Chapter Text
Chapter 1 – Smoke and Bone
The bus jostled slightly as it rolled over cracked pavement, the engine a low, constant hum beneath muted conversation. Sakura sat near the rear, pressed against the window, watching the city rush by in blurred streaks of concrete and neon. The sky was smeared gray, thick with the promise of ash or rain-it was always hard to tell in this world. Either way, it matched her mood.
Ahead of her, a pair of sidekicks chatted across the aisle. Young, probably early twenties. One wore bright yellow armor that squeaked with every movement; the other had cybernetic lenses fitted over his eyes. They were excited, nervous, but hopeful. She envied that. She remembered what that looked like, but that was before. Before she found herself in this new world of concrete and heroes.
She didn't speak. She never did.
The commission didn’t like her out in public unless absolutely necessary, but the recent uptick in sightings- grainy photos of a woman with pink hair helping with storm rescues, footage of her fighting alongside high-ranking pros had made containment difficult. Someone had even started a blog tracking her anonymous appearances, trying to crack the case of the pink haired hero who seemed to be everywhere yet nowhere at the same time. It wasn't normal for an up and coming hero to not make an official debut in front of the cameras, yet here was this woman, pictured with some of the countries top stars and the public didn't have a name yet.
The commission was agitated, she could feel it in how short their messages had become. No more polite directives, only cold, clinical dispatches. They hadn’t said why she was on this call, only that her presence would be beneficial to the operation. This last-minute assignment wasn't a favor; she didn't get those. She was expected to jump when they said. Sakura hated it - being paraded out like a trick pony. These missions were what allowed her a moment of peace. It allowed her time not to think and instead focus at the task at hand- rescue, search, heal, capture- these were things she was familiar with.
A jolt in the road made her fingers tighten on her gloves. She flexed her fingers once, then pulled them on with the practiced ease of a nin preparing for war.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way. The mission that brought her here, if she could even call it that, was supposed to be simple. It had been a solo reconnaissance mission along a disputed border. She should have waited, requested backup or been more wary going into the situation, but she was Sakura Haruno, Tsunade’s apprentice, war veteran at seventeen, and survivor of things most shinobi never dreamed of. At twenty years old Sakura had thought herself invincible, and while she was still alive, she was now paying the price of her arrogance. She’d walked into the forest expecting a minor threat, instead, it had been an ambush with several rogue shinobi. She'd managed to take down three before a jutsu tore open the sky and then-
Then there was this. This world of glass and quirks and people who called themselves heroes without knowing what it meant. A world where her chakra felt foreign and distant. A world without her team. She hadn’t seen Naruto’s grin in several months, Sasuke’s deadpan sarcasm, Kakashi’s masked amusement, they weren’t here. She was. And she was tired.
The bus hissed to a stop, brakes squealing. The driver barked something about perimeter check-in. People began filing off. Sakura stood and followed, silent as smoke.
The street looked like it had been hit by a missile. A collapsed overpass groaned under its own weight, twisted rebar jutting like broken ribs through fractured stone. Flames licked at the edges of a flipped food truck. Somewhere under the rubble, a child screamed.
Sakura’s boots crunched glass as she moved, eyes sharp. She passed the sidekicks from the van, frozen in shock and fumbling with comms. This was obviously their first major disaster and no amount of this worlds training and pretend scenarios could prepare them for the real thing. The smell of burning petrol, the desperate cries of injured civilians, everything assaulted the senses if you weren't adequately prepared for it.
Sakura moved away from them quickly, she'd been given orders to assess the situation and detain the villains who caused this. She found the first survivor-a young woman, pinned between a crumbled sedan and a storefront wall, arms wrapped protectively around two children. Blood streaked her face. Her breathing was shallow and rapid, her pupils were dilated and her eyes unfocused.
Sakura dropped to a crouch without hesitation. She had her orders but she'd never be able to face Tsunade again if she walked past this injured woman.
“You’re okay now,” she murmured. Her chakra bloomed to life, green light soft against the gray haze. It spilled from her palms into the woman’s ribs, soothing broken bone and torn muscle. The children huddled closer to their mother, pushing themselves deeper beneath her arms, one beginning to cry.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing?” a voice barked behind her.
She didn’t look up.
The fire announced him before anything else, embers flickering in the air, heat radiating off scorched pavement. Endeavor stood at the edge of the debris, arms folded, flames dancing at his shoulders like a restless cloak. His frown etched deep into his face as he stared down at the four of them.
