#Byakugo seal mark

[cherry-arcadebasement24]

Naruto The last

[team7-headquarter]

So unfair that we got designs full of scars and marks in the generation that is around Kakashi's age (Ibiki's head covered in thick scars and holes, Kakashi with his eye scar, Obito with half of his face and body ruined, Anko with the cursed mark, even younger Iruka with the nose scar), but then the generation of the Konoha 12 barely got some haircuts.

Kishimoto gave all the body changes to Naruto and Sasuke and forgot to make the rest of them appealing, which wouldn't take much time at all and would contribute to the main plot. Especially by giving the feeling of the Konoha 12 maturing in times of war and bigger conflicts.

Scars tell you there are stories you're not seeing. They talk about battles and experiences, about age and time passing. I want to see the Konoha 12 and all the kids their age with seals on their bodies and scars in visible places, burn marks that didn't heal properly because they were far from a good medic nin, marks left by really powerful beings like that one time Pain destroyed Konoha.

You know how interesting it would be to present an Ino who is all about beauty and yet refuses to get a scar on her cheek healed, because that was the first enemy nin she took out and Asuma told her he was proud of her?

To have Hinata keep the marks of fighting Pain as the memory of her love and devotion and all the sacrifices she's willing to make?

Rock Lee's legs should be covered in scars for the surgery Tsunade performed. He could ask Sakura to cure them, but he doesn't want to. It reminds him he had a second chance. He can't waste it.

Neji's seal on his forehead was interesting, even if we didn't get that much of a resolution. Sasuke and Naruto's lost arms were interesting. Sakura's byakugo, Kiba's face paint.

Those details made the characters come to life.

Why do you think the Sand Siblings have such great designs? They have ink on their faces and messy hairstyles and they are expressive and bold and determined. I want more of that.

[rantahead]

I’ve seen a lot of people saying NaruSaku would’ve been a better endgame ship and would’ve lived up to Kushina’s words about finding someone like her and that their kids would’ve been stronger, and these are the same people who ship BoruSara, but, like, you wouldn’t have Boruto and Sarada if it wasn’t for NaruHina and SasuSaku.

NaruSaku wouldn't be a good couple and their kids wouldn't even rival NaruHina's kids' strength. here's why:

Sakura's kids are always weak (yes, I'm starting with this first so I can get it out of the way):

the only thing Sakura can really pass on is her strength, as we see Sarada using it quite often. But her chakra control and Medical Ninjutsu can't, which makes Sarada look pathetic in eyes of some fans for not being able to achieve Medical Ninjutsu even tho her mom's one of the greatest (at this point, Wasabi or Mitsuki might unlock the Byakugo Seal because they're the best at it) Sakura has no Kekkei Genkai and we've never seen her use Ninjutsu (I know she has the chakra natures for it, but never actually uses it). so she can't really pass on something that she doesn't have or never uses.

2. Kushina's words:

Kushina's words were never about finding someone like her (personality wise), but like her (deep down).

people say Hinata wasn't fit to be with Naruto 'cause she wasn't like Kushina, but those people were thinking personality wise.

in reality, Sakura was the first person to come his way, because he only liked her because she was cute. she was literally introduced that way.

Kushina never wanted Naruto to marry someone who has the same personality as her, but someone who is like her. literally, all Sakura and Kushina have in common is their hair colors are different from normal shinobis, they were picked on for their insecurities, and they're hot-headed. Hinata, however, has many similarities.

they both care about Naruto

they've protected him with their lives

Hinata was the first person to believe in him after his parents

Hinata was willing to give her own life for Naruto's safety, TWICE, as Kushina did.

Hinata helped him when he needed it the most as did Kushina when he met her for the first time

now we move onto way the ship wouldn’t work itself:

Naruto questioned when Sakura called herself beautiful:

here, Naruto questions Sakura when she calls herself "lovely ninja maiden". if he was so smitten with her, you think he'd question her nickname and not her teaching? yeah, I think so. even if he loved her SO MUCH, he wouldn't questioned, he'd agree.

2. Naruto has never complimented Sakura as a lover should:

in Naruto, not once has Naruto complimented Sakura's appearance. Inari, who barely got to know her and only got to know her for one arc, complimented her as soon as he saw her, yet why not Naruto...? only once he has, but that's when he introduced Sakura. even after their reunion, he said she looked exactly the same.

heck, he even claimed that Haku, a BOY, looked cuter than Sakura.

3. Sakura hits Naruto too much:

Sakura hits Naruto too much. if they had of gotten married, it would be an abusive one (Sakura abusing Naruto). I understand she cares about him and he cares about her, I really do, but there's still A LOT more panels of her hitting him more than her caring about him. but there's a limit of pics a post, and I have much more to add and I don't want Sakura hitting Naruto to take up all the pic space. and not to mention, there's still the anime fillers. I understand that it's supposed to be comic relief, yet there's no need to go that hard. she leaves bruises or bumps on the places she hits, whereas everyone else don't even leave a mark. I understand that it could be because of her being a Medical Ninja and her strength is more than a normal humans, yet she does it too hard, KNOWING it's gonna leave a bump. even Tsunade (who has only hit him at least once) has not left a mark on Naruto and her strength is GREATER than Sakura's. that just shows that she hits him too hard.

and even if they got married, it'll still be an abusive relationship because Sakura hasn't stopped hitting Naruto, even through timeskip. her kids, too, would suffer the abuse of their mother and fear for their lives.

