Summary:

In the deepest recesses of the Konohagakure T&I Department, there is a room that very few enter, and even fewer leave alive. There are charts in that room, charts of strangely shaped maps and strangely written words. When Haruno Saki blinks open her terrified eyes in that room, she is greeted in perfect English. "Hello. You do not belong here, do you?" (She is not one of those who leave the room.) [drabble] [mentions of SI/OCs]

Disclaimer:

I don't own Naruto.

Saki is a year old when she speaks her first words.

"Kaa-chan. Tou-chan."

Her parents are overjoyed, of course, since even though Saki had been a downright terror for the first few months following birth, constantly screaming and crying and then crying some more, after she'd gotten past that phase she'd proven herself to be an uncannily deliberate child.

"Genius," Haruno Kizashi brags proudly to his wife.

Mebuki rolls her eyes but can't resist a grin tugging at her lips, as she slaps him on the arm in playful reprimand with one hand, and cradles Saki's twin, Sakura, with the other.

"Sakura's clever, too," she reminds him.

"Not as clever as Saki," he protests, which she concedingly agrees with.

They are a happy family of two career Chuunins, raising twins in an idyllic existence.

All seems well.

Saki smiles coyly, drumming her fingers on the kitchen countertops, feeling the warm thrum of chakra coursing through her sister.

Sakura gurgles innocently in confusion.

.

.

.

A day after Saki says her first words, a nondescript woman strides up to the Haruno's front door, and rings the doorbell.

Mebuki answers, Kizashi coming up behind her.

(The nondescript woman chose this time specifically to ring the doorbell, as she knows that the Haruno couple will both be in.)

"Yes? How can I help you...?" Mebuki trails off, quizzical.

Smiling a mild smile that warms her plain features, the woman states, in a calm and professional tone, "Your child, Haruno Saki, has been noted down as a person of interest. The Intelligence Department would like to borrow her for the day in order to run a few tests."

When it looks like Kizashi is going to protest, she plows onwards, "All orders have been authorized by the Hokage. Code 92-18-05, Chuunin-san."

It is a not-so-subtle reminder of their rank, and presumably of the woman's higher status.

The couple frown worriedly at each other, but they don't have a choice, not really, not when it concerns the Intelligence ninja and the Hokage, so they ungracefully concede.

Kizashi disappears deeper into the house to fetch their older daughter, while Mebuki stays by the doorway and eyes the brown-eyed, brown-haired, serenely placid woman with unveiled mistrust, as thinly-veiled emotions are basically see-through for ninja, and something in Mebuki's labor-trained muscles recognizes her as 'dangerous.'

She is, therefore, understandably reluctant of letting Saki walk off with the woman; it's bad enough her being a stranger, yet with her being Intelligence as well?

They not only don't have a choice, they don't stand a chance.

And truly, the Intelligence Department requesting to run 'tests' on an one-year-old who has just barely begun to speak?

This is, Mebuki thinks, the grim truths of a ninja village.

She's a loyal Chuunin, though, and that means she does not question her Hokage's orders, that means she does not resist her Hokage's demands.

That means her husband does not, either.

So when Kizashi returns, herding a politely interested toddler with him, they crouch down and hug her tight, forgivingly forgetting all of the child's unnaturally fast development and strangely intent moments, seeing only their innocent daughter about to vanish into the unknown.

(There are rumors about Intelligence, carefully controlled and filtered ones to be sure, because everyone knows that Intelligence is the one behind them all.

Or maybe that's just another rumor.

It's the uncertainty that gets people chilled and crying confessions.)

Saki tilts her head, still too large for her babyish body, in neutral confusion.

"You need to go with the nice lady, okay, Sa-chan?" Mebuki persuades, blinking widely to fight off tears as she stands up again, forcing herself to let go, stilling her arms by her side.

"She just wants to ask you some questions, because you're such a special girl, Ki-chan," Kizashi adds with one last pat on the rosette's tiny fingers.

Saki's brilliant eyes, as verdant as her sisters, momentarily light up with a flash of cool cunning, a cleverness beyond her physical age.

Her parents ignore it.

Then they cloud over with beaming blamelessness, and she kisses their right hands, standing on a precarious tippy-toe to do so.

"Yes!" she cheers, looking for all the world like someone who is just going along with the flow of things, peaceably swept up into a current.

