Chapter Text
“Could you repeat that?”
Hiruzen Sarutobi was a man who had seen many things in his life. This, though, was a little much.
“I am a time traveller.” The woman in front of him spoke with utter confidence, so much so that he wondered again whether he had misheard, despite his having asked her for clarification.
Hiruzen stared at her, feeling at a complete loss.
“Ah…” he managed. “Right.” There was a pause. He tried to search for something polite to say to this lunatic. “Pray, what is your name?”
The woman raised her head, green eyes boring into his. He would deny it till his dying day, but in that moment, Hiruzen’s breath caught. Her eyes were green poison and she bowed only lightly, almost irreverently, to him.
“Haruno Sakura, Rokudaime of wartime Konoha. At your service.”
Hiruzen almost chocked. Now he knew for certain: she was a head case. No matter how confident she’d just looked, it was all a part of her illness. He almost felt bad for her.
“I… see. It’s a pleasure then.” His words were drier than sandpaper.
“I’d say likewise, but we did meet already when I was a child.”
“I’m sure we did.”
She hummed. “Oh, yes. You died when I was young.”
He was beginning to tire of all this nonsense.
“Well, Haruno…” Hiruzen flapped his hands dismissively, purposefully speaking her name disrespectfully. “Your situation is highly irregular. Unprecedented, if you will.”
“I sure would hope so,” she agreed amiably. How anyone could be so blasé in such a situation was unclear.
“Yes – well…” Hiruzen coughed uncomfortably. “I don’t know what to say.”
I certainly know what to think, though.
“You don’t have to say anything,” the woman replied easily. “Simply listen to what I do. I’ve a lot to tell you about the future, you see.” She added the last part as an afterthought, almost apologetically. As if that would make up for the way she’d just told a kage to shut up and listen to her!
The nerve of this woman. Hiruzen could scarcely wrap his head around it. Never in all his years as Hokage had he encountered anyone quite as irreverent as this. One would think she really was a Kage, with such an attitude.
“I hope you will allow me to doubt your claims about your… status,” he said a little disparagingly.
“I know I wouldn’t believe me either, were I in your shoes,” she replied, her posture no less confident despite the purposefully dubious expression on his face.
“Ah, so you do understand my reticence to grant any credibility to your outrageous claims.”
He was beginning to lose his patience with her.
“I do. But trust me, sandaime, my words are no lie – and I can prove it. In my time, I was born the same year as Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto. They should have been born by now. You can ask me any number of questions about them or what happens to them in the future. Or the village. For example, I can tell you that your student Tsunade became Hokage… after your other student Orochimaru tried to destroy Konoha and you died in the attempt. You see, he used a jutsu known as the Edo Tensei–”
“Halt!” Hiruzen cried, anxious about the ANBU overhearing their conversation. He did not want knowledge of the Edo Tensei getting out. What a horrifying tale this woman had woven! “You are making completely outrageous claims…” He took a deep drag of his pipe. “This is – frankly, this is absolutely insane, not to mention an insult to me and this village.”
“It is no insult, only fact.”
How could she say that so cooly, as if she truly believed such lies?”
To his dismay, Hiruzen felt his guards shifting in place in the hidden room below the office, their chakra signatures flickering with obvious concern. This alarmed him further. He could not allow his men to believe this drivel.
“I will have to ask you take these accusations elsewhere, to someone who will believe them, Haruno. My student would never do that, is this understood?”
“Oh, he would,” the infuriating woman countered, and there was suddenly a steely undertone to her voice that momentarily shocked him.
“I am sorry, but that cannot be.”
“It can and will happen,” she asserted.
“How can you say that?”
The woman had the gall to sigh as if exasperated with his ‘slowness’. “We’ve been over this. I know because it has happened already – to me.”
“No,” he bit out. She was lying. She had to be.
“Yes,” she countered, factual as ever. “Later, the term Konoha Crush was coined for that particular plot. Came rather close to destroying the village, you know. Thankfully, you didn’t completely screw up your students’ education. Shishou and the pervert turned out alright, and they both worked tirelessly to make sure the village could recover from such a blow.”
“You… you claim to be Tsunade’s student?” Hiruzen questioned in disbelief.
“Her student and successor, yes.”
“You do realize how hard to believe all of this is, yes?”
