Sakura Haruno The Gaming Addict, and Her Gamified Life [Naruto]

So a few notes here.
1. I actually hadn't planned on starting the 1 chapter a week thing for a little while, but I realize that pretty much every chapter after this either is 4000 words - like this one - or probably should be. Like there's a lot of stuff I need to add.
If I find a sequence that should be smaller here I might do a double week but you can largely expect that to start now. I just don't have it in me to edit two chapters to 4K and keep up quality and like, I think quality is more important.

2. I originally planned to outright censor the second part of this chapter for the public release, but I think the edits are good enough. If a mod staff wants me to write a different version, I suppose I'll do as I'm told, but I think this is close enough to canon and serves enough of a purpose while being light enough that it should be fine.
Like I'm sorry, I didn't make Jiraiya. That wasn't me. He's gross, he just is. The fact that at his core I like him as a character is irrelevant, his flaws would likely come out this way and I'd rather not disrespect him if I don't have to. The man made Naruto shapeshift into a naked girl for him to stare at before he'd teach him anything it's just, who he is. It was played for laughs because Naruto's a guy, Sakura is not.

Patreon gets 142 later today, and it's finally an awesome return to form. I hope I can do to the entirety of arc 9 what 142 is, and I really hope I create as many smiles for everyone else as I had writing it.

---

It's probably a bad sign when you're doing so much killing that you don't even find it worth it to buff your sword anymore, but even without the goblin sharpening stone to apply a significant power increase, she finds her demonic blade cuts through flesh like butter. Standing close enough to her opponent to smell its scales, she doesn't stop at the first swing, or even the third, using her graceful yet brutal katana to carve up the creature is becoming strangely second nature, and maybe it's her trait but she doesn't mind being covered in the blood of her prey. It's gotten to the point where sometimes she forgets technique and starts slashing haphazardly like her sword is a club she just needs to thwack down one more time to break a skull or paint the room with greymatter. Sasuke sits idly by in the back somewhere making sure they're not snuck up on. He neither needs to get involved nor desires to get covered in the blood bath her rampage creates. It's symbiotic, and despite her soul sense he's still better at keeping track of what's going on around them than she is so she doesn't mind. There was once a time when she needed to be the most useful in the room, now she's happy to just be useful at all.

She's truly grown in her time in the Forest of Death. When she first entered the test, Sasuke was doing most of the heavy lifting against these monsters, her own heavy hitting techniques took too much chakra or blood to pull off and every other battle left her tired enough she needed a break. Now she's able to dance through her enemy, and she's having fun doing it. She finds she doesn't have any issue standing face to face with a giant snake while alone, and she's sure the mix of real combat experience and Genin-All Rounder are to blame. Sure she's fought lots of people up to this point, but fights with humans tend to be quick and decisive, monsters like the giant green beast glaring down at her with a forked tongue make for a much better fight. There's so much to learn from an opponent that doesn't just fall over dead after one good cut, and she's taking every opportunity to soak up all the lessons she can get. The experience will be very valuable when she inevitably meets someone stronger and a lot of her traits don't really work.

It also helps that she's gained quite a few stat points since she came here, which has made something obvious she hadn't noticed before. Her stats are not linear. Any veteran RPG player knows that statistics tend to go one of two ways. Linear progression means that every level means as much as the last, which makes early levels a huge jump but later on leveling up isn't that big of a deal unless it comes with huge abilities to keep the progression feeling nice. If one thousand jumps to one thousand ten, percentage wise you've gained nothing, whereas if one jumps to ten you've gained ten times your previous power.

The other way a lot of games do it is they make the numbers matter more as they go higher, maybe they scale in strange ways with passive abilities, dice rolls are applied in a way that makes each higher number more effective than the ones before it, or they just matter more intrinsically. She's thought her system was linear this entire time, but getting stronger all at once instead of over the course of weeks has allowed her to rapidly measure her growth in a way that makes it clear that every point really matters and nothing shows her that effect quite like just how natural her movements feel.

A smile splits her face as she ducks under a lash of the snake's massive tail, it only takes her a split second to spot weakness and charge in. It cancels its momentum to try and change directions and catch her by surprise with a quick swipe, but she's having none of that. Her blazing sword catches its attack before it starts, tearing right through it and painting her armor in sticky red. "Rrrrrreeeeeee!" An ear splitting cry of pain invades her senses as the end of its tail slumps to the ground lifelessly. Instincts shout at her, and without missing a beat she jumps in the air to avoid an attempt to devour her whole. Its face buries itself just where she was standing, its mouth filling with dirt while she flips hunger in her hands and stabs down at it from above. Gravity has a part in every fight, in this one it's helping her demonic influence act as a drill.

