The traveling monk sighed as he sat down on one of the many benches planted on the side of a road in Nami no Kuni. His disciple was kind enough to offer to get their lunch from a vendor just a block away. Their travels these past years have been as fruitless with him mostly stopping bandit attacks on merchants or small civilian villages.

There was nothing more he could do considering he had no set affiliation and that he and his disciple lived a nomadic lifestyle. It was a far cry from how he lived his life before, but this was his penance for the things he'd done. Definitely not a soul crushing one either. He was starting to really enjoy himself.

"Shishou, I got our food!"

The monk scooted over to make room for the thirteen year old boy. "Thanks. Did you see any trouble along the way?"

The boy scratched his cheek as he opened his bento. "Well, I saw a couple. I think they were married and the wife didn't look like she wanted to be there. She was forcing herself to smile and whenever the husband raised his hand or made a sudden movement, she would flinch or duck her head. I asked her if she was okay, but the husband cut me off and said she was fine before grabbing her wrist and dragging her away," he frowned. "I don't think he's being good to her. Should we help?"

The monk opened his own bento and broke apart his chopsticks. "We can't assume such a personal thing of them. If the husband ever acted out in public, then it's been made a public matter and we'll intervene."

The boy looked less than pleased, but nodded regardless. The monk patted his disciple's head and let out the words he used to speak so rashly in the years behind him.

"Divine punishment awaits those ignorant to the pain of others. If we aren't able to help the wife, the husband will pay his dues."

::

Iruka sat at a small cafe tucked into a street corner not too far from the Akasen. He stared down at his cup of tea worriedly, his thoughts meandering back to Naruto and the mission he had left for not too long ago. His adopted son was only ten years old, after all, and despite already achieving genin status and dutifully completing every D-rank assigned to the team (he was extremely proud at what the three had done for the son of that persimmon farmer), he was still worried about them taking on a C-rank.

With Kiri shinobi, no less.

Weren't those the guys that ate iron nails for breakfast?

"Lookin' a lil' worried there."

Iruka smiled at the familiar voice and turned his head to his companion for the morning. He stood a bit to peck Mari on the cheek before the taller man took a seat across from him.

"Yeah, sorry," the Academy sensei apologized. "It's just, Naruto, you know? I know he's got Sasuke, Sakura, and Hatake-san with him, but... There's Kiri-nin. A guard mission. A dictatorial shipping magnate! What if something happens to him?! What if something happens to any of them?!"

Mari reached across the table and laid a hand atop Iruka's. The darker one was shaking, in fear more likely than not.

"Naru-chan's gonna be okay. He's tough kid. Sasuke and Sakura-chan too. And that Hatake fellow—he's strong, ain't he? He'll protect 'em," Mari murmured. At his partner's worried gaze, the blond man tightened his grip. "Hey, nothin's gonna happen. Come to the bar after work and have a couple a' drinks, then stay the night. Yeah?"

Iruka turned his hand to hold the other properly. "Yeah."

"And when Naruto-chan comes home, he'll have the two of us waitin' for 'im."

The younger man nodded. He was so happy he had someone so supportive of him and who loved Naruto just as much as he did. It didn't matter that Mari had a bar inside the red light district or that Iruka was a teacher at the Shinobi Academy.

What they had now was more than enough.

::

The first night traveling towards Nami no Kuni, sleep evaded her.

Sakura volunteered to take up watch the whole night, much to her boys' dismay and Kakashi's curious calculations. He already knew she had trouble sleeping, but he was beginning to think that there was something more behind her restless nights. Insomnia could be a perfect cause for such. She didn't have the looks of someone suffering from it because of a medical condition like asthma or lower back pain, so that left the other reason.

A psychiatric disorder.

As night settled in and the fire slowly died down to a flicker of a flame, Kakashi raised his eyes at Sakura, who had herself perched up on a high branch just out of range. Her face, the one that always seemed to be mocking him in some way shape or form, had lost all its shine and was darkened with the stacks of days she hadn't slept. The bags he saw under her eyes were more pronounced now and glowing with the frustrated expression that showed through clenched teeth and a hopeless stare.

He blinked. This couldn't be his student he was looking at. She looked so much older and so much sadder than she always appeared to be.

Oh, but it was no matter what angle he saw her from. That confident little brat that lectured him when he was the one who was supposed to give the lectures had lost all the spirit in her bones. He turned his head and saw Naruto and Sasuke passed out in their sleeping bags, blissfully unaware of the way their friend probably wallowed in her sorrows night after night. If they knew, they wouldn't have let her take shift the whole night.

"... it... doesn't... sense..."

Kakashi raised his head against the moonlight and the dead silent forest.

"How... do... this...?"

She was talking to herself?

"I can't. I can't do this," she whispered fiercely. "None of... any... damn sense. It wasn't... this way! If everything was different from... the point of... being here?!"

Thin threads of chakra crawled to Kakashi's ears as he strained to listen in on what she was saying. Her arm extended, and if he hadn't been staring directly at the movement, he would have missed the four inch long shadow that crept up her arm.

It was shaped like a...

... scorpion?

