The clanging sound of metal on metal could be heard in the clearing.

She'd always known.

Chakra was gathered, and jutsu's were released.

It shouldn't be a surprise.

An attack. A mistake. A trick.

And yet...

"RUN!"

It was.

"I'M NOT LEAVING YOU KAKASHI-SENSEI!"

Useless.

"Weren't you the one who said that those who abandoned there comrades were worse than trash?"

She was useless.

"YOU WILL DIE! RUN!"

A complete waste of space.

"Demon shuriken!"

The only reason she wasn't dead yet was because her teammates had carried her weight till now.

"NOW!"

Sakura watched as her teammates faced an invincible opponent and free her teacher while she did nothing.

She watched as her teacher freed himself and fought off the missing-nin with everything he had, and win.

She was a waste. Completely useless to the team. They didn't need her.

"Thanks for the help, I've been trying to eliminate Zabusa for a while now."

"Hey sensei, who's that?"

She watched as her teacher explained everything, and the now named hunter nin disappear. She watched Kakashi fall to the ground. She followed her team silently to their clients home.

The team met a nice woman called Tsunami, the daughter of their client, who showed them their rooms and cooked dinner.

Sakura couldn't help it. She broke down crying.

She should've been alone, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) the thin paper walls weren't very sound proof, and Naruto was instantly by her side when he heard the quiet wails.

"What's the matter?"

She looked at him, tears trailing down her face. "I'm weak."

"...that's it?"

She looked at him in anger "what do you mean that's it?! I'm a weakling! I did nothing while you and Sasuke did everything!" She stopped yelling and broke down crying again. "I just don't understand, I thought I was at least better than the dead-last, but you didn't stay next to Tazuna while relying on your teammates! That was me! I-I...just don't understand how you got so strong..."

Naruto stared at her solemnly. "You're not a weakling Sakura, I'm just cheating."

"Than let me cheat too!" she said, fresh tears streaming down her face.

"You need the forth hokage and another kyuubi for that." He said with a serious expression.

She blinked. Once, twice. What.

Naruto lifted his shirt and with a flare of chakra, the most complex seal that Sakura had ever seen in her life was in front of her eyes.

"But..." she blinked, the academy had talked about jinchuuriki's, but most of her knowledge was personal research (just because she wanted a higher grade) and even then, she didn't know much...she did know however, the political implications of this, and it made no sense for Naruto to be a dead last...unless he had been faking the entire time...

"So were you always so strong? Why did you hide it?"

Naruto shook his head. "I was weak up until now, I just got stronger."

Sakura looked away, tears threatening to fall again. "so you just up and got better...I want to get stronger too but I'm just so weak..."

"Then get stronger." He replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

She opened her mouth to dispute his words, it wasn't that simple, and then shut it immediately. It was that simple.

"I...yeah." she said lamely. "Thanks."

"Glad I could help!" said Naruto with a grin, and left.

The following morning, Sakura hopped down from the branch and quickly followed her teacher before she lost sight of him. Naruto and Sasuke were still trying the tree walking exercise, a task that she had finished on her first try.

"Sensei wait!" The man stopped. "I finished the exercise, can you give me another?"

"I could, but at this point you don't need more control, you need more chakra, and for that to happen you need to continue to practise the tree climbing exercise. When you can manage a full 10 minutes without rest, call me."

She knew it was fair, she had weak reserves since the beginning of the academy, but still, she so hoped to learn something more, something that could give her an edge like Naruto's shadow clones, or Sasuke's fire techniques...

"But sensei, I'm so far behind compares to Naruto and Sasuke! Can't you teach me anything?" she asked pleadingly.

Kakashi shook his head. "Sasuke's from a clan and Naruto's...well...unique. it isn't your fault you're so far behind. Learning a new jutsu won't put you to their level: you need to master what you already know first and increase your stamina before trying anything else"

"Can't I learn the shadow clone jutsu like Naruto?"

"No, it requires way to much chakra. One would kill you."

"But sensei, Naruto can make hundreds!"

"Naruto's...an unique case."

"...the kyuubi gives you huge chakra reserves?"