4. they don’t understand each other on a deeper level:

now, Naruto married Hinata because they understand each other on a deeper level than anyone else (other than Shikamaru). she understands his pain and loneliness.

he never understood Sakura's pain and she never made an effort to understand his.

you may argue that because she was his teammate, she'd understand him the most because they went through Hell together. but the only people who understand Naruto on a deep deep level is Hinata and Shikamaru. not even Sasuke and Gaara (the ones confirmed to be his closest friends other than Shikamaru).

5. Naruto doesn’t except Sakura’s crush on Sasuke in part 1:

in original Naruto, Naruto tried everything to make sure Sakura falls out of love with Sasuke and in love with him. he never got to understand why she loves him or never really understood why he himself loved her. he even tried making her think Sasuke was a jerk by transforming into him.

I feel like if he had of ended up with Sakura and never realized his feelings for Hinata, it would be a loveless marriage and Naruto would've turned out as a spoiled brat, because he "won" his childhood lover.

6. The confession:

finally, the infamous confession that ruined Sakura for most of the fandom. honestly, I didn't think the Sakura hate could get any worst, yet this is just... it ruined Sakura for me.

like, Sakura seems okay with playing with Naruto's feelings. she KNOWS he likes her, Sai even confirmed it with BOTH him and her, yet she's reallly okay with hurting him and playing him for the fool?

not to mention, she KNEW about Hinata's feelings ever since the Pain arc, probably even before that because she's told Naruto that Hinata had been watching him all the way back in part 1, so she probably knew from there. was she really okay with playing with her boy best friend's feelings and betraying one of her best friends? she didn't even bother to check with Hinata about it. if Naruto had of said yes, do you think she would've had the nerve to walk in front of Hinata on Naruto's arm? no.

I don't think Hinata even knows of it. goes to show how little it meant to both Naruto and Sakura since they never bothered to mention it to Naruto's own WIFE.

but yeah, Naruto's head over heels in love with Sakura that he is totally in a loveless marriage with someone he finds weird because the girl he really loved is in a different marriage.

[madara-fate]

Uhh.. veryyyy curios does mito uzumaki has like byakugo? Because I know only two have it, which is tsunade and Sakura.

But sakura did say that the byakugo existed way before (?? Am I right??)

Annnndd why do kishi add the diamond on her forehead then?? For design I guess??

plus byakugo isn’t really a bring up topic in boruto

It’s not confirmed really, and we only know a little about her character so wild guesses I guess 🫣

It's unconfirmed whether or not the mark on Mito's forehead is the Byakugou Seal. Sarada had initially related the Seal to the Karma due to the striking resemblance in their design:

And that's when Mitsuki mentioned how according to Orochimaru, the Seal goes back a long way:

Going on from that, when Sakura was asked, the Seal's resemblance to the Karma was again highlighted, and she also states that according to Tsunade (much like what Orochimaru allegedly claimed), the Seal has indeed been around for a very long time, with Sakura being more specific and mentioning the age of Hagoromo:

This topic hasn't been brought up again in the manga since this chapter, so I hope to god that it won't just be forgotten about, because this has the potential to be a very interesting story arc.

[darkclouud9]

one thing about art to me is that the face can be so boring, like there's no details there. you just get average face, eyes, nose, mouth, perfect teeth, lots of plain skin, etc

characters like Itachi and Sakumo are more interesting to me because they have little lines in their skin, Itachi either side of his nose, and Sakumo's either side of his lips.

Konohamaru, at least for a while, had a missing tooth

Obito has scars along the right side of his face

and Kakashi has a scar on the left side, alongside, if you ever get to see it 😇, a beauty mark under the left corner of his lips.

like........... I LOVE little 'flaws' like those 🥺 they're so interesting and really set characters apart from each other

Karin, Sarada, and Kabuto wear glasses, Tsunade and Sakura have the byakugo seal, Tobirama has face markings, Kinkaku, Ginkaku, Naruto and his two kids have whiskers from the nine tails (in which i feel Mito, Kushina, and Tsunade also should), Hyuga get little veins (??) when their byakugan is active, Inuzuka have fangs under their eyes, Nawaki and Moegi have perpetual blushes, etc etc

they're all so memorable and I love looking into details okay. and I love making my own details, that's literally what Miton and Nitale are 😇

[byakugoseal]

Hi yes, feedback and thoughts are much appreciated for this verse!

TW: DEATH

Following the war and establishing the mental health clinics, Sakura embarked on perhaps her hardest journey — joining the ranks of the Anbu. At the age of seventeen, she awoke her Byakugo Yin Seal, an S-class level jutsu, a task that took her three years to master, which took her teacher over a decade to master. At the tender age of seventeen, she had given herself the mark of a legendary medical ninja, and her yin seal is the pinnacle of chakra control and a medical ninja. As a medical ninja, she is exceptional and can take her place amongst the ranks of some of the best medical ninjas. As a fighter, she possesses monstrous strength, which aided her at the age of fifteen to battle an S-class nukenin Sasori; this, of course, came with assistance from Chiyo. Her intelligence aids her in her analytic skills, especially on the battlefield. During the war, she managed to find Kaguya's blind spot and punched it to weaken not only the goddess but also her guard. All of these skills, the gathering of intelligence whilst being undercover, and the ability to devise a plan, whether your strength and technical abilities are able to back you up or not, are essential for the job of being an Anbu. These things that she noted and realized about herself were the first thing that made her think she could make the rank. 

