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When Sakura hears her name on Team 7 with Naruto and Sasuke, she drops her head to the desk with a thunk. “I’m going to die,” she says into the wood.
“Stop stating the obvious,” Shikamaru says, also into the desk. Choji awkwardly pats her back.
“I’m going to die very, very soon,” she clarifies. “Younger than most shinobi.”
Ino sighs noisily from her spot across the room with the other popular girls. “Honestly, forehead girl, I am capable of poisoning you without killing you. It’s not as if I could date Sasuke-kun from prison.”
That is actually slightly encouraging and there must be something wrong with her if she finds the idea of a nonfatal poisoning encouraging.
“Wuss,” Ami sniffs. “I’m good enough to get away with a fatal poisoning.” Just not good enough not to openly state her intent, apparently.
“Death threats can wait until after team assignments, Iruka-sensei says dryly. “Team 8…” He continues reading off team assignments while Sakura desperately tries to think of a way to get off a genin team. She could probably convince every other kunoichi in the class (except Hinata with her inexplicable crush on Naruto) to help her in the hopes of taking her place – surely they can do something?
After team assignments, the less clever kunoichi accept Iruka-sensei’s permission to threaten her. The clever ones know better than to threaten to murder someone they might actually want to murder in the near future. Sakura takes note of the silent ones.
Then Naruto pushes through the crowd. “Sakura-chan! We’re on a team! We’re gonna be the best team ever!” She lets him pull her over to Sasuke, who is glaring at the crowd of kunoichi who follow them over. They, predictably, blush and giggle until she hisses to Naruto “Make them go away.”
His grin has a little too much tooth in it as he turns to their classmates, still crouching on top of the desks. “Back off or you’ll be sorry!”
Naruto has enough of a reputation that the girls who were just threatening Sakura with murder back away uneasily at the vague threat. Sakura wonders what she would need to do to be taken so seriously, but first she owes him. “Thank you,” she tells Naruto, bracing herself for an enthusiastic response.
He practically glows. “I’ll do anything for you, Sakura-chan! Believe it!”
She eyes him, considering. Maybe he would help her get off the team? No, that would probably be asking too much. He was good at pranks, though, which should translate to traps. Maybe she could ask him to help trap her home so that the other kunoichi don’t kill her before she even leaves Konoha? She knows that it’s not nice to take advantage of a boy’s crush, but she is desperate and a kunoichi and hasn’t really been nice in years even if she does try to pretend for her family. She is about to open her mouth to ask when Sasuke speaks.
“If you hold me back I’ll break your arms and twist them into a bow. Then I’ll set your house on fire and laugh as you try to put it out.”
Sakura isn’t sure whether to laugh or shiver. He may be the cutest boy in class, but that has always been partly because he is dangerous.
“Glad to be on your team too, you bastard,” Naruto says.
Sakura slams her forehead against the desk for the second time today. “We’re all going to die because you two are idiots and I’m a terrible choice for a combat team.”
When it takes their jounin-sensei three hours to show up, and he then falls for the eraser trap Naruto set up as a joke, not even expecting it to work, she adds another reason for her imminent death. His introduction, if you can call it that when the only thing he reveals is his name, only reinforces her opinion. The boys say more or less what she expects, although she is curious who it is that Sasuke wants to kill, and why.
“Haruno Sakura,” she says when it is her turn. “I like learning new things and spending time with my friends. I don’t like being threatened. My goal was to join the research or intelligence divisions, like Shika-kun’s mom and Ino’s dad, but now that I’ve been assigned to a combat team with the boy half my class would literally kill me for I just want to live to turn thirteen.”
Kakashi-sensei gives her a strange look.
“They’re not that good,” Sasuke says, rolling his eyes. “They haven’t kidnapped me yet, and they’ve certainly tried.”
Naruto’s eyes widen and his hands form a cross. “Kage bunshin no jutsu!” He shouts, and then they are surrounded by Naruto clones. Sakura barely manages to strangle a scream. Too much orange!
