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"Sasuke-kun, you should go on a date with me?" Sakura's fingers moved entrancingly towards the target, her voice a strange combination of eldritch and seductive.
"No."
For him, it wasn't a reasonable course of action. Because of this, she just wasted the spell slot.
...
Catapult, as anyone will tell you, is the best simple spell for a shinobi. Select an object within visual range and it will fly at great speeds towards your target, whoever it may be. But do keep in mind that, overall, explosive tags make for much better ammunition than rocks and random knickknacks.
And if Sakura almost killed herself trying to summon a bell towards her own body during a certain test, well... No one will ever mention it, the moment of her greatest shame.
Except Kakashi. He's a jerk and would mention it often.
...
The Bell Test, as Sakura regretfully discovered, was full of disappointments to her wizarding pride.
Someone learned Fireball before her, and after this blatant perversion of the natural order and the rights of wizards everywhere, Sakura was not sure if she liked Sasuke anymore.
...
With her pitiful movement speed when compared to ninja, Sakura has to be carried everywhere.
Naruto and his clones are fine with this. She is not.
...
'I've got this!'
And Sakura really thought she did, as Haku's once beautiful mirrors spewed water and vapor.
Hiss... The jutsu was liquifying before her eyes.
Really, it was basic, static fire trumps ice, right?
Swoosh.
While congratulating herself, Sakura missed a subtle noise in the air, and something bit her skin.
Needles, plenty of them.
They left her in a great deal of confusion and pain. Just like that, her Flaming Sphere was gone.
Meanwhile, Kakashi watched from the sidelines. He was... Dissatisfied with her performance.
...
It was nice to be back in Konoha. The day was beautiful, birds were singing, and Naruto, while carrying Sakura in his back, had mentioned that she had lost weight.
It wouldn’t last.
Because even as they crossed Konoha’s gates, a giant cloud covered the sky, birdsong drained from the air, and Kakashi opened his mouth.
"We'll be testing your concentration Sakura-chan." He eye smiled. "It's clearly important for your fighting style, if we can call it that."
Her sensei had, let's say, unconventional ideas about training.
...
Ninken are vicious beasts, Sakura thought. The fact that she had to run and keep invisibility active didn't make them any easier to deal with since the hellspawn tracked by smell.
Except it kind of did, because the minute her spell faltered, Kakashi began throwing a veritable storm of practice kunai.
Has she mentioned that Kakashi is a jerk?
'War Caster better be worth it.'
“Maa, be thankful I’m not throwing bells.”
Jerk.
...
Sasuke is fed up with having to carry Sakura... Again.
"How they even let you out of the Academy is beyond me." He sneered at the useless fangirl who, even after weeks of active kunoichi duty, could only move at civilian speeds.
Sakura shrugs.
"I test well and can reasonably fake the Academy Three."
...
"Sakura-chyan~" Naruto whined, flaying his arms pitifully. "I wanna learn a cool jutsu. You know, like the stuff you do."
Sasuke said nothing, but he was paying attention. No doubt, ready to steal another of her techniques. Tch. Wasn't Fireball enough?
Sakura merely raised an incredulous eyebrow.
"Don't be ridiculous!" She remarked sagely for her dense teammate. "Do the work, slaughter all your enemies, and soon enough, amazing techniques will show up in your brain whenever you are asleep."
Frankly, Naruto could be such an idiot, not knowing simple facts of the world.
And that's how Team Seven became a trio of rabid murder hobos (especially Sasuke). Together, they would inflict terror upon the land.
...
"Just you watch, I'm gonna prove it to everyone! Sakura Haruno will become an excellent kunoichi. So what if I can't use any of your fancy taijutsu?" She pointed her menacingly, drawing strength from her inner Naruto. "One day my jutsu will be so awesome that literal meteors will fall down from the sky. Believe it!"
Quest reward acquired: One green-clad eternal rival.
...
In the Forest of Death, while everyone, the Sage and his brother were out there, resting in the cold and slaving away for a heaven or earth scroll, Team Seven was living the good life, warmth, dry pillows, and more importantly, an impregnable fortress that, to Sakura's knowledge, no shinobi can breach.
"Not sure who Leomund-san is supposed to be," The Uchiha admitted grudgingly. "But I do like his style."
Sakura just nodded indulgently with her eye closed and leaned further into the plushy silk of her Tiny Hut.
The rest was well-deserved. They had spent the day slaughtering foreign nin, bathing themselves in oceans of both blood and XP.
Tomorrow would be the same.
...
Kakashi-sensei couldn't do it.
Jirayia and even the Hokage himself, with their fancy seal-work, were at a loss.
Sakura?
Sakura had a good night's sleep and prepared Remove Curse.
Sasuke woke up just fine from his magical hickey.
...
