Chapter Text
Chapter V: A Year of Training
It was rather simple to get into a routine with a goal in sight.
She had just under a year to get into some sort of shape, and she wasn’t about to waste a single moment of it when her life itself might rest upon her decisions there. The fact of the matter was that she didn’t know enough about that world. She didn’t understand enough of the lore, or how the so-called magic worked there. She didn’t know how powerful gods and goddesses were there compared to those spoken of, but not seen, in the Elemental Nations.
So the goal was to become as physically powerful as she could, even while nursing a budding friendship with the purple-haired girl who’d once been her sworn nemesis. Ami always seemed to pop up everywhere, and Sakura had, at first, entertained the idea that perhaps she had been reborn as well – but Ami had hated her. Despised her. Loathed her. No matter how she put it, they meant the same thing, which was why Sakura was all but certain she was the only reincarnator there. Kaguya could only have grabbed her soul, and possibly that of her teammates’… but she knew that hadn’t happened.
The grand figure of Death had acknowledged some kind of claim the rabbit-eared Kaguya had upon her, and she doubted Naruto or the others had anything similar. It was a feeling, deep in her bones, and Sakura knew to listen to those sorts of instincts. They were the kind which would save her life, stranded in that strange world as it was.
“What are you doing?”
Sakura paused, mid press-up. “Getting stronger,” she said, grinning at the purple-haired girl. “I don’t wanna be weak, plus I’m gonna have to start helping mama around the house soon.” She stood up, flexing her almost non-existent muscles – she had been working hard so she couldn’t call them completely non-existent. “So I’ll need to be a little bit stronger.” Added to the fact that she had made up her mind to challenge a damned minor goddess as soon as she celebrated her eighth birthday. There was no time to waste.
While she couldn’t do too much weight training until her chakra fully settled in – and offset any injuries which might come from using weights at such a young age. She had been a medic, and never before had Sakura been more grateful about that fact. Though she had decided the medic part of her studies could come later. Her medical knowledge, otherworldly or not, wouldn’t come in handy if she died before she could find a larger town. Strength was what she needed then, first and foremost. She could worry about everything else at a later date.
“You’re so weird, Sakura,” Ami muttered, sitting on the fallen tree log – which had been placed there for the exact purpose of sitting on. It was an odd sort of hangout for children and teenagers allowed outside with their parents’ permission.
Sakura grinned, standing up to her full height – press-ups completed for the day – stretching out her stick-like arms. “It’d be boring if I was normal,” she said, feeling terribly happy as the other girl snorted. It was the closest thing to laughter she could pry from the older girl’s lips. “Besides… who knows what’ll happen in the future?”
Ami scoffed. “You’re still thinking that you’re gonna be this village’s next mage?” she asked scathingly, arms folded. “You’ve got your head in the clouds, Saku…” She flopped back on the log then, staring toward the sky. “It’s better to be down to earth… ‘cause then you won’t be disappointed when your dreams fall through.”
“Sometimes you sound like the actual adult out of the pair of us, y’know,” Sakura said, snorting at the thought. The eldest one between them was actually her. Even if no one else was aware of that actuality.
“I’m the older one,” Ami said, sticking out her tongue, book laid flat across her lap. “So I’m waaay more sensible than you. I don’t have stupid dreams of getting out of this village. Mother thinks I’ll marry the tailor’s boy and live a quiet life here… who knows if I’ll end up running the bakery or not…”
“Do you wanna run the bakery?” Sakura asked, tilting her head as she went and jumped atop the log, crouching down next to her only friend then in the village. She hadn’t seen any of the others since the night of the test of courage.
Ami shrugged.
Sakura hummed, a sardonic smirk playing on her lips. “Y’know… I think you really deep down wanna be the village’s next mage,” she said, peering down at the indignant expression which soon crossed Ami’s face.
“Do not!” Ami yelled, sitting up just as Sakura leapt away from the log, running as fast as she could as she heard Ami begin chasing her.
“Do too!” she called, laughing merrily at the indignant squeal of rage behind her. It was oddly therapeutic to tease the girl who resembled her past life’s bully. They weren’t one and the same, and they never would be. Not least because she, too, was completely different to how she had been as a seven-year-old last time around.
“Get back here, Sakura!”
Sakura only laughed harder, running away all the while, indulging herself in her childish whims and all they entailed. “Never!”
Chilly morning air greeted her as she lapped the village for a second time that morning, returning the cheerful greetings she was given – most people having quickly grown accustomed to her eccentricity. Or so they called her desire to be fit, healthy, and strong. Truly, Sakura despaired sometimes at how backward society there was compared to a modern Konoha. State-of-the-art plumbing, television, parks, hospitals, medical knowledge… Those were things of the distant past. Sakura had no idea if anything more eastwards was more advanced. Yet another thing to check out when she became bigger… or perhaps once she turned nine.