She gives her own battle cry as she lands on its thick skull and plunges her weapon deep into it with enough force that despite using a point to stab it, she hears bone turn to dust and cave inwards into its brain. She takes a moment to be sad that Tenten wasn't here to see that as Hunger penetrates deep enough to start devouring the beast's blood. "No, down boy-" She tries to stop him, but only ends up reacting quickly enough to witness a shockwave of flaming force tear the monster asunder from the inside out.

"Guh-" The explosion knocks her directly off the thrashing remains and makes her land tushy first in the dirt. That's before the shower of blood and snake tendons rains from above and covers her hair, face, and body. She can't help but imagine the scene as a painting, a groaning maiden in heavy armor sitting in a puddle of a battle's aftermath and staring up at raining sinew.

"Damn-it-" She sputters, jumping to her feet with a growl and glare at her black sword temporarily stained crimson. He's been disobedient lately, she thinks it's all the slaughter, but further investigation will have to be done once they're in a safe place to do it. It's not that huge a deal if she ignores the fact that it's annoying. The only real consequence is that her outfit will need another washing, but that's fine, that's actually already in her plans for today because she's come to a realization, and being bait will help her plans greatly..

She takes a little effort to climb up onto the snake the moment it's done thrashing, and begins extracting the soul. Soul Grasp used to be such a novel process, now it's something she's so used to it feels commonplace. Grasp the soul, pull on the soul, watch it swirl around and throw another snake's essence into the mix to create a cocktail of snakey goodness to shove right back into the corpse once more. She watches its body contort and heal itself using her excess mana. It's a natural process now, easy as breathing, afterall she's done this a lot.


Like a lot, a lot. As giddy as she is to receive a title and title system, and as much as she'd like to dance and sing and celebrate as the creature's eyes glow and its head begins to raise, something far more important just happened.

That's a lot of reputation.
Like a lot, a lot. Like enough that she actually calls that right up to check despite the fact that she is adamantly against the gamification of her friends and family through a numeric system.


As ominous as that is, she can't help but stare with a slack jaw.
The freaking spy likes her more than Kakashi does? This is why the reputation system is stupid, there's just no way that's true. It's complete bullshit, and if it isn't bullshit, she doesn't want to think about it anyway!

"You can come out." She announces, because really, the only way he would have witnessed it is if - well, the wet thud of feet landing on the bloody snake by her side confirms her suspicions well enough.

She made a grave mistake with Kabuto, not reporting him before she got into the forest was immature, unprofessional, and honestly grossly negligent on her part. Having Naruto's clones report him is one thing, and she hopes that the message got through, but the fact is that she should have done it. It leaves a bad taste in her mouth being that careless, and even if Naruto's message probably did get through she needs to report him the moment she's out of this forest just in case.

That being said, she's also going to report that he apparently really likes her when she does it. Maybe she can turn him, it wouldn't be the first time another ninja randomly decides to ignore their normal activities in favor of her smile. Gaara and Haku are both excellent members of her life now… That being said, Kabuto's quite a bit older, so if he does decide to take after them she hopes it's in the way Haku went, not the way Gaara did. She'd feel incredibly uncomfortable with someone that old hanging off of her like her word is their life's new meaning.
The man stands there silently while she thinks, as if waiting for her thoughts. When he realizes she's not going to give them, he speaks up. "Most are attempting to get as many balls as possible, but here you are, bringing the dead back to life with no clear goal in mind. One would think you're preparing for war, Sakura."

The pretense has been dropped, she can tell that much. He knows she knows something is up, and he knows she knows that he knows, so, "I am." She admits with as even a tone of voice as she can manage. She reaches down to pet the bloody snake head she stands atop. Its scales feel slimy in her fingers, but when she pulls away all that's stained her hand is blood. She realizes she might be the crazy snake lady from the recording left with Hunger. Maybe she gets a costume at some point and kills another version of herself? No, that's stupid. Either way she's pretty sure it's soon, the snakes around here have to be a bad omen, and Kabuto isn't helping matters. "Something's going to happen tomorrow, and it involves Ino. I'll destroy the entire forest's population and raise it as my minion if it means protecting her."

"That's…" He clearly seems to ponder something, something uncomfortable. He's the freaking spy, why does he have to make her feel like the bad guy?

"More importantly." She rises up, stretching her back a little and taking a deep breath. "Why are you here?"

"I've been tracking these monsters back to the source. A snake is an odd choice, is there any reason why?" He asks, looking down at it with an almost squiggly expression. He's not sure how to feel, and that's fair because she never knows how to feel about anything.