Kakashi stopped walking. "Naruto told me last night" she supplied helpfully. "Good" he said sternly "It's an S-rank secret, with the hokage and Naruto being the only ones allowed to tell others. I hope you understand the implications-" She nodded obediently like a good girl should. "Good" he said again. "Sasuke's from a clan that was supposedly created via demons. Naruto literally has a demon in his gut. It isn't your fault you're so far behind Sakura, we all have a demon-enchantment of some type, even me. Don't worry about catching up, worry about being better." She nodded.

Sakura watched Kakashi leave.

Of course she hadn't said what the solution was.

The solution, obviously, was to hurry up and find her own demon enchantment. Kakashi's silent footsteps moved on and soon there was one.

She frowned to herself. Were did one go to get a demonic power up? A sacrificial ritual? Sakura didn't know if she was actually capable of doing something like that.

After a long morning of brainstorming, Sakura decided that her best bet was a library, (all legends have to have some truth to them) or perhaps the 'demon of the mist' (who was apparently alive). It was easier to lie about why she wanted to go to a library, than to find a missing-nin who would probably kill her on sight (If anybody asked, she was going there for a light read after a long morning of training, which wasn't a lie since her reserves were so pathetic that she couldn't even train for an entire day straight even if she wanted to).

It didn't take her long. One simple fact that she forgot about wave, was that it's pretty much a 'third world town' with Gato's interference.

The windows of the building where bared. The door broken down. Insects where everywhere. She still went inside, just to see if there where any books left, but nope, all that remained was a stench of...something and a couple of homeless people in the back. Hadn't the sign behind her said 'Library' she would have never guessed that this dump would be it. So no short route to power. Great.

Undeterred she simply decided to find a temple, before stopping and realising that even if there was one it would be in ruins.

Oh for fuck's sake.

Considering the mental images of demons doing everything they could to seduce humans with their powers, Sakura expected, not thought, to find a power up in no time.

She had knew about biases and fallacies, she knew about humans natural tendency to be to optimistic, the academy curriculum was heavily influenced by the hokages, all of them being philosophers. The second hokage had especially been interested making sure that the future generation wouldn't repeat humanities previous mistakes.

She expected that it would take a bit, maybe a few hours, worst case scenario an entire day to get in contact with the other world.

Sakura had done no progress in an entire week.

Well, almost a week, but it was still way too long in her mind. In the end she gave up and practised the tree climbing exercise until she could do it for 10 minutes straight without too much trouble.

"Well done." Said Kakashi approvingly. She half expected him to give her yet another training exercise, but instead he just said to rest. Apparently tomorrow was going to be a big day. She expected a big climatic fight with the not-dead-missing-nin with her super power up being fundamental to save the day, but nope, Kakashi had called for backup and now half a dozen anbu where here. They were to leave in the morning.

She went to sleep in relief. Part of her was scared of encountering Zabusa again, so not having to meet him was great.

"I'll leave the rest to you then eh?" said Kakashi to the masked man in a laid back manner.

Elephant mask nodded, and together, team Kakashi left. Naruto groaned. "What's the matter?" Sakura asked him, making sure to at least try to treat him better. "I just expected more I guess. Like some sort of epic battle with me and Sasuke vs the fake hunter nin, and who knows, maybe the enemy has a cool bloodline and destroys us and it's up to me to save the day-"

"Highly unlikely" said Sasuke with a scoff. "You'd just throw shadow clones around, it's me who'd do the real work-" the fight was cut off by a huge explosion.

And then there where black clouds.

Shinobi weren't dumb, or at least, Jonin weren't dumb (one does simply not promote a dumb chunin) but even for the few dumb ones, there was still protocol to save their dumb hides from a painful death. Kakashi isn't dumb, nor does he ignore protocol (unless the life of his fellow comrades is at stake).

Sometimes however, shit hits the fan even while everything was done, such is life. When Kakashi first suspected that the client was lying he suppressed the urge to out right kill him (you just simply didn't murder a client on a hunch, that would be stupid and ruin konoha's reputation) and he immediately summoned Pakun discreetly, (which would normally be hard to do, but Kakashi was no longer in anbu, and creating a shadow clone and replacing himself with it without seals or smoke was child's play for a ninja at his level) with the order to summon him and (temporarily) his team as soon as he gave the signal (a simple release-seal, that would simply illuminate once activated connected to another one that he could activate in his sleep).

Everything went better than excepted though, and his team swiftly dealt with the chunin that went after them.

