Beta: Cyndaquil123

(ง ⌣ ~ ⌣) ง

Three years later

(Naruto)

Senju Naruto surveyed the desert with narrowed blue eyes. The wasteland grew cold at night, but the jinchūriki was not bothered. His ANBU gear kept him warm. His fox mask filtered out the worst of the stench surrounding him.

Naruto stood above a mass grave, eyes on the horizon.

His squad had been hunting for a month. He split them off into teams. He and Sakura (Rabbit) were partnered together, then he paired Sasuke (Panther) and Hinata (Raven), and the last pair was Ino (Dove) and Shino (Wolf). He and Sakura had found a couple of slavers.

Sakura applied some enhanced interrogation techniques to pressure them into revealing a potential base location. Naruto was on his way to assess the situation while Sakura lingered behind.

After prying the last bit of information from their enemies, Sakura would clean up.

Sasuke and Hinata were ordered to follow a different set of tracks Naruto had found a couple of days ago. If the tracks were accurate, they would belong to a caravan. Either of merchants or slavers. Regardless, they would be wiped out as no one was allowed into the country.

Ino and Shino were dispatched to finish clearing out a town Naruto's clones had uncovered a week ago.

No villages were allowed in the Land of Wind anymore.

Their orders were simple: eliminate any formed group.

There was no government left in the country. After Suna fell, their daimyo was assassinated barely a week later and their capital was set ablaze. Riots broke out that transformed into a full-blown civil war. The entire country was ravaged in violence with no steady government to stop it. Villages fell, and rogue shinobi preyed upon the helpless civilians. The Land of Wind became a lawless wasteland within a year. The other countries were fine to ignore the chaos, but then the slavers, villains, and goons leaked into the Land of Fire and started to raid boarding villages.

That was when Mo decided enough was enough and he ordered Konoha to eradicate all threats in the Land of Wind.

Since no one could control the country, it was best to purge it. Once enough time had passed, the other countries would convene and discuss how to split the land and rebuild any government—if they even chose to do that.

That was something for politicians to decide, not shinobi.

Naruto's squad had been dispatched three months ago. Already they had massacred two "villages" and wiped out several sects of outlaws. Some slavers. Some raiders. Some just desperate to live.

Naruto's eyes roamed down to the mass grave, noting that not all members were adults.

He stared at one of the children.

Younger than him.

Naruto let out a long, slow, tired breath. Whenever he saw a child's corpse, there was a heavy weight on his shoulders; a kind of exhaustion that was hard to put into words.

But that's how this world works.

He understood that.

The world was a fucked up place.

The kind and powerless were preyed. The world chewed them up and spat out their mangled bodies to rot away, forgotten.

It was laughable... really...

To think Naruto had once envied shinobi. He had heard tales of glamorous missions and heroic battles in war, but he had never connected that every vanquished foe was someone else's loved one. Naruto wanted so badly to be a great shinobi like his father and surrogate mother.

They were heroes. Respected and loved by everyone in the village.

He remembered just walking around the village people would gush to him about how amazing Minato or Naasica was. He was so proud to be a Senju. So proud to have his dad be the Hokage.

So... proud...

No one talked about the blood on their hands, or the ghosts that clung onto them.

Funny. A real laugh.

Not that Naruto would trade his position.

He would choose to be a shinobi again and again.

Because while the world was a fucked up place, Naruto made it a little better every time his boots squashed the brains out of a monster. One less monster to worry about meant one less tiny grave.

In his eyes, that made Naruto a hero.

He just wished the title wasn't so heavy on his shoulders.

Or rather—

I wish there was a better way.

(ง ⌣ ~ ⌣) ง

(Sakura)

It was a small workshop.

As soon as Sakura walked in, she knew it would be a place she'd visit often. The smell of paints, clay, and wood melding together in a sharp harmonious scent was unforgettable. She loved it instantly.

The front room had a showcase of his work, but Sasori did not spend his time in the front room. Instead, he worked in the back. It wasn't as glamorous or well-polished as the front of the shop, but Sakura liked it a lot more.

There was no pretense in the back of the workshop.

Concrete floors with a drainage hole, large work tables, and an assortment of tools and ingredients to use each organized. Sasori sat at one of the tables, his small hands working meticulously on sculpting something.