"I like snakes." She shrugs, looking down at those beady glowing eyes. Okay, technically this being a snake is meaningless and the symbolism just lines up, but she's not passing up the chance to screw with him. She's going to meet something that killed another her, and she'll be ready with a set battleground of her own creation. The beauty of the enemy coming to her is that she gets to decide what the fight's variables are.

"That's quite the peculiar answer. You know more than you're letting on." He reaches up to touch the frame of his glasses and pushes them up his face. His glasses glint in the low light from above, hunting all the future summons and meditating to get her mana back sort of took most of the day so the sun isn't very high right now. It also took a lot of her energy, so she's happy Kabuto is being forward with her like he respects her or something, and not you know, ripping her head off. He'd win right now, there's no doubt about that. Sure she called a lot of her summons to her the moment he arrived but they're spread throughout the entire forest, only a few are here at this point.

"As do you." She nods to herself. "I'll see you tomorrow, Kabuto."

"Good work, Sakura, I hope you survive." He gives her praise that sounds like acid to her ears, and steps off the snake. She turns to look at his escape, only to see him disappear into thin air like a magician.

That whole engagement felt really cool, there's no reason to admit that she's shaking internally and she only pulled it off because she was frozen solid in nervous fear.

"Why haven't you sought out a proctor if you know when, where, and what's happening?" Sasuke asks as he lands beside her, taking the same spot Kabuto took with zero sense of awareness to how that might be unnerving.

"I actually planned to seek out help right after this," Sakura admits, "I have another quest to follow up on, go rally Naruto, we need more clones for tomorrow. Like, a lot more. And also we really need to have a conversation before all that so get your gabbing teeth on."

"... What?"

---

While another system to complicate her life isn't something she would cheer for on its own, this one makes her eyes glint with excitement. She's seen title systems in tons of games and fully understands how they work. She gains titles by doing great deeds of some sort and can equip a set amount of them at a time for their bonuses. Her current limit appears to be one title at a time, but if she's lucky she'll be able to equip two or three at once later. She's not going to question apples fed directly into her mouth by conveyor belt, so she's happy.

She'll probably equip Umbrella Intern tomorrow in preparation for when the catastrophic event of catastrophe happens, but for now she needs Konoha Genin. She stands in the stream, washing her clothes from the absolute massive bloodbath she caused today. With no small amount of meditation to regain her mana, and a lot of hustle, she's happy to report it's not even nightfall yet and she's accomplished almost everything she needs to do today.

Except one thing, which is why she's here. She could totally put off cleaning her clothes until tomorrow evening, after-all she's probably going to get covered in gross again during whatever it is that's going to happen. Despite that, she spends time standing in the stream in her bathing suit and dunking her armor into the water while waiting for something to happen.

She's not sure how to feel about it when powerful eyes focus right on her before even ten minutes have passed. On one hand she got what she needed, and given she can't sense them without soul sense they're probably a Jonin. Sure she initially thought she could probably handle things alone but every hour that passes makes her more and more nervous. The proctors are specifically instructed to avoid her, so intentionally attracting this soul's attention is probably the best she can do to keep them safe if her plans fail.

She's sick of moments where she feels like everything is up to her, she'd really like a back up plan. She doesn't feel like that's a lot to ask, and the pervy soul currently doing exactly as she'd expect and peeking at her like a jackass can probably serve as a pretty good back-up plan.

On the other hand, she is intentionally attracting a pervy set of eyes to her immature body and that makes her shiver in disgust. Sure she doesn't feel the same urges a lot of girls do - especially not Ino - but she can still feel shame, and it's crawling over her skin like a cold wind. Her body feels bumpy, her hairs are standing on edge and her breaths feel heavy. To put it simply, it's gross.

She really hopes they're the peeping kind of pervert and not the 'she needs an adult' kind of pervert, but she doesn't have a lot of choices right now. She needs help, and the strongest force in the forest besides Kurama - who has yet to even try to talk to her through Naruto - is apparently as easy to lure in as an Inuzuka ninken. It's just that they require food, and this freak requires water and wet clothes.

If it wasn't for the fact that getting all of her friends out of the forest is probably impossible, she'd have skipped this entirely and just left the forest to go tell the Hokage about the quest and the snake lady from Hunger's mindscape, but they'd probably refuse to let her back in and she's not leaving any of them alone to something so dangerous that her system felt the need to harass Ino for over a month. She'd also fail the exams if she did that, but they're not actually that important in the grand scheme of things. There'll eventually be exams that aren't filled to the brim with nonsense, she can wait. Itachi's not getting any younger, they'll catch up one way or another.

