Sakura woke up with a start from a vague nightmare involving sand and Sasuke's sword.

"Your training starts today!" Tenten said cheerfully. Sakura was confused for a moment, and then remembered about Tenten, and Sasuke, and all the other stuff that had happened..

And then it occurred to her.

"I'm not going back home, am I?"

Tenten's smile faded a bit.

"No, I'm sorry."

My mom and dad... Ino... Am I ever going to see them again?

"Now that you've come with us, we can't let you go. Also, your powers are pretty special, so I really don't think the group will let you go so easily. They're nice people, they really are, and they have their reasons for being here."

"What's your reason?" asked Sakura, curious.

"Me?" Tenten blushed. "Love, that's all."

"You left your family for love?"

Tenten shrugged.

"My dad's out there looking for me, and it's not like I don't miss him but I never saw much of him. He's the- he has a very busy job, and I didn't get much of a chance to talk to him. I do love him, and he loves me, but I think he always knew that I wasn't meant to carry on the family business like my brother was. Him and Dad were so much alike and they are good people, so I am glad that I left. If I had stayed, it would have been my fate to carry on the job- but I left. I'm not going to pretend it wasn't mostly selfish. I'm just saying it was good for me to leave, too."

Sakura nodded slowly.

"So who are you in love with?" Tenten had said Sasuke was taken- did she mean by herself?

"You haven't met him yet," Tenten said, and a faint blush spread across her cheeks. "His name is Neji- he's a ninja- he travels with this group. He's a bit- he's- well, he's kind of... cranky. He'll be teaching you some ninja skills- chakra control. It'll be explained later, don't worry about it. But he's awfully nice, once you get to know him. If you pay attention and treat him with respect he'll like you. He's awfully good at what he does, and he's very smart. He's the best of all of us with chakra control so we picked him to teach you."

Sakura wasn't sure whether she'd like this Neji or not.

"Anyway, if you need anyone to talk to," Tenten finished quickly, "come straight to me. But you've got to get ready now. Neji's very punctual, and your first lesson with him is today... in about ten minutes or so. Here's something to tide you over until lunchtime, I don't think you've got time for breakfast now."

She handed Sakura something that looked similar to granola bars Sakura's mom had enjoyed, so Sakura took a bite and chewed it thoughtfully. It didn't taste bad, and it was filling.

"Now go!" said Tenten, pulling her to her feet and pushing her out of the tent in one fluid move.


Outside of the tent stood a... Sakura wasn't really sure what it was. He looked like a boy about her age, but- but no boy she had ever met had such beautiful long black hair, and such girly eyes. They were oddly pale, too.

"I am Hyuuga Neji." He (apparently he was a he) bowed. "I suppose I am to thank Tenten for your early arrival."

Well, he was a bit rude.

"You are," said Sakura. Something about his attitude made her feel like she had to talk carefully. "Nice to meet you, I'm Haruno Sakura."

"A pleasure to meet you, too." He didn't look like it, but it was as much as she'd hoped for. "She told me I am to teach you chakra control."

"Yeah, she told me that too."

"Do you know what chakra control is?"

"Not a clue."

"I see..." He seemed to pause for thought. "I think... well, let's go look for someplace quiet." He glanced back to where Naruto had just entered.

"Oh, it's Sakura-chan!"

"We're going to go train," said Neji, and he sounded annoyed.

"Oh..." Naruto's shoulders drooped a little bit. "I was going to show her around and introduce her to everyone! Gaara's particularly interested 'cause she's gonna be an awesome Healer once she gets some training!"

Gaara... Sakura only remembered the voice, not the name. He was the one that saw that she was a Healer...

"You can do that after we train." Oddly enough, it wasn't as annoyed as before. When Naruto's shoulders had drooped, Neji had sort of sighed and dropped the irritated attitude.

"All right!" said Naruto, grinning again.

"See you later, Naruto. Sakura, there is a clearing just past there which is useful for the type of training we will be doing."