“Don’t worry,” one of the Narutos says, while the others form a circle around the team, thankfully facing outward. One Naruto has enough intensity to nearly knock her over, so a dozen of them is beyond overwhelming. “I’ll protect you, Sakura-chan! You too, bastard. Nobody kidnaps my teammates!” He’s determined and frighteningly sincere and has somehow learned to make multiple shadow clones when, according to Ino, he hadn’t been able to make a basic clone last week. Sakura looks at her teammates and wonders if she knows them at all.
Their new sensei’s eye crinkles and he ruffles the nearest two Naruto’s hair. “Meet me at training ground 7 tomorrow at 6 for your real test. You’re such cute little genin that I’ll even tell you that no one has ever passed my test. You should probably start planning to return to the academy next session.”
Sakura stares as he disappears in a swirl of leaves. “Thank all the kami!” She says. Surely they won’t be the first to pass.
Sasuke glares at them both. “I can protect myself, dead last. I’ll see you both tomorrow. Fail if you like, but if I don’t pass you will regret it for the rest of your lives.” He turns and stalks away.
Sakura turns to the nearest Naruto. “If you don’t mind, could you help me trap my house? Five of the other kunoichi didn’t threaten to kill me this morning, so I’m a little worried they may try tonight. Even if they don’t succeed, I think Sasuke-kun might just finish me off if I’m not there tomorrow.”
“Anytime, Sakura-chan!” It’s a bit overwhelming to be the focus of so much intensity, but he did offer to help. “Come on, I know just what to do!”
Sakura has spent enough time around Ino to notice social nuances, like when almost everyone she passes glares at her. It doesn’t take her long to notice that they’re not exactly glaring at her, but at the cheerful ring of Naruto clones surrounding her and the boy who will help her survive tonight. She tells herself that this is why she steps forward to punch the man who actually spits at them. The Narutos get in her way, though, and drag her past the stranger.
“Ignore them,” the Naruto holding her left elbow in a surprisingly strong grip says. She didn’t realize he could speak quietly. “They’re just stupid, but there are a lot of them. If you hit them, they’ll hit back, and we could get hurt pretty badly before anyone gets here to stop them.”
“Ok,” she says and he relaxes his grip. She does not want to think about how he knows this. “Sasuke-kun would break any bones they don’t if we missed tomorrow because we were in the hospital.”
It isn’t a very good joke, but he laughs anyway and chatters about nothing until they reach her house. She wonders if he is so loud because his own voice drowns out the hisses and insults. It reminds her too much of the days before she met Ino, but almost the entire town treats Naruto like Ami and her gang treated her. Naruto can be annoying and stupid, but he doesn’t deserve this. No one does.
He releases his clones and hesitates outside the door and she wants to break something. Instead she grabs his wrist and drags him inside. “Hi Mom, Dad,” she calls as they remove their shoes. “Can one of my teammates stay for dinner? He’s going to help me prepare for our practical exam tomorrow.”
“Of course,” her mother says. She steps out of the kitchen, sees Naruto, and suddenly looks afraid and angry. This is ridiculous, Sakura decides.
“This is my teammate Naruto,” Sakura says firmly as she drags the protesting boy to her room. “He’s really strong and he’s promised to protect me when we go on missions.” Hopefully she won’t be going on any missions with this team, but her mother is traditional enough to approve of that and she can hardly tell her parents she needs protection from her classmates tonight. “He’s going to help me practice traps tonight for a game we’re playing with our classmates, so please don’t come in my room and don’t let anyone else from school in the house.” Then she shuts the door behind them and locks it.
Naruto is blushing and rubbing the back of his head. “Sakura-chan,” he says. “You didn’t have to say that.”
“Yes,” she says. “I did. I really am worried they’ll try to kill me tonight and you’re helping me when you don’t need to. I don’t know why everyone treats you like you killed their family, but I’m not going to let my family treat you like that when they’ll probably owe you for saving my life by morning.” She already feels guilty enough for using his affection for her like this. He's a teammate, even if it is just for a day.