Sakura is a medical ninja who prioritizes life above everything; she is not a shinobi who can leave behind a comrade; she's not someone who can follow orders if it means leaving one of their own behind to die. Such actions simply go against her ideals. So why then would she seek this rank? As such, it would take something highly drastic to her ideals to be rocked to the very core that she would leave her job at the hospital. The answer for her was simple: her parents' death during the war. The ones that she couldn't save and had to bury. The tragedy of having her parents ripped away from her jaded her in a way that she wanted to conceal herself in the darkness. She could never abandon her village, but she could at the very least lurk in the shadows. She was not a candidate being scouted during their academy days, but her work spoke for its itself, and now she dawns a rabbit mask to conceal her face codenamed "Seibā." Despite all of this, despite the rage she feels inside she can't help but to constantly question herself. She cannot help but to question if she is truly the type of person who could abandon a comrade, abandon the oath she took as a medical-nin. With each passing day she becomes more uncertain if this is path the for, and what will become of her if it is not. Her own anger and sorrow that she has yet to take ahold of and work through just might be her downfall.

[sakurasimpnation]

When i say i want sakura to have horns, this is what i mean:

(Lucy Berger from webtoon Lessa)

[thefairyletters]

Do you think sakura will make Anbu? I've read from somewhere that it is a ranking above jounin and others say that it's just a group of ninja who does dirty work for the village.

Sakura awoke her Byakugo/Yin seal, an S-class jutsu, at the age of 17 and it took her three years to master the technique against over a decade of Tsunade. Yin seal is considered the pinnacle of chakra control and mark of the legendary medical ninja. So, already at 17, Sakura was the top medical ninja, second only to Tsunade. Something Shizune, who was the first apprentice to Tsunade, a great medical ninja in her own right but failed to awaken.

Therefore, as a medical ninja, Sakura is exceptional and one of the very best.

As a fighter, Sakura is shown to possess monstrous strength which is a great defence technique and combat skill in combination with Taijutsu. At 15, Sakura, even if with Chiyo's assistance, managed to battle Sasori, an S-class nukenin, and destroyed all of his puppets. Chiyo may have helped control Sakura's movements – pulling her in and out of the range – but it was all Sakura who fought him head-on. She was in the frontline, took the brunt of attacks and retaliated harder. She showed incredible analytical abilities and observation skills, which is important in a fight with any ninja who ranks higher than you and odds are stacked against you.

During the war, Sakura punched Kaguya in the head, something which doesn't seem like a big deal at first glance except it is a big deal because she was in Kaguya's teeny tiny blindspot that allowed her to punch the goddess, a blindspot Sakura noticed and pounced upon to weaken Kaguya's guard that led to her sealing. She was opportunistic and smart enough to one-up a goddess who can see everything – well, almost, because she clearly didn't see Sakura's fist coming.

In fights against powerful people you're assigned to kill, or when you're undercover and gathering intel, or in cases where you are outnumbered and need to escape, you are forced to use your brain first and foremost before you use your powers regardless of whether or not you're powerful enough to take the opponent. Sakura has got that brain – she thinks before she jumps. She is analytical and has good observation skills. She was the smartest kunoichi of her generation during her academy years, which she continues to remain. She can survive.

To summarize, Sakura's got:

Top-notch medical ninjutsu skills

Jutsu that can pull her from the brink of death and give her tremendous amount of chakra to use

Brute strength that acts as an incredible defence and offence attack

A resourceful mind that zeroes on openings and make great strategic plans

A summon contract that can be used to protect her/comrades from any kind of attack, used as an offensive counterattack in the battlefield, and used to gather/deliver intel

With that said, Sakura would have no problem in joining the ranks of ANBU if it's about the power or intelligence factor. Even without all her strengths, if she only has her medical skills, basic combat skills and intelligence in her arsenal, she can still make it to ANBU.

But what is ANBU?

(Based on what I've seen in canon and read in numerous fanfictions)

ANBU, also known as ANBU Black Ops which means 'Darkside', is a special branch division comprising of soldiers who work for the Hokage, directly under Hokage, and not directly for the village. This means the operatives in this division do not bring money into the village for their services. The Hokage pays them for their services. These members are grouped into squads with squad captains assigned to each team. Each member has an alias they go by in the division for the anonymity sake.

The difference between a normal shinobi and an ANBU operative is that a third party (not Hokage) pay the normal shinobi (which means these shinobi are the source of income in the village) whereas an ANBU operative would be assigned a mission by the Hokage (who will pay for the mission) that usually reflects the corrupted side of the village – that means, these assigned missions usually involve elimination of the threats to the village, gathering intel from other villages, infiltration into enemy village, and collecting/removing/ridding of bodies. The reason why ANBU operatives have masks is to preserve their identity so that they could not be traced back to their villages should any operative gets caught in action. ANBU members are the real cannon fodder of the village. They are disposable to the village which is why they need to be exceptional shinobi so that they don't get caught. 'If you don't keep up, you'll be left behind.' Meaning: teamwork is important but importance of each member is not above the mission itself.

