Been thinking about a non-massacre Itachi & Sakura AU

[tozette]

"Crane?" Itachi asked.

"In the field," the desk nin said, shaking his head. 

"Cat?"

The desk nin, a forty-something, heavily scarred man with seven fingers and one leg, grunted as he leaned over to riffle through the organised chaos of the ANBU personnel files.

Their administrative office was stationed beneath the the Hokage tower, where one of Danzo's Root operations had been discovered a few years ago. When the legitimate ANBU corps had expanded its numbers to fill Root's vacuum, they'd made the move to the vacant space. The whole office was devoid of natural light, ugly and very secure.

"Uhh... injured, looks like. Redacted," he added, shrugging and offering Itachi a glance at a heavily edited file.

There was one kind of personnel ANBU sorely lacked, and that was fully qualified, field-ready medics.

It was asking a lot of any ninja to meet the requisite skillset for ANBU field work to begin with. Then, if they didn't die in the first eighteen months, they had a very finite number of years of service, limited by their bodies. To find somebody who had the youth—or a bloodline limit or kinjutsu—and the skills for ANBU who was also a fully qualified medic was...

There were only four in active service. And Crane was thirty-four now, and likely to retire soon.

None of them were available for Itachi's rostered mission.

"Hmm," said the desk nin, "there is a medic they trialled... a few shakedown missions, you know."

Itachi waited. The desk nin did not take his blank stare as a question.

"And?" he prompted after a pause. "He's available?"

The desk nin dug up more scrolls. "Here it is. Toad-san didn't think she'd be a good fit for an ANBU career." He tapped the page with one of his remaining fingers. "His report says she's... difficult."

Difficult could mean a lot of things. Itachi leaned over and plucked the scroll from the desk, ignoring the way the desk nin twitched.

He glanced at the unremarkable stats of the chuunin in question. Seventeen, promoted at fifteen, good chakra control, poor endurance. Hm.

Haruno Sakura's initial recommendation had come from Shizune-san, who had been one of her teachers. Curiously, Hound had not written a recommendation, but he had, very sloppily, signed Shizune's.

The medic's first, brief mission with ANBU had been under Hound's authority and it appeared to have been interrupted by an unnecessary twenty six mile race through a swamp in the dark, presumably designed as a test of her weakest skill, endurance. The mission itself had otherwise gone smoothly. His report stressed that she slowed his team down significantly, but offered no further criticism.

Toad's report from the second trial mission didn't say she was "difficult" exactly—it said she was rude, recalcitrant, and a know-it-all who had compromised mission safety. She had also, Itachi gathered from the attached hospital documents, removed a burst organ in the field. The operative in question had survived.

His face didn't change, but he tilted his head, weighing it up internally. Haruno was very green, and also not a jounin, so it was unclear if she met the mandatory duty fitness requirements for that rank. Her most recent captain had not found her performance satisfactory. And it was possible that she had only done adequately with Hound because Hound had been her genin teacher.

"She's a chuunin—we can pull her off whatever she's got now if you're desperate for a medic," offered the desk nin.

Itachi grunted. His team for this mission was just himself, Yamanaka Ichiro, and Namiashi Raido. Yamanaka liked to talk, but they were professionals. Backtalk from a chuunin wouldn't faze them.

He glanced back at Shizune's recommendation. Her skills as a medic were not in question.

"Yes," he said, at length.