Enough time thinking, her insecurities have cost her enough. It's time for action, so with a deep breath she deactivates meditation, seals her wet armor and jumps into the trees. There's always the possibility that he'll - she presumes it's a he - flee into the forest like last time, but she's willing to bet he was startled before. This time he approached knowing she could sense him, which means this is in part a challenge. Or she's dumb, either way, she launches herself directly towards him with a bit of an awkward expression..

As she gets closer, she feels the bright and powerful soul slowly move away. Like a glimmering light the soul beckons her to follow, and she's the one asking for help so she's not about to argue. Her feet take her on the path it sets as quickly as they can, from tree branch to tree branch in a way that tells her this is almost surely a leaf ninja. The way they glide without being in her sight is too graceful to be from Suna or Iwa or something, and she'd really like it to be a helpful force so she thinks positively while she can. Konoha Ninja, Konoha Ninja, be a quirky and ultimately harmless Konoha Ninja!

The chase continues for longer than she has patience, but she's able to control herself well enough that she's only starting to shake in rage a little bit before they stop in a clearing down below. He catches her eyes as he waits for her, and she finds herself gulping at his stature. Waist length spiky white hair that shines in the forest light, the odd wrinkle here and there telling her of experience and tough years despite a Ninja's normally fleeting longevity, and a pair of clogs much too tall and dignified to be from her generation or even Kakashi's. She does believe she just stumbled across someone much older than her.

The rest of his clothes are rather formal for the setting and stand out too much for him to be trying to blend in. The glove on his hand looks a little like a gauntlet, its metal covering allowing his fingers to breathe freely but still provide great protection for deflection movements. She should steal that design, it's stupid she hasn't already. She needs to ditch some of the Samurai motif after this, it wasn't her intention and she feels like an idiot.

He either didn't think anyone could spot him, or had a henge up until right this moment. Whatever the case, he stands out as a shining beacon of dignification. Or he would, if she didn't have to bait him into appearing by changing into Ino's selected bathing suit and getting into the water. The look on her face as she drops into the clearing is a mixed bag. On one hand, she's a bit in awe, on the other, him being old and dignified and powerful just makes him perving on her even worse. It'd be so much better if it was a spy only a few years older than her. How does she even respond to this? Does she call him out? Does she pretend it didn't happen?

Does she need to do that everytime she needs to get his attention?
She breathes a sigh of relief at the light upturn of his lips. The tension is greatly cut from at least catching up to him and meeting him, so when that upturn of his lips turns into a full grin she can't help but smile herself. She hopes his expression isn't lecherous but she's not socially inclined enough to know. Maybe the pervy stuff is fake? It'd be a good act to make her look down on and underestimate him, you know, if she was stupid.

"Why do you look so glum? It's not everyday that you come across the great, the only, the powerful and mighty! Jiraiya of the Sannin!" The proclamation would be very intense if not for the context, or that his hand is waving in front of his face, his legs are wide and apart from each-other, and he appears to be posing for his own introduction. He claps just before his name and sends a shockwave that ruffles the leaves around them indiscriminately.

"Should I also create a posing introduction?" She asks dryly, her arms crossing over her chest to block it from view and also to hide her discomfort and dread.

"Please do!" His sudden and animated thumbs up tells her that no, she absolutely shouldn't. This feels like the kind of shenanigans Naruto would get up to, maybe she should signal him? No, he'd probably run if a guy showed up and she doesn't want to see him leer at a copy of the Twins if Naruto shows up as Naruko.

"I need your help." She starts in, there's no reason to beat around the bush.
If this is really who he says he is, blunt honesty is the best policy. If he's not who he says he is, well, he's still strong enough to know if she lies or tries to withhold information. "What do you know about snakes?"

His sudden and intense frown cannot be a good sign.
She probably made the right call here, even if it feels icky.

Here, we are, the beat drop.
Significant edits happened between the original patreon and this version, almost 2000 words of edits. Stuff got redone, entire 'scenes' got added.
I think this is better.

Sakura seeks out help from an adult, does what he says, and almost immediately regrets it. What's new?
This is the first time I've written a real fight scene in months, and it's not one that's fun for Sakura. Though the fight really starts next chapter.

Patreon got Ch 143 today, Sakura's dog gets some pets and Naruto and Gaara talk. Ino's pissed and Temari's momming.
Enjoy the chapter! Patreon/Discord link: Sendicard/WitchAtTheEnd | Linktree

---

Awestruck as she was, it only took her about two minutes before she remembered she could just scan the pervy man. What she saw shocked her to her core.