"All right."

He began to stride purposefully towards the left and she followed him.

"Here," he said, when they reached what she supposed was the clearing they had talked about. "Now, you haven't got any idea what chakra is."

"Right..."

"So... it's like your life force. When you run out, you die. You use it up daily and it's... regenerated, I suppose."

Her confusion must have been obvious, because he sighed and leaned his head back.

"It's hard to explain... I don't even remember how they explained it to me, it was so long ago. Maybe I ought to just show you."

When she just looked at him, confused, he made a sign with his hands, bringing them together palm-to-palm with the first two fingers standing up and the other two covering each other. He closed his eyes to concentrate.

When his hands began to glow faintly blue and crackle a little a second or so later, he spoke, keeping his eyes closed like he was still concentrating.

"My hands are glowing blue, correct?"

"Yeah..."

"That's what chakra is. You have it, too. Anyway, once you've gathered it, like I have here, it's a pretty flexible medium and you can do a lot with it- things that most people would consider magic- like this-"

Suddenly there was a giant puff of smoke and Tenten was standing before her.

"Tenten!" she cried out without even thinking about it.

Tenten smirked in a very un-Tenten-like move.

"Not quite," she said, although she- he?- used Tenten's voice. "I'm still Neji. I just look like Tenten. This is the art of Henging. Now, it's easiest to gather chakra when you've got the Tiger seal- that's the seal I was using earlier. Can you mimic it?"

She nodded and brought her hands together. It was an awkward move to make at first, her hands weren't used to forming that sign- or seal, as Tenten-really-Neji had called it- but it came easily.

"Now, that's how you control chakra. Try to- it's like bringing it up- I don't think you know what I mean."

She closed her eyes like he had, and concentrated.

"I don't know what I'm doing," she said after a moment, when she was starting to get frustrated. "Are there people who can't do it? Maybe I'm one of them."

"You're a Healer, according to Gaara and Naruto, of course you can control your chakra. I've only met one other person who couldn't. You're not him."

"All right..." She took his word for it, since he was so sure of himself.

"Oh- Try to picture it. That's how they taught us."

Now he remembers.

She pictured the glowing blue around her hands, tried to hear the crackling noises- and suddenly her hands were warm but now not just her hands her whole entire body down to her pinky toes she'd painted green last week- Warm, no, not warm, hot- Not hot, burning, all over- she was picturing the blue glow all over-

"That's good," he said in a calm, low voice. "Stop, that's enough."

She opened her eyes in response to his words, and suddenly the warmth receded suddenly. She looked down to see the faintest bit of blue dissipate on her skin.

He nodded approvingly.

"You have a decent amount of chakra... It'll do for being a Healer. Not as much as me or Sasuke or Gaara or Naruto or Tenten, certainly, but a fair amount. Don't use so much at a time. You haven't got enough that you can waste it like Naruto or Gaara can."

Sakura nodded.

"Now, to teach you the seals- there's more than just the Tiger seal. There are twelve, and you will need to memorize them. It took me... a day to have them memorized. You seem..." He paused, looking at her. "...Intelligent. I won't care if you haven't got the seals memorized for the next two days but beyond that- well, it wouldn't be smart of you to put it off."

She understood, and she knew she was smart. She'd always done well in school, she was good at memorizing facts. Memorizing a bunch of seals would not be a difficulty.

He showed her the seals, which he said he would do only once but if she needed any more help Tenten would probably be gracious enough to supply it (his expression brightened when he mentioned Tenten, Sakura noticed and it made her smile).

"Now, to practice gathering your chakra." He frowned a bit. "I need you to understand that this is the kind of stuff that people hone over years but you haven't got that time. This is a bit accelerated as far as learning goes. Now that we have a Healer, you need to be proficient. Any day one of our number could come back seriously injured and we would need a Healer, and you would need to be ready."

She nodded. "I get it."

He nodded.

"Anyway, for gathering your chakra there are a couple of simple ways to practice it, and they're useful skills to have, not just drills."

