once more. She could feel the vitality leaching from her bones and she imagined that it must be what aging was like in rapid time, this was something not meant to be felt by humans all at once.

Pain lanced through her stomach and deep cut scored across her cheek - Chiyo, is this what you felt when you brought back Gaara? - and bruises clouded her skin - Tsunade really did know how to throw a punch - blood ran in rivulets from her remaining sleeve and ran from her wrist down Obito's back - Naruto didn't mean to hurt me, he wasn't in control. I forgave him. I'll always forgive him -

"...just hold on..."

Sasuke was a hundred yards away when he vanished and appeared on their side of the rip in space, having substituted himself for Sakura's soiled vest. Obito jerked around, breaking their connection through the seal even before Sasuke had landed on his feet. Sakura fell forward limply, eyes rolling around without control as the power snapped back at her like a rubber band almost stretched to it's breaking point. She was blinded by the light and deafened by the sound of the portal humming at unbearable volumes, screeching almost.

Obito caught her around the ribs before she could collapse fully. Sakura, jarred into consciousness, hooked her chin over his shoulder and stared at the portal in dread. The door had taken on an asymmetric shape, jagged at the edges, and it had grown four times its original size, the bottom half vanishing into the ground. Inside the portal the dimensions switched rapidly, cycling through more and more worlds. Worlds not within the rabbit woman's control.

Oceans full of ancient beasts. Deserts of purple sand. A city of gold and glass. Volcanoes spitting fire upon an ash filled wasteland. Endless fields of stars and an all consuming emptiness.

The portal folded, curling inward upon itself as if it had weight or substance, a slow falling giant.

Sakura reacted instantly, pushing forward and up. She slammed Obito to the ground, kicking one leg back. Her foot caught Sasuke square in the chest and he went flying, not expecting her explosive action. He crashed with little grace into the next mountain over.

Safe. You're safe. You and Naruto are going to be safe.

Sasuke was shouting something she couldn't make out, she hoped it was her name, and running towards her and reaching for her.

This is the first time Sasuke has ever held out his hand to me. I guess I was finally useful to him./em

Sakura wasn't sure she had the energy to smile and even if she was able she couldn't feel her face, but she clutched at the sense of accomplishment, even as the terror of approaching death washed over her.

Maybe this means I saved the world too, in my own way.

The portal roared down like a wave, swallowing Sakura, Obito, and half a mountain as it disappeared.

The office was cold, all flat surfaces and stainless steel. One wide window overlooked a grey ocean, so far below that the white outlines of waves seemed fixed in place.

"We're calling it seismic activity, our people are pretending to look for the cause, for the time being." A man fiddled with his cuff links. They were collectors items. Little red, white, and blue shields with a star at each center.

"...Is anyone actually going to believe that?" a woman asked, her voice dry without any obvious humor.

"I said 'for the time being'."

"It's your job to make them believe it." A sharp voice cut into the conversation, deep and uncompromising.

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir. Sorry sir."

The woman sighed, "...Initial investigation says that there were two people found on top of the...seismic activity. They weren't recognized by any of the natives." A screen flickered to life, green text scrolling mid air. "We haven't gotten visuals yet, but it says they found a woman and a man. They were taken to a hospital near the Botswana reserve. Nine hundred clicks Northwest of our Johannesburg base."

"If they have something to do with the thousand ton stone that appeared overnight they need to be brought in."

"...Who should we send, sir?" the woman asked.

"I think Agent May as lead with a four man squad would be adequate for recon and detention." Her associate offered up, finally turning from where he'd been mutely contemplating the floor.

"The Cavalry? Huh. You look like you want to say something, Agent Hill?"

"Nothing, sir. She's certainly skilled enough to handle it."

"...Alright. Put the team together," a beleaguered sigh sliced through the room, "and I want constant contact. I've got a bad feeling about these two. The last time something dropped out of the sky it was a hammer and we all know how that turned out. Don't we, Coulson?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let's do our best to avoid a repeat of New Mexico."