Chapter Text
Sakura could barely believe that she had survived the night, any more than she could believe the events that had transpired during it. Her team was on something of a high after their first successful, really real mission (not the busy work nonsense designed to build character and experience that was so typical of Rank D missions), and their sensei brought them to a clearing in the woods. This was ostensibly to congratulate them on a job well done and to launch into a no doubt inspirational speech which, for some reason, set off her suspicions and made Inner uneasy. Retroactively, she now knew she should have listened to those suspicions because they turned out to be right.
He lead them right into an ambush lead by a bandaged man who went by the name of Danzo. Somehow Team Seven managed to get free of the ambush, although she now believed that had been intended. After being pursued by one of Kakashi's kagebushin she managed to miraculously not only survive, but to escape as well.
She kept running for next couple of hours, in the off chance that her pursuers decided to follow up and ensure that she died, until she couldn't run anymore and went to ground within the hollow of a particularly large tree. Sakura spent the rest of the night pointing a kunai out at the darkness, cringing at every noise and movement out in the foliage, and trying to fight off sleep and chakra exhaustion. But if Danzo, Kakashi, or any of those strange ninja with the strange masks had decided to pursue her they never found her. So morning finally came and, despite being beyond exhausted, Sakura was happy to see it. Indeed, it was hands down the best sunrise she had ever seen.
"Nothing like a little life or death to make you appreciate a sunset," Inner said to her, likewise happy to have survived. Sakura agreed wholeheartedly, intent on never taking a sunrise for granted again.
At first, Sakura wanted to just curl back up in the tree hollow and go to sleep, preferably for a week. It wasn't as if it was likely that Kakashi or anyone in his mysterious group was likely to come looking for her now, assuming that they didn't think that she was dead, but she came to the conclusion that she needed to find better shelter. So she left the hollow behind, despite how dead tired and sore she felt, after picking a direction to go at random.
She wondered the forest for hours, with only that strange little voice that had been in the back of her head for as long as she could remember for company, until she came upon a clearing. For some reason that she couldn't quite put her finger on, the clearing seemed familiar to her even though it (thankfully) wasn't the clearing from the night before.
"It's the clearing from when we did that tree climbing exercise in, remember?" Inner supplied helpfully. Sakura looked around and saw markings on the sides of the trees all around where the boys, especially Naruto, spent all week trying to master such a basic technique.
Why was it that that seemed so long ago even though scarcely a week passed since?
The fond memory jogged another lose, and Sakura suddenly remembered the one day that Naruto came back to their clients' house. He had met a pretty boy there that he had claimed that was prettier even than Sakura. She remembered smacking Naruto, both for the remark and for the fact that the boy could have been an enemy and Naruto would have been defenseless because he had been asleep at the time. Of course, the effeminate boy had been an enemy yet he didn't seem to bear Team Seven a grudge.
Than something else that Naruto had said suddenly occurred to her, "Didn't he say that the boy was gathering medicinal herbs here?"
Indeed, Sakura could recognize the herb growing in the clearing. It was covered at length in first aid class back in the academy and it was also illustrated in detail in her student handbook, since it was such a common ingredient in healing salves. Sakura hadn't noticed it before, since she had spent such a brief amount of time in the clearing, but now that she looked she could see the herb all over the place. And then she quickly resolved not to be so unobservant of her surroundings in the future.
The time that the boy had been gathering herbs in the clearing would have been right around the time that Zabuza was recovering from his first fight with Kakashi. That thought caused another to arise, "If I were gathering medicine for an injured comrade who could only rely on me, I wouldn't want to go too far from them."
About an hour later Sakura found herself outside of what looked like a hunting cabin. A careful examination revealed minimal traps in the surroundings and none on the building itself. It seemed like a strange oversight to Sakura, given that Zabuza was supposed to be a survivor of the Bloody Mist, but there could have been any number of rational reasons for it. Whatever those reasons were, however, benefited her now as she entered the cabin...
Five days later found Sakura in a fully recovered state and in better spirits, having spent it resting. She explored the cabin and had found traveling supplies all packed up and ready to go. That probably explained why the cabin hadn't been trapped, they likely were expecting to have to leave in a hurry if they had been victorious.