Her voice lowered until he could hear her no more, but still he saw her shoulders droop in defeat and her hands reach up to hold her face-- guilty and unforgiving of herself. Kakashi tore his eyes away and instead watched the last remnants of the fire die down into embers and ash.

::

"Didja get any sleep last night, Sakura-chan?"

"Yeah, a few hours," she replied. "The stars were nice out so I stayed up watching them. But don't worry, I'm fully rested."

A lie.

"That's good," Sasuke said. "I know you don't sleep a lot, but at least you got some last night."

"Yeah, it was pretty refreshing."

The lie continued.

She didn't want to worry them, he could tell that much. She also spent all of the night before awake and whispering to that scorpion no matter what time in the night he woke to check up on her. Sakura would be in that same tree on that same branch with the same miserable expression on her face.

A drop of water fell onto his nose.

The skies were slowly turning a cool gray, the clouds heavy with summer's rare showers and the promise of rumbling thunder.

"It's only a light shower, but it'll pour soon. We keep moving until then," Kakashi ordered. Sasuke and Naruto gave their customary 'Yes, sensei', then quickening their pace to get farther along before they had to take shelter. The man was about to follow their move when he saw Sakura standing beside him, idle. Her head was tilted back and her eyes were fixed on the heavens. Horrible loss echoed in every corner of her features.

"Sakura."

"It... wasn't..."

He took a step towards her.

"Sakura," he repeated. "We're moving out."

Her eyes dropped to meet his, real confusion and defeat in her stare. She then angrily faced the small puddles forming on the ground. "Sorry, I..." She rubbed her eyes and stalked forward. "Sorry."

Kakashi watched her go knowing fully well that he couldn't put aside what he witnessed. For certain now he knew that there was something not quite right with her. She hid something behind that insufferable attitude of hers-- something that he wasn't sure he wanted to know for himself.

Unbeknownst to him, the scorpion he spotted hours ago clung to the collar of Sakura's shirt and had handed off a small note from someone he would have never guessed.

What's wrong?

Sakura held up a slip of paper for Yori to take and ran a hand through her damp hair.

::

It wasn't supposed to rain.

Sasori lurked about a kilometer away from the genin team in case something went wrong, as it always did. His Akatsuki cloak was replaced with one of black waterproof material equipped with a hanging hood. Orochimaru and Kisame already knew he'd be on extended leave for an uncertain amount of time. A month, perhaps. Maybe longer.

But apparently, it wasn't supposed to rain.

With Hatake Kakashi around, he couldn't get closer than he was already. His range of action was severely limited due to this, leading them to come to the consensus to exchange summons for the time being.

Kou popped up through the front of Sasori's cloak. The top of his furred head bumped against the man's chin as sharp eyes scanned their surroundings.

"Ugh, the weather's gotten so dreary. How uncute," Kou sighed. "So what did Sakura-chan say? Is she in trouble?"

Sasori patted down soft brown fur. "No. For now, at least. The mission she's on is two years earlier than normal and things are bound to be different. Example: Momochi and Haku were the enemies and lost their lives trying to raise money to over overthrow Yagura in the other timeline. Here, Yagura's views have changed and Momochi never defected."

He continued on with the cat hanging from the clasp of his cloak.

"Isn't that a good thing?" Kou questioned. Sasori shook his head and kept moving forward. Before setting off on the mission, Sakura detailed everything she remembered when she took the mission over fifteen years ago.

"We were sent back with the idea that we could change the past. Play Gods. I think you can imagine how irritating things are when you're actually the deity of a world you never knew."

He stopped and pulled out a scope from his back pouch when the group a kilometer away halted. It was something he planned to give Deidara the next time he planned a trip to Iwa, but a few uses before being handed off to its permanent owner wouldn't hurt.

Sasori situated the piece on his right eye and toyed with the buttons to get a better look ahead of him. The Oni Kyodai—Demon Brothers—he presumed, had unsuspectingly emerged from one of the various puddles that littered the path.

Kakashi feigned being cut in half, scaring the wits out of Naruto and prompting Sasuke and Sakura into action. The Uchiha took one of the gauntlet wearers, manipulating a chain to his own will and binding him to a nearby tree. The other assailant had the grand misfortune of having Sakura as his enemy.

She moved quickly and quietly, her movements creating an interval of about three seconds before—

"Sasori-kun?"

He hummed and pressed a few buttons on the scope. "She snapped his neck. Quite a clean kill, even for her."

::

There was something wholly unsettling with watching a student kill a man like she was crushing a roach beneath her shoe. Sakura's form was flawless as she appeared behind her opponent like a cool breeze and swung her leg to slam her heel against the back of his head. As he sailed to the ground, her arms shot out to wrap around his face and neck to twist it to the left.

Dead. Gone. Just like that.

And she didn't even bat an eye.

Kakashi stepped out from the shadows he hid in and approached Sasuke's attacker first. Gozu, he believed, stared at his twin brother in disbelief after having witnessed the entire murder.

"An ex-Kiri shinobi," Kakashi noted as he tapped the hitai-ate. "Chuunin level, if I'm not mistaken. Did you hope to accomplish something by getting rid of us?"