She opens her closet and starts pulling out the real ninja tools her relatives gave her last week for graduation. She is glad to have them, since the blunted kunai and shuriken they use in the Academy would hardly deter her classmates.
Naruto grins, almost fox-like in his enjoyment of mischief. “Oh Sakura-chan,” he says, “These are good tools! Those mean girls are going to be very sorry if they try to hurt you tonight!”
Sakura wakes early to disarm the traps closest to the bed so that she can add those supplies to her pack. She’s not sure what the test will be, but she is confident that she can fail it herself while helping the boys pass. She doesn’t want to know what Sasuke-kun will do if he fails, and she owes Naruto. Several of the outer traps went off last night, and there is blood and scraps of cloth outside her window. She leaves the evidence in place in case she fails to fail and needs to report this, but resets the traps as Naruto showed her before heading downstairs to eat breakfast.
It’s a little awkward after her outburst last night, but her father laughs when she tells them she won the game last night and her mother wishes her luck as she runs out the door.
The boys are waiting at the training ground. Sasuke-kun nods to her, and Naruto grins. “Sakura-chan! Did you catch anything last night?”
She shrugs. “The outer traps went off three times last night, but they left when they were injured. I left the blood on the roof in case I need it as evidence.”
Sasuke looks at her approvingly. She wonders if his parents had talked about their work with the military police when he was little. She’d certainly heard enough stories of restocking outposts and guarding the gate from her father.
“So,” she says, sitting down across from her temporary teammates. “You two need to pass this exam and I need to fail. Our sensei was late yesterday, and if he’s late today as well we’ll have time to prepare. We’ll probably have to fight him, with this team. Naruto-san, do you think you could trap this area and show us where to lead him?”
“I’ll set the best traps ever, Sakura-chan!” Naruto grins as he leaps to his feet and dozens of clones run into the surrounding trees.
Sasuke gives her a strange look and she shrugs. “He really is good at traps. Much better than I am.”
“Hn,” he says and leans back against a tree.
By the time their sensei arrives two hours later (fortunately without setting off any of Naruto’s traps) they have a thoroughly trapped forest and several plans. When he shows them that there are only two bells, Sakura grins. It’s perfect. “They’re all yours if we can get them,” she says. Naruto and Sasuke smile back and the three run into the forest.
Unfortunately, their sensei is entirely uninterested in following them into Naruto’s traps. He sits in the clearing and reads a book as they glare at him from the trees.
They have each run up to him and tried to draw him into the forest, but he only fends off their (halfhearted since none of them can actually fight him one on one) attacks with one hand and continues reading his book. He has yet to put it down or move from the spot. “Third plan,” Sakura says reluctantly.
The combination of Naruto’s clones, Sasuke’s fire jutsu and Sakura’s (nonfatally) poisoned kunai at least persuade him to tuck the book away in his vest. He even takes a few steps, although he easily evades the trap they try to draw him into. And the ninja wire. And the shuriken, even when they use all three of the jutsu they learned at the academy. Sakura tries a genjutsu she read about, and is unsure if it simply didn’t work or if he broke it instantly. Sasuke even has his clone henge into another jounin.
When that fails, the Naruto clones look at each other and transform into naked and unrealistically curvy women with only strategically placed clouds to hide the bits that (she hopes) he lacks sufficient detail in. Sakura still wants to slap him for developing that technique, but they did discuss it and their sensei’s book is titled Icha Icha. The clones definitely get his attention, but he still evades their attempts to trap him and snatch the bells without taking his eyes off Naruto’s clones.
When their time is up, he is still carrying both bells and Sakura and Sasuke fall to the ground, exhausted and chakra depleted. Naruto is still disgustingly energetic and she wonders if anything at all can tire him. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s too bad that all of them working together couldn’t do well enough for two of them to pass, but at least she failed. She relaxes for the first time since the teams were announced and wonders if Shikamaru would like company cloud watching this afternoon.
