A week after they got back from Kiri, Genma showed her his Hiraishin.

Sakura's jaw had hit the floor, then she'd ended up in various trees, bushes and general shrubbery sixteen times in a row and had a sprained wrist and multiple strained muscles to show for it when she'd tried it herself. She squashed down the disappointment before it even fully registered, then took Genma out for a celebratory dinner because the man had singlehandedly reconstructed a legendary technique with nothing but hazy memories and a dead man's notes to help him and that deserved a lifetime supply of free food if she had anything to say about it.

(the twinge of bitterness that reared its head and screamed that she'd been promised that technique, that Genma shouldn't have kept it from her, that it was her right scared her. So she made sure Genma didn't see a hint of it on her face and kept the stream of praise and encouragement and inquisitive questions up for the whole time they were in the restaurant until Genma pulled her to his side and thanked her for her support so sincerely that she felt a lump form in her throat and a wave of guilt so profound that she wanted to cry-!)

A month after that, Genma finally made the jump to full jounin, right after getting chewed out by Tsunade because of the Hiraishin, Shiranui? What next, you gonna take a shot at Mokuton and conveniently forget to inform anyone about it?

Three months after that, right after Sakura's fifteenth birthday, her probation as tokubetsu jounin was up. As a sort of 'last-hurrah', Tsunade assigned her, Anko, Tonbo and three other T&I shinobi on a reconnaissance mission to what remained of the Land of Rice Fields to investigate some info Intelligence dug up about Orochimaru's empty bases.

If anyone asked, that was the precise moment Sakura would cite as the metaphorical match that was thrown on the pyre.

Alternatively, the moment when everything went wrong.

Because they did find Orochimaru's bases. But Intelligence was wrong.

They weren't empty.

Whatever Orochimaru did to the Uchiha, these must have been the test subjects. Suddenly, Sakura understood just why Genma had come home so shaken, so broken after his ANBU team infiltrated that base: the failed experiments were monsters, yes, undoubtedly so. But right before Sakura's team broke into the base, they were children. Children sleeping in their own filth, locked up in cages or on wooden cots, dressed in rags and absolutely filthy. The moment they registered the presence of intruders though, their skin burned, their chakra tripled, their restraints broke as their bodies grew and contorted into something decidedly not human.

Then, the fighting began.

Somehow, all six of them ended up outside, the curse marked children along with them – it was easier, Sakura thought, to use lethal jutsu when the sunlight caught on the hideously deformed faces and made them look like the monsters they were and not the children they'd first stumbled across.

At some point, Tonbo went down, and Sakura knew at that moment that they had to retreat. They could've kept fighting, but guarding an injured comrade and dealing with overpowered monsters would only end in more casualties. Calling for a retreat, she spammed the field with her explosive tags, waiting until her comrades were out of reach before she unleashed the contained inferno of her seals, then methodically went to every fallen body she came across and slashed at the main arteries, robotic and thoughtless and deadly.

Then, just as she was straightening up from one of the last bodies, she heard the unmistakable sound of chirping birds, and a familiar voice calling what she knew was Anko's strongest technique.

Sakura froze.

As if in slow motion, she turned around and her heart leapt to her throat: about fifty metres in front of her was Anko, snakes extending from both sleeves of her trench coat, her face smeared with blood and gore and a determined scowl pulling at her lips.

And opposite her stood no-one other than Uchiha Sasuke.

His entire body sparkled with electricity, shocking every one of Anko's snakes that got close enough to him, his hair longer and fuzzing with static and the expression on his face colder than Sakura had ever seen in their genin days. Her eyes caught on the crimson of the Sharingan and she caught on to what the Uchiha was going to do a second too late. Her hands came together for a henge and a replacement when Sasuke was already using the Sharingan-aided agility to dodge the snakes and get to Anko, the Chidori surrounding his body gathering instead in his hand, and Sakura heard the technique connect a millisecond before her own technique caught and she found herself staring into Sharingan-red eyes of someone she once thought she loved. And then she moved, thanking the heavens for the padding provided by her flak jacket as she managed to punch Sasuke's wrist with a chakra-coated fist before his Chidori hurt her, successfully dispelling it. Then it became the question of spamming the Uchiha with explosive tags and burying him under genjutsu long enough for her to get to Anko who hadn't moved from the place where Sakura's replacement had dropped her off to and oh god this wasn't good this wasn't a battle she wanted to fight Tonbo was already down and Anko-!