Therefore, an ANBU member must:

• Be ruthless

• Be able to forget their ideals

• Be able to follow orders effectively

• Prioritize mission above everything else

• Not run on emotions

So, the questions comes:

Is Sakura Haruno exceptional enough to be appointed into ANBU Ops? Yes.

But for all her strengths and abilities, canon!Sakura couldn't make it to ANBU Black Ops NOT BECAUSE she is not worthy of becoming an ANBU member, BUT BECAUSE that goes against everything Sakura believes in. She's a medical ninja who prioritizes life above everything, she is not a shinobi who can leave behind a comrade, she's not someone who can follow orders if it means leaving one of their own behind, she's someone who is always high on emotions, and most importantly she reins tight on her ideals.

In fact, Sasuke is the only team 7 member who can pull ANBU effortlessly. Both Naruto and Sakura are too emotionally volatile to pull that off. Unless it's happening in some other AU where Sakura has an ulterior motive to join ANBU/ROOT (say, infiltrating ROOT under the orders of Hokage to take down Danzo) I can't see Sakura pulling ANBU without losing her character or undergoing trauma.

ANBU sounds like a glamorous profession, except, it's not, at all. It's a bloody business where you need to be emotionally restrained, at all times. I can't remember a single character who joined ANBU because they loved being in ANBU. They joined it to cope (Tenzo/Sai), by force (Itachi || it isn't made clear why Itachi joined ANBU but given his personality, there's a good chance that it was Fugaku who wanted him to join ANBU for the clan), or to escape their reality (Kakashi). It isn't a beautiful place to be.

If Sakura joins ANBU, she will most likely quit it within a month on her own accord because she simply doesn't like it. Regardless, she will be highly demanded the missions by ANBU squad captains, so if she has to join in a mission, she will do it when her schedule is open and it will be as the squad medic.

Besides that, if Sakura joins ANBU, it will only be alongside her genin teammates in one team, with Kakashi as the squad Captain, Sakura as the squad medic, Naruto as the backup, and Sasuke as the second-in-command. In fact, team 7 members will only join ANBU if they will be in it together.

I hope this answers your question.

[guiltyfandomtrashwonderland]

MadaSaku WeekEND 2019 Submission

Title: Lost Things

@madasakuweek

Prompt: Soulmates AU

Warnings: it’s terrible lol (will clean up and post to ao3 later as full story and not a mere oneshot)

EDIT: Guess I should provide a link to the ao3 account.

There is no victory without sacrifice. Ancient words passed from clan to clan, tribe to tribe, ninja to ninja. Words meant to provide solace to those left behind, of no comfort for those on the receiving end of fate’s whetted axe.

Kaguya is wily, but in the end she is no match for the combination seal laid on her by Naruto and Sasuke. Sakura watches, her eyes never leaving Kaguya’s face, for a medic is every battle’s sentinel. While the boys’ eyes lock squarely on the threads of the seal that instantly begins wrapping around Kaguya’s body, Sakura looks into the woman’s face, and sees her smile wickedly before crumbling away into dust. 

A few moments later, Sakura understands why.

The lines of the seal, hungry, fail to dissipate with the rabbit princess, and rush to Sakura, devouring her from the feet up. She can’t move, and time seems to pass slowly as the boys turn to look at her with twin looks of horror on their faces. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work, their eyes say, and then she vanishes into darkness.

It isn’t like passing out; it’s more like traversing a cave into its deepest point and turning off the light. Absolute darkness, so pure that she begins to hallucinate, her brain showing her images of what it thinks should be there in the absence of light to draw in.

There is no victory without sacrifice. And the success of the seal, it seems, requires such a sacrifice. Did it choose her? Or was she simply the closest one, caught up in the action by act of chance? She doesn’t know which feels worse.

Sakura strains against the darkness, feeling herself able to move again, but without earth, sky, anything, there is nowhere to move to, nothing to press against. She floats in an empty space not unlike the other worlds contained within some Mangekyo. It feels like eons pass, and she flexes her chakra here and there to remind herself she still exists, has a physical form, isn’t caught in a genjutsu.

And then, movement. A force grabs her entire body and pulls at the navel, drawing her in some sightless direction. She tries to fight, to struggle, but how can you fight against something that isn’t there? With nothing around her for comparison, she has no idea where she is going or how fast, but the way her hair spreads out behind her says forward and too damn fast.

And then, a pinprick of light. It grows larger faster than she can blink until the brightness is her whole world, and then she feels a sucking sensation as the force pulls her through what her body tells her is some kind of opening. A resting place for the dead? A final destination for all those sacrificed to the great causes of men?

But she isn’t the only sacrifice the seal will demand today.

She feels the severing of her soul bond like the snap of a bone when she passes through the void, and only then does she scream.

--

She wakes up to hard ground, a sharp voice, and an even sharper blade pressed against her throat. Her entire chakra network burns with the strain of use, and she feels a hollowness in her chakra reserves she hasn’t known in years.

“You are trespassing on the lands of the Uchiha Clan. State your name and purpose, stranger, or die.”

