A/N: Just a hint: this might not be what it seems. Don't say I didn't warn you. Suggestions and feedback always appreciated.

Edit: I really debated on whether or not to categorize this as a crossover, since I don't want anyone to feel "tricked" by the twist, so I'm just letting you know ahead of time. Crossover elements ahoy. However, I hope that readers will be able to follow along with little to no knowledge of the crossover anime in question and the setting and characters referenced are from Naruto (..for now..?). Happy reading!

Chapter I: Enter the Ninja

"Miss?"

A man's voice echoed in her head, far off and distorted, as if it was coming through a filter or projected from another room. Was he talking to her?

"Miss, are you alright?"

The voice was much louder this time.

"You've been staring into space for the past few minutes," the man said, placing a hand on her shoulder from behind.

The touch made her jolt, and her eyes snapped into focus.

"Not that it's any of my business, but you're holding up the line."

Everything was suddenly crisp, and she looked around her, stunned and utterly disoriented.

"Um, sorry…" Without thinking, she stepped forward, taking in the scene in front of her. She was standing in front of a long, rectangular counter at a food stand of some sort. There were people waiting in line behind her, and several customers sat in stools along a bar area, some eating silently while others conversed in low, jovial tones.

Her attention was drawn back to the counter at the sound of the cashier impatiently clearing her throat.

"You still need to pay," the woman said, her fingers tapping lightly on the take-out box that was sitting on the counter.

Um… Where am I? Why is everyone staring at me?

She had learned many lessons over the course of her life. Some lessons, of course, were more useful than others, and the most useful lesson was this: fake it 'til you make it. In other words, when you zone out in a public place, always pretend like you know exactly where you are and how you got there. True, maybe for a more self-aware person, this wouldn't qualify as groundbreaking, life-changing advice, but for her?

Incredibly useful.

"Oh! Right, pay, of course."

I'm normal, I swear.

Mechanically, she reached down for her purse, only to find herself grabbing thin air. Where…? Oh no. Not this again.

"Gah… my purse, it's gone!"

Panicking, she continued to fruitlessly grasp through the air for her obviously not-present purse, as if perhaps maybe it would magically appear if she just stood there long enough. Oh no, did I leave it at my house again? At the coffee shop? …Did I leave it on the bus?!

She heard the cashier sigh. "Did you check your pouch?" The woman said pointedly, eyeing somewhere below her waist.

"Pouch?"

Following suit, she looked down and saw a black pouch wrapped snugly around her leg, half-hidden from view beneath her dress.

That was… weird. She didn't remember putting on a red dress, and she didn't even own any black pouches. Then again, she had always had problems with her memory. It's not as if this would be the first time a piece of clothing had disappeared or reappeared out of the blue.

"Miss…"

"S-sorry..!" She stuttered, quickly diving her hand towards the pouch. She opened it, blindly grabbed for the contents, and pulled out a handful of coins.

Thank goodness…

Tossing the coins onto the counter, she froze when she realized that she didn't recognize the currency.

Had she gotten lost in a foreign country again? She was never going to hear the end of this…

Quickly grabbing the take-out container, she left all of the coins on the counter—the woman didn't seem to be complaining, so it must have been enough—and scurried out of line.

She got about twenty feet before panic set in.

Rows of buildings stood on either side of her, separated by a large dirt road: the architecture looked modern and strangely familiar, but…

Where was she? Where was here? And… Oh, no. This was setting a new record for her, really. It was actually kind of impressive.

She'd managed to space out so hard that she'd forgotten her own name. Was that even possible?!

Quick, status check. Name? No idea. Age? Drawing a blank. Location? Um…

Her brow furrowed as she tried to piece together what she did remember: she had vague memories of attending school, participating in club activities, hanging out with her friends… but their faces were blurry, the details just out of reach.

Absently, she wondered if she should be more upset about this. Sure, she was currently standing the middle of a fairly busy road, looking utterly terrified, but… Logic told her that yes, she should be frightened. Amnesia was not normal. Coming to your senses in the middle of ordering take-out was also very definitely not normal, and having all of this occur in some sort of foreign country was… well, you know. Dangerous.

More importantly, her purse was missing.

Someone probably mugged me. And I liked that purse, I think. I mean, I don't remember what it looked like, but I'm almost positive I liked it.

And that meant…

She glanced down at the red dress she was wearing, at the black pouch she did not recognize, and sucked in a sharp breath. She wasn't wearing her own clothes, and she had amnesia.

