Chapter Text
A pink haired girl with bright green eyes, smiles wide as she walks home from the park with her parents.
“I want to go to the Academy!” Sakura declares to her parents.
She had just seen a blonde girl stand up to Ami and her friends! No one ever did that!
The blonde had said she was going to be the best Kunochi after the Academy, and Ami had laughed. That resulted in that blonde girl berating Ami and her friends until they ran away crying.
After hearing them constantly make fun of her forehead, Sakura thought it was the best thing ever to see them cry.
At the age of six, she looks so small, as fragile as the flowers for which she is named. Her parents smile indulgently, most children don’t start the Academy until age seven or eight anyway. There’s still time for her to change her mind.
“Alright my little Flower.”, her father laughs lightly, thinking ( hoping ) she’ll change her mind, “If you still want to go to the Academy next year, we won’t stop you.”
She doesn’t change her mind.
(Her parents will look back on this day many times over the years and wonder if they should have fought her harder on her decision.)
Sakura finds a friend in the same blonde girl that she saw that one day in the park. Her name is Ino Yamanaka. She’s not afraid to make Ami and her friends cry, even now that they’re older.
Sakura thinks she’s amazing.
The Uchiha clan is massacred within the dead of night by their Clan Heir. Parents pull their children out of the Academy in fear of their futures.
(More specifically, they fear the lack of a future for their children in a world where a single boy barely thirteen can kill over a hundred members of his clan and manage to escape without being caught by any of the Shinobi of the village.)
The only survivor, people whisper in pity, is the youngest son of the late Clan Head.
Sakura wonders how someone could do that.
(Her parents, always wanting her to make her own decisions, don’t pull her from the Academy even if every fiber of their being wants to protect their only child.)
When Sasuke Uchiha, the last loyal Uchiha , comes into class for the first time after his whole family was slaughtered by that man, Sakura doesn’t look at him once.
She’s too caught up wondering if it was possible for her to be a good Shinobi, an excellent Kunoichi , when Monsters like that exist.
It will be another week before she notices that since the Massacre, she is now the last remaining civilian born student in her class.
There are only a few other civilians in her year now, spread throughout the different classes. The others are all orphans of Konoha who have no one to guide them away from the life of a Shinobi.
Her class is filled with Clan Heirs and Spares. The remaining students belong to small ninja clans of no prominent standing.
A week after that she’ll notice the divide growing larger and larger between her classmates and herself.
She alone has no background in the Shinobi arts that they seem to take for granted. The teachers all spend so much time, helping them each improve in their lessons. Some of the teachers barely spare her a glance, expecting her to drop out of the Academy like every other civilian in her class. Iruka-sensei, for all good a teacher he is, tries his best to help her, but more often than not his attention is too stretched thin by trying to help every student in the class.
She learns from Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji that Clan children receive help from their clans after school. They complain! She doesn't think that they know just how lucky they are to get that extra training.
Sakura turns eight in March and doesn’t think it’s fair, but she grits her teeth and smiles as she asks about their training.
They answer her without reserve and her blood boils when she learns even the “small things” like Ino helping out at the Flower Shop is training.
She can’t stop the small amount of jealousy she feels.
Sakura doesn’t know how to close the gap between her classmates and herself. They're getting stronger and nothing she does will ever make up for it. Even Shikamaru, who would rather laze under a tree and watch clouds all day or play shogi, is getting stronger.
She doesn't think she's anything special, and as a kunoichi this will either allow her to live a longer life or grant her an early death.
She doesn't want to leave the matter of her life up to something as trivial as chance.
It’s the end of her first year when she manages to find a thick obscure book in the library with no title in the “Free Books” bin.
It’s a book on the Basics of Seals (Sakura privately names it that in her mind).
It's handwritten and made of different handwritings, and filled with so many ideas her head starts to spin.
In the margins and a section in the back, there's notes on Medical Ninjutsu and Poison.
The name she's gifted the book remains untouched as the Basics of Seals still remains the majority of the focus of the book.
(It will be years from the moment she finds the book until she finds out who wrote it.)
Sakura devours it in two weeks, memorizing it inside and out.
She knows that this will be the tool of her choice.
No one will ever look at her, a frail civilian girl with pink hair, and know off first glance the skills she'll carry in her arsenal.
Her second year at the Academy, Sakura learns that her chakra reserves may never grow as large as her classmates’. She was not from a clan, and therefore did not have the same generations of breeding in her lineage which allowed for large reserves.
The instructors smile politely though and tell her in front of the whole class that she has near perfect chakra control that she may be able to pass down to shinobi children of her own one day.
It’s meant to be an encouragement, probably a twisted compliment, that she can rise above her heritage and marry into a small established clan if she proves herself. Of course, they mean a minor clan, because not one of her teachers believes she can marry into one of the major clans despite there being a handful of male Clan Heirs in her class. It sounds condescending to her ears though all the same.
Her blood turns to ice in her veins as she ignores the considering stares of her classmates and heads back to her seat.
She doesn’t care about marriage! She cares about seals and closing the gap between her classmates and herself.
