Fanfic / More Than Enemies

Team 7's photograph 2.0. and Shi-chan, Itachi's crow summon, on Sakura's arm. Artwork by the author of the fic.

Ita-kun:
Tell your stupid crow to stop calling me hime or I’ll throw a chair at him.
Regards,
—S
PS. Stay safe!!!

— Sakura's farewell note to Itachi.

During the first test of the Chunin Exams, Sakura empathizes with Naruto's dream of being Hokage and decides she won’t selfishly bet she can answer the tenth question whilst Naruto probably won’t be able, thus condemning him to remain a genin. She raises her hand and Team 7 is disqualified.

Kakashi is flabbergasted to learn that the most unsuspecting of his little genin has been the only one to take his teachings (Obito’s nindo) to heart. But now Sasuke hates her guts and even Naruto is pissed at her. So, Kakashi pulls a Miyagi and starts training her through mystifying methods that somehow bring her to meet Stalker-san, a.k.a., Itachi Uchiha. He’s in Konoha for the purpose of giving his first report since he joined Akatsuki’s ranks but has been killing time by spying on his otoutou ^Translation little brother.

Sakura proceeds to befriend Itachi without knowing of his true identity and he, in turn, teaches her how to be a better ninja.

Because Team 7 never got to the ill-fated second test of the Chunin Exams and Sakura is stronger and more focused, naturally all hell breaks loose. Especially concerning the Konoha Crush, two of the former Hokage, and ROOT.

More than Enemies is an ongoing^note Last updated on 2022-03-04 canon divergent Naruto fanfic written by thinknicht that starts off crack-ish but turns a lot more serious soon enough.

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More than Enemies provides examples of:

