Kill Your Heroes
by Evil Is A Relative Term is a Naruto Alternate Universe Fic where Haruno Sakura is forced to kill during the Wave Arc and, as an indirect result, forms a close relationship with Hatake Kakashi. The story explores the military side of village life, and Sakura's drive to become an elite soldier so that she won't die in the field.
This fanfiction contains the following tropes:
- Agents Dating: Sakura and Itachi go on a fake date to steal supplies, and they pretend that he's her secret boyfriend in order to explain her absences from the village. Their mission also seems to involve a lot of domestic downtime in an idyllic cabin.
- Badass Bookworm: The defining trait of rare genjutsu types like Sakura, Itachi, and Orochimaru.
- Bio-Augmentation:
- Employed by non-clan ninja during the Second War. Sakura uses this to improve her eyesight, but worries that further interventions might lead to her going full Orochimaru.
- Then Itachi pisses her off enough to throw caution to the wind.
- Tsunade is implied to have achieved her F-cups through boob job no jutsu. They don't call her a medical genius for nothing.
- Employed by non-clan ninja during the Second War. Sakura uses this to improve her eyesight, but worries that further interventions might lead to her going full Orochimaru.
- Blessed with Suck: Sakura's view of the Sharingan. Jiraiya isn't too keen on the Mangekyou either.
- Brains and Bondage: Sakura's taste in literature. She gets off on the idea of a man trusting a woman so much that he lets her tie him up and keep him.
- Celibate Hero: Sakura considers becoming this as she grows closer to becoming an elite. It isn't easy for S-class ninja to date and have relationships like normal people, as shown by Kakashi and Itachi, who is still sulky over being dumped at seventeen due to his heavy murder schedule and emotional unavailability.
- Consummate Professional: Sakura is on her way to becoming this.
- Covert Pervert: Sakura picks up Kakashi-like reading habits with focus on reverse harems and femdom. Unlike Kakashi, she tries to disguise her reading material in public.
- Cynical Mentor: Sakura's genjutsu teacher, Gozen, a retired ANBU from the same generation as Sarutobi Hiruzen. She has a low opinion of the Uchiha, the Fourth Hokage, kids these days, and the idea of some punk making a name off of her jutsu.
- Effortless Amazonian Lift: Leads to Sakura's first kiss.
- Family of Choice:
- Kakashi and his dogs.
- Eventually Kakashi stops being Sakura's sensei and starts being an eccentric older brother figure. He's much better at the latter than the former. Not that the bar was very high.
- Gender Flip: Chomei's jinchuriki, for no apparent reason.
- Heroic BSoD: Kakashi fell into one of these after the destruction of his original team. His character arc is about slowly climbing out of it and learning to form platonic bonds again.
- House Husband: Itachi learned to cook from his mother, who was apparently Ninja Martha Stewart. Even missing-nin need a hobby.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Sakura is jealous of Ino, who gets to be a relatively normal chuunin while Sakura runs around dealing with conspiracies and learning horrifying jutsu. Nothing is stopping her from stepping back and becoming a hospital medic; however, the idea of staying off the front lines feels like cowardice to her. This is due to her own issues and, possibly, the influence of Gozen, who hates the stereotype of women being healers and very much wants to pass on the legacy of her team, the Second Hokage's wetworks unit.
- Men Act, Women Are: The story spotlights sexism in the shinobi world, especially outside of Konoha. Women like Temari and Chiyo are passed over for consideration as Kazekage because of their gender.
- Near-Death Experience: Sakura can't seem to get through a major battle without horrific near-fatal damage. This is her motivation to improve, but it's starting to give Kakashi a complex.
- Never a Self-Made Woman: Subverted by Sakura, who (as in canon) is basically the only significant kunoichi of her generation that isn't affiliated with a famous family. This exempts her from the clan laws that prevent Tsunade from helping Kakashi with his sharingan.
- Non-Human Sidekick:
- Kakashi and his dogs.
- Sakura and her cat.
- Itachi and his crows.
- Pragmatic Hero: Sakura grows into this through her exposure to ex-ANBU and her own military service.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- Sakura is constantly struggling not to give one of these to Naruto after the timeskip. She can't stand that he feels entitled to go on high-level missions even though he has no field experience, and that he's disrespectful towards their commanding officer, Tsunade.
- Sakura to Itachi, once she is confident that he won't gut her for suggesting that giving his eyes to an emotionally unstable Sasuke is a really stupid plan.
- Remember That You Trust Me: Kakashi isn't very good with emotional conversations, so when Sakura needs a dose of this, he removes his mask.
- Self-Surgery: A clumsy, stop-gap version of this helps Sakura to survive being impaled by Sasori.
- Temporary Love Interest: Hyuuga Tatsuo, who dies at Sakura's side before they have a chance to become a Battle Couple.
- Terror Hero: Sakura, once she gets a handle on genjutsu. Also Itachi by virtue of being Itachi.
- Training from Hell:
- Sakura's basic physical training, which involves being chased around by Kakashi's dogs all day.
- Sakura's genjutsu training. Turns out that when you don't have absurd Sharingan powers, you need to actually experience painful and terrifying sensations before you can inflict them on others.
- We Have Become Complacent: The view retired ANBU have towards today's Konoha, and the reason why Gozen decides to shape Sakura into a weapon for the village.
