Chapter 1

Sakura was six when she heard the voice inside her head.

The other kids had been picking on her – like usual – and she was sniffling in the small wooded area in the park, trying to keep quiet and hide from them. After a couple minutes of silence, she started to relax.

'RUN!'

She was so startled by the sudden command she scrambled forward on instinct, past two blurs that thudded into the ground she had just been curled up on. The two blurs – which revealed themselves to be the mean older kids– yelped in pain when they crashed through the sharp twigs of the bush she had been hiding in. She paused momentarily in shock. They were older academy students, already training to be ninjas, yet there they were, bloody and in pain, while she didn't have a scrape on her.

'Stop daydreaming, Gaki, and KEEP RUNNING!' Growled an unfamiliar voice.

She spun around, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from, but stopped when it said, 'Do you have any idea how pissed those two will be when they stop whining about their little boo boo's?'

Oh, that's right, she had to hide!

Ignoring the oddness of the situation she started to sprint away from the terrible duo, but they had already recovered and were hot on her heels.

'Go left!'

She obeyed, just dodging a hand that would have fisted in her shirt. The fingers that skimmed over the fabric made her break out in a cold sweat.

'Concentrate on where you're going, you don't want to trip on a root or something stupid.' Continued the voice, 'I'll tell you where to go.'

Sakura, while terrified of the two big kids behind her, started to become scared of the voice. It was low and rough, and the sound of it reverberated in her head as she ran. It hadn't hurt her, but it wasn't friendly or nice at all and it seemed to be following her, which was creepy. She didn't trust it at all, and decided to not listen to it anymore.

The decision came too late, as the next second she was skidding across the ground face first; She had stumbled over a root.

The voice didn't say anything as one boy dragged her up by her pink tresses, but she could feel the irritation of her mysterious follower.

The voice didn't speak to her for a while after that, so she had started to wonder if it was just her imagination.

The bullies were meaner than usual today, probably because they were embarrassed that she'd managed to evade them and hurt them a bit too. They'd even gone so far as to rough her up a bit, normally they just taunted and tease her till she cried.

But then her day had gotten better.

A girl, named Yamanaka "Call me Ino-chan!" Ino, had come to her rescue. She thought that maybe, just maybe, Ino-chan was her friend. The thought made her grin as she lay in bed that night and she imagined all the fun things they'd do together.

Then the gravely voice came again, 'Sorry, Gaki. I won't talk to you like that again.'

Despite her previous reaction to the voice, now that she wasn't running or hiding from bullies she found the sound to be rather… soothing. It wasn't nearly as harsh and growl-like as this afternoon. Instead it sounded more scratchy, like the user had a sore throat – Sakura immediately felt pity for the person, she had gotten a cold last year and she knew the dry, raw feeling in one's throat was absolutely horrible – and the R's were more throaty than she was used to, almost like they were being gurgled. The voice wasn't reverberating in between her ears either, it was much softer and the tone was more gentle and apologetic. It wasn't scary at all.

Still, as she looked around her room she whispered the question that had been bothering her during her run, "Where are you?"

There was a slight pause before the voice returned.

'Don't freak out, Gaki,' She cautioned. Sakura was curious, but also surprised because the voice, which she had subconsciously assumed to be a boy at first, was obviously female. The voice was lower than her mother's, but much higher than her father's and overall just felt like a woman's.

'I'm in your head.'

Sakura blinked in confusion. In her head? That wasn't possible, people don't have voices in her head. Well, she amended, they don't have complete strangers in their heads. Sakura knew about her violent and stubborn self that she had dubbed 'Inner Sakura' or 'Inner' for short, but the voice wasn't Inner.

"Are you like… Inner?" She asked, mumbling the last part in embarrassment. She had never told anyone about Inner before and was slightly nervous to be admitting it. Then she realized that maybe the voice didn't know what she was talking about, and started to explain when the voice responded.

'Yes and no… It's complicated, Gaki, and it doesn't really matter. Look, I just wanted to apologize. I shouldn't have ordered you around like that today, and I won't be doing that again.'

"It's OK," Sakura whispered, "You helped me avoid the mean kids."

'Yeah, that didn't really end well though, did it? In any case, I won't be doing that again, so don't worry about it, OK?'