He walked straight up a nearby tree.

Sakura gaped at him.

"You have to gather it to your feet, instead of your hands. You use just enough to stick but not so much that you'll repel yourself. It's a hard balance to make, and it will need constant adjusting as you step, so watch out." He thought for a moment. "Just keep walking up the tree, don't worry about falling."

Walk... up a tree?

She took a tentative step toward the trunk of one, and he started to look annoyed.

"Just go, Sakura."

She put her right foot on the tree, picturing the blue crackly glow around it and suddenly her foot was pushed back like someone had punched it.

"Too much."

Well, duh!

She kept her annoyed thoughts to herself, though, because she didn't want to risk incurring Neji's wrath, and pictured the blue glow but only barely.

Her foot stuck. She smiled, and pulled her foot back down, testing that she could do it with the other foot before she started to run up the tree. Which, she could. But she didn't think she was quite capable of running straight up- wouldn't she fall backwards and hit her head on the ground- so she grabbed a low branch and put her feet on the trunk like she remembered doing in elementary school on the pull-up bars so she could go up and flip around.

They stuck, and so she let go of the branch.

And to her surprise, it was like walking on normal ground, but with a little more concentration involved. She made it up a few steps before she was startled by a leaf that fell on her nose and she lost it.

As she was recovering from the sudden trip downwards and hello, Mr. Ground, didn't your mother ever tell you it wasn't nice to come up so fast and so forcefully and painfully?- someone else came into the clearing. She heard the footsteps, but she didn't dare move much more than necessary in case something was broken.

She was pulling leaves out of her long pink hair when a voice she'd heard before remarked to Neji, "This is where I was going to train."

"I think she needs the training more than you," Neji muttered back, and Sakura pretended she hadn't heard him but that sounded like an awfully rude thing to say, and so she marched back up to the tree and did what she did before, only this time she walked at least halfway up the tree and turned around to stick her tongue out at Neji.

The boy beside him, who had red hair and a funny backpack glanced up as well as Neji, and she saw that his eyes were rimmed with black. For some reason, it reminded her of Naruto's whiskers. Maybe they were related? She suddenly realized that his voice was the voice of the guy that they called Gaara.

He said something in a low tone to Neji, so low that she couldn't hear it, but Neji nodded. It didn't look like they were going to tell her anything, though, so she turned around again and kept going up the tree, trying her darndest not to look down.

When she reached the top of the tree she sat down on a branch and waved to Neji and the red-haired boy below her.

Neither of them waved back. Neither of them looked very amused. Was she stupid or something? Was this something she was supposed to have gotten on her first try?

Then again, they weren't the type to do goofy things like random waving.

She stood up from the branch and discovered that going back down would be either very long and frightening or very fast and more frightening.

Very long and frightening seemed like a better option, and a less painful one, so she just kept going, trying her hardest to concentrate on that exact amount of chakra. Neji and Gaara watched her, which was fairly unnerving. Neji had those pale eyes, and Gaara had an eerie stare.

When she couldn't figure out how to land easily, she just jumped off and braced herself for the landing.

The landing... which never came. She found herself enveloped in soft (she didn't even know how sand could be soft, but it was), warm sand... which smelled sick-sweet-metallic like blood. She tried not to puke, and the sand set her down gently and flowed to the gourd-shaped thing on Gaara's back.

"The way you were landing," Gaara said in a tone that reminded her of the sand, soft and calm. "-You would have broken your wrist. And seeing as you can't fix it yet, it would definitely hinder your training."

Sakura stood up slowly.

"Um... thanks," she said, a little confused.

He shrugged. "You're welcome."

All of a sudden, Neji made a hand sign and veins around his peculiar eyes bulged.

"Good, Sakura, you still have chakra left."

She blinked.

"How do you know?"

He frowned. "Ask Tenten later. The point is, you can still train."

More training? She nearly groaned aloud, but Neji would not appreciate that so she kept her mouth shut.