Sasuke's strategy of eye-and-kai had one weakness: in the few seconds that it took him to spot the genjutsu, he wasn't looking at his surroundings. So the moment he came within range of one of the stronger tags Sakura had managed to drop, she didn't waste a single second.

The moment the tag detonated, Sakura was shooting off towards Anko, gathering her up then disappearing in a series of staggered shunshins that ate away at her chakra but she couldn't, wouldn't stop even as she tried to navigate south south south, Leaf's border guard the only thing on her mind.

After an hour of non-stop, panicked shunshin and four consecutive soldier pills, the moment Sakura saw a Konoha shinobi running towards her from the border post, she crumbled.

Then, her world went black.

When she woke up, she wasn't even surprised by the white walls and steady beeping that greeted her. Chakra exhaustion had become such a common injury that she barely noticed it anymore.

Finding out that Anko was in a coma and likely to be paralyzed from waist-down upon waking up because of the Uchiha's chidori, however, was enough to get her heart to start beating fast enough that one of the nurses came running in, a look of alarm on her face.

Sakura was furious.

And while Tsunade had been quick to assure her at the debrief that this officially changed Sasuke's status to a B-Ranked missing-nin and that there was nothing the Elders could do to change that, there was the matter of personal revenge that Sakura set her mind to.

No one hurt her senpai and got away with it. No one.

And yet, she wouldn't have done anything if it weren't for Inoichi. When Sakura went to him after being dismissed, all she was hoping for was a way of dealing with the grief and helplessness that she felt upon getting the news about Anko. What she wasn't expecting was the conversation that took place right as she was getting ready to leave;

"Now that your old teammate is coming back, don't you think he'll want to go after your other teammate?"

"I... hadn't thought of that... but you're right."

"Mmhm... and do you have a plan for how you're going to do once that happens? When you see him again?"

"I... don't."

And that had been enough to get her thinking, and when she realised that the only reason the Uchiha had been able to hurt Anko was because of his dojutsu, because Anko was just that good, she suddenly knew what she had to do.

It was unheard of, blasphemous, even. But she would do it. And she would make it hurt.

A week after being dismissed, having slept maybe twenty hours over the seven days and with ink smudges on almost every bit of visible skin, Sakura stared the two Hyuuga gate guards down and demanded to be let in and allowed audience with Hyuuga Hiashi, notes and annotated seals clutched in a death-grip in her hands.

The Hyuuga Clan Head almost sent her out when she first presented her idea.

Then he said that what she wanted was impossible.

But Sakura had stopped believing in the word after she turned thirteen and stood her ground.

Eventually, Hiashi caved, something like respect shining in his eyes as he made her swear that what he told her would not leave the room they were in.

Sakura held her fist over her heart and smiled, the sweet taste of revenge sending her nerves singing with elation as she took notes.

The Uchiha would regret hurting her senpai. She would make sure of it.

Sakura the genin had been smart, practical, but weak and easily distracted. She had become a kunoichi for something as silly as a crush, and as petty as a childhood rivalry. She had worn impractical dresses because they were pretty, had kept her hair long and loose because it was pretty, had worn flowery perfume because it smelt pretty and had adamantly refused to take part in weight training because muscles were not pretty.

Then, Sakura the genin got a reality check.

Sakura the genin post-Wave had been scared. She had had the unpleasant realisation that just her brains were not enough to save her, that her manicured nails were too weak to even scratch an opponent, much less dislodge his hold and that all her skillset boiled down to was hold a kunai and cry. So, Sakura reconsidered. She read and she studied and she made notes and tried as she might to picture what she was learning in a battle scenario but it seemed futile until-

Until Genma.

