Sakura finishes her overnight double shift at the hospital just in time to run home and eat a quick breakfast and change into sparring clothes. She sneaks in through her window so her parents won't realize she was gone all night and peels off her white uniform dotted with fresh blood stains before pulling on spandex shorts and a loose fitting cotton shirt. Her chakra reserves are running a little low from the unusually busy graveyard shift, so she swallows a chakra supplementary pill before grabbing the rest of her things and running down the stairs. She wants nothing more than to sleep away the morning before her next shift starts at dusk, but with the chunin exams starting in less than a month, she needs to keep up on her physical training as well as her shifts at the hospital. She hasn't decided whether or not she wants to take the medical shinobi route with her career upon promotion to chunin, so she's been putting in the work for both that profession as well as field shinobi training.
Breakfast is waiting for her and she scarfs down as much as she can in five minutes before jogging over to training ground three. Sasuke gives her a strange look as she flops in the grass gracelessly and groans in ecstasy as her body finally gets a moment's rest. He goes back to target practice wordlessly, knocking out all of Naruto's clones with kunai in seconds. The blond summons another dozen and one of them goes to sit next to Sakura, wordlessly pulling her head into his lap. She hums in appreciation of the gesture before promptly passing out.
Kakashi arrives an hour later, and Naruto and Sasuke have started sparring. Sakura is still sound asleep, but when Kakashi approaches her her eyes fly open and go directly to his face. Her tensed muscles relax when she sees his casual posture and his hands in his pockets. Yesterday she also she fell asleep while waiting for him, and he woke her up with a water jutsu that sent her splashing into the pond. He thought she was just growing complacent with her training, but now that he has caught her asleep again, he suspects there might be something more to it. Sakura isn't normally one to slack off.
"Sorry Sensei, I only meant to rest my eyes for a few minutes." She says as she quickly gets to her feet. He notices the dark circles under her bloodshot eyes and sighs before ruffling her hair. "Everything alright Sakura? You look… tired."
She glares at Kakashi and after a quick hand sign she has cast a genjutsu over her features. "Nope. Everything's fine." She grits out before stalking toward her sparring teammates. Without announcing that she has even joined in, she grabs Naruto by the scruff of the jacket and flips him over her head and onto his stomach on the ground. She places her heel between his shoulder blades to hold him in place and glares across the clearing at Kakashi. "See?"
Kakashi decides to not comment on her snapiness in fear of souring her mood further, and instead nods and beckons for her to follow him. "You boys keep sparring. I have a new jutsu to teach Sakura." He calls to his other students. He sees Sasuke help Naruto to his feet out of the corner of his eye and watches them both skirt around their female teammate as she stomps after her sensei. As soon as she's almost to his side he jumps up into the trees and beckons for her to follow. She ignores the shaking in her muscles as they scream for rest and follows closely behind.
After nearly twenty minutes of traveling away from the village, Sakura starts to feel tremors in the ground making their way up the trees and into the soles of her feet. She glances nervously at Kakashi, who seems unperturbed by the disturbances. "Is this a mission, sensei?" Her voice wavers uncertainly and Kakashi glances down at his student. She has a worried and frustrated expression on her face and is rummaging in her medical supplies pouch. He has noticed she's been taking supplemental chakra pills during training breaks for the past two weeks when she thinks he isn't looking.
"No it isn't. Don't worry, you won't need any chakra for this exercise." As if on queue, the ground rumbles again,the impact much closer than it was before. Kakashi-sensei jumps down into a freshly made clearing in the forest and Sakura quickly follows. She comes face to face with the Hokage herself.
"What do you want Kakashi?" She snaps, glaring at the silver haired man who scratches the back of his head and smiles sheepishly, deceptively innocent in manner.
"I believe my student is at a crossroads that I am not equipped to help her with, so I thought she could speak with you." Kakashi gestures to a bewildered Sakura. The pinkete fights the urge to step behind her sensei as the Hokage's annoyed glare turns on her. After a few seconds of observation the blonde woman snorts and snaps her fingers. Sakura feels the genjutsu masking her physical signs of exhaustion dissolve and stares in bewilderment at the Hokage.
"Only thirteen and you already look like you need to be committed to the hospital for overwork. How many missions have you been taking your genin on, Kakashi?"
"Mah, Hokage-sama. You wound me. I have been limiting their practices and missions to an acceptable amount. I believe you and Sakura-hime may have some things to discuss, though. I'll drop by your office later for more details on that classified mission you requested me for. I'll miss my team's performance in the first and second round of the chunin exams because of it, so I had better go make sure the boys are prepared. Chow." He disappears in a cloud of smoke.
