Preventing The Inevitable

Chapter 12

Sakura's top priority at the moment was to avoid detection. She shouldn't bother taking on huge goals if she was going to be caught before ever achieving something. So stealthiness, it was.

That included hiding that this four-year-old Sakura Haruno had been swapped with her, a grown adult. She was confident in her ability to act the part because of experience (years of pretending to be unbothered by sly remarks about her upbringings, acting like she was supposed to, a collected and reliable medic, as if she wasn't slowly breaking apart, every death to her name a weight crushing her shoulders—), and she still had a cover story, 'Keito', to back her up.

But most importantly, she needed to keep the people aware of her training to a minimum, which she had already semi-failed at. Well, only technically speaking.

She couldn't have prevented Shisui and Itachi from knowing in order to secure another way to expand her skillset. And although Yūta was a stranger to her, not to mention someone she couldn't predict reactions of since he never existed in her timeline, she had somehow managed to evade his suspicion. Of course, that was assuming she had successfully tricked him.

So, strictly speaking, she had yet to be caught and had only got really close to it.

Besides, Shisui didn't know the full extent of her abilities—not even a fraction of it, actually. Only knowing the things Sakura had accidentally shown him and whatever she would decide to showcase to him in two days' time, at their first training session, he wasn't a threat yet. The most he could do right now was accuse her of being a child prodigy, which she would prefer over being found out as a time-traveler slash dimension-hopper any day.

However, her own personal training—which she wasn't going to lessen now that she was going to receive training separately—along with her rapid improvement and understanding of chakra and the workings of the human body—all of which she couldn't excuse as prodigal talent. It had to be hidden from the world, concealed in a way nobody would even think to raise suspicions.

In a way, she had experienced it first-hand already.

Naruto had gotten away with being aware of and using the Kage-bunshin back then. People either didn't know how strange and suspicious that was or didn't care because it was Naruto. What could he do to endanger the village? Because, really, it wasn't Naruto they were afraid of, even though they claimed to despise him just as much as the Kyūbi. It was the threat that he posed, the thing that he could become, the monster lurking within, that they were terrified of.

To them, Naruto, the nine-tailed in human form, had been a ticking bomb that could decimate the village in a matter of minutes if the beast managed to escape. A truly terrifying outcome.

Then there had been Naruto, the troublemaker, the Dead Last, the failure. Not even being able to keep up a simple clone, he had been the laughingstock of his class. Could he even kill a fly?

The ever-present threat of the Kyūbi—the remnants of the attack of twelve years ago looming over the masses like a silent reminder that they couldn't let their guard down, ever. And Naruto Uzumaki, a gullible and naive boy with unreachable, unreasonable, impossible goals and one strong-willed mind. Someone who was destined to trip on his own self-confidence before he could ever pose a threat to someone.

The comparison of the two opposites made the change to Naruto's arsenal—this strange technique that didn't attack nor defend, instead, seeming kind of useless at first, inexperienced glance—seem insignificant.

What did the Dead Last learning how to clone himself properly—like all other Shinobi his age—matter when he was hosting a monstrous beast inside of him? Many noticed, saw it themselves, but the fewest cared. It was simply easier to go along with the flow, to follow the crowd.