• Adaptational Protagonist: While the third-person narrator switches the P.O.V. between several characters fairly frequently, Sakura is the undeniable protagonist. Not only do we spend the most time following her but she's the reason why the fic's events diverge from canon and the plot is structured around her growth as both a person and a kunoichi. She interacts with most of the other major players (Kakashi, Itachi, and Orochimaru) or, at least, people who know them. In canon, she was the least important element of the protagonist Power Trio, often overshadowed by the myriad of minor characters.
• Adaptational Skill: Justified. Several developments steer Sakura to gain a range of mundane abilities, including some not so combat-oriented.
  • Sakura's combat approach exploits the element of surprise and weapons (kunai, senbon, and shuriken) due to her precise aiming.
  • Her taijutsu is a mish-mash of katas from both the Academy Basic and Itachi's style, with the latter revolving around flexibility, viciousness, and turning the enemy's strength against them. After all, Itachi created it when he had a child's underdeveloped musculature. This veers far from her canonical "punch your opponent to hell and back".
  • She also learned how to pick locks.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Justified. Being trained by Kakashi and Itachi means that Sakura's jutsu repertoire gets some additions not present in canon, and much earlier at that.
  • She figures out by herself the Water Walking technique and later developes an Air Walking technique (hanging from the water surface like a bat by walking on the water-air interphase) to rapidly mobilize and fight underwater.
  • Sakura has assimilated various useful genjutsu from Itachi — how to induce calmness in an animal and how to conceal herself or others. She is also way better at spotting and breaking genjutsu.
  • Kakashi gave her the initial hint to figure out chakra sensing and taught her the Body Flicker.
  • While within a snake's bowels, she picked up chakra-coating on the spot.
  • She can channel chakra to any part of her body to improve said part's function — her lungs to boost her oxygenation or breath underwater, her limbs to stick objects on them, her ears to improve hearing, etc.
  • Shi-chan make her sign the Crow Summon Contract which gave her the ability to not only summon crows but to use them as a hivemind for recon and environmental awareness. And also to produce her own crow clones.
  • Another important change is Sakura's apparent lack of an Elemental Affinity. It doesn't matter how many times she pours chakra into the chakra paper, nothing happens.
  • An overlap with Adaptational Skill occurs with the genjutsu Kakashi crafted for her. It emulates the Sharingan's preternatural environmental perception, specifically in terms of measuring distances with a mere glance. Sakura is yet to master not how to cast it but how to effectively use it. As she is a self-described paper ninja, she's got Awesomeness by Analysis, but she still needs to hone it to calculate angles and speeds on the spot like the Sharingan does automatically while tuning the genjutsu's input to not saturate her brain. The ultimate goal is to grant her absolute aiming.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: In-Universe.
  • Under the alias of Tetsuya, Itachi slowly warms to Sakura and it’s shown to be a good friend to her – worrying over her, training her so she can defend herself, and coming to her aid when she’s in danger. Sakura also discovers he is emotionally stunted, lonely, and sick. She then proceeds and success in being a balm to the soul for him as Shi-chan puts it. Binge-eating dango^note round-shaped, sweet dumplings made from rice flour and usually served with green tea and kidnapping abused cats certainly help. However, the dreaded moment where she discovers his identity as the Uchiha Massacre’s perpetrator, no amount of denying prevents her from second-guessing her interactions with him.
  • Río is presented as Danzo’s loyal second in command. However impertinent she may be, she’s still ROOT -– not actually obeying the Sandaime, putting the mission over comrades, cold, and brainwashed… right? Well, Kakashi and the readers are for a shock as she’s slowly revealed to be quite the opposite (maybe barring the Sandaime part). She’s emotional, rebellious, and a good teammate to cite her least spoiler-ish traits. It goes to a point where Kakashi is left wondering just why is serving under the foundation. The real shock comes when we find she is the false Yugao, the first friend Kakashi made after Minato’s death while still in ANBU. Given how is she described in her friend's recollections, she couldn’t resemble the stereotypical ROOT agent any less.
  • Kakashi remembers Minato as a caring sensei who managed to be liked by almost everyone. Minato was a Parental Substitute of sorts after Sakumo’s death and the one who brought the color back to the world and made it possible for Kakashi to meet Obito and Rin. Even if Kakashi had to subconsciously now no one, particularly a Clan-less man, gets so high up in the hierarchy and to be a war hero without being ruthless and a dirty but terrifying fighter. It doesn’t help Minato used to be part of ROOT.
  • To Sakura, Yuna has always been this batty cat-lady who manages her favorite thrift shop. She is the one who taught her how to bargain and her store is where she gets pretty but affordable clothes. Yuna knowing how to use medical chakra comes as a surprise but nothing too outlandish considering she merely healed Sakura's sprained calf muscle. By the time Sakura needs serious healing after blowing Orochimaru's snake to pieces, she is too out of it to take notice of it. The real shock comes when Sakura finds Yuna working along with Kabuto and, therefore, helping Orochimaru with the Konoha Crush. Not only that, but it turns out Yuna is a retired, elite kunoichi who can hold herself marvelously well in a fight despite her advanced age. To top it all, Yuna is following Orochimaru out of loyalty, as he was the only one to put his life on the line when he could have easily sought Fuinjutsu knowledge somewhere else.