“I can answer any questions about her you may have to prove it,” the woman replied patiently. “Frankly, I likely know more about shishou than you do. At least, the older version of her. The one that was Hokage… I imagine the mantle ought to have changed her from the woman she is here – now.”
It was all such colossal nonsense that Hiruzen could barley wrap his head around it. Wilful, obstinate, consummate gambler Tsunade taking up the hat? He would not believe that till he saw it with his own eyes. Even Jiraiya struck him as a more probable candidate, porn or not.
“Look, Haruno,” Hiruzen said, becoming tired of listening to some lunatic’s wild imaginings. “I will kindly have to ask you to take such concerns about… time travel up with a doctor. I can have you set up with–”
“Will you cease burying your head in the sand?!” the madwoman spat, raising her voice to the point where she’d have made lesser men startle. “Listen here, Sarutobi. I’ve been speaking the truth and nothing but. Sand and Sound forged – will forge – an alliance to take advantage of your hospitality in the next chunin exams hosted by Konoha, invading our village and killing off the populace.” Her face darkened. “Including my parents. Ah, but I suppose you perhaps haven’t heard of Otogakure yet?”
He had. Hiruzen knew his face must have paled. Otogakure was an oddly specific name for any run of the mill crazy to know. His best and brightest had returned with rumors and whispers about the rising new village… but… he had thought that Orochimaru would be content now. He’d wondered whether perhaps Oto could become Konoha’s ally, whether the burned bridges between him and his students could be mended yet. And now here came this woman, claiming that Otogakure was nothing but a stepping stone for his pupil to crush Konoha.
He wanted to stomp on her claims. He wanted to have her thrown out of the office and into T&I… but could there be some truth to her nonsense claims? One way or another, there was no way he could allow her to walk away anymore, not with all the knowledge she possessed. He needed to think. In the meantime– he needed to know what classified information she possessed – and how she had gotten her hands on it. Thankfully, he knew just the man who could take a nice, long look into her mind.
“Guards,” he barked.
One word and a look was enough for the ANBU. His protection detail leapt down from the rafters or shunshined in from the hidden room, three of them immediately placing powerful genjutsu on her while another held a kunai to her throat.
“Hokage-sama?” asked the first ANBU to appear. Hiruzen was glad he’d kept this one in the village today.
“Hound.” He nodded toward the woman. “This one will be looked at by Inoichi himself and no one else, make that clear to the staff.”
Hatake Kakashi – also known as Hound in ANBU – bowed curtly and snaked his arm around the unconscious woman, clearly intending to shunshin away with her when –
Her eyes opened and she sidestepped his reaching arm, straightening from her limp position as easily as anything. With a deft movement of her wrist, she deflected his kunai, using chakra to stick it against her wrist and then quietly slipped the weapon back into Kakashi’s pouch.
She must’ve broken the three-way genjutsu, or perhaps had not even been caught in it, for she looked utterly unruffled.
Kakashi tensed, no doubt preparing to kill her if necessary. The woman stared at him with wide eyes, as though something momentous had just transpired, her lips moved silently.
Hiruzen read Kakashi’s name on them.
She was acquainted with him? How? He was clad in his ANBU gear, one of the fake identities, one which included a mask and wig…
Hiruzen leaned forward unconsciously. He heard the woman breathe in deeply through her nose, though she did not speak again.
“Do I know you?” Kakashi asked the woman, much to Hiruzen’s surprise.
“Not yet,” she replied.
“I will ask you to stop harassing my agent," Hiruzen said, prompting her to look away from him at last.
Turning to face him again, the woman lifted her hands in a gesture of innocence. “No one is doing any harassing here, sandaime. I was merely pleased to see… an old friend.”
“An old friend you’ve never met before?” Hiruzen countered. Please. She could at least try to come up with a more convincing excuse.
“Time travel–”
“–is impossible .”
“It is your reality, through my standing here. And anyone at T&I will be able to tell you that.”
His brows rose despite himself. “You would agree to being tortured – to having your memories read – just to prove this point?” Not that he hadn’t already been planning on having them read anyway.
“Of course,” she said immediately. “In the name of vital security, I would ask that you keep what knowledge you may find in my head a secret, but…” she finished strongly, “for my village, I would do anything.”
The way she’d spoken the possessive pronoun was assured, almost as if it really was her village, her people, that she spoke of. Almost as if she–
–well. Best not finish that thought. After all, the last time Hiruzen had heard such an intonation of the words “my village”, it had been from his own mouth.