Then their infuriatingly perverse jounin-sensei opens his mouth. “You guys passed,” he says.
She starts beating her head against the ground. She is dead. So, so dead.
Kakashi-sensei looks at her teammates curiously and Sasuke sighs. “She wanted to fail,” he says.
Their sensei raises his one eyebrow and looks at her. “You were serious yesterday?”
“Naruto helped me trap my room yesterday. The traps went off three times last night, and it’s only going to get worse.”
His eye crinkles. “Start working on an antidote kit for the most commonly available poisons. If you choose the first two well I’ll teach you a seal tomorrow.” He shudders. “Misdrawn storage seals can be much more dangerous than kunai.”
It’s incredibly tempting to accept his offer – sealing is a rare skill and she may never find anyone else willing to teach her. But she doesn’t want to die yet. “You’re sure you won’t consider just failing me?” She widens her eyes and gives him her best too-cute-to-deny look.
“No,” he says and sticks his nose back in the orange book.
“Even if I survive the other kunoichi, I’ll die once we start going on missions,” she says. “You’ve seen my records, I’m a paper ninja and a terrible choice for this sort of team.”
He looks at her seriously and the lazy, late pervert slips away like a henge. “I don’t lose my teammates,” he says. “Trust me.”
She takes a breath. “All right, sensei.” She didn’t die last night. If she works on the traps again maybe she won’t die tonight either.
He nods, then falls back into a slouch. “Maa, you’re too serious,” he says.
She glares at him and he ruffles her hair.
Two months later, she is still alive. As much as she has always lacked confidence in her physical skills, she is clever enough to adapt and improve Naruto’s traps faster than the others can find ways to evade them. That is not to say that they have never injured her. She has slept under her bed since the night they managed to open her window and hit her sleeping form with a rain of kunai and shuriken. After they poisoned her spoon at a restaurant (and she neutralized the poison with the kit she always carries now before heading to the hospital), Kakashi-sensei taught her to store her own spoons in a seal. She looked up ways to detect poison in the library on her own. She looked up genjutsu in the library as well, but Kakashi-sensei helped her practice. She’s still not as strong as her teammates in a fair fight, but she’s smart and fast enough now, with genjutsu and seals that few expect from a genin. She can usually make sure it isn’t a fair fight.
She notices more now, after two months of fending off blatant attacks at night and more subtle ones during the day. When they finally leave on their first C rank, she pretends that it is another babysitting mission, only with bandits instead of boy-crazed kunoichi. She notices the puddle as soon as she sees it, and elbows Naruto to warn him. Sasuke, who has dealt with his fangirls for longer than she has, does not need her warning. None of them are surprised when two ninja leap from the puddle, and Sakura reacts instinctively, casting a genjutsu before slashing at their tendons with poisoned kunai.
Later, after Kakashi-sensei has interrogated both the surviving ninja and their client and they have dropped off the former at an outpost, she sits next to him. “It’s surprisingly good training, fending off Sasuke-kun’s fangirls,” she says.
“Is it?” He crinkles his eye at her.
“I wonder if a jounin-sensei might even stall the investigation into repeated attacks on his student to allow such training to continue.” It’s not a question, hasn’t been for several weeks now.
“Maa, that would be ANBU’s responsibility now, with the military police gone. How would a simple jounin-sensei influence such a thing?”
She rolls her eyes. “Easily, when he isn’t a simple anything. Ordinary jounin don’t go more than ten years with no public missions, for one thing.”
He does not reply, so she continues. “I wanted to thank you for not rescuing me. You helped me learn to protect myself instead. So. Thank you for that, and for asking your old friends to look out for me.”
“If a jounin-sensei were to allow such attacks to continue as a training tool, it would be irresponsible not to arrange backup,” he says.
“They’ve saved me several times,” she says, staring up at the stars. They’re camped on a beach, and it’s different.
“Not recently.”
“No,” she says, smiling. “Not recently.”