Oh god. Somebody pr-probably... probably...

All of the blood drained from her face as she was swarmed with images of faceless men grabbing her clothing, groping her, coupled with images of herself fruitlessly struggling to get away—she could even imagine herself cry out, "N-no! Please s-stop! What are you doing? Aaaaaah!"

"Oh, hey!"

She blinked, momentarily snapping out of her self-induced panic. An oddly familiar man was walking towards her, lightly waving a hand in greeting. His dress was odd, and maybe someone else's eyes would have been drawn towards the scar across his nose, but it was the sight of the silver hitai-ate resting innocently across his forehead that knocked the wind from her lungs.

That was… it was… "Iruka…?"

No. It was just not possible.

Iruka smiled at her. "Picking up lunch for the team?"

There was silence. She was staring up at him with large, comically wide eyes.

"Um…. Sakura, are you okay?" Iruka's smile dropped.

If her silence hadn't been an indicator that something was wrong, the sight of his ex-student bursting into tears and falling dramatically to the floor in a heap definitely tipped him off.

"N-no, I'm not alright!" Sakura sobbed, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. "I've been mugged, kidnapped, violated, I have no idea where I am and I-I'm so traumatized that I've managed to convince myself that I've been sucked into Naruto!"

With that, Iruka also found himself at a complete loss for words.

Sakura's first lesson upon entering the world of Naruto: When you crumple into a ball and start hyperventilating in the middle of town, your ex-Academy instructor will then escort you to Konoha's hospital, where you will be poked and prodded and spend the next several hours convincing the hospital staff that you're really okay, you swear. Really, you just forgot where you were, and you've been having a lot of trouble with your memory and maybe just hallucinated a tad…

Sakura's second lesson was that Konoha's doctors took these sorts of episodes very seriously (because apparently dissociative amnesia was a thing), and that admitting to frequent memory loss got you escorted down to the psych ward for a full evaluation. Fortunately, instead of asking her questions about what she remembered about herself, the doctors kept asking her about how she was sleeping, was she eating any better, and had her nightmares started dying down yet? Her file indicated that her genin team had recently returned from the Land of Waves, after all, and Sakura hadn't been coping very well with it.

Sakura didn't remember any of this happening in the manga, but by God, she was going to play that up for all it was worth. Because she was terrified, and she did have amnesia.

The only problem?

Her amnesia was about her own life, not Sakura's.

Oh, sure, she didn't remember much about Sakura's life either. After all, it's not as if the manga focused much on the day to day lives of its characters. Still, when you remembered more about a piece of manga you've read than what you were doing yesterday, there was a problem.

When you remembered the name a fictional character but couldn't remember your own name, there was a big damn problem.

Methodically, Sakura found herself sorting through her memories, trying to figure out what she did and didn't know. She was able to list off a handful of other manga novels, which she usually read on her way home. She definitely had some non-identifying knowledge of her world and even some situation-specific memories—like attending high school—but everything else was curiously blank. She knew she had friends and family, but she couldn't for the life of her remember their names or faces.

A few bouts of crying hysterically, a few well-played states of pretend-catatonia—and one or two instances of actually zoning out, but that really couldn't be helped—and Sakura was finally discharged. One would think catatonic behavior would get you committed, but Konoha's psych ward seemed more interested in questioning people and less interested in actually treating mental problems.

She was escorted home by her parents, who spent the walk home loudly lamenting their decision to send their poor, pink-haired daughter off to ninja school.

"Sakura, honey, could you get the door please?" Mebuki—Sakura's mother, if she could remember to call her that—called out from the kitchen.

Upon hearing her mother, Sakura paused. She had been in the process of ransacking her room, only recently having managed to escape to the relative solitude of her bedroom.

As soon as they arrived home, Sakura was stuck listening to her parents bicker with each other. She was then ordered to help her mother make dinner, and then she was told to clean the dishes, and then she was kicked out of the kitchen for stressing her mother out (who then proceeded to stress-bake several batches of chocolate chip cookies). When she was finally allowed to retreat to her bedroom, her father demanded she keep the door open because "it wasn't healthy to be cooped up like that." He then went on a tangent about how the doctors said she shouldn't be alone, and how she really should spend more time with her family and was apparently in need of more "social and emotional support."

How the real Sakura managed to balance family life with what she remembered about Naruto's ninja escapades was a mystery.

