Naruto: Reborn as Sakura with Manyuu Chifusa Template

"SHANNAROOO!!!"

The very air crackled with power— jagged bolts of plasma surged all around Sakura, licking at the ground at her feet. She was in the eye of the lightning storm, but despite the excruciating pain lancing through her arm, she didn't dare move a single inch— the instant she had punched the lightning bolt, it had split into a myriad streams of electricity, turning her surroundings into the deadliest rave party ever conceived.

…and a split second later, Sakura's chakra-coated fist pulsed with power.

Within the span of a hundredth of a second, the equivalent of ten Kakashis' worth of wind chakra exploded outwards at Mach 5 speeds— though Sakura did not know it, the way she had mobilised the chakra flowing through her right arm's chakra network had almost perfectly imitated a de Laval Nozzle. Skipping over the science lesson, the fluid dynamics and Bernoulli's principles, the only thing one needs to know about this is that it's the sort of science involved with rocket propulsion…

Sakura howled in pain, her shattered arm falling limply to her side.

Inevitably, the recoil from Sakura's improvised Nintaijutsu had wrenched her right arm out of its socket. Her arm's bones were broken in too many places to count— she would need much more than a simple curry dish to heal from this injury!

"Let go of my comrades!" Tenten's voice called from above. "Or your boss gets it!"

"You first," came a familiar man's gruff voice from behind Sakura. "Why don't you let go of my business partner first?"

Biting her lip to stifle the screams of pain which were trying to escape from her throat, Sakura attempted to turn around to see who was talking. Visibility had been restored, since the mist covering the valley had cleared— thanks to the massive amounts of air displaced by her Wind Chakra Enhanced Strength punch.

"I wouldn't make any sudden movements, if I were you," an androgynous voice whispered softly into Sakura's ear. "Why don't you ask your friend to stand down?"

Sakura felt a prick on her skin— someone was holding a senbon needle to her neck!

"Haku!" Sakura gasped. "Why!?"

If Haku was here, then didn't that mean that the man's voice she had heard earlier belonged to Zabuza?

This meant that they were now facing two former Seven Ninja swordsmen and a powerful Ice Kekkei Genkai ninja who had surpassed them both— elite Jōnin-level opponents. This mission now far surpassed the scope of a C-ranked bandit elimination mission, entering the lower bounds of what constituted an S-rank mission! But this time, there was no Kakashi here to save them…

Even though Sakura had faced and beaten Kakuzu, who was by any measurable metric a stronger opponent than Raiga and Zabuza, the situation was far more desperate than back then. Sasuke and Lee were out for the count, and Sakura's right arm was now completely unusable— not to mention that she still hadn't fully recovered from the Breast Diet Jutsu's aftereffects!

"Oi, who asked for your help!?" Raiga growled. "I told you bastards I wasn't interested, so shove off, already! Don't make me hold a funeral for you!"

Sakura could have sworn that Tenten had just winked at her, though it was hard to tell from this far away. Did she want her to buy some time, or something? Or maybe she wanted her to make some sort of distraction…

"You've let yourself go, Raiga," said Zabuza calmly. "As you are now, you wouldn't last even a day in the current Kirigakure."

"Lemme go!" Naruto hollered. "We let you go once, so you owe us, bandage-face!"

"Still think playing ninja is all fun and games, kid?" said Zabuza harshly. "There's no honour among shinobi— you should have become a samurai if you really cared about such things."

Eliminating the Kurosuki family— what should have been a walk in the park for a team up between Team 7 and Team 3 had turned into a standoff between the Hidden Leaf and the Hidden Mist's rogue shinobi:

Tenten was holding Kurosuki Raiga hostage with a kunai to his neck; Yuki Haku had placed a rather pointy senbon at Sakura's neck, ready to pierce her carotid artery; and Momochi Zabuza had jammed a struggling Naruto's head through the hole at the end of his Kubikiribōchō sword, to stop him from wriggling too much.

"Why, Haku?" Sakura repeated in dismay. "Didn't you two learn your lesson in the Land of Waves? Why are you here, helping this madman hurt and exploit more innocent people?"

In lieu of an answer, Haku grabbed Sakura's arm, and she felt an icy cold sensation from his hand on her broken arm— he was using his Ice Style Kekkei Genkai to reduce her shattered arm's swelling and ease her pain. As expected, Haku was still the kind and gentle soul who hated violence that she had known in the past…

"At first, we stuck to stealing from the rich who could afford it, and the nobles who abused their power," said Haku quietly. "Zabuza-sama had raised a band of pirates, and for a while, we had great success raiding the eastern coast of the Land of Lightning to raise funds for the cause."

Kakashi had once called Zabuza a traitor to the Hidden Mist for going rogue and abandoning his comrades, but nothing could be further from the truth. While it was true that Zabuza was extremely ambitious and coveted the title of Mizukage, he was also a true patriot who deeply cared about his village and wanted nothing more than to stop the Bloody Mist policy and overthrow the despotic (and mind controlled) Fourth Mizukage, Karatachi Yagura.

After all, by killing a hundred of his fellow graduates, Zabuza had successfully managed to put an end to the death matches that were the Hidden Mist's academy graduation exams…

'Hang on,' said Inner Sakura. 'The east coast of the Land of Lightning? That rings a bell…'

"We would use the Kirigakure no Jutsu to stealthily infiltrate nobles' estates without too many useless killings," said Haku bitterly. "At first, our approach worked perfectly, but at some point, the Cloud shinobi found some way to defeat the mists."

"Ah," Sakura blurted out.

When Sakura had infiltrated the Hidden Cloud to rescue Hinata, she had overheard some Kumo-nin complaining about some rogue Kiri-nin raiding the shores of the Land of Lightning. At the time, she hadn't thought much of it, but the would-be pirate kings had turned out to be none other than Zabuza and Haku!

Speaking of Hinata, Danzō's men had managed to retrieve one of her eyes (though Danzō claimed that it had been destroyed), but the Hidden Cloud had managed to hold on to the other, giving it to a certain Dodai, the Raikage's attendant. The Byakugan could very easily see through the Kirigakure no Jutsu's mists, so could it be that Sakura's failure to retrieve Hinata's eye was directly responsible for Zabuza's and Haku's trip to the Land of Rivers to meet an old friend…?