He of course told Pakun to return to konoha with the request for backup (which took about an hour considering the dogs speed and ability to reverse summon himself to his contract holder whenever he pleased) and out of sheer curiosity asked his team what they should do (a simple test of character) and was surprised when not only they considered continuing, they actually chose the option.

He didn't know if that was a matter of courage or simple stupidity, but what the hell, they weren't in danger for it would take an hour for the anbu to arrive and another day to get to wave at the pace that they were going at.

That's when shit hit the fan.

Apparently some bullshit with unknown ninja happened, and the anbu had to deal with it. The unknown ninjas were skilled enough to actually kill one of them, and hurt another two, so the squad was delayed. By a week. A fucking week.

Thankfully his team managed to deal with Zabusa without too much trouble, while he swiftly recovered from his chakra exhaustion (he had to stop using high level jutsu's that were water and wind element, it just wasn't worth it, even if it was fun watching the enemy stare in shock at his ability to finish their jutsu that he had supposedly never seen before, and not only complete it before they did, but overpower them at it).

But then the anbu arrived and he could calmly go home. Everything went well, Konoha would get an amazingly convenient contract as soon as wave got on it's own feet, and his team had real life experience to motivate them to train harder, especially Sakura, who he once worried would get captured and killed or worse on her first real mission. Instead, she had worked her ass off for the entire week. Kakashi had rarely felt this proud before.

The hardest thing that he expected to do was to walk back to konoha, and maybe get ambushed by bandits.

He did not expect four S-rank criminals to arrive from nowhere and slaughter them.

Never had Kakashi been so grateful for the existence of seals.

He stared at his student next to him, lying in the hospital bed in a coma. He wasn't sure how, but according to Sasuke, Itachi had tried to do something and Sakura had tried to shield him. Now she was in a coma and Naruto and Sasuke were training there asses off in guilt, especially Sasuke.

He shook his head, sometimes even if he did nothing wrong he would still fail.

The worse part was that he couldn't even learn from his mistakes: the usual coping mechanism that he used to deal with his past regrets. 'Don't do this' or 'look out for that' were the usual rules. This time however, there was nothing to learn from: not in his wildest dreams would he imagine four S-rank appearing out of nowhere and mind fucking his student. "New rule" he thought, and stopped. What could he say? If something can go wrong, it will?

No, that wasn't an efficient way of living: as a ninja, you worked on information, hunches and mostly luck. Having wrong information was bad, but he could deal with that. Having wrong hunches was harder, but he had enough experience to usually survive everything without too much trouble. Having bad luck? He may as well not leave konoha anymore.

If he had a way to deal with four S-rank ninjas on every mission, then he wouldn't have to worry about hardly anything. He was just glad that the seal that he gave Pakun also had an adrenaline-induced trigger, and so his summon had obeyed his order when he did, otherwise he would have been done for.

"That was also luck" he mused: Pakun hadn't been on duty, and easily could have forgotten to summon him, thankfully he hadn't, and thankfully his team had still been part of the temporary contract.

But now Sakura was in a coma, and his right arm was permanently done for (he had managed to seal the black flames almost instantly, almost instantly wasn't enough though).

With the permanent injuries of their teacher, and unknown amount of time their teammate would be a vegetable, team Kakashi had been disbanded.

"Kakashi-sensei! I brought chocolate!" yelled a voice as the door to his left got slammed open.

Kakashi sighed and shook his head, suppressing a smile. Naruto didn't care though, in his mind he was still in team Kakashi. Sasuke walked in slowly after, almost as if he had been forced to come along (Kakashi would have bet his life that Naruto had indeed forced him to come) and kept his eyes away from Sakura's sleeping form at all times.

"Hurry up at getting better sensei! We have to train and get stronger!" yelled Naruto.

"I'm not your sensei anymore Naruto, and as such, it's forbidden for me to teach you anything because of protocol...although...this isn't an order or anything, just a remark, anybody who wants to get stronger should, and now that I think about it, the academy is always open to anybody interested in reviewing something..."

Naruto just blinked, not understanding how going to the academy could be useful, Sasuke on the other hand, remembered that there was a certain chunin who had learnt all ninja branches to a sufficient level that he could help all types of students, (as they had just graduated, they weren't above the level) one that also coincidently just happened to not be biased towards Naruto.

Yes, it was time to pay Iruka-sensei a visit.