With Genma, Sakura became something more than a scared genin. Something more than a girl with a crush. She became someone who was one of the only two to be promoted to chunin.

Sakura the chunin was still scared. Because suddenly, it wasn't an A-Ranked missing-nin who turned out to have a good heart who was her bogeyman. Now, it was an S-Ranked Sannin who brushed aside her best efforts like they were flies, a pest more than a problem, who infiltrated the Village like it was nothing, who effortlessly controlled Summons the size of the Hokage Mountain.

But Sakura the chunin was also wiser. She wore green to blend in with the forests, she tied her hair back because it was safer, she carried a pouch filled with ten times the equipment she ever owned as a genin, much less carried in one go. Sakura the chunin had a specialty, had responsibility, had managed to unite not one, but three Villages under a common goal. Sakura the chunin was a ninja.

Sakura the tokubetsu-jounin-and-part-time-ANBU-member was called a prodigy. A civilian-born kunoichi, tokubetsu jounin at fourteen and an ANBU assassin. She went on missions with a partner who was her own, who respected her and her decisions despite having been in the field longer than she'd been alive. Sakura the tokubetsu jounin was no stranger to paranoia, to nightmares, to PTSD, to hurting and bleeding and killing for her Village. This Sakura knew her strengths and played to them; she gained new skills, worked on old ones.

Sakura the jounin-and-part-time-ANBU-member merely expanded on those skills. Her dedication to genjutsu meant that she could ensnare chunin and some jounin-level shinobi with nary a flick of her finger. Her illusions had grown into something that could fool, comfort, and ruin in the same instance. Bukijutsu was something she nurtured, and it became something she readily fell back on if her illusions were for whatever reason thwarted. She insisted on maintaining her versatility in weapons she used, but Yuki's insistence on choosing one she favoured had swayed her a bit and she felt the most at ease with a daito in her hands. Sakura the jounin had also figured out an alternative to Genma's Hiraishin, an idea based on the reverse-Summoning technique that would never allow her to jump around as easily and instantaneously as Genma could, but which enabled her to stick a seal on the Main Gates and jump over half of the Land of Fire in less than three seconds, landing within her Village's walls almost out of chakra but whole and safe and able to do the Hiraishin.

And yet, her reserves still meant that despite all the techniques she could theoretically pull off, in practise, five B-Rank ninjutsu was enough to have her teetering on the verge of chakra exhaustion. She had learnt to accept that.

But that didn't mean she would make it easy for others to best her.

Fact of the matter was, Sakura no longer believed in playing fair. Honour was for samurai and had no place in the shinobi world.

So she played dirty.

It was true that, unlike Genma, she couldn't fight with just ink. Instead, she carried pre-made seals for an extra edge, and sealed scrolls full of poison-filled baubles. To counter having her long hair being used against her, she braided it every morning and threaded poisoned ninja wire through the braid, harmless to her but strong enough to ensure that those who grabbed it would not be grabbing much else in their lives. Hopefully ever. And Sakura, unlike some, was not above throwing dirt in her opponent's eyes, nor going for one-hit knock-outs in taijutsu fights. Throat, solar plexus, eyes, back of the knees, temples - she used and abused them all. Graceful, flowing katas had no place in her repertoire unless to hone muscle memory.

Sakura the jounin's uniform was a mix of patriotism, practicality and paranoia all in one. Close-fitting charcoal turtleneck, loose grey pants and black boots made up an almost-standard attire. Coupled with that, she wore a grey chest armour reminiscent of her ANBU uniform, arm guards, plated gloves and her jounin flak jacket thrown over the top. Her medical pouch and scroll case were clipped to her belt, her kunai and shuriken holsters wrapped around her thigh, her daiito hung across her back and her wakizashi was secured to her other thigh. By appearance alone, Sakura screamed "war child". (Genma had long since learned that Sakura was almost overly receptive to his advice and offhand comments and he realised that the reason his partner looked dressed for war every mission was because he never stopped stressing that she should be prepared for every eventuality. The fact he did the same only served to reinforce that point.)