She cares about surpassing them all, not in spite of her heritage, but because of it. These teachers don’t know anything about her, and they won’t care unless she makes them. All they see is a potential asset to the village, who’s only true contribution will be children.
She’s too young to change how they view her and her worth despite her top marks. But, she silently muses to herself, maybe she could negate her small reserves with a seal?
She fails to notice how Ino is looking at her in envy or how the boys in the class appear to be reevaluating her existence.
She learns more about the Slug Sannin, Tsunade Senju, two months later, and resolves to be stronger than even her, because Tsunade has a blatant seal on her forehead and she’s not even known for sealing!
At the end of her second year she has a working seal to store her own chakra. She’s already managed to figure out how the Slug Sannin’s seal on her forehead works. It’s supposed to store chakra and with it Tsunade heals and is given an increase in strength, but Sakura wants to take it a step further. She doesn’t want to take Tsunade’s seal because she can see that it’s not perfect. She wants something to not only store her own chakra, but that of anyone else who attempts to use it on her. She makes her own seal, because why would she steal something so imperfect when she can make something better?
She has no way of knowing that she has a prodigious talent for sealing, because there’s no one entirely invested in her becoming a ninja. There’s no one to tell her what she’s attempting will take years to complete if it even does work. No one to tell her the dangers of putting seals on a living body.
She does the impossible in less than a year.
She begins working on actively putting it on her body the first day of the break between second year and third year. She’s nine.
She adds in another aspect for perfect recall, integrating everything she hopes to desire into one seal that no one will be able to steal from her. Her design takes the form of Cherry Blossoms and other flowers connected across her forehead on an entwining vine. It looks like a flower crown was placed across her forehead.
It's innocuous enough that most won't pay it any mind, dismissing it because it's attached to a girl with pink hair who has never been considered dangerous by anyone ever before.
But, at the same time her sealwork is distinctive enough to make her enemies cower before her on sight after she makes a name for herself. She's made her own Sealing Style and has no idea of how impossible others claim it to be.
Who would expect to be bested by a girl with pink hair and a flower crown?
Chakra gives her Inner for her hard work.
She’s lucky she doesn’t fry her brain.
Sakura begins her third year with bangs covering her forehead and eyes filled with so much excitement it draws everyone in.
Ino talks to her after that first day and declares them to be rivals when Sasuke gives Sakura a nod of acknowledgement as he enters the classroom. No amount of telling Ino she doesn’t like Sasuke will persuade her to change her mind.
“You’re lying!”, Ino grits out as tears leave her eyes, “You like him as much as I do and you have the nerve to lie to me?!? From now on we are rivals, Billboard Brow. You may have gotten a nice haircut to hide that big forehead of yours, but that doesn’t change anything. Do you hear me?”
Sakura takes the hint and begins to sit next to Shino instead the following day.
She’s glad she never told Ino about her skills in sealing, because she knows now that had Ino known, she would have used it against her somehow. Maybe she would have even gotten her book on the Basics of Seals taken away?
The light in her eyes dims slightly, but no one expressly comments on it. Shino offers her a jar of Aburame jam the next day, it’s the kind that always runs out of the Market within an hour on the Wednesdays the clan sells it.
Sakura gives him a small honest smile and thanks him. They both know what she’s really thanking him for.
The next week when he purposely lets his kikaichū crawl onto Sakura’s notes and she doesn’t scream or attempt to kill them, merely gently nudging them away when she wants to write, he doesn’t know how to feel.
She doesn’t appear distressed or disgusted when he lets his kikaichū brush against her hand. He continues to test her the whole week until he decides that she has the potential to be a good friend.
She goes for ramen one day after school, not wanting to go get barbeque like she had told her parents was planned weeks ago, back when Ino was still her friend and not her rival. She meets a boy with the brightest blue eyes she has ever seen, his hair is more yellow than a sunflower. When he smiles it feels as though he’s sunshine incarnated.
His name is Naruto.
Sakura doesn’t think he’s too bad.
Shikamaru and Choji still smile slightly at her when she sees them, but they don’t talk to her without Ino. She feels betrayal and anger because she considered them to be her friends too, but it steels her resolve to be better than them all.
Why should she care about them if they don’t care about her? It’s not like she’s alone. She has Shino. She has Naruto. She has Inner. She has her parents! She doesn’t need anyone else.
More people in her life would just take time away from her sealwork.
Her fourth year at the Academy she acknowledges that her taijutsu may never be naturally as good as her classmates’. She decides to fix it with seals that add gravity resistance to her limbs to boost her speed. This seal is a singular Butterfly added an inch above her belly button. It’s cute and so delicate looking, that most people will overlook it. But then again, people have been overlooking her ever since she first stepped foot in the Academy
No one tells her that training with weights at such a young age will stunt her growth.
If she’s a little slower during her spars, no one comments on it. No one pays her attention as long as she doesn’t dare beat a prominent Clan’s Heir or Spare. But it doesn't matter, she won’t hold back when she becomes a proper Konoichi and there’s no use drawing too much attention to herself.
