Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto.

A/N: Let me know if this sparks your interests, guys! I'm working on my other stuff too! This was inspired by iZombie and The Last of Us.

PROLOGUE

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It all started with a snake.

Which, in retrospect, was the defining sentence in all of Sakura's problems. See, even after the bloodiest and shortest war to date, for some reason, the Hidden Villages had decided to let public enemy number one, Orochimaru, and his cronies go free without any sort of punishment. To her immense surprise, he was put into the custody of the Hidden Leaf and thusly ignored. But, like most instances of catastrophic proportion, the Leaf had not handled it well and Orochimaru—despite having his prior experiment guard him for every minute of the hour—escaped.

Sakura still had nightmares about the man, so it did wonderful things to her psyche to see him gallivanting about the village like he'd done nothing wrong in his entire life. She had even implored Kakashi, as the Rokudaime, to pursue execution or some other punishment for all the villainous acts Orochimaru had committed in his lifetime—preferably one where he rotted away in a cold, dark cell for the rest of his life—as she'd never truly forgiven him for ruining all of what Team 7 had and could have been.

Regrettably, with this new era of peace, archaic methods of punishment were done away with—and that included execution. Instead, Orochimaru was to be fully inducted as a shinobi of the Leaf and was even allowed to keep his former bases in Sound. The council deemed it prudent that they seize all of Sound's assets under the guise of analyzing all of Kabuto's research to make advancements in the medical field, therefore improving the longevity of Konoha ninja in the battlefield.

But Sakura would rather cut off her own hands than use Kabuto's research to save lives when all he'd done to compile said research was torture and take them.

So when the day she'd been anticipating arrived, (because Sakura knew better than anyone else, barring Sasuke and Anko, that Orochimaru would escape) she had jumped on the opportunity to be on the Hunter team to bring him back and finally do what should have been done years ago.

Unfortunately, Orochimaru was as slippery as his namesake. They spent months upturning every rock, checking every source, every sighting, and every lead without result. They had even recruited the ever elusive Sasuke's aid, and he—with his monosyllabic answers—was barely any help. The Hunter team had returned to Konoha after six months with the weight of failure draping itself across their shoulders, and Sakura was never able to escape a persistent feeling of dread for a future with Orochimaru in it.

Honestly, she should have known that her business with him wasn't finished—that Orochimaru would be a constant nightmare in her life for as long as she lived. And no nightmare of hers was complete without being strapped, spread-eagle, to a table with a grotesque looking Kabuto looming over her with an ominous syringe.

Which was her current, unfortunate predicament.

War had not been kind to him, and fusing and de-fusing with Orochimaru's essence even less so.

Jerking against the leather chakra suppressing straps binding her neck, wrists, and ankles to a cold slab in one of Sound's hidden bases—one that not even Konoha knew of, Sakura bared her teeth as Kabuto checked and annotated the dosage in the syringe in a thick file.

"What are you going to do me?" Her voice was full of vitriol and rage as she tried to summon her chakra without result.

Kabuto ignored her as he calmly tied a band tightly around her bicep, tapping her vein none too gently, before sterilizing the area with an alcohol swab. Sakura's heart beat a frantic drum in her chest as he picked up the syringe and took a seat next to her straining form.

"Kabuto, you rat bastard, what are you doing?"

Kabuto tutted. "Language, Sakura-chan."

Sakura almost screeched with rage, but instead chose to focus what little chakra she could feel inwards in preparation to synthesize whatever it was that Kabuto planned on injecting her with. She wasn't stupid; she knew that Kabuto had plans to use her in one of his twisted experiments and there was no way she was going to let herself die from it.

Whatever "it" was.

"Well," Kabuto hummed, as if doing her a great favor. "As a fellow medic, I suppose I should at least give you the courtesy of knowing how vital your participation in this project is."

Remaining silent, Sakura willed away the rising panic. She was having difficulties gathering her chakra; Kabuto had left her with the bare minimum to function—definitely not enough to perform any type of medical ninjutsu or escape. With nauseating dread, Sakura knew that she would not be able to survive whatever it was that Kabuto had planned for her—with her normal mental and bodily capabilities intact, at least—without some type of divine intervention.

"You see," Kabuto started, his voice saccharine as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Orochimaru-sama was most disappointed in hearing about your opposition to his reinstatement as a Konoha shinobi."

"We should have executed him when we had the chance," Sakura spat, tugging at her arm whose lack of circulation was quickly becoming painful. "As if Orochimaru would ever give up his pursuit of immortality."

Kabuto chuckled, "Always so smart, Sakura-chan."

Leaning back, the spectacled man toyed with the syringe in his hand as he observed her struggle with her restraints.

"You're correct. Orochimaru-sama has ambitions far too grand for the Hidden Leaf—ambitions they don't understand. They were fools to assume that he'd let it all go as easily as they let him join their ranks.

And you little Leafs are always so foolish."

Kabuto grinned as he stood, uncapping the syringe as he did so.