Trees. A forest. Scraggly plants clinging to the earth. Wet leaf smell wafts over her face with a gentle breeze, and sudden nostalgia wrenches her insides with incredible pressure. Home?

When she doesn’t answer, the flat of the blade presses against her throat harder.

“Who are you?”

She reaches out for her connection with her soulmate, a reflexive habit whenever she became anxious or hurt or scared. The nothingness from inside the void answers her, and Sakura despairs because she has never felt such emptiness. Was Ino dead? Am I dead?

“Sakura.” Her voice creaks like it hasn’t been used in a thousand years. “My name is Sakura.”

“Your purpose.”

Tsunade-sama, what is a medic’s purpose? 

To live, to survive, to heal, to fix, to defend. And always to move forward, to advance the field. 

Her purpose. Too deep of a question to pose to a lost woman with depleted chakra in a familiar forest surrounded by unfamiliar dark-haired men. But no, some of them almost looked like--?

“I’m a healer,” she says, hoping that if nothing else, they’d at least think her too valuable to kill. 

She’s right.

Her eyes and mind clear a bit and now she can see. There are three of them surrounding her in a protective triangle, weapons all drawn and pointed in. They all have dark hair and Sharingan eyes, and from their stances alone Sakura knows to be cautious. These are shinobi, and high ranking ones, dangerous enough to wield stolen Sharingan eyes. 

She reaches for the chakra in her Byakugo and doesn’t feel surprised when she comes up empty. At the end of the battle with Kaguya her seal hadn’t been depleted, but close, and the...journey to wherever she was now had apparently taken the rest. She isn’t helpless, but she’s close enough.

“We should take her to the council, my Lord” one of the men says. “Her sealwork alone will be invaluable in the fight against Uzushio. The mark on her forehead speaks of master’s work, and if she created the seals that transported her here…”

The man who demanded her identity, the one with the look of a leader about him, nods. “I agree. Fuyuki. Hirokazu.”

The two subordinates respond to his unspoken command and each form seals, and Sakura feels a sensation like a cold hand reaching down her back. She blacks out.

 --

When she wakes up, she finds herself clean and reclothed in a cell. There is no space for embarrassment at the thought of being stripped and washed while unconscious. There are no bruises on her skin and no ache between her legs, so she knows that at least she wasn’t violated after being put under. Small mercies. 

Sakura pushes the worry aside in favor of standing up to assess her surroundings, hoping the simple act of accounting for space will help center her racing thoughts. 

The cell is small, maybe two by two meters, and made of stone. There is no window, so she doesn’t know what time of day it is, or even where she is in orientation to the earth. From the coolness of the air, she guesses underground. 

The bars in front of her are deceptively simple--too far apart, too rusted--and so she hovers a hand over them to test her suspicions. A subtle heat emanates from them, and she knows that if she touched them the hidden seals would unleash burns on her skin that would go down to the bone everywhere she made contact. Probably she would be burned if she tried to slip a hand between them, as well.

The walls have a similar fire-based chakra effect, but only that of an uncomfortable heat, to warn her to keep her distance. If she breaks through them, she expects they will burn her also. An old-fashioned technique to keep a person imprisoned, when simple chakra-dampening seals both keep the prisoner from escaping and eliminate the danger of their attacking captors.

Her hand tingles uncomfortably on the exact point where her soul mark rests and she can’t bear to look down at it, already knowing what she’ll see when she does, but it will have to happen sooner or later. She looks. 

On her palm there is nothing, no misshapen mark that matches Ino’s in every way and that once allowed her to feel Ino’s presence when the other girl was--is nearby. Looking at her palm feels a little like dying, and so Sakura closes her eyes and breathes deep. If she just keeps breathing, eventually she will calm down. Her knees decide to give out a bit but Sakura follows them down as gracefully as she can and hovers over the ground on hands and knees, continuing to breathe. 

If she just breathes, everything will be okay.

Breathing doesn’t work for shit, and five minutes later she throws herself back on the futon and sobs and sobs, clutching her naked fist to her chest in denial. 

It had to have been the work of Kaguya. That bitch. That smile. 

Had Kaguya manipulated the seals, or had she just known what was coming? In the split second that they’d wrapped around her and her vision had gone dark, Sakura caught a few characters on the winding inky threads: time, fling, obliterate, soul. Now, lying in the fetal position in a cage with her chakra still gone, Sakura thinks of the worst: those men had had Sharingan. 

In her exhausted state, she assumed the only thing she reasonably could, which was based on the information she knew: nearly all Uchiha-born Sharingan users had perished, so the eyes those men used had to have been stolen. Now, she isn’t so sure. 

Where am I?

Well, she certainly won’t find out with her head between her knees like this. Sakura stands up on shaky legs, takes another deep breath, and walks back to the front of the cell.

Peering carefully between the bars gives her no clues as to her location. She can see several other cells, all empty, and a wooden floor with paper walls. Two doors mark the end of the walkway between the cells and both are shut. There are no guards. It is a clear attempt at disorienting her, she thinks. Or perhaps their attention is drawn legitimately elsewhere.

Pondering this feels somewhat pointless, and so Sakura returns to the futon (dry-eyed this time) and enters the lotus position, focusing her excess chakra into her Byakygo. 