The red-haired boy looked up upon Sakura's entrance, and he smiled. His face was too angelic to be real, it made Sakura's heart skip a beat. "You came."

"I hope the invitation still stands," said Sakura with a shy smile.

"Of course," he said smoothly. "Did you get enough rest?"

"Yeah. Um—thank you. For the doll."

"It's nothing. You kept me safe during the invasion."

Sakura blushed. "Oh—um—that's my job."

Sasori beckoned to a seat across his table. "Would you like to join me?"

"Yes," Sakura blurted out, then winced at how loud and super obvious she was. The pinkette hurried over to the seat, grateful that Sasori did not react.

"Do you like art?" he asked.

"I do now," she sighed.

Sasori chuckled. "A good answer. I find art to be a... therapeutic hobby."

"Even for a kunoichi?"

His smile seemed a little odd. "Especially in your line of work."

Sakura faltered in cleaning her tools. Her paints had spilled out in her bag, and the smell of them reminded of her first visit in Sasori's shop. She had become a regular face at the workshop, even building up a repertoire with some of Sasori's customers.

The red-haired boy had set up shop in Konoha as a commission artist. Naasica was his first patron and customer, which instantly earned him a high-standing among the wealthier and noble members of Konoha. The Senju leader encouraged Sakura to visit Sasori after missions and training sessions, citing that the pinkette could use a good hobby.

Sakura loved to visit his shop after training to watch him work. He made art out of nothing.

Sakura continued to clean her skinning knife of the paint that had spilled over. Her rabbit ANBU mask filtered overwhelming scents, but paint oil was not strong enough to catch in the fūinjutsu filters.

"Please," whimpered a voice.

Sakura ignored the voice, continuing to clean her knife.

I miss Sasori.

Sakura had not been much of a doll person, but then she saw Sasori build a puppet from scratch and she fell in love with his art. There was a hypnotic pull to it. She would sit at his work table and listen to the clink, clink, clink of his tools. Each clink and scrape was steady and methodical, and sometimes the sounds would send shivers down her spine.

He would take a lump of clay, or disfigured log, or blank canvas and he would transform it into something worth millions. Everything his talented hands touched became gold.

Sakura was not much for art before—only dabbling in sculpting and woodworking because of her brief crush on Raion—but his work was simply too gorgeous.

It admittedly helped that he was very attractive as well.

Sakura was usually fleeting with her crushes, but oddly her interest in Sasori did not disappear. The sniper was accustomed to liking someone new every month, and so having a crush for literal years by that point was a novel experience.

When he asked to use her as a model, Sakura had been flattered and delighted. Pretty was not a word she had used to describe herself for some time. She was a kunoichi who constantly smelled like blood no matter how hard she scrubbed. She was not an heiress, nor prodigy. She had nothing but her hard work and unremarkable face.

She was not the type of person who could be used as a honeypot. She was better off as someone who worked in the shadows, never to be seen.

No one called her pretty.

But Sasori thought she was beautiful. Even though Sakura was a killer, a monster-hunter, a kunoichi, Sasori told her she was lovely. No matter how many people Sakura buried, when she returned to Sasori's side after a mission, he would pat her head and praise her.

He even made a little doll of her and gave it to her shortly before Sakura left for her longest mission. He told her that whenever she missed him, she could hold it and think about him and know that he was missing her, too.

He was so terribly sweet to her.

She missed him.

"Please... please let me go... please..."

Sakura had finished cleaning her knife. She looked over at the shinobi she had captured, now dangling by his wrists. She had hobbled him.

Her voice came out distorted through her rabbit mask, "You know I can't do that."

"Please," the shinobi sobbed.

"Let him go!" cried out a kunoichi. The woman was tied up and dangling upside down, her limbs bent at opposite angles.

Sakura clicked her tongue.

"Neither of you are escaping," Sakura told them.

"We told you everything already, please—"

Sakura rolled her eyes. Not that they could see it behind her mask. She wondered whatever happened to the previous Rabbit ANBU. "I'm not going to trust that information until it's verified."

Naruto had already gone ahead to confirm. He was the fastest between the two, and better at espionage. If the information was accurate, he would send a clone back to Sakura to let her know.

If all went well, Naruto would take out another slaver ring.

If it didn't... well.

Sakura was preparing for it if it didn't.