Itachi had heard it all. Shouts and curses, cries and pleas, all of that and more had graced the dark walls of nightmare kingdom. Nothing, he maintained, could spark creativity quite as much as a knife twisting again and again through the layers of illusory flesh...
...but the enraged screams of "where is my saving throw?!". Well, that was a first.
When Sakura left, she was broken, and in his own way, so too was Itachi.
'Target removal with no saving throw.’ Envy grumbled in her thoughts. ‘That's so broken...'
But Sakura was lucky. Unlike poor Sasuke, she would be completely fine after a long rest.
Except for all the psycological trauma, of course.
...
Sakura tried it all...
...Augury, the bones of the knowledgeable dead, used to obtain arcane secrets and guidance for events to come...
...Portent, the highest skill of divination, one that can twist fate itself to directly bring about good or bad fortune...
...straight-up blackmail, threats, and all that shinobi goodness...
...but no wizardry nor spell, neither kunai nor bribe, nor shinobi's art nor wizard's cunning could overthrow the last Senju's demonic bad luck. It took Tsunade by the throat and pinned her down.
With bills. There was just so much debt...
'Crap. I failed. I don't think she's coming back to Konoha.'
Not only that, but she refused, out of sheer spite, to teach Naruto the super strength technique that he liked so much.
“You want to learn? Well, though luck, brat. I want to visit the Land of Hot Springs.”
...
It was by accident, really, as they fought Orochimaru, that she discovered the true meaning of unlimited power.
Sakura cast her spell and Naruto produced Shadow Clones at the exact same time. Pretty standard, right?
WRONG!
Because Sakura had deployed her newest and most powerful spell, the trump card known as Polymorph. It works like a Henge, but one that is more than an illusion, it sculpts the flesh (or in the case of a chakra construct, such as a clone, gives it flesh, at least for a time) and can turn any creature into a beast of the user's design.
But Naruto, her target, had cloned himself at the exact same time. The result was a freaking army of “real” giant monkeys.
Which was, of course, completely awesome.
When the implications became clear in her mind, just how well Naruto's technique meshed with her own powers in so many possible combinations, Sakura wanted to laugh. No, more like cackle madly like a deranged missing-nin.
'This... We're gonna take over the world, you and I, Naruto-chan.'
Her thoughts were punctuated with even more mad cackles.
Jirayia had probably thought something similar, because he was frozen into place with his mouth stupidly open.
'Well, time to finish this.'
The monster horde descended, with extreme prejudice, on the “unarmed” sannin and his silver-haired accomplice. With plenty of wounds, exhausted chakra, and angry primates blocking every possible escape route, their fate was pretty much sealed.
Sakura smiled.
'I could get used to this.'
...
Tsunade became... Somewhat distressed, crying loudly over her former teammate's mangled corpse.
'Is this our glorious military dictator?' Sakura asked herself more than a little disappointed.
And then, she had an idea.
It just might be crazy enough to work.
...
"Listen, If you don't wanna be Hokage, that's fine. I've got a plan, are you interested?"
Tsunade looked skeptical, very skeptical, but the offer was too good to pass. Tsunade really, really didn't want the job, so she agreed before Jirayia had a chance to interfere, and block negotiations.
Sakura smiled.
"All you have to do is teach Naruto-kun your strength technique, and help our dear teammate, Sasuke-kun.” The voice was sweet, like a snake in the garden. “I'll take care of the rest."
...
Konoha was hesitant, to say the least, when receiving the triumphant Godaime Hokage newly returned from battle.
But really, what did they have to complain about? Naruto was insanely powerful. An army of Super Strong Giant Monkeys, Sakura believed, was fully the equal of any alternative Kage the Leaf currently had to offer.
Someone tried to protest, an elder called Shimura... Something.
Sakura presented him with Orochimaru's severed head, skin even more pale than usual, eyes and mouth frozen in sheer terror. That shut him right up. Curiously, no one else decided to interject after that.
Naruto's glorious rule had begun. Konoha's allies overseas, like Suna, called him the Second Monkey King. Others, of a different inclination, bemoaned about some Sarutobi Brat Who Inherited The Overpowered Summoning Contract.
Really, those titles were interchangeable.
The true mechanics of Naruto's ascension, however, were a little more sinister. Both Jirayia and Tsunade's silence had to be bought with plenty of booze and a fully paid vacation to the Land of Hot Springs. Sakura, having waited for an auspicious day, one in which she predicted a natural twenty using her broken Portent skill, had left everyone in the village council almost unnaturally convinced of Naruto's greatness.
(Jirayia had called it a disgusting perversion of free will, but that's fine. With Tsunade’s complicity they could keep him drunk for a while longer.)
So, when both Sakura and Sasuke, in a dirty little quid pro quo, received their own jonin flak jackets just a few days later... Well, people were more than willing to turn a blind eye. All for Naruto The Great's sake, of course.
Long may he reign!