A flaw in the system

VII

Wow that was a large gust of wind. Was Sakuras first thought the wind had been extremely powerful and had physically blown the three of them away from one another. She had found herself in front of a Sasuke who was himself, albeit a little scratched up, and a Naruto fake. The holster was on the left when Naruto was right handed. What an amateur.

Sakura trusted her instinct and let a chakra speeded kunai rip through the air only to have the Naruto fake dodge. Naruto wasn't fast enough to dodge something coming at that speed.

"Hey! Why'd you throw that?" The phony said, frowning at Sakura.

"Because you're a fake." Sasuke replied for her, stepping out in front of Sakura like taking a step forward was gonna scare away the faker. Sakura nodded and watched the fake Naruto grin at them.

"You've got a sharp eye," he stated, transforming into a konaha nin they had never seen before. Before they could charge at him or do anything he pointed towards the tree branch directly above and said "your teammate is up there. I surrender against you since i have no backup and eventhough I could definitely take one of you, I can't take two." The boy then proceeded to turn around and walk away from them. Sakura watched the boy before remembering something, it was something, despite being incredibly insignificant. That boy was the teammate of Kabuto. She didn't particularly understand why that fact was so relevant in her mind, it just kind of was.

Sasuke went to untie their hopeless teammate as Sakura stood her ground, guarding his backpack. But she realised something. Everyone knew Sasuke was the strongest and Sasuke kept the scroll in his bag. So when people eventually came for their heaven scroll they would go straight to Sasuke for it, ignoring her as the weak kunoichi. She dug through the dark haired boys bag and took out the scroll, placing a small area affect genjutsu on a spare sealing scroll to makd it look like a heaven scroll and placed it in Sasukes bag. She took the real one and sealed it in one of her sealing scrolls and sent the scroll into a summoning fujinijutsu tag she kept on her right palm.

Sasuke climbed down, Naruto right behind him. Sakura knew that look of pure annoyance in Sasukes eyes and she thought for once it wasn't directed at her. "Why is it you who gets kidnapped in the first hour of being here, Naruto?" Sasuke asked, trying to keep the growl out of his voice. Sakura shook her head, and decided to defend Naruto. To be fair, he might not have done the same, but he still didn't deserve getting yelled at.

"Leave him, Sasuke. None of us were on high guard so it could just have easily been one of us." Sasuke furrowed his brows before sighing. Not because Sakura was wrong, but because she had defended Naruto.

It won't last, Sasuke thought. When the one on one battles come she'll get a taste of reality and be back to being the scared pink haired kunoichi dependant on her teammates. 

They began their voyage deeper into the woods once again. They walked in stony silence only broken up by when Naruto or even Sasuke stood on a tree branch. Now, Sakura was not the most powerful ninja out of the three, but she was still the most nimble, and with her increased training she managed to avoid obstacles with the bat of an eye.

Sakura knew something was off when there was an exceptional spike in chakra too close for comfort. She also knew that anyone with the capabilities to spike their chakra that much was definitely not a genin. She began to speed up when a bigger, more threatening, chakra spike came from a tree they were on only moments ago. And then there was another rush of wind, and suddenly their fire hazard blonde teammate had disappeared and it was only Sakura and Sasuke facing the creepy ass grass ninja from before. And then they were stuck in a bodily paralysis genjutsu.

Sakura was completely aware that she still had a small amount of control over her arms and hands. She used that small amount of control to grab a senbon from her ninja pouch and gripped it firmly in her hand. It seemed the grassninja was...molting? It looked like they were shedding their whole body and it seemed to be someone new inside. But when the person on the inside was revealed she realised she recognised this person. Orochimaru. He was scum. She knew for a fact that he was only interested in her dark haired teammate and had most likely given Naruto some obstacle to keep him busy. And he had written her off as useless.