And when the two of them became renowned for coming back in one piece from missions some would have deemed as suicide, people no longer dared to call out their paranoia.

But competence, just like it had for Shikamaru, just as it had for Kakashi, and all the other geniuses before them, came at a steep price.

When the Village gates and the small crowd gathered before it came into view, Naruto would've taken off running had it not been for Jiraiya's hand holding on to the back of his jacket. The closer they got, the more he could see the likes of his friends, the old Rookie 9, as well as Neji and Bushy-Brows and Kakashi-sensei, all waiting for him to come back home.

It wasn't until he'd been hugged and whacked on the back and had his hair mussed multiple times that he dared ask about the most glaring absence in the small group that came to greet him.

"Where's Sakura-chan?" silence greeted his words. It seemed that nobody quite knew what to answer him.

Then, there was a flurry of movement and out of nowhere, two figures appeared in front of the gates, too quick to have used a shunshin.

Naruto's eyes fell on the painfully familiar pastel-pink head and the man at her side who was using the rosette as a crutch, a sluggishly-bleeding wound in his side visible even through the thick green material of the flak jacket. Naruto was about to run straight to his teammate, but before he could, one of the gate guards beat him to it.

"Sakura!" he jumped up and materialised at the teen's side with one of the quickest shunshins Naruto had ever seen. When Sakura raised her head and met his eyes, a tired grin lit up her face.

"Zumo-chan." she sighed with obvious relief, her eyes falling to the gates in something akin to wonder. "It worked..." she mused, before she eyed her comrade, worry clear in her gaze, "Would you be so kind as to get a medic unit here please?" and the chunin's didn't need to be told twice – he was gone before she even finished her sentence.

The other guard, the one with hair that Naruto personally thought could put a porcupine to shame, stepped up, grabbing the nin's other arm and swinging it over his shoulder, helping Sakura bear the weight of her limp partner.

"How far d'you jump this time?" he asked once the brunet was settled and Sakura grimaced, looking surprisingly guilty as he kept talking, "Valley of the End? Land of Whirlpools maybe?"

"Try the border of Stone and Waterfall." she grumbled, prompting the raven's eyes to widen to the point of being comical.

"Damn." he whistled, urging her to let him fully support her partner. "You beat your record by an entire country."

Something like a laugh bubbled out of the rosette, but it was followed almost immediately by a coughing fit. "That I did." she agreed weakly, before she paled even more. "Tsunade-sama is going to beat my face in, isn't she." she asked glumly, but her tone was far from questioning.

"Probably." the first brunet materialised by her side, an apologetic look on his face just as a group of medic-nin complete with stretchers and all ran towards them. "She's also going to want to know why you thought you had enough chakra for jumping across two countries but not for finishing a healing."

Sakura groaned, tired and long-suffering and Naruto thought he heard something that sounded like 'just bloody great' before she too, the second she was left to take a step forward without her teammate's weight, stumbled and passed out, saved from smacking face-first into the ground only by the brown-haired chunin's reflexes.

"Huh." 'Zumo' murmured when his hand came away from Sakura's waist wet and stained crimson. "Seems like the only thing keeping her up was sheer power of will. Again." he observed, exchanging an incredulous look with his partner who merely laughed.

"Are you really surprised?" porcupine-head, as Naruto had inwardly dubbed him, grinned. "Those two are the Hokage's favourite jounin partnership for a reason."

And then the medics were amongst them and Sakura and her partner were whisked away to the hospital while the chunin returned to their posts, as if unaware of the chaos their declaration had wrought.

Shell-shocked, Naruto turned to those of the Rookies who had been able to gather to greet him, eyes wide. "...jounin?"

And, perhaps a little vindictively, Shikamaru smirked, inwardly regretful that he didn't bring a camera to capture the blond's disbelief and frame it for Sakura's next birthday.

"Jounin." he affirmed.

The longer Naruto spent in Konoha, catching up with old friends, getting back into the swing of annoying Tsunade, and alternating between pestering Kakashi-sensei and Jiraiya for extra training, the more the absence of one particular person made itself