• Confound Them with Kindness: Kakashi thinks this was the fake Yugao's plan when she infiltrated Konoha's ANBU corps — befriending him and lowering his guard so he wouldn't suspect her of being a spy. He feels simmering rage and utter confusion at how his close friend, the first he'd allowed himself to have after his teammate's tragic demise, betrayed the village so easily. The reality proves to be a subversion, though, because the whole affair is accidental on the impostor's part. For her, it's a much-needed pause on her hectic life.
• Demoted to Extra: Sasuke, Naruto, the rest of the Konoha 12, the Jonin instructors, and Jiraiya. Most of them get their Day in the Limelight, though. The Sandaime also gets this treatment in his fight against Orochimaru at the peak of the Konoha Crush.
• Evil Power Vacuum: At some point in the past, Danzo inexplicably disappeared for a while, leaving a huge power vacuum in ROOT, as every agent strived for his approval and favor. More than one of them expected to be his successor. Of these ones, Charca collected the most influence and made sure of marking everyone's tongue with a seal of his design to ensure obedience to him. Everyone but Río. As Charca's regime grew senselessly crueler and oppressive, roughly half the ROOT agents started to rebel against him in any way they could and silently supported the unmarked agent until Danzo came back.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Averted with Akiha Nara, whose name means autumn leaves and it just happened to be dawn (therefore, orange) when he was born. This foreshadows the fact Akiha is Shibuimaru's son as the latter is stated to have not cared for his son one bit.
  • Itachi calls his main crow summon Karasu, which is how "crow" is pronounced in Japanese. When Sakura encounters Karasu while he was spying on Sasuke for Itachi, she gets fond of it and names it Shi-chan. Shi means death in Japanese (and also four, but Four Is Death), and -chan is an endearment Japanese honorific for pets and young children.
  • Río means river in Spanish and points at her mastery of the Water Release techniques. Her true name, Inoue is also related to water because it translates to "above the well". This could mean that, before entering ROOT, she hadn't reached her full potential and that she was safe from danger.
  • All of Yuna's names throughout her life are ironic given her attitude. Yuna itself means kindness which the woman is but only for those she cares about, and even then is more like a rough love. Rasna has two meanings: a ray of light (especially ironic considering the Suna shinobi who gave her the name also held her captive in the dark) and rope. It's possible the second alludes to her status as the previous One-Tail host — as in the rope that contains the beast. Finally, Touka can be translated as "perfect scent/perfume". It's not like the woman stinks but it's a name far too delicate for a hardened, weary old woman like her.
• Meta Origin: Several secondary characters are descendants of Tobirama Senju, ranging from those who nearly turn Sakura into a Supporting Protagonist to those who are key parts in backstories, subplots, or both. They also owe their more outstanding skills to him and his Uzumaki wife. And that's not even counting how his status as Danzo's beloved sensei prompted the latter to track them down, thus intertwining the fates of several people.
  • Touka, his youngest daughter who was abducted by Suna in the Second Shinobi War to get their hands in Fuinjutsu and land a blow in her father. Later, they sealed Shukaku into her and renamed her Rasna. At some point during the Third Shinobi War, she was betrayed and sent to kill but survived thanks to Tsunade's teachings and Orochimaru coming to her rescue. She then moved to Konoha where she changed her name to Yuna. Several years later, she befriends Sakura. More shockingly, she is hinted to be one of Orochimaru's several moles in Konoha.
  • Chihiro, his granddaughter whose family hid in Tea Country as farmers. She inherited his grandfather’s intelligence, pragmatic lethality, and potential seeing she engineered very efficient terrace-based irrigation systems for their rice paddies and made chunin with little training and sheer determination when she moved to Konoha. She did the latter so the stuck-up Yamanaka Clan Elders would allow her to marry their heir. She mothered two daughters.
  • Charca, his grandson though a lot younger who tried to make a living by terrorizing and stealing from Rain Country’s peasants and farmers after his mother’s demise. He recruited a gang of orphaned children and together they disguised as a menacing black bear. He proved to be a prodigy in Fuinjutsu by applying his mother’s teachings to control wild animals through cloth-made seals. Shibuimaru found him and forced him to join ROOT, where he would later attempt to seize Danzo’s power.
  • Río, his grand-granddaughter and Chihiro’s daughter and originally called Inoue who was kidnapped at a young age to be trained into a ROOT agent but had a rather convoluted story with the foundation. Several escape attempts, at least twice times she was Left for Dead, an infiltration into ANBU, the grueling survival training of an entire ROOT division, and getting to be The Dragon for Danzo are some of her more notable exploits. She inherited her ancestor’s knack for Water Release, stubbornness, and most of his out-of-the-box but genius thinking. Finally, she got to interact with Shibuimaru, Minato, Kakashi, and Shishui at different points in her life.
• Power Crutch: Sakura cannot perform the Body Flicker technique without the help of her crow summons. This owed to the uncanny speed she acquires when she performes it, making it impossible for her eyes to follow where she's going or to have environmental awareness. Granted, she could do it without smacking herself against stuff if she knows the place extremely well, but in a fight, she might still appear in a kunai or a jutsu's trajectory. To compensate, she summons a flock of crows, connects them and herself in a hivemind, and sees through their eyes. In general, nobody can use the Body Flicker without a Sharingan or solutions similar to what Sakura engineered.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Inverted and justified. It all starts with Sasuke hating Sakura's guts for getting in his way to achieve power which makes every interaction with him too awkward and unbearable. The distance and spending more time interacting with other people causes her to realize how shallow her crush on Sasuke is and stop pining after him. To be fair, she went after him in a self-assertion move. To make the statement she wasn't any less than her Clan classmates, that she had the same potential to be strong and a worthy kunoichi as them.