She ignores a burning feeling spreading across her upper back. A stress rash. It’ll go away in the morning.

--

The next day, as near as she can tell without the window, the man who led the squad approaches her cage and nods at her. It isn’t a bow, but it’s an admission of cordiality. Sakura does not relax. Fresh from the agony of her journey, she hadn’t paid much attention to what they’d looked like, she’d just noticed. But with her head clear, it’s as plain as day that this man is the spitting image of Sasuke, and the resemblance sends a feeling like jumping into an iced-over pond all over her skin.

Sharingan. They’d all had Sharingan. And this man, who looked so much like Sasuke, must have had his own, for his eyes were black as anything today. Only an Uchiha could switch the Sharingan off again.

“Sakura,” he says. “Is that your real name?”

Sakura nods. “Yes, it is. Will you tell me yours?” She feels herself shaking a bit, unsure what she will do if he says what she thinks he might.

He smiles. “I’d like to ask you a few more questions first, if you don’t mind.”

Sakura nods again. She’d been preparing for this.

The man sits on the floor in a crossed-legs position, looking for all the world like a friend eager to catch up on goings-on. She stares at him, and at the easy smile on his face, and wonders what he could possibly want from her. From the way he begins his questioning, what he mostly wants is very boring answers to boring questions.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes.”

“How is your back?”

My--? “Uh, fine. It’s not sore if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I see. Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

Her answers are simple, not giving away more than is necessary, and she feels comforted by his apparent lack of care for this. It is absolutely imperative that she cooperate. The sooner he trusts her, the sooner she’ll be out of this prison, and then she can reorient herself and find her way back to Naruto, Sasuke, Kaka-sensei without needing to resort to anything drastic. All she needs is a moment to escape.

But then, his questions take a rather different turn.

“You were in quite a state when we found you,” he says. “Fighting a war, are you?”

Sakura makes a face. “Obviously,” she bites out. “Where have you been? Haven’t you noticed the strange things that have been happening? In the sky, it was--well, the sky went all red, and there was a genjutsu on...on the moon.” The man tilts his head, face completely blank. He doesn’t react either with recognition or confusion. “Maybe you weren’t near the fighting, but surely you encountered the Zetsu,” Sakura finishes.

He stares at her, but she senses something cautiously hidden behind the stoic facade. This isn’t the face of a man hearing the rambling of a brain-addled prisoner, but it also isn’t the face of a person who’s spent the last four days thinking the world might end. What’s going on?

“White men, they were all white men with green hair...everyone went to sleep. Please, don’t you know what I’m talking about? I’m Sakura, Haruno Sakura. I’m from the land of Fire.” She swallows hard, pressing her hands on the ground to quell the tremors. “You have to know about that, right? Don’t you know who I am?”

The man looks at her like she’s crazy, which is fair. For the past few days of fighting she’d felt slightly unhinged even at her best.

“Haruno Sakura,” the man says slowly. “You’re in the land of Fire. My clan members and I found you near the border of our territory, at the edge of where the Senju forest begins.”

“But that’s not--surely you’d have seen--the whole country was overrun with--”

“Sakura,” he interrupts gently. “You’ve clearly been through many things. Considering the state you were in when the transportation seal dropped you at the border, I can’t imagine what you’ve been going through. But you clearly need rest. The sky is not red, and there is not a genjutsu on the moon.” His face is devoid of deception, and her heart sinks like a pit into her stomach.

He asks her a few more simple questions, carefully avoiding any that would have her recount the manner in which she arrived. When he leaves, Sakura curls up into a ball on the futon and cries, again. The burning on her back is worse today.

--

He comes every day for a week (if she counts by meals), bearing her breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and always stays until she’s finished them all. The food does indeed remind her of Fire Country’s cuisine, but of the southwestern border, where tastes ran spicy and sour and sweet and strong, and the rice wasn’t rice at all but a type of wild grass that grows in flooded marshes.

The man is cordial to her, laughing and teasing at times, and she can’t help but relax around him as he reminds her a little of Naruto, whose ability to make a friend astounded her at times.

He still hasn’t told her his name, but she knows for certain this man is related to Sasuke. There’s something just so about the shape of his jawline and and the tilt to his eyebrows that couldn’t be from anywhere else. 

She asks him about his family, about where they’re from, but all she gets is vague answers politely nudging her to change the subject. She feels brave enough once to ask him directly about the Sharingan, but all he does is laugh and tell her that if she’s from the land of Fire she should know already. 

After a while she wonders if it’s his job to assess her mental state, because a suspiciously large portion of the questions relate to her emotional stability, ability to recall events, mood status, and some painfully obvious inquiries concerning her use of controlled substances. 

In fact, his questions aren’t intelligence-seeking at all, but sound rather like the same sorts of questions she asks hospital patients suffering from head trauma or psychosis. They’re questions you ask a person that you intend to release as soon as they’re stable. This baffles her more than she’d like to admit. What did they plan to do to her, these Uchiha?

None of the questions remotely mention the shinobi arts until the 22nd meal, upon which he requests to know her chakra affinities.

“Earth and water,” she answers easily, though to be honest she rarely uses elemental ninjutsu, preferring to rely on her yin and yang release for attacks and defense. 