Sighing, Sakura continued her running, all the while marvelling over the fact that her legs were definitely far stronger than her arms. And not naturally so, either. She had far too much to figure out, but she supposed she had to be patient. There was no one so far west who would be able to answer the numerous questions she had about her new world.
All she could do was train, both her body and with her settling chakra, and then by the time the sun dawned on her eighth, she’d be venturing into that forest. One that terribly childish part of her still considered to be scary. The trees were tall, not unlike those which had grown in the aptly named Forest of Death and she was smaller and in a strange world. A place where minor gods and goddesses and possibly demons too seemed to hang out in the backwater forest surrounding a tiny, relatively unknown village.
There was a reason only a few merchants ever visited. Sakura supposed it wasn’t that much of a surprise. It meant less chance of a kidnapping or anything of an unsavoury sort happening due to outside forces. Less merchants meant less goods though, and Sakura supposed it meant less bandits would come to dwell in those parts and terrorise them. She had hated bandit elimination missions more than anything in the world, if only because they were often involved in the slave trade, and they weren’t kind to their so-called goods. Everything had its good points and bad points. Sakura only hoped that the good continued to outweigh the bad. And that maybe, just maybe, she might be able to become a mage and find out more about the world.
About those words the Rabbit Goddess had whispered to her so long ago.
Truth be told, she couldn’t remember them too well, only that a bunny-eared Kaguya had a hand in her reincarnation there. Sakura didn’t know whether to be grateful, or whether she was meant to hate and worry about that fact. Perhaps she wouldn’t have feared too much if it had been a good person who had interfered with her death and life after, but nothing could change the fact it had been Kaguya. The same face as the one who had ultimately killed her.
Sakura didn’t think she could trust her, but maybe that was the traditional shinobi paranoia talking there. She knew too little to make a proper judgement, and she hadn’t seen Kaguya – presuming that was her name, perhaps – since her birth. There had only been the rabbits since then, and going off the fact Kaguya had been called the Rabbit Goddess, and the fact she had rabbit ears rather than horns… She thought they might be there to keep an eye on her. Sometimes she attempted to spy on the small fluffy creatures when she ventured into the eaves of the forest, keeping her eyes peeled for the white rabbit with pearlescent eyes. Not that spying on rabbits had done much good, other than helping her with her stealthy sneaky skills, as Ami liked to call them whenever she used them against the older girl.
She didn’t know if everything she was doing would be enough, part of her fearing being too weak. As she had been once before. Things were different to the Elemental Nations though, and Sakura took heart in that as she finished her run, hurrying back towards her home, breath misting in front of her – a sign that winter was on its way out, ready for a crisp cool spring, and it would grow warmer and warmer. Until the next year, which, when things started to become cooler once more, would mean it was time for her to venture into the forest to face the minor goddess she was readying then abouts to battle. Or whatever it was she was meant to do.
“Little Bean!”
Sakura grimaced at the bothersome pet name as she was swept off her feet upon her return to her home. Grunting, she pushed at her father’s face. “Do you have to call me that?” she grumbled, fondness surging at the familiar chuckles which rumbled from his chest, and Sakura felt an odd panging in her chest.
The world she was in wasn’t like her old one, where she had always returned to her parents after completing a mission. Rather, at the rate things were going, she would become a mage, or a traveller at the very least, and she would go on to leave that village. There was no other way to do things, because deep in her bones, there was something urging her onwards. A little voice in the back of her head, like Inner, urging her to become stronger.
In order to survive what was coming.
Sakura didn’t quite understand what that meant, and unfortunately that was because she understood so little of that strange world. The stories her mother told were something else, but not quite what she was searching for. She was so very thirsty – so very hungry for information – it was like a dry well had opened up inside her, and Sakura felt compelled to fill it up with a fountain of information. Information she knew wouldn’t be found as far west as she knew she was.
Sighing softly she looked between her parents, wondering how they would feel about her leaving. They had been wonderful parents, terrible echoes of the ones she had before, and Sakura always struggled to not compare them – to not think them the same, because they weren’t. For all that Haruno Mebuki and Haruno Kizashi were alike to their counterparts in the Elemental Nations, there were undeniable differences there. The way they walked, the way they talked, who they interacted with. They were warmer in some ways in that strange land, what with the odd sense of community Sakura always felt hovering about the village. Because it wasn’t Konoha, and there were no shinobi, no threats living amongst them for them to fear.