(No matter how much she wants her teachers to acknowledge her strengths, now is just not the time.)
Shino remains a calm presence at her side. She slowly opens up to him, it’s easier talking to Shino then it ever was talking to Ino.
She tells him about her interest in sealing. Gifts him a storage scroll on his birthday recalling when he mentioned how hard it is to keep fresh fruit available for his kikaichū to snack on throughout the day.
He doesn't want to keep it after he's had it long enough to realize what it does. Claims it's more valuable than she knows.
Basic sealing scrolls aren't meant to perfectly preserve food at the same temperature it goes in at, much less perfectly put it in stasis to stop it from expiring.
The scroll Sakura gives is the type that is jealousy hoarded by seal masters and gifted to Kages and Daimyos.
"Sakura, my clan would gladly buy these from you as quickly as you can make them. Why? Because I've never seen a storage scroll like this before, and neither has my father or any of the rest of our clan. These scrolls would be perfect for everyday use or missions."
She doesn’t tell him about the seals she’s placed on her own body.
(She is a kunoichi forged through her own sheer willpower, she understands the need for withholding information of her strengths here where even Shino is a potential competitor for her.)
"These aren't even that good, Shino.", Sakura sighed, "Right now anyone can open these, they aren't secure at all. I can make them better, but they aren't my biggest priority right now. I have so much I want to do, but not enough time."
"I was surprised by the sealing scroll you gave me. Why? Because it does not look like a typical sealing scroll.", Shino stated while examining the scroll again. It was outlined with a variety of insect drawings and small enough to fit in a pocket.
"Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the idea that scrolls have to be bulky to be functionable.", Sakura laughed lightly, "It just seems like a waste of sealing paper when it can hold the same amount of stuff as a scroll three times its size."
Shino nodded along and asked some questions of his own. Some she answered, some she gave a secretive smile to and diverted the flow of the conversation to something else.
Shikamaru, who gives the guise of sleeping when Shino and Sakura talk about the scroll, tells his dad when he gets home that night.
Shikaku mentions it to Choza and Inoichi and together the three talk to Shibi.
By the next afternoon most of the Shinobi in the village have heard of a new storage scroll invented by an aspiring Seal Master. Though no one is able to gain any solid confirmation.
Ino-Shika-Cho, despite drawing attention to it, is very tight-lipped about the whole thing. And no one is willing to ask any more than one Aburame about the scroll since they all give the same answer.
When the other clans bring it up, the Aburame cite that their novice Seal Master (who may or may not exist) has no bearing on the meeting. Clan Business for shinobis is reserved for the Clans themselves, it's the reason no one has been able to do anything about the Hyuga's Cage Bird Seal.
After the meeting, Sandaime quietly approaches Shibi to inquire about a similar scroll for himself.
A week later, Shibi hands Sandaime a scroll, no bigger than the palm of his hand and bordered with leaves.
After extensive testing, Hiruzen sends the scroll off to Jiraiya to examine.
Jiraiya wants to know who the Seal Master is, grudgingly admitting that not even he could make something that extensive into such a small piece of sealing paper without obvious seals on display. It shouldn't be possible to accomplish that. And the seals are so intricately hidden within the vines and flowers he can't even make heads or tails about this person's Sealing Style.
Hiruzen asks Jiraiya if he's thinking about taking on a student.
And Jiraiya drops his inquiries, saying the next and last student he ever wants to teach is Naruto.
Sakura is in her fifth and final year at the Academy when she does something remarkably stupid.
She wins a Taijutsu match against Kiba.
He looks at her in awe before he challenges her to a rematch.
The instructors allow it, and her pride won't let her back down and lose now.
(Not after she's already won him before. Not after all eyes are on her finally.)
She wins against him again and Kiba can't take his eyes off of her even after they do the Seal of Reconciliation.
(Shino doesn't like that Kiba can't keep his eyes to himself.)
Later she'll realize how stupid it was to showcase her skills to the class, but for the time she's content about shutting up Kiba for the day.
Akamaru starts approaching her the next day and finds out that Sakura gives pretty good scratches.
(Kiba won't stop staring.)
The next Taijutsu match is against Sasuke.
Sakura gives it her all, not once expecting to win against the last loyal Uchiha .
She wins.
There's disbelief in his eyes but he doesn't demand a rematch like Kiba.
(Now Sasuke won't stop staring at her, and Ino hates her more.)
They go over seals in class and Sakura surprises her teachers because she looks almost bored as they talk about explosion tags and storage seals.
Mizuki wants her to demonstrate how to open a storage scroll.
She barely refrains from rolling her eyes and does it with practiced ease, much to the confusion of the majority of the class since Mizuki hasn't even told her how to open the scroll yet.
(They all won't stop staring.)
Her seals are finally complete, she turns twelve as the Cherry Blossoms bloom.
She graduated as the top Kunoichi of the year.
(The title Rookie of the Year goes to Sasuke.)
She's assigned to a team with Naruto and Sasuke.
Her Jonin Instructor is three hours late.
An eraser falls on his head.