Flick Through

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:: Flick Through II

:: Chuoko (Secondhand)

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Author: Ms Trick
Notes: I thrive on reviews and cupcakes. I would be honoured to accept either.

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:: Konoha ::

Shizune clutched some papers to her chest as she rushed through the crowded hospital hallway, her heels clicking on the linoleum floor. She hurriedly hopped out of the way of two medic-nin jogging by with a stretcher between them.

The war was taking its toll.

“Tsunade-sama?” Shizune called as she reached the end of the top floor corridor.

She found the Godaime hovering over one of the many occupied cots in the large hospital room. Her hands, lit with green healing chakra, flew to different parts of the anguished form of Neji, whose white eyes were staring blankly at the ceiling as his body arched and spasmed involuntarily.

“Damnit,” Tsunade muttered, pressing her soothing fingers into his shoulder, where the stains from a deep sword wound lay like a flower on his white shirt.

Neji’s mouth opened in a silent scream in pain and finally, he sank into an agonized unconscious state. His body lay like a corpse on the cot.

Shizune watched him worriedly as Tsunade finished closing the shoulder wound and did her best to calm and extinguish the body’s spasms.

“What happened?” The dark-haired secretary asked from behind the Godaime’s shoulder.

Tsunade wiped her forehead and standing, checked that no patients in the room needed her expert care at the moment. She sighed in exhaustion and swiped up a clipboard from a nearby table.

“Sasuke managed to get a hit with his katana and then instigated the Chidori Nagashi. He should recover though,” Tsunade said tiredly as she marked instructions for Neji’s care onto the clipboard.

“I see. Naruto wasn’t in the vicinity was he?” Shizune questioned seriously, eyes still on Neji’s unconscious form.

Tsunade’s pen paused for a split second before continuing. “No. As far as I know, Naruto was with Kakashi on the north western front.”

“Ah. Good. Strategically, it will be difficult to keep Sasuke and Naruto apart for the entire war...you know that.”

“Shizune, what did you need?” The Hokage said, handing the clipboard to the nurse who just entered the room.

“Tsunade-sama...” Shizune started, holding out the papers for the blonde to see. “Sakura may not be in the future. She may be in a future--we have no guarantees that she made it to the correct one.”

The Godaime pursed her ruby lips as she read over the meticulous calculations concerning the Time Thrust Jutsu.

“No, we replicated Orochimaru’s jutsu exactly and Kakashi witnessed it with the sharingan activated. We need to believe Sakura’s in the right place.”

- - - - -

:: Reno ::

Gaara held onto the dashboard of Sakura’s jeep as they sped towards the bright city, which vibrated with all the lighted architecture. His eyes stung from the wind and the grains of sand flying into his face. Sakura was concentrating intently on the road but this wasn’t making the redhead feel any better. He double checked his seatbelt and then happened to glance up.

“Woah!” He said startled.

He scrunched into his seat defensively and Sakura turned her gaze up. A large, dark cloud of sand was hovering above them and swirling nervously.

“Eyes on the road,” Gaara commanded, gripping the dashboard harder as Sakura barely kept the car on the asphalt strip.

“It reacts to your fear!” Sakura hollered over the wind. “Stop freaking out and the sand will!”

“Then STOP driving so fast,” Gaara gritted out.

She heard him and sheepishly let up on the gas a little. As they approached civilization and they met more cars on the road, Sakura worried about the sand structure attracting attention. But it seemed that Gaara had calmed down because the cloud had retreated and was settling back onto the desert ground. By the time they were on the outskirts of the city, it had disappeared completely.

“You know where Naruto lives, right?” She asked when they had stopped at a red light.

Her plans were going a little faster than she had expected, but Sakura could think on her feet. If she could recruit all four teens tonight, they were that much closer to finding Kabuto and stopping him.

Gaara gave her concise directions with a cold voice that implied he really wasn’t too fond of her driving skills.

