Zaman

Chapter 16

If Sakura could not convince her teammates to skip out on the chunin exams, she knew that she would have to formulate a watertight plan to keep Sasuke out of Orochimaru's clutches instead. Though she hoped that Kakashi managed to convince the Hokage into banning Otogakure, she could not rely on that. She knew that even in her old timeline, she could not have taken on Orochimaru alone–that snake had as many lives as a cat and a bottomless well of jutsus to draw from. Not to mention, he knew Sakura's fighting style better than nearly anyone thanks to his familiarity with Tsunade. Now, Sakura had disadvantage after disadvantage. In fact, her only hope was that Orochimaru would so severely underestimate her that she would be able to land one good blow.

There had to be another way around her predicament. Of course, she could push Sasuke out of the way and take the curse mark herself, though that would introduce so many new variables that she very well could make this timeline worse. Another option would be to seek out Tsunade early and hope that she could figure out a way to undo the curse mark, though yet again, Sakura could not rely on that being successful.

Sakura felt as if she were in an impossible situation. By preventing just this event, she could turn the entire timeline for the better, but out of everything she had faced in her past life, Orochimaru grabbing hold of Sasuke felt the most inevitable. She needed an outside perspective, but she was not ready to divulge information on Sasuke's fall into darkness yet. With a huff, she decided to speak with Kakashi, regardless of whether she could tell the whole truth or not. Some help would be better than none.

––––––––––

Despite the late hour, Sakura could see light seeping through Kakashi's curtains. Of course he was not asleep. Before she knocked on the door, she sent a wave of chakra to probe around her in case of any traps. Nodding to herself as she detected none, she knocked firmly on the front door. Kakashi took his sweet time answering it, finally greeting Sakura with a tired sigh.

"Come on in," he said, though he sounded awfully miffed about it. "I was just getting to the good part in my book."

"You can get back to that garbage in a bit," Sakura replied, her voice curt. "We have some slightly more important matters to discuss."

Kakashi muttered something under his breath and motioned for Sakura to take a seat on the couch while he busied himself in the sparse kitchen. "Tea?" he offered, putting the kettle on to boil.

Sakura nodded, knowing that she wasn't planning on sleeping much that night and any amount of caffeine would help.

"Right, so you're here about the chunin exams, I assume?" Kakashi grabbed two ceramic cups from his cupboard, holding them up to the light to check for dirt.

Sakura took a steadying breath, her mind already running at a mile a minute. "Yes," she started. "Before I explain my worries, I need to know, did you manage to convince the Hokage to prohibit Otogakure from the exams?"

"I did," Kakashi said, a glint of pride shining in his one visible eye. "I looked into missing people in the area as you suggested and man, did a lot come up. Did you know that more than one hundred children have gone missing in the last seven years alone? I brought that up to the Hokage and he agreed that there was likely something suspicious lurking under the surface in that village. I did not bring up Orochimaru, of course, but I have a feeling that he was suspecting that that old snake had something to do with Otogakure. Honestly, it's embarrassing that we did not pick up on Oto as a potential threat in your past life. It has Orochimaru's rank scent all over it."

Sakura breathed out a sigh of relief. Though that revelation did not eliminate the prospect of Orochimaru's appearance in the chunin exams, it certainly made it less likely.