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Maybe, if someone actually had some common sense rattling around in that head of theirs, Sakura wouldn’t be in this kind of situation. Like, honestly, was it so hard for someone to put two and two together and realize that humans don’t actually have a base temperature of 60 degrees Celsius and probably couldn't survive being crushed by a house, a pissed off fox and the horrible realization that you’re the only one around who can rub two brain cells together.
She was scooped up and shoved into the arms of a civilian running for safety, having been found in the rubble of what used to be her home. It’s a panicked mess of a situation and the ninja who found her would have totally gotten an ass-kicking had they been part of Sakura’s medical squad. It’s a basic procedure to run a diagnostic check, as well as knowing that someone running a temperature high enough to give second-degree burns means enough bad news that you should cart them off to the morgue instead of the hospital.
I mean, c’mon! The village might be under attack by a chakra creation 90% rage and 10% structural hazard but that doesn’t excuse sloppy behaviour.
Then again, as someone who has punched a god, flattened mountains and talked to the very person who made the world she’s living on, her expectations of how people should act are slightly skewed. Also, it’s nice to be treated as a normal kid straight off the bat instead of as a threat.
Whatever. She has work to do.
Sure, her sealing was a little off and she was expecting to be twelve, a fresh child soldier ready to fight for a boy she never loved, a friend she always had and a village that was never “nice”. Instead, she’s barely six months old, the personification of chubby, and only marginally less helpless than the other kids around her.
There’s one sliver of hope though; Sakura’s never one to pass up potential.
Her efficiency has been sharped down into a razor point, chakra religiously hoarded and given out in exact measures. It’s probably what kept her alive during the last years of what she’s rightfully dubbed as “the worst years of her life”. This complication is just an early start, and she’ll be rolling in a grave before she ignores how much more she could do.
It’s a pretty thrilling feeling, like finding out a new jutsu you never expected to, or realizing that you actually have enough money to buy both of the items that you’ve been drooling over. Sakura savours it for a few moments, precious seconds, before squirming enough for the civilian who is still carrying her to miss a step and trip.
Whilst it is harder to make this new body of hers cooperate, she does manage an admirable roll that protects her squishy insides. The civilian, clearly knowing some self-preservation instincts, scrambles up and rushes off without a single look back. Had she been younger, Sakura might have felt an increasing sense of disillusionment, but with her being mentally at the wise, wise age of nineteen, she’s already moved past that stage right into a single-minded desire to rip everything out by the roots and rewrite everything to her standards.
Putting her plans aside, she uses her chakra to force herself up, and then to slowly make her way towards where there’s the biggest concentration of anger-fear-hate. Thank god she’s retained her stores otherwise this would be a lot harder to do. Then again, that’s not an impossibility, and Sakura breaks those kinds of assumptions each week.
It still takes a while, unbreakable determination be damned, and by the time she’s somewhere closer to the kyuubi, to Kurama, she already knows that she might actually be too late.
It sobers her up quickly and with a snarl, she forces herself to go faster, the only factor stopping her from using the body flicker technique being that she might actually hit her very unprotected head on a rock. Severe head trauma at this age would spell disaster and she can’t take that risk, so she grits her teeth and moves.
Finally, she sees the golden chakra chains and unmistakable orange fur above the trees, having travelled to somewhere outside the village. It’s a relief because it means there’s the possibility they’re still alive and that spurs her on, until, at last, she bursts through the underbrush straight into the visibly startled view of Minato and Kushina.
It’s a moment of surprise that costs them, the chains loosening enough that Kurama can get a hand free to try and slash and claw his way out. Trees are uprooted and flung wide as he digs long gorges into the earth in his desperation.
Fortunately enough, Sakura manages to keep her head on straight and having applied a light henge to mask her features, she barrels into the two adults and slams her hands onto their calves; it’s the only place she can actually reach. The only reason why she could even get close is because the kyuubi is creating a really handy distraction right about now. As soon as she makes contact, she syphons in enough healing chakra to revive, kill, and revive again which is such a crude way of healing but Sakura’s been having a pretty bad time today and she’s sure they can fix anything healed wrong later.
They both startle for a second time, but Sakura doesn’t care, she’s already moving to Naruto, his small (so small!) body having been carefully placed on something that looks like a sacrification table, complete with these small creepy candles around it. It’s kind of disturbing, and Sakura allows herself a second to think what the fuck Minato before she draws on a seal with a pink crayon she found a while back. The wax is melting between her fingers, which makes it even better to draw with and with all the finesse of a half-trained dog, she scrawls on a seal which will ensure that there will be no dumb death penance when Kurama gets shoved into his new cell.
Satisfied, she glances to the left where Minato is staring at the seal with an intensity unparalleled by anything except, maybe, the sun, before turning that soul-searing gaze onto her. Sakura tries to say something smart like yeah, I did that, but her vocal cords and tongue only grant her the ability to make a fairly adorable gurgle.
It’ll have to do, Sakura thinks, activating the seal with a shriek as her bones creak with the effort of dragging a very unwilling participant into the very small (seriously, so small!) body of Naruto. It takes a small eternity, and she’s sure she would’ve passed out halfway through except Tsunade trained her to be better than that, so she toughs it out by sheer luck and an unbending feeling of vindication.
Her body is sizzling now, once she steps back, and she realizes hazily that she’s left small, hand-shaped burns on his stomach which, oops, guess that’s something that’ll need to be healed later. She’s vaguely aware that her surroundings are definitely on fire or on its way to being on fire, but that’s someone else’s problem, and she chances a shunshin out of this field so she isn’t immediately captured and interrogated within an inch of her life by her past (future?) best friend’s parents.
Layering a few genjutsus in the area, it's kind of too easy to hide in the trees, which makes her think that the adults in the area probably let her go, but that’s acceptable as she gets to see them cry their eyes out for what was probably nothing short of a miracle for them. This section of the forest is totally ruined, but that’s fixable later and Sakura is a little more preoccupied with thoughts on how she could get back to the village, if her parent’s survived again, and what she’s going to do now that she’s slightly mangled the timeline.
Looking down at the clearing as the sun rises across the trees, the smile that creeps onto her face is so cliche and yet also perfect. Later, she can create backup plans to her backup plans for the bijuu and the akatsuki and kaguya. Later, she can think about how she’s going to live undercover when two of the most powerful people in the world are most likely going to try to hunt her down in an effort to wrangle an explanation. Later, she can deal with being on team seven again (because how can she not, after everything) and this time it’ll be side by side instead of as a dead weight.
She made a promise a hundred years in the past future, and she intends to keep it, Kami help her. Once everyone finds out, and they will because she’s so bad at keeping secrets from her precious people, they better start grovelling for all the effort she’s putting into this ridiculous, unbelievable, fantastic chance.
Now, how does she get the fuck out of here before the ANBU kids start arriving?