Oh well, she thought without guilt. We’re alive aren’t we?

While Sakura had the excuse that cars weren’t the norm where she was from, her future self had no such way to reason away her bad driving. She caught sight of Gaara’s wary glare and wondered if he’d remembered yet that he outranked her in the world of ninja.

“Here,” the redhead said, indicating the large house on the corner of the quiet suburban street they were cruising down.

Sakura parked on top of the curb and as she killed the car’s engine, Gaara held out an open hand.

“After we get Naruto, I’m driving,” he said flatly.

She scowled but plunked the keys into his hand. She heard him manoeuvring into the driver’s seat as she made her way across the spacious front lawn and up the steps to the beige front door.

The last name ‘Spiral’ was engraved on the bronze mailbox next to it. She regarded it wryly and then rang the doorbell. She groaned, suddenly remembering that the Sakura of this world was just one of Naruto’s fangirls and he probably wouldn’t accept an invitation to spend the night hanging out with her.

She listened to the doorbell echo through the house unanswered and checked her watch. Was it too late? Were they asleep? No, impossible, it wasn’t even 10:00 pm. And the lights were still on.

Suddenly the door opened and Sakura found herself stunned into silence at the unexpected sight of her sensei.

“Sakura!”

“Tsunade?!”

Cue Sakura Hardwick. She squealed, giving the older girl a hug. “I haven’t seen you since, what, like, spring break? When did you get back?”

“Term ended yesterday,” the blonde said through a grin and leaned against the doorframe.

While her lips kept asking questions about how college was, Sakura’s mind was marvelling at the teenaged sannin. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a short ponytail and she was in a plain t-shirt and short skirt. This was what Tsunade must have really looked like years ago, she thought in awe.

“Is your brother home?” She asked casually, the word brother supplying itself from the chaos of memories trying to organize themselves in the pink-haired girl’s head.

“J? He won’t get home ‘til tomorrow,” Tsunade said with a frown.

“No, not Jiraiya. Naruto.”

“Oh, nah. He’s staying the night at Sasuke’s,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Doesn’t matter if his beloved big sister is finally home... That reminds me, our parents are away for the weekend and J and I are planning on throwing a completely wild party tomorrow night that you should come to.”

“Sounds awesome! I’ll see if I can make it!” She said as she made her way down the steps.

She trudged back across the green front lawn, cursing her strappy sandals and mentally drawing up a list of comparisons between this teenaged Tsunade to the Godaime. Both appreciated their alcohol, that much was very obvious.

“To Sasuke’s?” Gaara queried, twisting the key in the jeep’s ignition as she neared.

“How’d you know?” She asked confused, hopping into the passenger seat and snagging her seatbelt.

“Where else would Naruto be?” He said with a shrug of his narrow shoulders.

Neither Haruno Sakura nor Sakura Hardwick had any response to that.

- - - - -

Sakura rang her third doorbell of the night and shifted her weight from foot to foot. Bored, Gaara spun her car keys around his finger. Footsteps were heard and then the door opened with a squeak to reveal a silver-haired man with a brown eye and a blue eye.

Sakura found herself speechless for the second time in twenty minutes. She stared wide-eyed and made an attempt to burn the image of Kakashi’s uncovered (remarkably handsome) face into her mind.

There was an awkward pause and Gaara looked to Sakura to supply an explanation for why they were on Kakashi’s porch.

“Hi Mr. Fans, is Sasuke home?” She blurted out.

“Mr. Fans?” He said with amusement. “I’m afraid I’m Sasuke’s foster father, Kakashi Hatch.”

He proceeded wave off her apology good-naturedly and stepped back to let them in.

“Sasuke’s in the kitchen,” he said with a smile that had Sakura trying not to blush--he really was good looking. “Down the hall.”

Gaara stopped spinning the keys and followed. Perusing her mind, Sakura found that she actually knew very little about Sasuke’s personal life in 2007. Naruto’s too. But the words ‘foster father’ were sticking in her memory uncomfortably. Had Itachi murdered the entire family here too?