After that, Neji made her walk on water, which was considerably harder but also the same kind of thing. Gaara... meditated or something, Sakura didn't know what, but she could see him from the river she was practicing standing on, and he was just... sitting there.

When her insides were so sore for no apparent reason, her head throbbed, and she was dead tired, Neji did his eye-thing again and pronounced her chakra depleted, and sent her back to eat lunch.

She stumbled back into the camp.

"Sakura-chan!" cried Naruto out of nowhere. "Now I can show you around the camp!"

"Moron, she's out of chakra. She needs something to eat before you go flirt with her." Sasuke appeared out of nowhere, and Sakura felt blood rush to her face as he smirked in the direction of her and Naruto.

"I know what she should eat- ramen!"

"I bet she hates ramen, just like everyone but you," Sasuke groaned. "You've eaten ramen for three days straight. You need something healthy."

"Aw, Sakura-chan, you can't hate ramen, no one but stupid party-poopers like Sasu-chan here can hate ramen!"

"Ramen's all right..." Sakura said slowly, unsure if there was a right answer in this situation, and also unsure if she cared because she was going to pass out.

"Don't encourage him."

But when she looked at Sasuke, he was half-smiling, so there really wasn't any harm in it.

She agreed to eat lunch with Naruto, unless she fainted first.


"See, ramen is good!"

"Everything is good in moderation, dobe. Ramen is not good when you eat it all day, every day."

Sasuke couldn't have been too annoyed because he was making the ramen, and it was good ramen, too.

Wow, he's a good cook... another addition to his list of perfections.

She ate her ramen happily, and Naruto was right, it really did hit the spot right after training. Her head was no longer throbbing and she was now able to keep her eyes open.

"Thanks," she said, truly grateful.

"Hn," said Sasuke, which she took as a response to her gratitude since he was the one who cooked it. Hey, it was something.

"Okay, now that you're done, let's go!" Naruto grabbed her hand and pulled her up.

"See, here's Sasuke's and my tent-" He pointed to a canvas tent colored by someone colorblind, and then Sakura looked at Naruto's clothes which were of the same odd combination of navy blue and unnatural orange and realized "-and then there's yours and Tenten's tent... haha, that phrase came out funny... Here's where there's a fire. We cook here most of the time! And that's Kakashi-sensei's tent-" This tent was a smart, camoflauging green. "-and there's Neji and Gaara's tent." Those two had made their tent the same green as Kakashi-sensei's. "And... um..."

"There wasn't much to show in the first place." Sasuke sighed, sounding annoyed. "But at least you know whose tent is whose. And where the kitchen-sort-of is. It's generally where we meet up."

"We have a house, too! But we don't stay there most of the time. Mostly we camp. I'll show you the house when we get there."

Sakura nodded. Naruto was so cheerful and friendly all the time.

"So, Sakura-chan, how do you like traveling with us so far?"

Naruto looked like he was actually asking in earnest, and Sakura couldn't help but answer him.

"It's all right... I miss my family," she admitted.

Naruto nodded, and Sasuke looked a little tense. "That's good, that you have family to miss," Naruto said, softly, as though he hadn't intended to say it but he did anyway.

"What about you?" she asked, hoping to change the topic. Sasuke looked... well, it made her nervous, and Naruto had gone a little bit quiet. "Do you like travelling?"

Naruto nodded, and acted cheerful again, although she wasn't sure if his heart was really in it.

"I love travelling! Although Sasu-chan here's a bit of a party pooper, and Kakashi-sensei's a pervert but you don't need to worry about him, Gaara's kind of scary sometimes but we get along and Neji's pretty cool mostly and Tenten's nice. Anyway, I'm going to become the best ninja ever!" He punctuated this by punching the air. "Sasu-chan likes being a ninja, too! We've known each other ever since we were little. He wants to-"

"Become a strong ninja as well," Sasuke interjected. Naruto looked at him and then grinned, scratching the back of his neck in a sheepish manner.