That really was Jiraiya of the Sannin. Jiraiya of the Sannin made her pose for five whole minutes before he agreed to help her, which was actually a little calming because it wasn't even in a weird way, they went through pose training. She learned how to stop mid-movement like she's gonna kick someone in the face and just stay like that, which was apparently a favorite of Tsunade of the Sannin's at one point. He taught her how to hold her movements and pull her strikes so that they look cool but do no damage, which was an odd thing to learn but felt good. That's before he moved onto her sword, and stances, and even battle cries and why they can be important.

All in all, Jiraiya taught her more - mostly strange knowledge - in an hour than Kakashi does some entire months. He didn't even get that handsy besides the stance teaching and while she has her doubts about him, she's pretty sure that's required sometimes. That this creepy old man that had to be baited is somehow a better teacher than her actual teacher? Truly the world is grim, dark, and full of festering evil. Sometimes that evil is the good guy. Is it okay to call him the good guy? He is on her side, that makes someone good right? She's uncomfortable calling him the good guy, she's not going to do it. She's going to ask her mom about this and she gets the feeling her mom isn't going to like it either, that's that.

Whether Jiraiya's here in the forest because the Hokage thought something massive was going to happen, or if he just takes every opportunity he can to isolate young girls in the forest and this was too good to pass up, she has no idea. What she does know is that the scale of what she could be dealing with is now through the roof. She'd asked him to go get her headsets and radios so they could communicate through the nonsense they're about to deal with but he told her that if she's truly in danger, covering her ears and making a lot of electrical noise was the dumbest idea he'd ever heard of.

She agrees now that she's thought about it, but damn-it that would have been awesome! Luckily, Naruto had a better idea. He could just flood the area with wildlife clones of himself and use clones for important communication.

Another concern of hers is that Jiraiya has genuinely decided that luring out the threat is more important than keeping her safe. He patted her shoulder and told her that while she does absolutely need to show up to bait out the threat tomorrow, she should plan and prioritize every single chance to her advantage so that she can survive. He looked truly regretful while giving her the order, which means that he cares and still felt the need to give it. Whatever he suspects is going to happen is a significant threat to the village, it's a threat to her home, it's a threat to her family and friends. Which is what brings her to finally sitting down with her team and saying "we need to talk, right now, it cannot wait until morning."

A groggy Sasuke and Naruto sit in front of the burning fire she created - it's still good affinity training - and look her in the eyes waiting for something important. She finds her voice is hard to force out. The reality of the world has hit her almost all at once, frames have been filled with pictures, and she's terrified. "Before we came to the forest my mind was visited by someone outside. They left something, um…" She chokes up a little bit, her cheeks flustering potently as their rapt attention is poured onto her. For once it's Sasuke that seems to be caring, Naruto has too much faith in her to grasp the situation. "In it, there was a video of our deaths." She bites her lip, digs her nails into her palms. "A different us, which um, I didn't take seriously because as far as I know parallel universes aren't a thing? It seemed more likely to be a genjutsu or something super far in the future but as time has passed and the event seems to be approaching it's hitting me that I should have said something earlier."

"So we should leave." Sasuke says, a dry voice of reason once more.

"That probably would have been a good idea except… I met with Jiraiya of the Sannin." She forces out, "and we are to play the part of bait tomorrow before he deals with the issue."

"A Sannin is here?" A part of her is surprised to see Naruto even knows what that is, but then he did learn a lot specifically about the Hokages in school and Jiraiya is the 4ths teacher, so - "so we need to stay." He is duty bound to a fault, his nod makes her smile a little through the stress. "He'll save us."

"I'm not sure," Sakura shrugs, "but I do know that the moment one of the most important ninjas in the country got involved and told me to do something, it became an unofficially official village order."

Sasuke nods himself, albeit slowly. He seems to be thinking about something deep but doesn't share what it is. "Kabuto seems to know what it is, I reported him too, Jiraiya said not to worry about him and that it's taken care of."

"So the message did get through." Naruto sighs in relief.

"We need to strategize and consider this like it's an official mission now, either that or run away. We probably wouldn't become missing ninja but I could see our promotion chances going down for a long time…" Sakura says.

"And our promotion chances go down permanently if we die." Sasuke points out, "the village is important but my final goal is Itachi and us, we stand to lose both if we don't leave." He makes a very real point, and that's it for her. If she hadn't received a very real order from a superior earlier, they'd already be taking off. But… "My family lives here, I can't just abandon Konoha like that. If you want to go on your own, I won't blame you, but…"

"I'm with Sakura." Naruto gives her a naive smile, one that doesn't sit well with her at all.