She ignored their whimpers of pain, and how they begged to be spared. She pulled out the little doll Sasori had made her, gently holding it in her hands. She ran her fingers over the smooth wood, smiling to herself.

Thankfully, the doll wasn't damaged by the paints. Every time she held the doll, Sakura felt a surge of comfort and longing. She caressed the doll, mesmerized by how delicately it had been made.

I wonder what it was like?

Sasori had dainty hands. What did it feel like to be made by him?

Naruto's clone appeared in a flash of yellow light. The fox-masked ANBU flatly told Sakura, "Confirmed."

Then it disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"See?" the shinobi said. "See? Please—please let me—let us go—"

Sakura put the doll back into her pack and pulled out a peeler.

"Yes, I see," said the rabbit-masked ANBU. "You're slavers. Inhuman. Monsters."

"We—"

The man did not get a chance to finish his sentence. He screamed in pure agony as Sakura carefully moved the peeler down his abdomen, pulling back the first layer of skin and flesh.

"The only good you have now," she said, ignoring his screams, "is practice for me."

Sakura wanted to bring back a gift for Sasori as thank you for the doll. Sakura knew she couldn't make anything as beautiful as Sasori's works, but she wanted to try.

Sakura hoped he'd like a human doll.

(ง ⌣ ~ ⌣) ง

(Naasica)

The Land of Wind had fallen shortly after Sungakure's destruction.

Madara assassinated the daimyo and set fire to the capital to spark riots. Chaos spread across the land, bleeding into the Land of Fire. Mo ordered Konoha to put a stop to the madness, and so Konoha dispatched a portion of its military might into the Land of Wind and slaughtered a chunk of the population. While Konoha was preoccupied with the remnants of Suna, the Akatsuki slowly spread their influence into the Land of Water.

Hotoro had agreed to sell the country, abdicating his position in favor of a lesser government role.

Refugees of Suna and Kiri flocked to Water as Mei, Kakuzu, Guren, Deidara, and Hidan headed up the rebuilding project alongside the Black Angel acolytes. Several new, smaller, shinobi villages popped up across the Land of Water, each of them groomed by the Black Angel acolytes into being utterly loyal to the Akatsuki.

Those that were disloyal were given Sasori's mind control seal.

Not that anyone alive outside the Akatsuki knew that. The Land of Water was covered by Nagato's rain thanks to the seals I had invented. My acolytes constantly supplied chakra to those seals as to lessen the burden on Nagato.

Kumogakure was content that Konohagakure had avoided gaining control over a nearby country. They were wary of the Akatsuki, but did not think they were nearly as dangerous as Konohagakure.

Iwagakure was under heavy lockdown, so little information could be found about the village.

After my Genin had completed their Chūnin exams, they started to take missions of their own. A year after the exams, my students began to test for their Jōnin certificate, and each passed on the first try.

When Naruto showed an interest in ANBU, Minato tossed about starting a new ANBU squad. My darling little sunshine was delighted at the thought of leading his own squad and convinced his companions to join him.

Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata, Ino, and Shino entered the ANBU. They trained under different divisions for another year before coming together for an entirely new squad Minato had made up for them.

Naruto (fox), Sasuke (panther), Sakura (rabbit), Hinata (raven), Ino (dove), Shino (wolf).

They were sent out to finish wiping out the resistance in the Land of Wind, and in that country, they would stay until their mission was complete.

I vaguely remembered that canonically around that time Naruto was supposed to rescue Gaara and to save Sasuke, but we had veered dramatically from the original plot line.

Gaara was a brainwashed and devoted member of the Black Acolytes, personally taught by Guren. The jinchūriki spent all of his time in the Land of Water under Guren's watchful gaze.

Orochimaru was dead and gone, all of his bases had been destroyed by Madara in the past couple of years. Sasuke never received the Curse mark, and instead followed the path of a loyal Konoha shinobi.

My students were not in the same place as Shippuden.

They were stronger, smarter, and more capable of handling what was to come.

Not that it would stop our plan.

Especially since most of them were out of Konoha and would not hear about any of the news until it was too late.

After all... it was finally time.

The bijū hunting would begin.

(ง ⌣ ~ ⌣) ง

Answer: Minato seems like the most well-rounded instructor.

Question: What kind of Naruto crossover would you want to see animated?

Reviews are love!