“I see,” he responds, standing and setting his feet. “Would you mind doing a small demonstration? You see, there are members of my clan who would greatly like to meet you, and I’ve been asked to assess your proficiency in the shinobi arts.”

“And my sanity.”

“And that,” he agrees with a wry quirk to his lips. “You haven’t mentioned any more of this moon-based genjutsu, so I hope that means you’ve recovered from the disorientation the seal caused you.”

Sakura shrugs.

“Very well,” the man continues. “So with that, Haruno Sakura, would you please provide a demonstration of your abilities?”

Sakura gets an idea, and requests that he bring her something alive and injured. Anything would work, she says, animal or human, and he looks at her curiously but leaves. In his absence, Sakura takes a deep breath and slips into the child’s pose on the floor, centering her chakra in far too much preparation for a simple healing, but it certainly helped calm her nerves. 

There is something bothering her. Something wrong. She can’t quite point it out, but it is there, poking at her incessantly. He’d said she was in the land of Fire. There’s always the possibility that he intends to disorient her and had lied, but something inside her says he was telling the truth back then. And what does that mean if he had? The seal had pulled her through space. Lots of space.

Had it truly pulled her through time as well? To a time when the Uchiha Clan still lived alone in their territory to the southwest, perpetually at war with the Senju? He’d mentioned the Senju forests. Uzushiogakure. No one talked--talks about the forests like that anymore. And Uzushio is--

It is all completely ridiculous. But with the things she’s seen lately, she feels fully prepared to believe it. The rabbit princess can turn humans to ash with a touch, so why can’t an ancient sealing technique throw a human sacrifice interdimensionally in order to power the sealing?

But she doesn’t believe anything, not yet. She needs to gather more evidence. Get out of this damn cell first. A demonstration of her healing abilities will almost certainly help with that. A good shinobi isn’t hard to find, but a good medical shinobi sure as hell is.

The man returns with a small kitten sporting an infected sore on its head. Easy to fix. It has a twisted back leg likely there from birth. Far less easy to fix, but kittens are small and biologically squishy and she’s feeling like showing off wouldn’t be a bad idea. Hands glowing green, she takes care of the infection in minutes and repairs the leg enough to splint it in two hours. 

When she finishes she’s a bit tired out, her reserves having not completely gone back to normal and her Byakugo still depleted, and the man is looking at her with an expression of pure awe.

“What is that?” He gestures at her hands, the green fading silently into nothing.

“It’s chakra used for healing,” Sakura says, and then watches the man carefully. 

He betrays nothing of recognition and the awe only increases. “That’s incredible,” he breathes. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Sakura closes her eyes, refusing to fall into despair. Not yet. The unsettled feeling of wrong wrong wrong begins to grow, bolstered by what she’d seen on the seals, but this is hardly an air-tight confirmation, she chides herself. There are plenty of rural areas that had never heard of--well, not in the land of Fire. But she still isn’t sure if--

“Please,” she speaks to the man, letting all the worry and stress seep into her voice. His head snaps up, away from the kitten he’d been watching roll about with four unmarred limbs, and his gaze connects squarely with her own. “Please, I want to get out of here. I don’t want to be kept in here.”

“I can help you,” she adds, gesturing to the kitten. Desperation claws at her belly.

The man approaches the bars and touches them with a single finger, making the sign for tiger with his other hand. She feels an odd shimmering in the air of heat and energy, and then the man opens the door.

“Haruno Sakura,” he says, “If it pleases you, the council of elders for my clan would like to meet you. The detention was a precaution, of course. I’m sure you understand.”

She holds her breath, hardly believing her luck and this man’s inexplicable trust in her.

“My name is Uchiha Izuna.”

--

Sakura begins to worry more intensely at the wrongness of it all as Izuna leads her out of the holding cells and into the light. After she squints the last bit of darkness from her eyes, she finds herself in the middle of an enormous domestic compound stretching in every direction for as far as she could see.

Stone houses with red clay rooftops line well-trodden dirt pathways, and everywhere she looks there are people bustling about. Two women in a house down the way put up laundry together, and in the space of an intersection five children tumble over one another in a mixture of tag and sparring. None of them could have been older than five but all have kunai in their hands.

But the people, and their questionable child-raising traditions, aren’t what stops her dead in her tracks just outside the cell block.

Red and white uchiwa fans emblazon banners and kimono and the backs of the children’s shirts. They decorate walls and paper lanterns on all the houses, and mark the barrier walls at steady intervals.

What’s happening to me? 

Izuna leads her past the intersection and down a main thoroughfare, keeping a steady hand half an inch or so above her lower back, which she feels the pressure of every so often as she slows down to gawk at the next thing, and the next.

Izuna Uchiha...she knows that name, doesn’t she?

More anxieties push their way anxiously to the forefront, overwhelming her thoughts to the point where she barely looks where she’s going. He hadn’t asked her about any loyalties she holds, any family she has waiting for her, and no shinobi of his caliber would forget something so vital when interrogating a prisoner. In fact, her entire lock-up seemed like a farce, and she wonders if it had all been concocted to ensure her cooperation with medical ninjutsu.

Surely, she thinks, a clan would not trust an outsider around their children so soon without something hanging over their head. 