"You are my family." Sasuke grunts, "if you won't go, neither will I, but we need to flee the moment he shows up, none of that die a hero stuff. I'll learn your necromancy and revive you just to kill you again if you die tomorrow."

"Agreed," Sakura feels a pressure evaporate off her chest like it's magic, "speaking of die a hero stuff though, we do need a back-up in the event that it's impossible to escape before he arrives. It's foolish to assume the best, it's downright negligence to pretend nothing can go wrong."

"Bombs." Sasuke shrugs, "bombs and fire. Lots of it. There's even a chance we survive bombs and fire."

"Naruto, I did have the thought, do you carry explosive tags? And do they work if they're your clones' tags?"

"As long as the clone hasn't dispelled, yeah. That does mean there needs to be an order to how they're placed but…"

"We'll go with that. I want you and Sasuke to stay as far away from the fight as possible at first, most of my traits are defensive and there's a chance I can't even really die," Sakura says, "I know how it sounds but I'll call for help if I need it. And Naruto'll have lots of clones there for me to flee with so I won't be alone…"

"And I do what, sit in a hole and wait?" Sasuke asks, while she tugs her collar.

"I got a quest to protect you from something called a bite, and it mentioned a bad end. I think that's tomorrow, things will go really bad if I let whatever that is happen. I think it's safer for you to stay away from direct combat."

They got to bed late that night, not even due to nervousness. It took three hours to convince Sasuke to at least stay in the hole until Jiraiya would likely get there so he can help her escape. She's not convinced he actually agreed, so much as he stopped arguing.

---

"Sakura!" Ino's normally comforting voice is shrill with fear as she lands on a tree branch next to her and about six squirrel Naruto's. She's careful to miss them with her feet, she clearly knows what they are. Ino spent a notable amount of time with Naruto and Sasuke in this forest while she was off getting Necromancy and it's nice to see she's taken to every lesson she learned. "We only have ten minutes left and I'm still off by a whole level, we failed… I can't save you."

"I expected you to." Sakura admits, looking directly into her friend's tear filled gaze with a complete lack of surprise or disappointment. She reaches out to pat her shoulder - then decides to screw that and pulls her into a hug when Ino tries to flinch back.

She squeezes her, holds her close, she closes her eyes and lets Ino sniffle for what feels like forever. Ten minutes on the clock and she'll spend every one on Ino if she has to. "Ino, your quest was never to level up that much, it was chosen to be that high because it was deemed impossible you'd reach it and panic." Sakura shakes her head against her. "You were lied to, even I'd have a hard time leveling up that much that quickly and I have the system's actual help instead of the half-assed nonsense it gave you.."

"But… I've tried so hard." Ino's features droop, her arms slack, falling out of even trying to join her in the hug. "I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in over a month."

"That's all you needed to do. If you didn't try as hard as you have to get as strong as you are, I'd spend the entire time worrying about you during whatever's about to happen." Sakura explains to her, patting her friend's back as warmly as she can manage while only being extremely awkward. Finally after a long yet somehow shallow breath from Ino, she pulls back to look into the shimmery blue ocean that is Ino's tear filled eyes. "The only person you were ever going to save me from is myself, and you have. Forget about the quest, instead I need you to do me a favor." Sakura does her best to give her a bright smile, even if she knows the way her lips twitch is awkward and fruitless. "Yesterday I was at a location for an entire hour. Shino is about one click to the north, he'll be able to lead you there. Go and tell the man waiting there that it's time. If you can do that, you'll likely really save me."

"I love you." Ino gasps, nods, rubs her eyes clear and then disappears without another word. There's no solemn look of determination, no powerful talk or motivational speech about how she'll do her best. Ino is gone before Sakura can even reply.

"You're one of the most important people in my life," Sakura mumbles after the missing form of her friend, "be safe."

"The system lied to her?" A Naruto squirrel asks, revealing they can talk which wasn't something she was aware of until just this moment. Despite being startled, Sakura shakes her head at it like she's not surprised at all. Her suddenly erratic heartbeat would betray her but she's pretty sure Naruto can't hear heartbeats from a distance yet.

"Probably not." Sakura hisses through clenched teeth. Lying to Ino hurts, but she needs her for this and she needs her as far away from what's about to happen as physically possible.
She'll make it up to her later, maybe with an ice cream sundae? She'd love to treat Ino to ice cream after all this. She's a bad liar, but there's one person in this world she can likely lie to, and it's Ino. Ino wouldn't suspect she was going to lie to her about something this important in the first place and as she's recently learned, charm is a meaningless stat unless you're applying it manually. "Is Sasuke in position?"

