Naruto: Reborn as Sakura with Manyuu Chifusa Template

"Who's this Madara person?" Sasuke asked as they climbed the temple steps. "You were talking like everyone ought to know who he is."

"Wha—?" Sakura blurted out. "You mean, you've never heard of him!?"

Jiraiya had once claimed that everyone knew the First Hokage had defeated Uchiha Madara at the Valley of the End, but that was only true for the village's higher-ups, or for those old enough to remember the early days of the village, some seventy-odd years ago.

In truth, after Madara had become the first man to tame the Nine-Tails with but a glance and subsequently launched an assault on Konoha, he'd been quietly scrubbed from the history books. It was a tidy bit of historical revisionism meant to keep the village's history looking cleaner than it really was.

As such, despite being the Hokage's own disciple, Sakura shouldn't have known a thing about him, which meant her offhand attempt to feign ignorance by parroting so-called common knowledge had achieved the opposite of what she'd set off to do and put Obito on his guard.

"On the night of the massacre, my brother mentioned another Uchiha, a Mangekyō Sharingan owner that he hadn't killed," said Sasuke, gritting his teeth. "No matter how good Itachi was, he couldn't have wiped out the entire clan on his own. Someone must have helped him. I just know it."

It was the first time Sakura had heard Sasuke rattle off so many words in a row.

"If you know anything about the man we just saw," he added, forcefully grabbing her wrists and looking deeply into her eyes, "you need to tell me everything… now."

"Sasuke, you're hurting me," Sakura gasped, as his grip tightened. "Let go."

There was a hint of madness in Sasuke's sinister eyes, and the intensity of his gaze was beginning to scare Sakura more than a little. Almost instinctively, chakra flared out from all 361 of her Tenketsu with a harsh sizzling noise, briefly cloaking her in electricity that was more akin to a Chidori Stream than a true Lightning Style Chakra Mode.

"I said," Sakura hissed, "LET GO!"

Sasuke let out a grunt of pain and released her wrists as if he'd been stung by a bee. The current hadn't been strong enough to cause any real harm— just enough to give him a taste of the training she'd been putting herself through these past few days.

"What is the matter with you, you blithering idiot!?" Sakura yelled angrily, rubbing her sore wrists.

This finally seemed to snap Sasuke out of his trance, though he remained as unapologetic as ever.

After Madara's departure, he'd kept his three-tomoe Sharingan active as a precaution against further surprise encounters, which, in turn, had led him to accidentally notice something deeply unsettling:

First, the genuine flicker of surprise on Sakura's face when she had realised that he didn't know about Uchiha Madara. Barely a heartbeat later, the flash of panic in her eyes when it had dawned on her that she'd slipped up. Even now, he could see the rhythmic rise and fall of her heavy hangers; her nipples hardening into peaks under her nearly see-through clothes, due to the cold rain… oh, and her breathing was quickening again, just as it had begun to steady following Madara's disappearance.

Sakura was keeping something from him; he just knew it.

"Tell me what you know," said Sasuke coolly.

Though she'd believed her words harmless enough, Sakura had messed up by misjudging what information was considered general knowledge. She now had to come up with a believable story, or risk losing Sasuke's trust!

"Towards the end of the Warring States era, Uchiha Madara was the leader of the Uchiha clan. He helped found Konoha, alongside the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama," Sakura recited quickly, choosing to conceal a lie among many truths. "But at some point, the two of them fell out over the future the village ought to take, and they fought, resulting in Madara's death, just like I said earlier. The End. You happy, now?"

Sasuke's eyes widened slightly.

Sakura had believed every word she'd just said… except for the very last bit.

"How did you learn about this?" asked Sasuke quietly.

The truth was, Sakura had seen it all happen on her television screen… but she could hardly admit to that, now, could she?

Finally realising that Sasuke was actively using his Sharingan powers on her, Sakura turned her back on him, pretending to be in a huff. Her Genjutsu mastery was higher than his, which meant he couldn't overpower her with the Saimingan's eye of illusions and forcefully extract the truth from her, so he was using the Dōsatsugan's eye of insight to spy on her microexpressions!

How ungentlemanlike!

"When I found out I was part of your clan, I sneaked into the classified archives at the Hokage Residence to learn more about the Uchiha, all right?" Sakura harrumphed. "That's where I found out about him. Now, is the inquisition over, or do you have more questions?"

"Why didn't you come to me, then?" Sasuke asked, his frown deepening. "If you wanted to know more about the Uchiha, I could've told you everything worth knowing about the clan."

Sakura turned back to face him, her cheeks tinged with pink.

"Er…" she muttered sheepishly. "Because that would have been too embarrassing…?"

Now that, Sasuke could believe.

On the journey back to the village from the Land of Wind, he had noticed Sakura sometimes acting like a lovestruck maiden around him… that is, whenever she hadn't been sneaking glances at Hinata's heavy mounds jiggling under her thick clothes (much to Karin's dismay).

Ahem.

However, there was still a glaring hole in Sakura's story— why take the risk to sneak into the archives, when she could just have gone to the local library?

The puzzle pieces were starting to fall into place in Sasuke's mind.

He could believe that Sakura had sneaked into the village archives to learn more about the Uchiha, perhaps abusing her authority as the Hokage's disciple to hunt for lost Uchiha clan techniques or to search for clues about her true lineage.

And it was probably during that search that she'd uncovered something terrible: a DNA analysis revealing the identity of her real father— the man her mother had had an affair with, the very same man now claiming to be Uchiha Madara… and the one who had most likely helped Itachi massacre the entire Uchiha clan.

That's how Sakura knew Madara was alive, and that's why she'd survived the purge— because she was the daughter of one of the Uchiha massacre's perpetrators!

Yes, that had to be it!

…

Well, no.

Sasuke couldn't have been further from the truth, but the explanation he had come up with was certainly more believable than the truth, so that's the one he chose to stick with!