After returning to her parents' home to prepare for the Akatsuki Assassination Mission, Sakura took a brief detour to the Hyūga compound next door to return one of Hinata's missing Byakugan. She had prised it from Dodai's eye socket on the journey back to the Hidden Leaf, leaving his unconscious body by the roadside.
When she asked to see Hinata, Sakura was greeted warmly by the Hyūga clan's patriarch himself in the drawing room, along with Hinata and other important members of their family, but to her shock, she soon found herself facing an entirely different sort of trouble when she tried to return the eye.
"What do you mean, you don't want it back?" said Sakura, aghast. "Do you have the faintest idea how much trouble I went to just to get your eye back?"
"Hinata!" said Hiashi in disbelief. "The Byakugan is the pride of the Hyūga clan! It's thanks to our Dōjutsu that the Hidden Leaf stands undefeatable in war! How could you refuse this heaven‑sent chance to reclaim your heritage?"
"I… I… I…" Hinata spluttered.
Hinata looked left and right, panic clawing at her heart.
The room had erupted into an uproar. Everyone was talking at once, so she couldn't get a word in edgeways. The clan elders were arguing with the clan head over whether she even deserved to have her eye back, or if it ought to go to someone who'd lost theirs in battle. Meanwhile, her imaginary friend chattered in her ear the loudest of all, drowning out every other voice.
"Oh, how the noble Ōtsutsuki clan has fallen, if their descendants are such fools," Ōtsutsuki Urashiki bemoaned, drifting lazily around Hinata's head, unseen by all but her. "I suppose this is what comes of mingling with mere monkeys."
"If getting my eyes back means becoming more like you," Hinata mouthed, "then I don't want them back!"
Noticing Hinata's eye flick skywards for the briefest instant, Sakura couldn't help wondering if the little bitch hadn't just rolled her eyes at her. She looked up too, curious to see what had caught Hinata's attention, but saw nothing.
"That pink‑haired girl…" Urashiki murmured, paying no heed to Hinata's words. "How peculiar… the more I sense it, the more her chakra feels oddly familiar. I didn't notice it before since I was dying at the time, but I could swear I've tasted something like it before..."
Urashiki tossed her long, silken hair with a scoff. Impossible. The monkeys of this star hadn't even mastered flight, let alone flight out of their own atmosphere, so interstellar travel was out of the question. How could this girl's chakra possibly carry the taste of a fruit she'd devoured on a far‑off star, aeons ago?
Hinata hiccoughed in surprise as Sakura's eyes flared scarlet without warning, locking on Urashiki's curvaceous form as she hovered above her head.
"I could've sworn there was something there," Sakura muttered, her irises fading back to their usual green. "Strange."
Urashiki's eyes widened slightly. For a fraction of a second, the pink-haired girl had just barely sensed her existence but failed to see her.
"Ho, ho," said Urashiki, a note of reluctant admiration in her voice. "For a mere monkey, your friend's chakra is surprisingly refined. I'm not quite sure how she's doing it, but it's almost approaching the level of an Ōtsutsuki… but if you were to surrender control of your body to me, you'd eclipse her strength in an instant…"
As a relatively new arrival to the shinobi continent, Urashiki didn't know about senjutsu chakra, which was a step down from the Six Paths Senjutsu Chakra that Ōtsutsuki clan members could obtain directly through the consumption of a chakra fruit.
"Well, not to be rude, but I really must be off— I've got a mission," said Sakura, pressing the glass jar containing Hinata's Byakugan into its rightful owner's hands. "Oh, and I'll need that jar back when you're done with it. My mum won't be able to make her pickles without it."
…
The rain was still hammering down outside when Sakura exited the Hyūga Compound.
As she neared the village gates, where the rest of Team 7 waited for her, Sakura pulled her standard‑issue waterproof cloak tightly around herself, shivering slightly. Her teammates were also wearing the same all white and red‑striped cloaks. What little snow had fallen had long since melted or been washed away, and though the trees had kept their leaves through the mild winter, it was still early January, so the rain was freezing cold.
"Good, you're here," said Kakashi‑sensei, nodding as Sakura reached the gates. "Lord Jiraiya mentioned that Honoured Sages inherently possess a kind of sensory ninjutsu that's impossible to detect, so we'll be relying on you for the initial approach."