"He is." The fluffy creature nods at her, it looks so unnatural it brings a giggle to her lips.

"Five summons are left with Karin, the remainder are here." She says, flipping on the Umbrella Intern trait. She can feel a flare of power scorch the air as almost one hundred monsters suddenly awaken to their real powers around her and screech into the air. "Underground, in the trees, waiting at a perimeter to march in. If this isn't enough to survive, nothing we could possibly have done would change the outcome of what's about to happen."

"I have ten thousand clones stationed around." The squirrel says, "there are over a hundred thousand explosive tags littering the forest. If we die… I'm not sure what'll happen if we set off over a hundred thousand explosive tags in the same spot."

"Uh, let's hope we don't find out." She titters awkwardly, looking out into the clearing in front of them. Whoever's coming for them will not survive if she has any say in it. Technically they could be after her specifically but for once she doubts this is about her at all. The Quest asking her not to let Sasuke get bitten and the memory of her death seemed to be all about the Uchiha, so, she'll roll with that and do this to protect Sasuke. The order to engage and all the stress here only further leads her to believe this has nothing to do with the KSH.

Hopefully Jiraiya also called for external help, if not, well he's probably enough… Right?

He has to be.

---

The playing field she set up, all that effort, every puzzle piece positioned just right; it all scatters in the wind exactly two seconds after she fully readies herself. They say no plan survives contact with the enemy, but she's had several plans so far that have gone almost exactly as she imagined it. Fierro actually went better than planned, and while Tenten got snuck up on the plan for being a distraction while Neji went onto the roof worked amazingly. While it was a spur of the moment plan, switching with Naruto clones to avoid Gato worked incredibly well, even if she spent weeks apologizing.

That saying is evidently for when the opponent is on another level beyond your comprehension, as is made clear when she has to raise her arms up and stick herself to a tree to avoid being blown away with half her traps and dozens of squirrel Naruto's. The force of the gale hitting her is truly tremendous and even her colossal summons are uprooted from where they've hidden themselves to fly away into the air. In one move everything is reorganized, before the fight even starts she's fighting an uphill battle and struggling to stay in place. A branch flying by her manages to nick her cheek without her body even moving, meaning that the wind is sending random objects at her with more classified and system acknowledged power than every genin in Fierro's dungeon could muster when sending their kunai at her.

She closes her eyes to ensure nothing slices them and only after thirty beats of her heart does it stop. For a civilian that's not very long, for an active ninja it's an eternity. She stands upright on the side of the tree as nowhere else is fully intact around her. There's a canal dug in the ground, and some of the other trees are completely uprooted. The amount of smaller wildlife running around confused and displaced is shocking, the fact that only half of it is Naruto is moreso. She wasn't aware there was that much smaller wildlife in this forest, it does a great job hiding itself. It would have to, with all the predators. She thought Naruto was being dumb disguising himself as something that's not really around but as it turns out she has to start giving him more credit. Her brother is somewhat of a genius himself, able to see things she never would on her own.

The explosive tags are probably displaced, but that's okay, she really didn't want to die exploding anyway. What's more problematic is all the wire traps the three of them setup are screwed, the summons are no longer placed tactically, and the pitfalls are now uncovered and serving as spike traps for if she trips. She had expected an attack from all directions, or maybe a group of elites that'd cause her to have to be quick on her feet and dart from place to place like in a movie while trying to buy time.

She didn't expect the first move to take her breath away and reduce the landscape to a bad joke. "Sakura! What do we do now?!" Naruto's voice calls out from her side, but it's not his voice that causes her to look up at a tree not too far away and take him in. Standing on the side of a crooked monolith of wood and fragmented bark is an oddity. It looks like Naruto, baggy jacket and all. Their mom got him a nicer one, it's still pretty orange but it's got a few darker colors mixed in and the same triple-crest circle that's emblazoned on her chest plate rests on his shoulder. His hair is further disheveled than normal and Sakura can even make out a little fear in his sharp blue eyes. In every way that her five senses can determine, including his very distinctively rugged smell, she is looking into the eyes of her brother.

That doesn't stop her from pulling a scroll from her sleeve and unsealing its contents as she unsheaths her black blade into the world. Hungry for a massacre, it gratefully sucks up the sealed blood and inwardly she thanks Sasuke. If they hadn't killed those three she'd be feeding Hunger with her own life force and if what her sixth sense is telling her is accurate she'll need far more than she has to start with to survive long enough for Jiraiya to get here.

For while the soul of the Naruto in front of her feels distinctly different, curled and twisted and malicious to a fault; she can't tell any difference in intensity from the real Naruto. That doesn't say much on its own, she can't tell the difference in intensity between Gaara and Naruto unless they're standing right next to each-other and she's sure the nine tails is stronger than the one tail.