The woman proffers her hand, Saki slips her own, doll-like in comparison hand, into it, and they stroll down the pathway, soon swallowed up seamlessly into the noonday market crowd.

Kizashi watches after their direction for a few more minutes, the situation feeling surreal.

"She's not coming back, is she?" his wife murmurs wetly into his shoulder, silent tears staining the cloth darker.

Because the most prevalent rumor-on-the-verge-of-fact is that the Intelligence Department works very closely with the T&I Department, which is actually a very logical and thus believable connection.

And the direction they'd strolled away towards was opposite to the Intelligence Department's main building.

He doesn't answer, and she nods, like that was an answer all on it's own.

Mebuki indulges in a few more sobs, and then they close the door.

Sakura blinks up at them when they enter her room, and coos, giggling and slapping her pudgy hands together.

She looks distressed at their sudden fit of crying, joining in with loud, unhappy wails.

It is strange when her nee-san doesn't come to calm her down with that glowy blue stuff.

Sakura wails louder.

.

.

.

They walk in silence, Saki playing the part of the adorable, cherubic, perplexed but cooperative infant, the woman playing the part of the doting, absent-minded, affectionate but stern babysitter.

Passerby 'aww' when they spot them, hands held tightly together, the brunette woman brushing back her chin-length bob to smile at the child, the rosette child returning it with a gap-toothed grin of her own.

(Their grips are loose, but iron-tight.

Who is holding whom?)

"Name?" Saki ventures to ask, after a few more blocks, eyes wide. "Saki!" she pronounces with pride.

"... you may call me Nami, if you wish," she answers, "or Atsuko. It matters not, though. Eventually, we are all nameless," she adds with a minute trace of humor, somehow deriving a sense of personal amusement from her last statement.

And then she doesn't stop abruptly, but simply changes course smoothly to their left, entering a modest teashop, where the proprietor looked up from behind a carefully dusted desk.

"Tea? Peach is popular," he offers pleasantly, the words rolling off his tongue to plonk into humble, rich syllables, his brown hair and brown eyes just as unremarkable as Nami's (Atsuko's?).

"No thank you," Nami/Atsuko declines with equal pleasantness, flicking her free wrist in an odd, sideways-rolling motion that the man studiously overlooks. "Every peach has a hard core. Jasmine, please, one cup for drop-off."

He nods, and seats them at a table in a corner, near the backrooms.

Saki sits cautiously, fidgeting only much as would be appropriate.

The tea arrives.

Nami/Atsuko pours her a cup, and takes a sip of hers.

"Enjoy your tea," she invites her.

Warily, Saki goes along with it and takes a sip as well.

She is rather thirsty...

Another sip, another, and soon her cup is drained.

Then she feels warm and sunny and just a bit drowsy and ohgodhowcouldshebesostupid and the last thing she sees before she blanks out is the serenely placid expression Nami/Atsuko wears as she takes a second sip of her cup, gazing at her with coolly distant eyes.

.

.

.

When she wakes up, Saki is in a cold metal chair in a cold dark room and Nami/Atsuko is nowhere in sight.

"Ah, you're awake," someone rumbles, deep and offhand.

A light flicks on, with no fuss or drama.

It blinds her, temporarily, as she tries to adjust and think her way out of this unfortunate scenario at the same time.

Then she sees the stuff on the wall right in front of her, illuminated by the light, and her mind flatlines.

"... what?" she blurts out on an automatic reflex, while her eyes hungrily scan the hand-written charts and maps and articles, desperatedevouringdenial.

Morino Ibiki walks in front of her, his superior height casting a looming shadow and, more importantly to her, blocking the precious papers.

"Hello," he greets in perfect English. "You do not belong here, do you?"

Suddenly, him blocking the papers is not her main concern.

"... what?" she repeats, cursing herself viciously when she realizes that she'd subconsciously switched languages to match his.

He doesn't look surprised, though.

If anything, he looks shallowly satisfied, like some interesting theory of his has just been confirmed.

"An interesting theory of mine has just been confirmed," he starts to say.

Turning slightly, so as to confront her with a profile of his face, harshly emphasized by the unshielded bare white bulb.

"You're a reincarnation, aren't you?"

Before she can say anything, if she can say anything in her current stunned form, Ibiki continues blithely, resuming his patient pacing, "We've gotten several of your types before. All the same story. Died in another, more modernized world, where they'd read about our world as a manga, or watched it as an anime, only to be miraculously 'reborn' into this world. Usually, they decide to try and 'make it better,' by exploiting their prior knowledge of 'canon' to influence events for the better.