“These civilians are non-priority. First responders will handle triage, we move after the villain.”
“I am here as support. I am supporting,” Sakura replied calmly. Her chakra pulsed brighter. “By keeping them alive. You want to play hero, go get that villain. But I'm going to remain here and make sure she doesn't die.”
“You don’t get to choose the objective,” he said, stepping closer, voice low and charged.
Sakura finally looked up, her expression neutral. “And you don’t get to tell me to abandon the dying to run after a villain when you are more than capable of doing it yourself. Or is it that the number two hero can't do something as simple as take down a couple of villains without support?”
Sakura was familiar with this hero, she'd never worked with him, but his reputation preceded him. He was all fire, a passion to be number one, worked strictly by the books and was ruled by numbers- popularity, arrests, cases closed. Any number that played a role in the hero rankings Endeavor was sure to do anything he could to keep it from dropping.
The fire around him flared, heat making the glass whine in its frame. For a heartbeat, it seemed like he might lash out, flames surged higher, muscles coiled with tension. But Sakura continued to work on her patient, she knew his type, he'd leave her be if it meant this civilian's loss wasn't counted against him.
Another pulse of chakra and the woman’s breathing steadied. Her children peeking their eyes out in wide wonder at the heroes before them.
Endeavor stood rooted, fire crackling at his feet. He didn’t understand her defiance, her calm total disregard for his authority. Most support types snapped to his instructions, but she barely registered his presence. It rankled something deep inside him, the feeling gnawed at him to push her to follow his commands. After all, he was the pro and she was an unknown support hero.
He turned sharply and stalked away he would take down these villains, and when he was done, and next time the pink-haired woman worked with him, she’d follow his orders.
Later that night, he sat alone in his office, the overhead lights dimmed. A mug of untouched tea steamed beside a half-written report. He stared at the glowing screen of his tablet, the incident summary still blank. Next to him was a file of all personnel on the scene, he had her name highlighted after getting it off a new recruit.
He opened his email and drafted a different report.
Subject: Haruno, Sakura – Field Conduct Evaluation Request
He filled out the standard form: failure to follow field chain-of-command, insubordination, failure to adhere to mission briefing. His jaw tightened with each box he checked.
Then he hit send.
The response came less than an hour later, marked CONFIDENTIAL – COMMISSION OVERSIGHT. He opened the file expecting disciplinary notes or training gaps - instead, he found redactions. Pages and pages of them, names blacked out, missions scrubbed clean, no registered quirk, no birthplace, no education history. Yet through all of this her record was spotless, a detailed listing of her work placements, no record of reprimands or gaps in her work. Endeavor felt his jaw clench.
Her listing of placements; short-term assignments at top-ranked agencies, short stints, no promotions, no affiliations. She was a ghost of the hero system, perhaps some underground hero that was attempting to go pro but had issues with the public lens. He'd seen it before, heroes who couldn't handle the public pressure and cracked under its weight, slinking off into the shadows to work a solitary career. Perhaps she was similar.
He skimmed further. Photos were rare, a few stills from rescues. There was one from a well-known villain takedown in Osaka. He recalled an up-and-coming hero student named Ectoplasm receiving the credit for the capture. Endeavor wondered what caused her to lose out on the credit she’d earned, if it was by her own design to avoid the camera. This woman was always out of focus, always peripheral. Until-
A freeze frame captured All Might, smiling at the camera, blood on his temple and cape in tatters. And just behind him, half-turned, was Sakura. Laughing. Her hand on his arm, her eyes bright.
Endeavor stared.
A memory surfaced from a briefing weeks ago. “Unknown rising support hero with both healing powers and a strength quirk. They work under Commission assignment.” It had been a vague description; he'd dismissed it as exaggeration. Anyone with those combinations of skills would easily climb the hero charts and give All Might a run for his position as number one.
He frowned, if the report was accurate, that meant she could easily take his position as number two. He stared at the photo of her and All Might, the public would love this, and All Might would see a boost as well if he were finally linked to a sweet and docile healing hero. He snorted, there had been nothing sweet nor docile about her.
Now he wasn’t so sure. He tapped his fingers once, then typed a new message.
To: Commission Assignment Board
Subject: Request for Reassignment
Message: I believe Haruno's skills would be a great asset to the Endeavor Agency. Having Haruno on the team would allow us to leverage their knowledge in the field. I am requesting immediate reassignment to the Endeavor agency.
He hit send.
And for the first time in weeks, he felt like he was chasing something real.