It is still enough for her to recognize that there's a Biju standing across from her, and it's not her friend. It stands there with painted skin and fake eyes and dares to use a voice it hasn't earned the right to mimic, and yet, she has no power to tell it to stop. "Sakura, what's wrong?" He asks, tilting his head to take in her frozen expression and shaking noodly legs.

She is going to die screaming. For all the power Naruto's soul possesses, he can't use any of it outside of all these clones. She gets the feeling whatever's pretending to be Naruto can use quite a bit of its Biju's power, if not all of it. She almost immediately regrets drawing Hunger in the first place, she might have been able to stall for more time for Jiraiya to get closer if she didn't immediately skip to revealing her awareness and threatening them with a deadly weapon. They're clearly playing a game, they don't need to trick her which means they want something before they slit her throat and watch her bleed out into the dirt. "Oh? What's this?" They break character at the sight of her sword coming to life, its sigils glowing and its surface crackling with intense heat. "You weren't fooled for even a second. I didn't think my Henge was so poor." Naruto's voice is sickly sweet, and every instinct she has knows it should never sound like that. Even knowing it's a henge doesn't stop her instincts from revolting at seeing and hearing Naruto as a threat to her life.
Maybe she shouldn't have made Sasuke stay back, no, Sasuke needs to run as far away as possible. Naruto too, she shouldn't have come here either. Screw Jiraiya, screw the village, none of it matters. The moment this creature moves, it'll all be a regret no one's alive to feel.

"Naruto doesn't come to me for every decision, I know if you've been watching us that it probably looks that way but…" Okay she's kinda lying, without soul sense she would have been a little fooled, but she'd be slightly suspicious. Naruto's a very independent guy when he's not whimpering over a corpse. He only looked to her because she has so much more experience with the dead. Even if she hadn't been suspicious, an owl over there shaking its head at her is a pretty dead giveaway that Naruto wants her to know this isn't him.

"My mistake." Watching Naruto's grin split his face unnaturally before his tongue slithers out and licks his lips has a very different and extremely menacing vibe to it than it probably would have yesterday. Yesterday, she likely would have been terrified, now it's not just terrifying it's also giving her flashbacks to Jiraiya's creepy old man gaze. It's so much worse, the toad sage never held any animosity in his eyes for her, but it's a similar feeling that causes her skin to crawl and she's not having any of it if she can help it.

She points her flame shrouded sword at him, and watches as the entire tree in front of her puffs into a potent smoke. It shakes the ground below them a little, which in turn shakes her off balance. She's never seen henge smoke possess force before, but she gets the feeling she should get used to seeing new things. He clearly wasn't threatened by her pointing at him, so she has to wonder why he gave up the act with such a display of power.

She sends a few hand signs to a Naruto chipmunk quite a ways away. Sasuke needs to be informed that he should stay hidden until he has a real opportunity. He probably already knows that but every variable matters right now and she's not leaving anything to chance. As the smoke clears, she gets a look at who's approached her. A woman with long black hair stands on the crooked tree where Naruto was. A long yellow top droops down around the waist area of the woman to fall just above her knees. Black underclothes hug her body well and a long brimmed wooden hat sits snugly atop her head. Some kind of purple rope is tied around her midsection, and it looks suspiciously unique, ninja don't normally like being that unique as it can be rather dangerous.

The 'Grass Genin' in front of her - complete with a signifying headband that's almost guaranteed stolen - looks a lot like an adult. That'd be scary even without soul sense, there's not a single adult ninja she'd like to fight if she can help it. Adulthood is a luxury, one that has to be earned, and as a twelve year old girl - almost thirteen - she's not feeling too great about her less than a year of being a Ninja right about now. "You know your teammates well, Konoha's will of fire is still burning hypocritically strong."

"Well I mean, he lives with me, he's kind of my brother… it's a whole thing." She finds herself correcting the enemy and for once it doesn't feel stupid. Every second she can stall is another second for a freaking Sannin to come save her. She'd love to cry 'mommy' and curl up into a ball but instead she has to hold a flaming sword in their general direction and hope they choose not to come towards it anytime soon. Ino has to have gotten to the perv by now, right? Shino definitely knows the location, his tracker bug is actively on her right now so she's sure it was on her yesterday.


A timer appears at the top left of her vision, counting down one second at a time.
Five minutes… she can do that, right? With a flicker of doubt, she rips off the bandaid and scans her opponent.


Orochi- "Fuuuuuuuuuuuu-"