Tsunade massages her temples in annoyance, but makes no move to chase down the Jonin who just dared to dump his genin on her during her private training session. She supposes she does owe him. After all, he has grown rather close to his genin team over the past few months, and he won't be able to observe their progress because of the mission she has tasked him with. Recent intel from Jiraiya's network of spies indicates that Orochimaru plans to send multiple teams to participate in the exam. While he is a missing nin and would be arrested, or even killed on sight, she has no doubt he will still find a way into the village, which is why she has tasked Kakashi with tracking him down when he inevitably does so. She doesn't need her ex-teammate sneaking around unmonitored in the shadows during such a high profile event. If this event goes off without a hitch, mission requests will hopefully come pouring in. With her decision to stop taking assassination and other morally corrupt missions, there has been a noticeable decline in requests for other missions. She needs to prove to potential clients that her shinobi are still more than capable of fulfilling their requests.
"What is your name?" Tsunade asks as she takes up a sparring stance. The pinkette looks bewildered at the unspoken invitation but quickly drops into a defensive stance when Tsunade rushes forward. She wisely dodges the punch instead of trying to catch the older woman's fist.
"Sakura Haruno." She manages to get out before leaping back to dodge a kick to the abdomen. Despite her haggard appearance, the girl's eyes are still alert and her movements are precise and quick. Deciding to test her endurance, Tsunade continues launching attack after attack, saying nothing as they fall into a rhythm.
After her initial disbelief that the Hokage is sparring with her, Sakura focuses on the battle and looks for opportunities to get her own attacks in. Unfortunately for her there are none, and within fifteen minutes her fatigue is starting to overpower the sheer force of her mental will to keep going. This is an opportunity that every genin only dreams of, and here she is, barely able to keep her feet beneath her and her eyes open. The first blow the Hokage lands sends her flying and Sakura lays on the ground, trying to breathe with the wind knocked out of her. When the feeling doesn't go away she realizes a rib or two is probably broken and raises a palm glowing with green medical chakra to her sternum. One of her lungs is punctured and she grunts in frustration when she realizes she definitely doesn't have enough chakra to heal that. She fixes the ribs and does what she can for her lung before getting up slowly.
Tsunade had watched closely the whole time, silently bewildered by the girl's proficient use of medical chakra. By her movements she obviously didn't fix everything, but the fact that the genin can stand when Tsunade knows she broke almost half of her ribs is proof that she did a good enough job. After a few moments of contemplating the pinkette starring ashamedly at her feet, Tsunade approaches and reaches out to more closely examine the girl's work. The ribs are perfectly healed, and the lung has been partially repaired. In a pinch it would be enough to have her back on her feet and fighting. That is, if her chakra wasn't completely drained from just the one healing.
"Either your reserves are shit, or you need to learn how to take better care of your body." Tsunade comments, quickly healing the rest of the damage before taking a step back to look over the girl. She's very scrawny, but what little meat is on her bones is all hard muscle. Given her age and height, if she increased her caloric intake just a bit she would likely have a major growth spurt within the next few months.
Sakura grimaces at the double edged insult, and nods. "Definitely both, Hokage-sama." She admits sheepishly.
Tsunade hums in acknowledgement. "Well, luckily for you both are fixable problems. I'll make sure Shizune drops you from your hospital shifts so you can focus on your physical training." Before Sakura can protest Tsunade holds up a hand for silence. "You obviously haven't decided on a career track yet, and from the looks of you have been pursuing both a medical and field path. Until you are promoted to chunin I want you to focus on actually getting promoted. There's no point in wasting your talents by burning yourself out before you even hit puberty." Sakura flushes at the reprimand and looks down at her body, suddenly self conscious. She is rather skinny, but she always has been. But now she's really skinny. Sickly looking, in fact. She's sure that in combination with her unwashed hair, the shuffle in her fatigued gait, and the dark circles under her eyes that she probably looks ill. She kind of feels like she could pass out at any moment.
After a few critiques to Sakura's form and a very brief demonstration of her strong fist technique, Tsunade realizes that too much time has slipped by and heads back to the mountains of paperwork awaiting her in her office. She stops by the hospital to check the shift schedule, and just as she suspected the girl has been working most of the overnight shifts for the better part of a month. It's a wonder she was able to spar at all, let alone heal herself after. Tsunade smirks to herself, feeling her worry over the chunin exams lessen, just a little. At the very least, Konoha will have a good crop of genin to display to the wealthy attendees of the third round. She has no doubt the scrawny pinkette will ruin a lot of betting pools.