"It's fairly easy to identify reincarnations, you know. The first one came to us by free will, in what I believe was the Shodaime's time. Came to his office, requested a private interview, gave up all of their knowledge, and went mad from it. The Shodaime kindly ended her misery, believing her to be nothing more than a poor civilian broken by the war and driven insane from delusions. Then as time went on and events matched up with supernatural precision, he was convinced, and shared the knowledge imparted with a select group of trusted individuals. One of those individuals was eventually instated as the Head of T&I, and with the blessing of the current Hokage, started up the top-secret R-Watch, a unit meant to ensure that the timeline was kept consistent and that Konoha was kept informed, by carefully scrutinizing and surveilling the Elemental Nations for any more reincarnations that pop up.

"We get to them early, the ones we can find, and the ones we don't, well, usually they die off or are caught and killed anyway. As soon as they can speak, which is when their thoughts and memories are often fully incorporated. They're easy to find, most of them, as there is a prevailing trend to be reborn into a 'canon' character or a relative of one. We compare 'canon' personalities and information and histories, and pick off the ones that don't fit. Then, well, any guesses?"

Saki defiantly snaps, "I was going to save people! So many people are going to die! Like-"

"-Hyuuga Neji, Sarutobi Asuma, Gekko Hayate, etc.?" Ibiki finishes for her, still both conversing in fluent English.

"Yes! So why- why- why are you doing all this!? I can help! I know stuff!" she shouts, losing her cool rapidly, confronted by the uneasy insinuation that her upper-hand is really a hand that's well-known to all her opponents.

He sighs.

"I highly doubt that you have any knowledge we haven't already gleaned, and I highly doubt that you can do more than an elite jounin to protect Konoha," he comments drolly. "You still haven't guessed. However, I can see that you're a straightforward sort of person, so I'll be straightforward with you as well. We already have quite a lot of information gained, but in the unlikely case that you have more to add, we always extract it from the minds of the reincarnations."

"Then what?" she calls nervously, wanting to move but finding her body unresponsive below her neck, craning her head to track him leaving through a door that she didn't notice before.

Ibiki stops, briefly, on the threshold, to toss back an answer.

"We dispose of the shell, of course," he says, looking faintly puzzled, "for what is a body without a mind? You were never meant to exist in the first place, anyway. Think about it this way: you'll be helping us. Isn't that what you said you wanted?"

With a clap on the shoulder of the entering Yamanaka Inoichi, Ibiki orders, "wipe her," and then departs without a backwards glance.

Saki, terrified, stares pleadingly at the father of her sister's canon best friend.

"Sorry," he apologizes, sounding sincere, although his pupiless blue eyes remain hard and indifferent. "Try not to resist. It'll make it hurt and draw out the pain."

"N-"

She doesn't get past the "o" before she stiffens up and then, slowly, slumps over, keeling onto the ground limply.

Inoichi sighs, a perfect mimic of Ibiki's former sigh, and rubs at his forehead tiredly, already feeling a headache start to form from the swiftly grabbed memories.

.

.

.

"For Konoha," Ibiki thanks him with a salute and a nod as he accepts his stack of write-up reports.

"For Konoha," Inoichi returns, echoing the salute with a bow and a weary smile, before heading home to his wife and kid.

.

.

.

It takes another week and a half of endless wailing and sniffling and snotty tears before Sakura understands that her nee-san is not coming back.

It takes an extra week on top of that for Sakura to realize that her parents don't seem remember who her nee-san is, or that she ever had a nee-san.

It takes merely one more day until Sakura notices that their sudden forgetfulness started after that one man with the buttery hair and the bluebell eyes came around to talk to them.

.

.

.

In time, she forgets as well.

There is only a faint, confusing nagging sensation when she stares into a mirror that there should be someone else next to her, flashing a coy look with dancing blue sparks on their fingertips.

Sakura avoids mirrors and clear watery reflections the best she can, and forces it out of her mind.

She forces out the uneasiness at talking to Ino-pig's dad, too, not understanding the traces of resentment and anger stirred up by his presence.

And every time Team 7 encounters another pink-haired girl on their various missions, she searches for brilliant eyes, as verdant as her own.

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