As she and the quiet Gaara got closer to the small, cosy kitchen, they heard raised voices.

“Nah,” Naruto was crowing. “You kiiiiiiissed her and now she’s going to want to have your baaaaabies.”

“Jealous?” Sasuke said with a smirk, plucking a green grape out of the bowl on the table between them and throwing it at Naruto’s head.

The blonde snatched it out of the air and gave his friend a smug look.

“Not in the least,” he said, leaning back in his chair and popping the grape into his mouth without taking his eyes off Sasuke’s.

The two glared at each other challengingly.

“Uh...” Sakura said, finding herself at a complete loss of what to say.

All she wanted was to just grab her boys and hug them and have the three of them be Team 7 again.

But she knew that to them, now, she was just a girl they knew the name of but hardly spoke to. She had Math with Sasuke and sometimes asked him for help on some of the more difficult questions. That was about it.

This. Was. So. Awkward.

“Gaara? Hey man, how’re you?” Naruto said finally, standing up and extending a fist, which Gaara punched in a friendly greeting.

“Kankurou’s kid brother, right?” Sasuke threw out, eying the two curiously.

Gaara nodded and looked between them. Then said in a serious tone that implied the very concept of ‘hoax’ didn’t exist (for which Sakura was very grateful): “Guys, you’ve got to come with us somewhere. There’s something you’ve got to see.”

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“You said you wanted to grab Lee too, right?” Gaara asked suddenly.

Sakura looked over at the passenger seat but Gaara was staring straight ahead, just thankful that the pink-haired girl was keeping her driving below the speed limit this time.

“Wanted him for what?” Naruto piped up from the backseat.

“I’ll tell you when everyone’s together,” Sakura said with a cheerful voice that she knew was arousing Sasuke’s suspicions. She didn’t dare meet his dark eyes in the rear view mirror.

“He lives two blocks from here,” the redhead supplied.

After Sakura jerked to a stop in front of an extraordinarily turquoise house, Gaara generously offered to do all the convincing himself.

Something in his voice made the other three look at him strangely, but he didn’t notice and he climbed out of the jeep.

“Huh,” Sasuke said amusedly.

“Was he...blushing?” Sakura asked, smile playing on her lips.

Naruto burst out laughing as Gaara knocked on the front door of the Rocks’ house, which was doing a fine impression of an Easter egg.

“Who would’ve thought that Goth little Gaara would have a crush on the weirdest kid in school?” Naruto said through a good-natured grin.

Sakura thought back to her future self’s sophomore and junior years, when Lee had worn nothing but spandex. The three watched curiously as Lee answered the door and the younger teen twisted his hands behind his back shyly as he talked.

“OF COURSE HE’LL COME HANG OUT WITH YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS!” A voice exploded out from the house. “IT’S A FRIDAY IN THE GLORIOUS SPRINGTIME OF YOUR YOUTH!”

Lee found a twenty stuffed into his hand and then the front door closed firmly behind him.

His ears ringing, Gaara walked back to the jeep where the other three were staring at the house incredulously. At his side, Lee self-consciously ran a hand through his short spiky hair and Sakura once again marvelled at how different he looked without the bowl cut.

“You’re dad’s kinda weird,” Gaara stated. “I like him.”

Lee smiled broadly and then gave a jovial wave to the car’s other occupants.

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So the new brilliant and not-thought-out-enough plan, of course, led to Gaara and Sakura standing next to the cactus that Sakura had outright parked on this time while about 12 Narutos ran around in a panic, Lee zipped around uncontrollably as just a screaming blur and a spray of sand, and Sasuke flailed as flames burst out of his mouth with every exhale (and had a heart attack every time one of the Narutos got caught in the blast and vanished).

“Well, they’re taking it about as well as I did,” Gaara said in a deadpan.