“Sakura, yoohoo?” A hand waved in front of her face, and Sakura only sighed, letting her head flop against her father’s shoulder.
“Mm,” she grunted. “What’s it?”
“You want your breakfast yet?” her mother asked, an unreadable expression on her face as she stared at her as she lay, sweaty and sticky in her father’s arms.
“Un!” Sakura nodded, squirming in the hold until her father got the hint and released her to charge about the house. “Thanks, mama.”
Her mother only smiled, sighing quietly as Sakura seated herself at the somewhat rickety table, ready for the morning meal. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day, especially with her training. She needed to build muscle, and the right diet would help her do just that. Nodding to herself, she watched as breakfast was served, and immersed herself in conversation with her precious family. The same one she would likely be leaving after her ninth birthday had passed.
The moon hung heavy in the sky, a bright white orb shining through the gap in the dark grey cloud cover. Truly, it was an eerie night, or so Sakura mused as she looked out upon the village from her room. The forest was there in the backdrop, spooky and haunting, what with how the shadows seemed to move. If she stared hard enough, she could sometimes see little glowing circles which glinted. Eyes. The hairs on her body stood up on end at the thought of what lurked out there. Because she wasn’t in a world she knew the rules of, nor did she know all of the creatures which lurked in the forest she would soon venture into.
Caution. That was what she needed, along with patience and strength, though the latter was proving to be slow going. Muscles and base strength wasn’t something she could acquire overnight, nor was a good level of cardiac fitness. Her chakra-enhanced strength only built on top of that which she already had.
Her breath misted on the window, and Sakura shivered, drawing upon her chakra then, as if it might keep her warm. It rippled over her skin, and her eyes could only widen as the source she was pulling from shifted. No longer was she pulling from that familiar blue source. Rather, she was tugging from the little white bundle hidden behind her chakra stores which were large enough to dwarf it by that point, thanks to constant chakra exercises. By her own rough estimates she had more than she had when she had ventured out on that fateful Wave Mission.
That white chakra, as she had taken to calling it, was unmistakably different to her normal blue chakra which she had always known. More power. Though Sakura wasn’t entirely certain of its origins. A new source after her reincarnation there? She didn’t have enough information, and she was gleefully looking forwards to the day when she discovered a library once more. Not that Konoha had many of those, other than the civilian ones. This place wasn’t Konoha though, so she hoped for something more, though it was likely her hopes somewhere would be crushed. They always tended to be. It was just her luck.
The unfamiliar chakra hummed over her skin, and Sakura wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all, until she finally registered the unfamiliar visage reflected somewhat in the window. Her hair was still pink – she could see that much – but the visage, the reflection, of herself wasn’t. Rather it was white haired, with pearlescent purplish eyes with veins which bulged around those strange terrifyingly familiar orbs.
Sakura stumbled back, weaving her fingers through her pastel pink locks, shaking her head as she dived back under her covers, determined to forget the sight which she had just seen. White chakra curled back towards her core, and Sakura buried it, hiding it away behind the familiar blue chakra. Out of sight, out of mind, was what she wanted it to be. At least until those memories stopped being so haunting.
The memories of her death that was.
Seeing white rabbits with those eyes hadn’t taken her back to that fateful day when her fate was forever severed from that of her old friends but seeing that humanish lavender-eyed reflection on the other hand… Sakura shivered, and not from the cold, as she curled up beneath her covers, closing her eyes, determined to block out the strange world right then and there.
A world which wouldn’t seem to let her forget the pale-haired, lavender-eyed ghost whose hand had speared through her chest and sent her tumbling into a place she knew too little about to not be afraid of what lurked in the shadows.
Time passed, and Sakura was careful not to tap into her white chakra ever again. Not until she overcame the trauma which accompanied her death and subsequent incarnation in those strange lands. Her muscles grew, arms and legs becoming more and more toned, and her chakra slowly began to settle in to that tiny body of hers. She became better at enhancing her own strength to the next degree, chakra stores continuing to grow until she could scarcely believe the amount she had gathered in that oh so very tiny body of hers.
Everything was different, and she was far stronger than she had been before, though she had yet to achieve any sort of healing feats. Those could wait until she was twelve once more. Becoming stronger in that tiny body was all that mattered, because otherwise she wouldn’t survive. But she had to keep herself healthy, whether by eating the correct sustenance, or by maintaining her relationships with those whom she was closest to in that small village.
And so time passed in that repetitive fashion, and little Haruno Sakura grew in strength, until the morning of her eighth birthday dawned, bright and clear.