What if the bell test was replaced by something else?

Kushina isn't quite made of fire, but with Kurama in her stomach, it often feels it. Kurama is fire and rage, anger in its basest form, and she knows that she's not supposed to be that. She's from Whirlpool, a land of water and wind and hurricanes, and she knows that she was supposed to be like them. But she's not.

Sabaku no Temari is the eldest daughter of the Kazekage, and she was born with rage in her heart. She was born incompatible with the Ichibi—something she will forever be grateful for, she thinks, because she saw how it twisted Gaara into something terrible, and she knows and hates that she played a part in it—and she was born as someone who was never expected to take the hat.

Even worse; she's been warned by Matatabi—warned about the spirit-touched clan of humans with spirit-dogs who have forgotten their roots.

She's the medic on a team of powerhouses, the backline fighter to Naruto and Sasuke's brilliance, and she never thought it would be her people looked at like this.

There is a drumming in her head. It builds and it builds and it builds, constant, forever demanding her attention. Three beats, pause, three beats. Tails on a shell. Rin takes a deep breath, quiets her mind as best she can, and lets her hands glow green with the chakra of a medic. (Her green is too dark. It does the work all the same.)

"I'm home!" she calls, shoving the front door open and hitching the paper bag further up on her hip in one smooth movement. Kuromaru's deep, booming barks echo from inside, a warning before the dog himself comes bounding around the corner. Konan only just has time to put the groceries down before she's hit by 80 kgs of dog.

She looks at Nagato, looks at the little blonde boy who convinced him to give up so much, and she hates. It burns in her gut, a bright flame that should catch everything about her on fire—she's flammable, made of hair and paper and skin, and she burns just as well as a forest in midsummer.

She doesn't know what she'd expected, agreeing to be Kushina's bridesmaid. Maybe she'd hoped that Kushina would realise, or maybe she'd hoped that Minato wouldn't turn up; dead on some mission far from the village and leaving Mikoto to pick up the pieces.

Haruno Sakura is nothing and nobody, but she breathes and grows and thrives and the forest thrives with her. (She opens her eyes to wood, grown from nothing, and Hatake Kakashi stares in disbelief at the tree where his student used to be.)

(This is the story of how Uzumaki Kushina fell asleep with the Kyuubi no Kitsune and woke up with blood-stained teeth. This is the story of a little girl with red hair, who discovered she'd ripped a man's throat out in her sleep and swallowed the taste of blood when she woke up. This is the story of Uzumaki Kushina, who killed a man and smiled about it.)

Uzumaki Kushina was born to a world at war, a world where blood and death and danger was commonplace, and more people knew how to fight than not. Uzumaki Kushina was born fighting, and she intends to keep it that way.

Predictably, Shunshin no Shisui really likes people who are faster than he is. (A sequel to They say I'll die but they won't show me how)

In which Uchiha Shisui's best friend is Mitarashi Anko, and that changes everything.

There's a quietness that comes after death. Sakura has never understood it, never known quite what to do within it, regardless of her relation to the dead. Now, as she watches Shikamaru stand in front of a grave that was filled far too early, she feels that silence fall heavier than ever.

She thinks it's Sasuke, at first. It's stupid to think that—so, so stupid. Her love for Sasuke is not a secret; and she is not jealous of him or cruel to him. Nor is he jealous of her, or cruel to her. The marigolds curling around her ribcage cannot be for Sasuke. (Ino knows who they're for.)

In which Haruno Sakura gets the character development (and badassery) she deserved.