“Shut up,” Sakura grumbled.

After another minute of incessant terror, Sakura decided to cut them off.

She marched into the centre of the fray and braced herself. When Lee ran past again, she flung out an arm and latched onto his elbow, her strength effortlessly hauling him to a complete stop and sending a wave of sand against her legs.

“NARUTOS! All of you, STOP IT!” She hollered, keeping a firm grip on Lee.

All the clones were stunned into standing still and Sakura noticed that the one between her and Gaara had reacted first. She shifted her grasp on Lee to his wrist and quickly moved to grab onto that Naruto’s wrist too, sure he was the real one.

Satisfied that she had them both under control for the meantime, she spun them all so that she was facing Sasuke. She blew a stray strand of pink hair away from her face.

“Sasuke, breathe normally. Stop freaking out,” she said firmly.

He eyed her warily and his stance remained tense but he followed her instructions. Soon, the arcs of flames bursting out of him dwindled to small shoots of fire and then finally to puffs of smoke.

Lee and Naruto stared in surprise at the hands latched to their wrists and then looked at each other to confirm their observations: there was a strength in that grip that didn’t match up with the body of a skinny teenaged girl.

Gaara wandered closer, his face apathetic and his arms folded against the cool desert air. The t-shirt and mesh undershirt was doing little to keep him warm.

“I thought they’d be able to control sand too,” he said curiously.

“No, that was very much a you thing,” Sakura said, sparing him a withering glance.

“In my past life?” He supplied.

“Yep,” she said in a perky tone that completely juxtaposed the manic atmosphere.

“What...did you do?” Sasuke asked. The question was supposed to come out menacing but coughing on smoke that’s curling up your own throat made ‘menacing’ a hard goal.

“Gave you a watered down version of your strongest abilities in a past life,” she said, still chipper.

Inwardly she winced; she was starting to sound like Sai. Maybe she’d start keeping an emotionless smile on her face too. She rolled her shoulders to shake off the image.

“So...in a...past life...I had superspeed, Sasuke breathed fire, and Naruto could copy himself?” Lee haphazardly summarized, not believing the words coming out of his mouth.

Sakura warily released his and Naruto’s wrists and opted not to go into defining exactly what the four of them had been capable of just yet.

“Basically.” She said, stumbling through the sand to where her jeep was still stuck on top of the large cactus.

“What can you do?” Lee asked, turning his attention to Gaara.

Without moving, Gaara summoned a cloud of sand from the ground at his feet and let it purposefully swirl around him. Sakura was impressed at the amount of control the younger teen already had over his ability though she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. She absently wondered if the sand would automatically protect him if Shukaku wasn’t present--she doubted it.

“Awesome!” Naruto crowed, eyes glittering. “Are we going to be superheroes?” He asked excitedly, the panic from two minutes ago utterly gone.

Sasuke snorted and noted with pleasure that no smoke came out his nose.

“Something like that. There is a bad guy I need you to help me defeat,” she said, taking in the scene of her car with a cringe.

“Why should we believe you’re the good guy?” Sasuke asked, shrewd as ever.

She placed one hand under the jeep’s bumper and, to the shock of the four boys, casually lifted the whole car up into a forty-five degree angle and rolled it backwards off the crumpled cactus. She glanced over her shoulder and smirked, getting a thrill out of being able to make four guys’ jaws drop despite the fact that it wasn’t because of her slammin’ nice body.

“I don’t know about you, Sasuke, but good guy or not, I kind of want to be on the side with the superstrong hot chick,” Naruto said, his gaping mouth morphing into a massive grin as he folded his hands behind his head.

“And mentioned bad guy was sent here specifically to kill you while I just gave you the means to defend yourselves,” Sakura added with smug satisfaction.

“Kill us?” Lee echoed, a frown spreading over his features.

Sakura nodded seriously. “Which means one thing...”

They looked at her expectantly.

“Sleepover!”


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