The kunai struck true.
It wasn't a clean, silent hit. It was clumsy, a desperate throw from a girl who had never aimed at a comrade in her life. The steel blade sliced through the orange fabric of Naruto's jacket and bit into the flesh of his shoulder with a wet thwack.
The impact was negligible to the raging power of the Nine-Tails. The pain was a pinprick. But the shock—the sheer, unadulterated shock—was a bucket of ice water to his soul.
The torrential red chakra enveloping Naruto flickered violently. The feral, slitted eyes widened, the crimson receding like a dying fire, revealing glimpses of horrified, familiar blue. His guttural roar choked in his throat, replaced by a strangled gasp.
"S-Sakura-chan…?"
His voice, though rough, was his own.
Across the bridge, Haku froze mid-motion inside his mirrors. The attack was tactically insane. It made no sense. Why would the girl, the weakest link, attack her own rampaging teammate? It was an act of self-sabotage. This momentary confusion broke his rhythm, his perfect, flowing dance of death stalling for a single, crucial second.
Even Kakashi, locked in a deadly exchange with Zabuza, felt the shift. A flicker of his gaze was all he could spare, but it was enough. He saw the kunai embedded in Naruto's shoulder and Sakura's defiant, terrified stance. "Sakura!" he barked, a warning laced with disbelief.
Sakura ignored them all. Her world had narrowed to two people: the boy she had just wounded, and the boy she refused to let die.
"Shut up and look, Naruto!" she screamed, her voice cracking but laced with an authority she'd never wielded before. "He's not dead!"
She didn't wait for his response. Fueled by the phantom agony of her simulated death, she ran. She scrambled across the cracked concrete, past Naruto's stunned form, and fell to her knees beside Sasuke.
The air was thick with killing intent, Haku's cold fury radiating from the mirrors. A volley of senbon could end her at any moment. She knew it. But the memory of the bridge collapsing on top of her was a far more immediate terror. Inaction was death. This, at least, was a chance.
Her hands, guided by the [Minor Chakra Control Enhancement], trembled as they reached for Sasuke's neck. In the Academy, they'd practiced feeling for a pulse, but it was a sterile, academic exercise. This was real. His skin was cold, clammy. For a horrifying moment, she felt nothing.
No. I saw it. The simulation was based on what is. He can't be…
She pushed down her panic, focusing her chakra into her fingertips. It wasn't Iryojutsu, not yet, but it was a hyper-sensitive probe. She concentrated, filtering out the rumble of the distant fight, the pounding of her own heart… and then she found it.
Faint. Thready. As slow as a hibernating animal's. But it was there. A tiny, stubborn flutter of life.
"He has a pulse!" she shouted, relief and triumph making her dizzy. "Naruto, he's alive! Haku put him in a death-like state! He's alive!"
The last vestiges of red chakra vanished from Naruto. His blue eyes, now fully clear, locked onto Sasuke's still form, then onto Sakura's face, seeing the desperate truth there. The grief that had been fueling his rage was instantly replaced by a wave of bone-deep relief, followed by a new, colder fury. It wasn't the mindless wrath of a beast, but the focused anger of a boy whose most precious person had been threatened.
He turned his gaze back to the ice mirrors, his knuckles white. "You… You'll pay for that."
Just then, a sleek, blue window shimmered into existence in Sakura's peripheral vision, visible only to her.
[Path Divergence Detected.]
[Event: Naruto Uzumaki's Jinchuriki state successfully de-escalated by User intervention.]
[Prior Simulation Outcome: 100% Failure.]
[Current Projected Outcome: Survival Probability Increased to 17.42%.]
Seventeen percent.
It was a horrible, terrifyingly low number. But it wasn't zero. It was a fighting chance, earned with a kunai and a scream. It was everything.
Haku, realizing his psychological ploy was shattered, finally moved. His deception had failed, leaving only direct conflict. A figure blurred from one of the mirrors, senbon glinting, aiming not for Naruto, but for the vulnerable pair on the ground. He had to finish the job.
"I won't let you!" Naruto roared. He wasn't faster than Haku, not yet. But his protective instinct was a force of nature. He threw himself in front of Sakura and Sasuke, a human shield of orange and pure determination.
The battle resumed, but its nature had changed. Naruto, clear-headed but still brimming with residual Kyuubi chakra, was a different kind of opponent. He was sloppy, he was wild, but he was thinking. He used Shadow Clones as decoys, as probes, as shields. He fought with a desperate cunning born from his desire to protect the two people kneeling behind him.
Sakura's role was set. She couldn't fight, but she was the anchor. She huddled over Sasuke's body, her hands glowing with a faint, useless green as she tried to recall every word of first-aid training she'd ever read. She was a beacon, a living reason for Naruto to keep fighting, a constant reminder of what was at stake.
The fight blurred into a chaotic symphony of shouts, clashing metal, and shattering ice. It ended, as perhaps it was always meant to, with a sacrifice. But not Kakashi's.
Zabuza, cornered by Kakashi's Ninken, was about to be struck down by a Raikiri. Haku, seeing his master's imminent demise, moved faster than lightning. He appeared not as a weapon, but as a shield. The crackle of lightning, the sickening sound of it piercing a human body, and the sudden, profound silence that followed.
The rest was a grim epilogue. The arrival of Gato and his thugs. Zabuza's final, bloody rampage. Two Demon Shinobi, dying side-by-side in the mist.
As the sun finally broke through the clouds, casting a watery light on the carnage, Team 7 was left standing. Battered, bleeding, and exhausted, but standing. All of them.
Naruto finally collapsed from chakra exhaustion, falling near Sasuke, who was just beginning to stir, his fingers twitching.
Sakura felt a wave of dizziness so profound she nearly pitched forward. The chakra cost of the simulation, though she hadn't understood it at the time, was hitting her now. It felt like she'd run for three days straight. Her limbs were heavy, her mind a thick fog.
But through the fog, one thing was clear. The memory of the other future. Kakashi-sensei's dead body. Naruto, captured. Her own drowning. It felt more real than the scene in front of her. A ghost of a world that had almost been. A secret she would carry forever.
A shadow fell over her. She looked up to see Kakashi-sensei. He had sealed Zabuza and Haku's bodies in a scroll and was now looking down at her, his single eye unreadable.
"Sakura," he said, his voice quiet, stripped of its usual lazy drawl. "What you did back there… throwing a kunai at Naruto. That was the most reckless, illogical, and dangerous decision a shinobi in your position could have possibly made."
She flinched, expecting a lecture.
He knelt down, his gaze intense. "It was also the only reason we're all alive. Tell me. How did you know it would work?"
Sakura stared back at him, her heart pounding. How could she explain? How could she tell him that she had already watched them all die? That she was living on borrowed time, playing a game with rules only she could see?
"I… I just had a feeling," she whispered, the lie tasting like ash in her mouth.
Kakashi's eye narrowed slightly, scrutinizing her. He saw the new, unnerving depth in her gaze, the weariness that didn't belong on a twelve-year-old's face. He knew she was lying. And he knew, with a certainty that chilled him, that on this bridge, in the Land of Waves, something fundamental about his most underestimated student had changed forever.