Gozu tore his gaze away from the prone form of his brother and glared at the jounin dead straight through his pupils. Giving no answer was the greatest weapon to use when there was absolutely no way out of the situation, and Kakashi respected that of him.

"Fine."

When he turned to check on his team, a kunai could be seen protruding from Gozu's stomach. He walked over to Sakura who was knelt by the dead body. She had already taken the liberty of frisking for any hidden weapons or information they could use in the future.

"Not a thing on him. No mission scroll, job offer, identification... but this is Meizu, right? One of the twins who left their village about a year ago," Sakura said. She was given a hardened look from her teacher.

"How do you know that?"

"I'm not deaf or blind," she shrugged. "Meaning I see things and hear things just as well as you do. And it's me you're talking to, Kakashi. Are you really that surprised?" That and the old man gave me an international bingo book not too long ago, but you don't need to know that.

Now that he thought it over, there wasn't anything too shocking about her knowledge. She had already proved time and time again by displaying what she was capable of. Granted, he still knew nothing about the kid like her true potential, her home life, or the reason she was put into therapy.

"What are we going to do with the bodies?" asked Sakura. "Leave them? Bury them? Burn them?"

A war memory came back to her. It was one she hadn't thought of since the day she was first sent back and it left lingering smoke and ash handprints on her skin that she couldn't wash off.

"Fifty-two deaths this week," Shizune informed. "Forty-eight of them unidentified."

"Burn the forty-eight."

"What?! Sakur—"

"We don't have time to bury them, Shizune-senpai," Sakura added on monotonously. "People are being rushed in every day. We have to focus on the ones that are still alive and that still have a chance, not the ones that are already gone."

Shizune stared at her, frozen and wide-eyed. When she made no move to carry out the order, Sakura sighed and rolled up her sleeves.

"Nevermind, then," she said as she walked towards the tent's exit. "I'll burn them myself."

A flicker of confusion flashed in Kakashi's eyes as he crossed his arms.

"Body burning is normally considered for A-ranks and S-ranks. With what just happened, this mission turned into a high C. Low B, at best. Where did you get the notion of burning?" he questioned. Sakura pressed her lips together and glanced towards Sasori's far off direction. The bastard was probably giddy with her slip up.

"Just a joke, Kakashi. Don't take it seriously," she waved off. She turned as Naruto slowly walked towards her. His eyes were wide and blue, a little fearful as it flickered from his best friend to the dead body on the ground.

"S-Sakura-chan... did you... d-did you kill him?" he croaked. His voice was shaking and quiet—distant, even. And it was breaking Sakura's heart.

"It was us or them. I didn't have a choice."

"But you killed him! They might have been bad guys, but... but... you didn't have to! And you... you did it like it was nothing."

Sasuke stood silent on the sidelines, his face blank.

"You did it like it was nothing," Shizune whispered disbelievingly. "Forty-eight people. And you burned all of them without hesitation."

There was no moon in the sky that night. Of the starless horizon and misty midnight backdrop, the only light for miles was the bonfire in the middle of the forest with the scent of blood and burning flesh heavy in the air.

"War is never pretty, senpai. And we can't afford to waste time when the camp's low on medics and our supplies limited." When Sakura turned from the fire, the shadows of unsteady flame danced across her worn face. "Let's get back," she continued solemnly. "We still have our jobs to do."

"We're shinobi, Naruto," she spoke quietly. There was a small tilt to her lips, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Sometimes, sacrifices need to be made."

"But we didn't have to this time, did we? A-And you killed him so fast and you didn't react to none of it!" he exclaimed. Kakashi's eyes narrowed slightly. Naruto had a point. There was no way a first kill would be so easily taken, especially when delivered by someone fresh out of the Academy. Then again, she was an early graduated with skills far beyond her rank. The boy gulped. "Sakura-chan... you... he wasn't the first one... was he?"

Sakura exhaled and picked up the pack she dropped when Meizu attacked her. "We'll be late if we keep delaying. It won't look good on Konoha's image," she murmured.

::

Sasori stashed the scope back into his back and ran a hand down his face.

"I'm getting a bad feeling about all of this. If the mission was critical back in our timeline, then something's going to happen here too," he sighed. Kou's tail flickered, brushing against the man's torso.

"You and Sakura-chan have it so hard, nya," the cat purred. "But it doesn't make sense, you know."

"What doesn't?"

"The fact that you two were sent back to change things. I mean, why change something you have no idea about? If the path goes in a different direction, then the destination should change too. Unless it just loops around back to where you should be? Ah~ dimensions and time travel are so tricky and ugly! Your thoughts, Sasori-kun?"

But he'd stopped listening, having been struck with a sudden epiphany. Paths. Destinations. What he and Sakura had been sent back to do in the first place.

Maybe they weren't supposed to change a thing.

::

A/N: The war flashback with Shizune is and includes the continuation of the one from Chapter 2: 5;20

::

Clarification on: Mari

Mari is a transvestite and the owner of Magenta, a transvestite bar.

A simple definition of transvestite by Merriam-Webster: "a person who likes to dress like a person of the opposite sex".

::

EDITED 2/5/18

::

Here's a work by  , whose Ino was inspired by Otokage!