"Sure," Sakura agreed, though mentally she was still grateful that someone had tried to help her and wouldn't have minded if the voice helped her again next time. She was sleepy though, and so she just agreed sweetly and said goodnight.

Right before she fell asleep though, she asked one more question, "Um, voice-san, what is your name? I'm Haruno Sakura."

There was another pause, so long that Sakura thought she might not respond, before the soft, rumbling voice said, 'Eirin. You can call me Eirin.'

Over the years Eirin ('No honorifics, Gaki' she had insisted) proved to be quite kind and helpful when she talked to Sakura, and her voice lost the grating edge that it had the first time they spoke. It was low and soft, and while Eirin always spoke slowly it was never in a patronizing manner, it just served to smooth out her tough and coarse personality. She also began to call Sakura by her name instead of "Gaki", which seemed to be her preferred go-to nickname for anyone under 30.

The more time Sakura spent talking to Eirin, the more Sakura came to admire her.

Eirin was full of contradictions: She was compassionate yet rude, calm yet volatile, observant yet distracted, opinionated yet understanding. When Eirin seemed to be hypocritical, it was just because Sakura didn't understand the entire situation, because Eirin didn't voice judgments until she had thought the situation though seriously. In the end, Sakura decided that Eirin's contradictions just made her balanced and flexible.

Despite becoming so confortable with Eirin's presence, she was still a riddle wrapped in an enigma (which was one of her favorite sayings she'd heard Eirin say). While friendly and familiar, Eirin never shared any facts about her life or who she was. Sakura didn't even know what her favorite color was, let alone anything personal, yet most of the time she completely forgot about it. She knew Eirin so well personality wise that she never felt like Eirin was hiding anything from her, and therefore she never asked any questions. Eirin was Eirin, and that was that.

After that first day Eirin refused to help Sakura in the same way she had the first time, saying that it was because Sakura needed to learn how to defend herself. She did, however, provide help in other ways whenever Sakura asked for it. She gave Sakura tips for studying, cooking, memorizing or little reminders to do chores or not to forget something.

The key was for Sakura to ask, because while Eirin was perfectly willing to do something, she would never offer. It was because, like Eirin had promised all those years ago, she wouldn't tell Sakura what to do and only occasionally provided advice after reminding Sakura, multiple times, that what she was going to say was just an opinion and one of many possible options, and that Sakura must think it through herself. In general though, Eirin rarely talked at all during the day even if asked since, according to Eirin, it would result in Sakura tripping or something.

Sakura tried to convince her otherwise, but Eirin was too stubborn and Sakura eventually gave up.

When Sakura was 12 she started to train.

It had been a normal day at school, but as soon as Sakura got home Eirin spoke.

'Sakura, I have an idea.'

Curious, Sakura quickly dropped her bag onto the ground and plopped down beside it, closed her eyes and steepled her fingers. It was her signal that she was going to thought-speak. Thought-speaking wasn't any harder than actually speaking, it was just the same actually, minus the last step: saying it out loud. Usually, when people think things, they don't put them into words or sentences until they want to communicate the idea. In that case, they start to form the sentences in their head before and while they speak. With thought-speech it was the same, just that she never ended up opening her mouth, the benefit of this being that now Eirin could listen to Sakura without it looking like Sakura was talking to herself if anyone walked in on them.

'Oh, you talking to me first, this is unusual,' Sakura teased, 'To what do I owe this pleasure?'

"Yeah, what's up Eirin-Onee-sama?" Inner piped in. She had become rather fond of Eirin over the years and refused to call her just Eirin, giving her the honorific of Oni-sama. Originally she wanted to call Eirin "Sensei" or "Shishou" as her sheer power of will, shown time and time again, made Inner her avid disciple of the mysterious mental compatriot but Eirin was very firmly opposed to both (surprisingly so, even going so far as to refuse to talk for days after Inner had called her by the titles to show her disapproval). Inner eventually settled on Onee-sama, and though Eirin wasn't fond of it she allowed the title with only a little grumbling.

'Stop that, it's creepy when you start talking like me, Sakura, and I'm not your sister, Inner.' Eirin replied, annoyed.

Inner didn't even deign the comment worthy of a response.

'Yeah, yeah, sorry about that,' Sakura replied instead, though not repentant in the least, and quickly changed the subject before Eirin started rambling on about "Respect". 'Now what was your idea?'