"Because of his rather short imprisonment, if you could even call it that, Orochimaru-sama's advancements in the Cursed Seal's development were lost to your village's Research and War Crimes department; which put me, the sole researcher of the Cursed Seal's effects, in quite the bind."

Sakura bit back a whimper as Kabuto's steely grip came down on her arm, her wide eyes observing the needle as it dimpled her skin. She had no sense of grandeur when it came to her abilities—she knew just as well as anyone the peak of her own mortality; and the fact that he held it in his mottled hands terrified her. Her breaths came in shorts pants as Kabuto paused, his gaze turning thoughtful even as his lips curled sinisterly. Leaning back, he stroked a calloused thumb along the sensitive skin over the bend of her elbow.

"You see, I've had to start over," he said conversationally, lips pursing mockingly. "I've had to develop a new Cursed Seal, one without the potential for error and rejection like its predecessors."

Sakura listened warily and with curdling disgust as Kabuto went on to describe the gruesome experiments he conducted on displaced civilians while his master resided in Konoha. Orochimaru wanted a cursed seal that encompassed the same parameters of those previous but with the added advantage of immortality by soul consumption.

The snake wanted a cursed seal that would leech away its bearer's essence until it was nothing more than an empty shell, until it couldn't refuse Orochimaru's hostile takeover. To counteract the unavoidable act of aging, Kabuto designed a sister seal that would gather the life force of its recipient until it was ready to be harvested for Orochimaru's use.

Sakura's disgust morphed into horror as Kabuto relayed, with mock sadness, how each trial run was met with disastrous results. He hypothesized that the seal had not had a proper conduit, nor a proper base, and test subjects either shriveled up like dried husks from the uncontrollable rapid gathering of their life force, or exploded from the strain put on their chakra pools.

"Since our latest failure," Kabuto intoned, his brow furrowing, "Orochimaru-sama was not…satisfied with my developments and proposed something different—something revolutionary."

He paused as if waiting for her to inquire what this grand something could be, but Sakura would do no such thing. Cat-like emerald eyes narrowed dangerously at the maniacal baring of teeth that only Kabuto could call an excited grin, and her nostrils flared at the visible giddiness rolling off him in waves.

Mad scientist, indeed. How fucking sick.

Brushing off her lack of response with ease, Kabuto resumed his tale steadfastly, "Orochimaru-sama is quite the genius, I must tell you Sakura-chan. It was quite the surprise to know that Zetsu was the one pulling the strings in Akatsuki, wasn't it?"

Upon Sakura's sharp intake of breath, Kabuto chuckled and continued, "Yes, you were there while everyone else dreamed. I, unfortunately, was also asleep. Fortunately for Orochimaru-sama, he was not. After learning of White Zetsu's rather admirable longevity, I was tasked with scrounging the lands for remnants of his cells."

He leaned forward, bent elbows resting on his knees as he rolled the syringe in the palm of his hand. "With Zetsu's DNA and fragments of Hashirama's cells, Orochimaru-sama and I were able to develop a serum that would alter the recipient's own DNA to increase their strength and durability tenfold."

Bright fluorescent lighting glinted off the plastic as he held up the syringe.

"By mutating the recipient's cells to mimic Zetsu's own curious mutation of plant and animal cells, we have crossed the hurdle of self-sustainment and mortality. You have heard of trees living for hundreds of years, no?"

Sakura swallowed at the influx of information, the voice in the back of her head reminding her, ominously, that Konoha's dendrologists had placed the oldest tree in their village at nearly a millennium. Her mind raced at the possibility of Orochimaru living and committing unspeakable acts like these for forever.

Despite the looming of her impending demise and agony, Sakura was a scientist at heart and she couldn't help but ask, "And chakra? Have you even accounted for the natural resistance of a person's chakra?"

Kabuto leered at her supine form, licking his lips as his glasses glinted. "Of course, Sakura-chan. You and I, as scientists and medics, both know that we must consider all possible angles. With the aid of the serum, the recipient's chakra would flood and nourish each cell so that they are enhanced and sustained by a constant stream that would encourage cellular mitosis, therefore eliminating the potential for chakra exhaustion. We produce thousands of cells each day—it'd be a never-ending source of power and chakra!"

"That isn't a serum," Sakura hissed, her voice rising. "That is a virus!"

Kabuto lurched to his feet, circling around to the crown of her head, and she jerked when she felt his gnarled fingers comb through her dirty rose tresses as he shushed her, "It may seem so. But that is where you come in, my dear."

Kabuto bent at the waist, his lips coming to rest by the shell of her ear, "Your Byakugou opens a world possibilities. You have such fine, subconscious control of your chakra that you'd be capable of halting all cancerous cellular division. So, I don't doubt that you, with such great chakra control would be able to counteract whatever issues you may encounter."

Kabuto toyed with the strands of her hair as he hummed, "Tsunade-sama had been my first choice, but Orochimaru-sama is quite…fond of her and did not approve. You, however, he holds no such feelings for."