Among the supplies was a bunch of scripts from various territories across the Land of Mist, since a centralized script didn't exist. There was sometimes a script shared by several territories in a region, but it just simply didn't exist. There was, instead, a series of monetary exchanges that wasn't always consistent. It made trade and barter between territories difficult, sometimes impossible in some cases. She didn't know what the exchange rates were on the script she found, but she would wager that it would be a lot if she were to risk using it.
There was also spare field rations, extra kunai and sebon, and even a nicely stocked first aid kit. In short, everything that she could hope to have as a ninja out in the field. In one of the packs she also found a map for the Land of Mist. There were a series of marks, presumably made by Zabuza, a few crossed out. Sakura didn't know exactly what that was about, because there wasn't a key explaining the marks, but she came to the conclusion that they were related to his work as a missing ninja.
When the five days came and past, she had to come to the conclusion that Kakashi's kagebushin hadn't been lying the night she had escaped. The boys had been caught, otherwise those ANBU look-a-likes would have continued searching the area and she would have been found again. It was because of that and no other reason that she was currently free.
At the evening of the fifth day, Sakura found herself at the memorial site of Zabuza and Haku. It wasn't really a grave per se, as Kakashi opted to have them cremated instead of buried. That was the custom for ninja, for very grisly and practical reasons.
The memorial wasn't even marked, excepting for two large stakes and Zabuza's giant sword driven into the ground. Standing in front of the memorial, Sakura had come to a stalemate.
The options before her were both limited and obvious.
The first option was to do nothing and stay on the island. As far as anyone knew she was dead so no one would ever go looking for her, and the hunting cabin was well hidden so she could stay there undetected indefinitely.
The second option was to make her way back to Konoha and warn about the strange group that were planning a coup. The likelihood of arriving safely to Konoha without alarming the insurgent group wasn’t very good, and she didn’t have the first clue about who all could be involved.
The third option was to officially go rouge and build her strength up and make a name for herself. From there, who knows?
Staring at the overly large cleaver sword, Sakura came to her decision.
It was time that she go rouge...
Back at the hunting cabin she stood in front of a mirror staring at her reflection, observing her change in image. Having remembered all the nightmare inducing stories that she had heard in kunoichi classes of what happened to women in the field, especially enemy combatants, she opted to disguise herself as a male.
Towards that end she started by binding her breasts, despite being nearly flat chested, and cutting her hair that had once been a source of pride to her. She followed up by dressing herself in the spare clothes that she was certain belonged to the effeminate boy that posed as a hunter ninja, she also wore a cowl over her head; because of what she was sure was some strange blood line or another, Sakura’s hair couldn’t be dyed; and a half mask that could be pulled down when it wasn’t in use. On top of all that, Sakura applied a low level henge to change her facial features in small ways and to give her frame a more masculine appearance. The result was an appearance that harkened to a more traditional look of a ninja.
But the reality was that she really was a girl so had to carry an extra supply pouch with items needed for the typical kunoichi out in the field including medicines for menstruation (which she thankfully hadn’t had need of yet, but it was only a matter of time) and a suicide pill intended as a last result in case she was ever caught and could not realistically expect rescue or escape (something Sakura had to realistically consider now). If ever anyone were to go through the pouch that was familiar with standard ninja or kunoichi gear would instantly realize that she was female, but if anyone was in position to go through it than she would probably be screwed anyhow so it was a catch-22.
Sakura packed away necessities in her pack, and sealing everything else, after practically stripping the cabin bare, into a couple scrolls she found and put them into her hip pouch. She even sealed away Zabuza's sword, even though Sakura couldn't explain why she did because she didn't know how to use a sword and it was too distinctive for her to use especially as an untrained genin. Perhaps she could use it to barter at some point in time. And since it would be unwise to leave such an obvious safe house unprotected, Sakura concealed the cabin as carefully as she could using nets, leaves, and a low level genjutsu trap.
And then, like a ninja of old, disappeared into the night...
[To Be Continued...]