• Sensing You Are Outmatched: Danzo tries to score brownie points to his beloved sensei, Tobirama Senju, by "suggesting" he fights against his supposed student, Río, in order to prevent Tobirama's revived self to slaughter the rest of the Konoha nin. Though Danzo's subordinate is a very resourceful and skillful kunoichi herself, she knows she's no match for the Second Hokage. Therefore, she invokes this trope and flees. Unfortunately, Tobirama chases after her and she has to resource to every unexpected and/or dirty trick under her sleeve just to avoid dying, never mind actually landing a blow on him.
• Super Special Move: Yuna gifts Sakura a special explosive tag that reads "destroy" on the center. She warns her that it's for emergencies only — and lo and behold when Sakura finally has the chance to activate it, the explosion is enough to rip apart from the inside one of Orochimaru's gigantic snake summons. To survive, Sakura and the shinobi she's trying to rescue have to entirely coat themselves in chakra. And, even then, they are in need of medical aid. To put it in scale, normal explosive tags wouldn't have even scratched the summon and moderately strong ninjas can shrug them off.
• Supporting Protagonist: Subverted. As we get to know Río’s intricate backstory linking her to more people than Danzo Shimura while she herself gets to be one of the most relevant players of the Konoha Crush’s arc, it seems like this whole ordeal engulfs Sakura’s struggles and developments. However, Sakura did play a huge role in the previous plot points and stirred many changes. Furthermore, her role in the respites of the said events is still impacting enough to guarantee her status as the Main Character.
• Team Member in the Adaptation: Minato joined ROOT when he was a jonin shortly after meeting kid Kakashi. As the narration puts it, he seemed to flourish there. It's hinted he had motives different from the usual ROOT agenda (kidnapping children to turn them into even younger child soldiers, completing the more morally black missions, and disregarding the Sandaime as the village leader). However, by chapter 33 said motivations are still unknown.
• Training from Hell: A self-imposed one after Orochimaru stole Sasuke's eyes and once Shi-chan persuaded her disaster was upon them (i.e., the Oto and Suna invasion). Sakura wakes up at dawn and goes to train with Itachi who put her taijutsu, aiming, and chakra reserves up to par in a way only a perfectionist can. Soon enough, he makes her do her katas while using the Air Walking technique. Once Itachi leaves the village to return his duties, she keeps doing the same but replaces their spars with other things. She pits herself against Academy kids or a flock of her summons to accustom herself to fight against several opponents at the same time. At 9, she has her shift in a very busy restaurant where she has to keep moving while still tired and stick the dishes with chakra so they don't fall. Whenever she can, she refines her chakra control with chakra threads. In the night, she performs various odd jobs, with several of them also including physical activity. When she is done, she sometimes practices her katas. As expected, though her training yields more than satisfying results (particularly in terms of her chakra capacity), one day she collapses from exhaustion and doesn't wake up for four days. This insane training also has the pleasant side effect of improving her sleep seeing she's too tired to have nightmares about Orochimaru and Itachi's illness.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee:
  • Subverted with Sakura’s nearly suicidal bet to kill Orochimaru’s gigantic summon. Her improved chakra-sensing and her fine chakra-control are enough for her to learn chakra-coating from Ahika while both of them are within the snake’s gastric tract. She then activates an overpowered explosive tag and, miraculously, the snake is torn from the inside and both her and the other shinobi are alive if in severe need of medical aid.
  • Played straight with Kakashi’s idea to bring down Río. The narration spends some time with him pondering just how to defeat a mind-reader and Jiraiya’s failed and awkward bonding attempt with him revolves around creating a seal to cancel out her abilities. When the time comes, it seems to have worked but her resourcefulness and his reluctance to deal the killing blow prompt his plan to fail.
  • Zigzagged with both of Río's crazy plans during the Konoha Crush. The plans do succeed as the unease ROOT-ANBU joint team manages to break the Fuinjutsu barriers caging the former Hokage, Orochimaru, the Sandaime, Danzo, and the Clan Heads, but they derail at some point or another. The first plan goes without a hitch (throw the Hokage Tower to the barrier and exploit the glitch to saturate with chakra the inner layers, then use a ROOT agent’s Kekkei Genkai to support the remaining structures), but the Kekkei Genkai refuse to care about collateral damage. To clarify it involved letting the agent be possessed by a psychopath, long-dead Nara whose only goal was to set a score with one of the people inside the barriers. When the Nara gets his fight, his attacks’ splash damage affects Oto, Suna, and Konoha nin indistinctly. Regarding the second plan, Río fakes her death so she can wet the seal tags with a time-consuming and precise Water jutsu. Only one remains when the Clan Heads inside the barrier realize she’s very much alive and stare at her, thus alerting a Suna nin of her ploy. Kakashi warns her in time for her to dodge, but they now need to rely on a third teammate to destroy the last tag.
• Wax On, Wax Off: As noted in the description, Kakashi does this to subtly but surely improve Sakura's stamina, endurance, and speed. What did he make her do? To walk his dog summons whom Sakura describes as demon spawns. Justified as she has to chase them all over Konoha with few if any moments of respite and using chakra to walk on vertical surfaces and jump large distances just so she can keep up with the dogs. First, he asks her to do it as a "thank you" for comforting her after the first test flop. Then as an exchange for the brand new genjutsu he's crafting for her. It ends up as an indirect bonding activity between the two. Sakura is delighted to note the effects while running from a very pissed Orochimaru.

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