Sighing in defeat, Sakura exited her room and dragged herself towards the front door. Flinging it open, she found herself face to face with Kakashi Hatake.

Her first reaction?

She was starstruck.

For several moments, Sakura could only gape at him. Outside of Iruka and her own reflection, Sakura realized that this was the first main character she'd come face to face with. And he was tall, and a ninja, and his outfit was awesome, and his hair was—well, actually, he could probably use a haircut, but otherwise he was just…

"So cool…"

Kakashi blinked at her. "Um, hello… Sakura-san?"

"Oh!" She flushed. "Um, uh, I'm sorry! Can I help you? Do you want to come in? I.. I can make you some tea!" Sakura said this all very quickly, embarrassed and still not quite over her dazed first impression.

"Thank you for the offer, but I shouldn't be too long. I—"

"Sakura?" Mebuki called out, poking her head around the corner. When she saw Kakashi, she scowled fiercely and strolled through the living room towards the front door. "You!" She seethed, eyes narrowing in obvious displeasure."I've been meaning to have a talk with you."

Uh… Sakura gulped, and she saw Kakashi do the same.

"Ah, hello, Haruno-san-"

"Don't you 'Hello, Haruno-san' me!" Mebuki seethed, forcibly pushing Sakura away from the front door.

"Um, miss-I mean, mother…" Sakura tentatively tugged on Mebuki's sleeve, but the woman ignored her.

Sakura was forced to sit there and listen to Mebuki rant and rave at Kakashi, her face growing redder and redder as the conversation went on.

"…almost got my daughter killed! What kind of jonin-instructor leads their brand new genin team on a B-rank mission? You should have taken them home immediately—"

This continued for the next five minutes, and by the end of it, Sakura felt immensely sorry for her new teacher.

"You are completely right, Haruno-san."

Sakura blinked.

"Uh… huh?"

"It was completely unacceptable for us to have put your daughter in such danger without adequate preparation," Kakashi said in an even tone. "After I heard she missed the rest of today's training because she was in the hospital, I came here to personally check on her and make sure she was doing okay. My, something smells wonderful. Are those cookies?"

"Ah, my cookies!" Successfully distracted, Mebuki ran back to the kitchen, leaving Sakura alone with Kakashi once more.

He did not seem inclined to speak with her, though, and was patiently waiting for Mebuki to return from the kitchen. Needless to say, it was awkward.

When Mebuki finally re-entered the room, she had a plateful of warm cookies with her and seemed to be in a much better mood. "Now, where were we, again?"

"I see you managed to save them," Kakashi said, neatly sidestepping the question. "Those look delicious."

"Oh, yes, thank you for reminding me," her mother smiled. "I got a bit carried away with my cooking, it seems. Would you like some?"

"I would love some," Kakashi smiled right back at her.

Sakura stared at him with a blank face. Are you kidding me?

"You don't happen to have any bakers in the Haruno family tree, do you?" Kakashi said, after having removed his mask and taken a bite of the cookie her mother offered. "These might be the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever tasted."

He was really laying it on thick, wasn't he?

Who knew Kakashi could be this suave?

"O-oh, well, I don't know…" Mebuki stammered, mirroring Sakura's earlier dazed expression. "They're nothing special…"

"No, really, they're wonderful—"

"..Ah, but back on topic…" Kakashi continued, "Given Sakura's condition, I thought it might be good for her to take the next week off and relax some. It's not normally something we do, of course, but I think in this case it'd be perfectly acceptable. She's a wonderful student, at any rate, and the break would be well-deserved."

Mebuki glowed with pride.

"Additionally, I have some… personal matters to attend to, so it works out quite well."

That was all Mebuki needed to hear: the tables turned, her mother thanked him for understanding, noting how rare it was for ninjas to get "time off" and how impressed she was for checking up on her daughter. After promising him that Sakura would be well-taken care of for the next week, Mebuki insisted on sending some cookies home with him, which Kakashi readily accepted.

After Mebuki handed him the container full of cookies and having lathered on a few more compliments, Kakashi gave another enigmatic smile—he was really quite handsome, Sakura noted—before finishing up his last cookie.

Pulling his mask back up, he gave a one-handed wave. "See you next week, then, Sakura-san."

With that, Kakashi turned and left, leaving a dumbfounded Sakura staring after him as he walked off.

Wait a second. Had she just seen Kakashi Hatake's face?