Rising to his full height, the grey-haired man calmly returned to his previous position by her discolored arm and trailed a finger down its length. It had lost circulation long ago and she felt his touch like shattered glass against her skin. Her pulse throbbed in her throat and she swallowed against the fear threatening to suffocate her as Kabuto moved the needle to her vein. She sneered at the crown of his head, thoughts and information churning over in her head until a mirthless laugh spilled from her chapped lips.

"You know that I loathe you and your master," she spat even as Kabuto calmly lifted his head to stare at her, "And yet you give me something you hope will mutate me into something super-human with expectations that I'd survive. Surely, you know that I'll kill you the first chance I get."

Kabuto's answering laugh was like ice down her back.

"I said I did not doubt that you'd survive," he corrected. "But I never said I had intentions of letting you live."

He leaned towards her as if imparting a secret. "See, your ability to survive this is only a hypothesis, as the survival rate in previous experiments is at a resounding zero percent. If you don't survive, my hypothesis was wrong; but if you do, then I was correct and you've served your purpose. You are only a means to an end, Sakura-chan."

Opening her mouth to let him know just what she thought of his depraved hypothesis, Sakura yelped and then cursed herself for his distraction when she felt a sting against the bend of her elbow. She jerked against the restraints, her chakra lashing out wildly against the foreign chemicals coursing through and invading her cells.

"Orochimaru-sama thanks you for your participation, Sakura-chan."

Kabuto discarded the empty syringe on top of a steel tray with other medical equipment, then moved to grab a file and pen to begin writing down his observations. As Sakura observed this through hazy, agonized beryl eyes, she decided that she'd receive retribution in this life or the next.

Her thoughts of vengeance were halted by what felt like molten lava coursing through her body, liquefying her from the inside out, and she screamed until she started seizing, and then she knew no more.

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Kabuto observed as one of the strongest kunoichi in the world writhed uncontrollably on the steel slab, her mouth foaming as her body seized in reaction to the serum streaming through her. A scream ripped through her throat, and he adjusted his glasses as her chakra flared against the restraints.

Subduing her by use of chakra suppressants was not wise, considering the nature of his experiment, but it served a purpose in observing whether her chakra would break through to interact with the serum's components or remain fettered by the challenge.

Catching Sakura tiredly making her way back to Konoha after a long, grueling solo-mission had been a stroke of sheer luck. Kabuto was not arrogant enough to believe that he could challenge her—one of the Neo-Sannin, hero of the Great War, Striker of Gods—at full strength and win. He saw an opportunity in her fatigued gait and he took it.

Orochimaru had been most pleased when Kabuto had returned from his supply mission with the battered pink haired woman slung over his shoulders. As Kabuto had told her, Orochimaru held no affection for her after her rather public opposition to his reinstatement; but he respected her, he said, for recognizing a predator and keeping it in her sights.

However, as Kabuto observed the thrashing body on top of the rattling table, he determined that his master would be supremely disappointed in hearing about the failure of his hypothesis.

As he watched, Sakura's once healthy skin adopted the ashen pallor of a corpse, the bare flesh of her arms and legs mottling, black veins spreading across her once flawless complexion like lightning as her cells died and struggled to reproduce.

Kabuto sighed as he annotated the familiar sight in his hefty file. Standing, he tucked the file under his arm as he made his way towards the woman that used to be Haruno Sakura. He gripped her head by the hair to keep her from moving, and he lifted an eyelid to confirm what he already knew.

The sclera of her eyes, like every other recipient, had bled into a bright crimson as the cells and blood vessels combusted and died. Pupils dilated to pinpricks, her once brilliantly green iris had faded to an eerily pale shade of what it once was, small crimson fibers spaced in between the green as cells reacted violently.

Stepping away, he annotated in his files his disappointing results, and didn't bother to glance back when he heard the tale tell expulsion of her last breath. As per Orochimaru's protocol, Kabuto was forced to wait by her cooling corpse for an hour to see if there were any changes in her not previously seen in the others.

When the hour went by and all Kabuto observed was the onset of algor mortis, he deemed the project a loss and called for the base's disposal team to get rid of her corpse. Within ten minutes, the man in charge for the day was throwing her body over his shoulder and making his way out the door while Kabuto made his last notes in his file labeled: Case #34/ T3-S.

On a whim, to appease the niggling feeling in the back of his head, Kabuto halted the lowly servant before he fully left. Stepping next to him, he placed two fingers on where Sakura's pulse point should be and held it for a minute. When he felt nothing, he directed a stream of medical chakra into her body and found her void of all life. Nodding to the larger man, Kabuto went back to his file and closed it.

Haruno Sakura had died for science.

Kabuto grinned; how fitting.

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Five days later, thirty miles away from Kabuto and two hundred miles away from Konoha, Sakura awoke in a ditch of rotting corpses.

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tbc