Eirin was apparently in a good mood because she ignored the counterparts irritating comments and plowed on with her idea, as Sakura asked.

'Remember that Hyuga parent that was sitting on that bench in the park? He was reading a book.'

Thinking hard, Sakura shook her head. She hadn't noticed.

Eirin replied by dredging up a memory for her of a frowning, stiff looking man.

'This guy.'

'Oh Yeah, what about him?'

'Well, I read some of the book while you were screeching – sorry, talking – with Ino about Sasuke and there was something that could be worth a shot to try.'

She paused, collecting her thoughts. Sakura patiently waited for her to continue and Inner grumbled at Eirin's blatant disapproval of Sasuke, though both knew better than to try and rush the sassy, slow-speaking confidante.

'It was a book about meditation, but this particular chapter was about using meditation to fortify against the mind arts. It said that you can put up barriers, traps and guards in your mind to stall anyone who entered, and even how to hide and camouflage memories or information so that mind-walkers can't find them.'

'Mind arts? Mind-Walkers?'

'Mind arts include all jutsu that involve the user, who is sometimes referred to as a Mind-Walker, seeing into and entering the mind of another. This doesn't include genjutsu though, because while genjutsu does involve messing with someone's head the user doesn't actually see inside the victim's head. There are very few methods and jutsu considered mind arts, though every hidden village has at least one person who can preform some form of it, though with varying degrees of success. None, however, have anywhere close to the amount of talented mind-walkers as Konoha, who has an entire clan of them: the Yamanaka. And before you ask, yes, that's Ino's clan. It was one of her clan members who wrote the book actually. I've never seen it before though, so I'm guessing its from the restricted section of the Konoha Library. Understandable, that book has a lot of high quality information on how to evade an entire subcategory of jutsu, not to mention nullify an entire clan's prized technique. We're lucky to have been able to get a peak'

It never ceased to amaze Sakura how much Eirin knew or learned. While Sakura had been absorbed in her rivalry with Ino, Eirin had managed to notice the book and its value then read a considerable amount of it. On top of that, she had no idea when Eirin had learned all of that information about that type of jutsu and her rival's (and best friend's) clan. She had no doubt Eirin had mountains more of information about things Sakura couldn't even fathom, which made her wonder why Eirin had gone through the trouble of mentioning it, even going so far as to talk to her first.

'Wow, OK. But why are you so interested in that?' Sakura asked.

'I'm getting to that. While mind fortifications are extremely valuable – and I recommend trying to do it yourself, even if it's just to satisfy your rivalry with Ino – that's not what I'm interested in. The thing about setting up mental fortifications is that they are a form of mind arts in themselves, since you are entering your own mind to do so. I think it would be interesting if you were to enter your own mind and meet me and Inner, face to face.'

Sakura agreed to the plan immediately, but didn't manage to enter her own psyche that day. Eirin said that it was probably normal that Sakura couldn't do it the first try since she wasn't used to meditating, but Sakura wasn't satisfied with her results. Not only was she extremely curious about meeting Eirin (what did she even look like?), Eirin's offhand comment about besting Ino with mind fortifications really stuck and she was determined to master the first step of the process.

But after about a month Eirin gently advised for her to slow down her practice, as the graduation exam was coming up. Sakura was reluctant at first, but after thinking about it for a bit she saw the logic in Eirin's proposal. After all, Eirin would still be there after the exam.

As she walked out into the sunlit courtyard, spring in her step, Sakura felt completely overjoyed.

She had passed! She had passed the graduation exam! She was a ninja!

Even Eirin's ominously amused 'Congrats' didn't deter her good mood.

Briefly she saw Naruto sitting dejected on the swing, no headband in sight, but she brushed it off. Of course he didn't pass, he was an idiot after all. Yet she felt a slight pang of sympathy. Eirin had taught her to think things through and to "never judge a book by its cover" and while she didn't like Naruto by any means…

Making up her mind, she walked up to Naruto and said, "Sorry you didn't pass, hope you have better luck next time."

Naruto just smiled his big grin and exclaimed, "Thanks, Sakura! Congratulations on graduating!"

Sakura, pleasantly surprised by Naruto's reply (though he was still annoying) didn't notice the sadness lingering in the boy's eyes, nor the horrified silence of Eirin.

Deep in her mind Eirin swore. Things were already changing.