"Right! Sasu-chan wants to become a strong ninja as well!"

Sasuke nodded, as though he approved. Sakura didn't have to be a genius to know that there was more to the story.

Just then, though, what Sakura had thought was shadow on the side of a tree melted out and Neji stepped forward. Gaara appeared a second later from a different area.

"The police," said Neji in a low voice. "Where is Tenten?"

"Tent," said Sasuke.

"Right." Neji walked off to alert Tenten.

"It's unlikely that Kakashi doesn't know, where is he?" Gaara asked.

Sasuke and Naruto and Sakura looked around.

"Probably his tent," said Naruto.

His voice sounded a bit different, so Sakura turned to look at him.

His entire... Attitude? Tone? Countenance? Energy?

Whatever it was, it was completely different. His mouth was wide open in a grin, and Sakura noticed for the first time that his canine teeth were slightly elongated- more so than a normal person's might be. He looked like a wolf- no, not a wolf- a dog? Not quite that either. A tiger? A leopard? The answer would come to her in time, she was sure. Something with whiskers that was too doglike to be a cat and too catlike to be a dog.

"We gonna fight?" Naruto asked- or more like growled.

Gaara's mouth twitched a little in a smile. The dark circles around his light blue eyes were more pronounced, and Sakura had no trouble identifying an animal for him. He looked exactly like a raccoon she had once seen hissing at another raccoon before they fought.

Sasuke was contemplating their surroundings.

"We can't outrun them?"

"No," said Neji, who had just returned with Tenten. Tenten was in what Sakura assumed to be her battle gear. "Sakura, hide out in a tree... Gaara, you be in charge of protecting her, I haven't taught her any taijutsu yet and I doubt she knows enough to deal with any ninja."

"Hey, kiddos- Oh, looky here. What's your name?"

A silver-haired man in a mask came out of what Sakura remembered to be Kakashi's tent.

"I'm Haruno Sakura," said Sakura. He seemed friendly enough, if a little bit odd.

"Nice to meet you, Sakura. I'm Hatake Kakashi, and I am the leader of this little band. I hear you're a Healer?"

"I suppose I am," she said.

He nodded approvingly, and squinted his visible eye- the other one was covered by a forehead protector- in what looked like the top half of a smile. What a weird guy, to cover his face all the time like that...

"Well, that's good to know. I suppose we're still working on your talents?"

She nodded.

"Well, that's too bad that they won't be useful today. Guys, just be extra careful," Kakashi called out. "In the mean time, thank you for agreeing to come with us... Not like you had much of a choice, but you haven't run away yet..."

"I'm glad to help," she said, but the look Kakashi gave her let her know he heard how her voice went up a little too high.

"Well, Sakura, I hope you come to like us," he said in a joking tone, but he wasn't joking. "Anyway-" he turned to address the rest of the group. "The police are coming, so you've got to be ready. Especially you guys, Tenten and Neji, but not like you didn't know that already. It's a fairly small group and they're close by, and I don't think they know we're here, but you never know so be on your guard. They're not that skilled, so there might not be a fight today, but if there is be careful. Gaara, Neji told you to watch Sakura, right?"

He nodded.

"Good. At this rate, you guys aren't even going to need me anymore." Kakashi sighed and turned around. "But let's pack up now. We've been here for too long anyway."

Sakura helped fold up the tent she shared with Tenten in a daze. It was silent all around. There was going to be a battle? Here? She would witness it?

They had finished and were about to set off when Neji looked up suddenly and in the silence that permeated the clearing they were in, muttered, "They're here."


CLIFFHANGER.

Don't hate me, please! I like my chapters to last about 4,000 words. Don't ask me why. Anyway, like usual, let me know what you think! I haven't had much time with the Internet lately (road trip) so forgive me if I don't respond, but I love your reviews.

Is Naruto too chipper or cheerful or whatever? It's kind of worrying me. Sasuke's definitely too friendly... but then again, you've only seen him around Naruto.