Where it all begins
The universe as she knows it crumples under her touch, pulling apart at the seams as reality dissolves into obscurity. Her breaths are shallow, controlled. Nothing feels real anymore, as her trembling fingers lightly grip onto the grass that tickles her fingers. The crisp smell of grass dancing in the warm summer winds she had missed. Stretching out, her hands can feel the cold crisp blades of grass that crumple under the weight of pressure as she grips the ground religiously. Taking in a deep breath, the scent of grass and dew floods her nose. Sakura doesn’t dare to open her eyes, she is too afraid to open her eyelids to see blood-red skies with an insidious moon perched above everything. Instead, her eyes remain closed, reminiscing the peacefulness of unity she is experiencing. A noted side effect from all the blood soaked sacrifices they had all made in order for her to get to this point. Too many sacrifices had been made for this moment. Sorrow swells in her beating heart. The gentle chiding of birds musically serenading her ears rather than making them bleed. She wonders when the last time she had heard natural birds had been. It sounded nothing like the screaming wail from the chidori, a frenzied choir that left the hairs on the back of your neck stand. Sakura had almost forgotten what actual bird songs had sounded like. The war had nearly decimated all forms of wildlife, a tactic to drive them to starvation.
Cautiously opening her eyes, Sakura is greeted with clouds rolling through blue skies and the presence of the sun. How long has it been since she had seen blue skies? Pushing the thought down because it is useless, her hands push against the soft ground, the crawling violets emerging from the wild grasses, stark in comparison to the verdant shades of the living forests. Sakura gets on her feet as the sight of green grass and lush trees greeting her. It almost feels like a dream except the cost of what got her there holds her back from happily rejoicing their success. A living world that basks before her feels like a mirage, untouched from the horrors that had been birthed during her lifetime. There is no possible scale of comparison. Her eyes almost burn from how colorful everything is, what the colors remind her of.
“It’s okay Sakura-chan,” the orange jumpsuit is gone, “I’ll bring him back and finally give it to him for you when I see him.”
“Don’t,” She begs, “You have already done enough. Let him go.”
A boisterous laugh filled with warmth fills up the small tent as his warm hand rests on her shoulder. Sakura looks into sky blue eyes that shine with courage.
“I made a promise a long time ago,” A sad smile follows, “I’m the only family he has left, he wouldn’t kill me. I know it.”
Sakura wishes she had deployed with him because all that was left of him was a cold, bleached arm as she screamed-
Sakura apathetically pushes down the memories that beg to surface. With unrelenting severity, she snuffs out any emerging thoughts, a hard learned lesson she had obtained in her years of active service as she decides to stretch standing. The skies are blue, almost no clouds in sight as the birds keep singing their calming songs. The smell of grass, springtime flowers and moss sting at her over sensitive nose. Sakura cannot smell the burning pit of bodies, the clinging stench of death and antiseptics as she begins to slowly make her way through the thriving forests.
She cannot stand idle.
Sakura is beginning to feel the immense mission sitting on her shoulders, she is weathered enough to not react to the panic. Sakura is a survivor of the Fourth World War, a battle-hardened shinobi that had faced the worst calamity to ever befall the world. There is nothing left that can shake her, Sakura has entered the tale of where it all began with nothing to lose and no one to hold her back. Her objectives are to get the Senju and Uchiha to unite in order to prevent the cycle that Black Zetsu has created over the millenia and stop the birth of the Rinnegan. She had been given full authorized permission to use any means necessary.
There would be no glory or honor in what she was about to do, but Sakura had shed those useless things away, they would not serve her any good going forward.If playing the monster is what saved everyone, she would become the worst possible being in existence to protect the futures of her loved ones. She would simply raze the world and break it under her fists enough for them to fall in line. Sakura is good at being vicious. She didn’t care if she became a monster. Sakura knows exactly how to get them to work together. Her childhood experience brings up the missions when they would fight as one rather than against each other.
The solution is simple. What better way to unite them against a common enemy.
The enemy?
It’ll be her.