But here she is, being led through--the Uchiha Clan compound--this man’s family compound, a man who claims the Uchiha and their Sharingan eyes, as though she poses no threat at all. He knows something, Sakura thinks, he just isn’t saying what.

When they arrive at the large central house, she lets herself be whisked in away from Izuna and into the hands of capable servants, who slip her out of her clean but plain clothing and into an elaborate kimono with a green base which she admires while being dressed. Bide your time, she tells herself. It isn’t time to run, not yet.

She enters the council room with little introduction and meets the grim faces of six elderly people all crouched on mats, and she sits on the lone empty mat at the center of the room. Behind the elders is a large black stone bowl at the center of which is a massive flame, and everywhere along the wall are uchiwa in various stages of antiquity. 

By now, it’s clear to her that this family must be genuine, but before she accepts she’s been flung headlong through time she feels she needs something more convincing than some scenery. What that is, she doesn’t know.

The elders, in spite of their mood, are surprisingly unhostile and question her about her health, apologize for the necessity of keeping her caged for several days, and inquire after her ability to heal with chakra. It is only when they begin to question her soulbond status does Sakura feel a sense of gnawing horror, a ratlike terror in a darkened corner of a room filled with cats. The feeling makes her want to act out, to put herself out on the line to see what will bite her next.

“When I came through the seal,” Sakura says, and at this the elders lean forward as one, “my connection with my soulmate was severed. My soul mark is gone now, and--” Here her voice breaks, just a bit. “--as you see then, I have no soulmate.”

“You are wrong,” a deep, masculine voice cuts through the stillness of the room, silencing everything but the fire.

Uchiha Madara, very much alive and looking no older than thirty, steps into the room. The elders all immediately bow but Sakura’s back stiffens like a metal rod. Behind him she can see Izuna, changed into more formal attire. He nods encouragingly at Sakura but her eyes stay riveted on the wild-haired man in front of him.

Madara bows to her. Low, at the waist. Dryness overtakes her mouth completely. “Your name is Sakura. You came to this world from another, through a seal you had no part in making. You bring knowledge of healing chakra with you from a time beyond this one. In that place, the conspirator Zetsu succeeded in bringing about the end of the world. And your soulmate in this world,” Madara continues, “is me.”

He brings a hand up to his shoulder and presses his hand to his upper back. Burning chakra like dying embers overtakes her system until the invasion overwhelms her shaky reserves and she begins to black out. The last of Sakura’s doubt dies with her consciousness, and her last thought before her body hits the floor is well, shit.

[formerfool]

HEADCANON 002   /   sage mode  (  shikkotsu forest, pt. ii.  ) 

001.     in mount myōboku, the special oil is applied, allowing the body to take in natural energy. in ryūchi cave, the white snake sage bites a person to inject them with natural energy. however, within the shikkotsu forest, said energy has to be taken in naturally. the person is essentially drawing life energy from the trees and plants and other living things within the forest   (  or around them, when using the technique outside the forest,  )   and this is where knowledge of medical ninjutsu comes in handy; a base knowledge for how to manipulate chakra in terms of life. it’s the most difficult of the three, given that there aren’t any shortcuts or easier ways to allow a person to absorb natural energy, and it’s precisely why there are basically no slug sages.

002.     surprisingly enough, for those who have mastered the sage technique within the forest, one of the major abilities has to do with draining the life force from a living thing and essentially feeding off of it   (  in english, the shikkotsu forest is called the damp bone forest, because while the natural energy of the forest will always replenish, so much of it is constantly drained within sage mode.  )   the ability to give life (or at least provide energy) to things is also possible, but is a lot harder to master than taking the energy from something. the byakugo definitely aids in the latter, though not every slug sage needs to be able to use the byakugo, as this technique was created by tsunade.

003.     sakura’s sage mode has different manifestations depending on how she uses it. using only sage mode, she gains pigmentation beneath her eyes that matches the color of the seal   (  much like hashirama, except it’s lavender instead of black, and she doesn’t gain the mark he has on his forehead ----- instead keeping the diamond seal.  )    using just the byakugo, the normal black markings will appear, and how far down her body they travel depends on how much of the byakugo is being used. the seal on her forehead glows as it’s activated, and will disappear once the byakugo is in use, but the markings will leave the outline of the diamond seal on her forehead. when the two are combined, she keeps the lavender pigmentation around her eyes, but the black markings of the byakugo will also cut through and spread across her skin, and the seal will reappear between the markings once sage mode is activated.

003a.     in addition, despite the fact that sakura is able to properly balance her chakra and the natural energy, she does take on very minor slug - like traits whilst in sage mode, due to their practicality. the most prominent being the retractable set of antennas that grow from her forehead. a second set of eyes, in a sense, that are able to move independently and regrow if lost, and are used for extra sensory abilities such as heightened scent, hearing, and a wider plane of vision.

004.     as just a side note, sakura knows the secret passages to get to the shikkotsu forest from konohagakure, but since she has constant contact with lady katsuyu, they tend to use the reverse summoning technique, instead.

[naragenius]

Top 3 transformations? I honestly like chojis butterfly, sasukes curse mark 2 with the hand wings, and tsunades byakugo seal

1. Naruto’s nine-tails chakra mode2. Obito’s ten-tails form 3. Tsunade and Sakura’s seal

(I really like your favs too!!)