"He's already left?" Sakura asked timidly. "Jiraiya-sama, I mean."
"There's no need to worry about Pervy Sage, ya know?" said Naruto lightly. "He might look like a pervy old geezer, and he might act like one too, but… er… wait— where was I going with that again, hehe?"
Kakashi frowned.
Back in the Hokage's office, he had noticed Sakura growing unusually fidgety when Lord Jiraiya mentioned his mission. From their few encounters, Kakashi knew Sakura wasn't particularly fond of Jiraiya because of his shameless tendency to let his eyes wander, so it puzzled him to see her suddenly so worried. As far as she knew, Jiraiya was heading out on a routine mission, and he was a man who ate S-rank missions for breakfast.
Why, then, the sudden concern?
"Is something the matter, Sakura?" Kakashi asked.
Sakura nodded quickly, her eyes darting towards Sasuke for the briefest instant… a detail Kakashi did not miss. After instructing Naruto and Sasuke to wait, Kakashi led Sakura to a small, secluded room in the guardsmen's quarters near the gate and closed the door behind them.
"Naruto and Sasuke still don't know the true nature of your Kekkei Genkai, so I'm guessing this has something to do with that, since you clearly didn't want them overhearing whatever you're about to say," said Kakashi evenly. "So, mind telling me what's got you looking quite so terrified, Sakura‑chan?"
"Do you know about the Holy Miko of the Land of Demons, Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura asked anxiously. "I stole her Kekkei Genkai…"
Kakashi nodded.
"It's said she has the power to see the future," he said, his tone serious. "So, I take it something bad will happen to Lord Jiraiya if he goes on this mission?"
"It's not something I can do on command, and I wasn't sure what I saw at first, but yes, that's exactly what happens," said Sakura, her voice trembling as she came up with a lie on the spot. "If he goes, he'll succeed in his mission in Amegakure and transmit crucial intel about the Akatsuki's leader to the Hidden Leaf, but he'll die…"
Kakashi breathed in sharply.
Lord Jiraiya might usually take his time with missions, but whenever the Akatsuki was involved, he became almost unnervingly diligent, for some reason. Kakashi had no doubt that, in the hour since his departure, Lord Jiraiya was already halfway to his destination, Amegakure.
Amegakure was a famously secluded nation, nestled in the buffer zone between the Lands of Fire, Wind, and Earth. It was fiercely guarded by the strongest shinobi alive— Hanzō of the Salamander. Though he hadn't been seen for several months, his reputation alone was enough to keep outsiders at bay. Even the Five Great Nations thought twice before setting foot in Amegakure uninvited, because without fail, they would lose contact with their spies within hours of them crossing into the Land of Rain.
There was a reason Lord Jiraiya had chosen to infiltrate Amegakure solo: he was the only one confident enough to enter its capital undetected and still escape with his life. Lady Tsunade would never send Leaf shinobi into the Land of Rain if it meant certain death, so Kakashi doubted she'd allow anyone to follow Jiraiya into the Rain's capital, even if it was to save him.
No messenger hawk would catch up to Jiraiya-sama in time with an hour's delay, and Lady Tsunade wouldn't send anyone after him.
As leader of Team 7, Kakashi had his orders: he was to lead his team in assassinating Hoshigaki Kisame and Uchiha Itachi of the Akatsuki without taking any detours, but in that moment, he could help but remember his own catchphrase:
In the Ninja World, those who break the rules are scum, that's true...but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum!
When his father took his own life, Kakashi closed his heart to others, determined never to face the same choice that had destroyed him. Yet, despite his resolve to stay detached, he ended up joining Lord Minato's team and found himself caring for Rin and Obito… only to lose all three of them, one after the other, and sink into a depression so deep it seemed bottomless.
It was only years later, through his three disciples Naruto, Sakura, and his beloved Sasuke, that he began at last to glimpse a light at the end of the tunnel. And now, fate had brought him back to the same impossible choice his father had once faced:
To save his sensei's sensei, he would have to abandon his mission and his students and would likely die in the attempt. Yet if he ignored Sakura's warning, he would still be abandoning a comrade. Either way, he would have to live knowing he was worse than scum for the rest of his life…
"Why not ask Team Guy for help?" Sakura said timidly. "It's their last day off too, I think…"