expectation

Ino expects to win the match when her ploy pays off and the shintenshin connects.

Most of the room expects her to win when the shintenshin connects.

But then there is silence.

*I*I*

What Ino expects is a dark landscape. She expects it to be as if Sakura is sleeping, as if they had simply switched bodies. She expects to be able to raise her hand and declare her forfeit.

Instead, she gets stuck half way.

The Yamanaka have an excess of Yin chakra – much like the Nara, but aimed towards a different end. It concentrates in a different section of their brain, the supramarginal gyrus. It controls empathy, and combined with enough Yin chakra can create the Yamanaka signature jutsus, allowing the user to connect with another's brain, alter or take control of it by becoming part of that mind.

The shintenshin specifically targets the conscious mind, or the self, and shuts it down. This allows the caster's transferred mind to command the body to actions that the original would never have considered, such as forfeiting. The original mind is merely sleeping; of the Yamanaka jutsu, it is the gentlest… that is for the majority of the population.

But Sakura – she has pitiful reserves, but that is because of her lack of Yang chakra, not Yin. For Sakura, her Yin chakra is concentrated in her cerebrum, and more specifically, the right frontal lobe, which controls the mind's sense of self.

(Sakura has always been too self-aware.)

Her mind is sensitive to change, to chakra, because there are two entities housed there. Sakura feels the breach as a branding iron, an attempt to control her.

So when Ino's chakra breaches Sakura's mind, the right frontal lobe and the chakra from the primary self – Outer, who was already in a semi-comatose state – redirects the foreign invader to the "mental workplace," a series of interconnected parts of the brain, a web of chakra that creates a imaginary landscape.

So they dream.

extra: an analysis on team seven (by sakura):

Of Team Seven, Sakura has always been more of the textbook shinobi.

Sasuke is too full of emotion. His drive comes from his single-minded mental state – first revenge, then guilt and atonement. His fixation of power overrode all logic, leading him to make stupid, rookie mistakes, set on proving himself to the ghosts and that man. Even now, he is too invested in each mission – as if he has something to prove, and perhaps he does.

Naruto at least doesn't show his emotions on his sleeve. Odd as it may seem, Naruto hides his emotions extremely well – the demon-container and orphan's mask is so secure that even the Third believed he was a happy-go-lucky optimist. But they're wrong. Yes, Naruto is and will ever be a dreamer, an idealist. He craves acknowledgement from the village.

But Sakura has worked with him on higher ranked missions. (His first kill was bloody, unintended, at least five stab wounds, but his opponent just wouldn't die. Sakura saw the crystal sapphires soften, melt and shatter into a red wound – the shadows on his face deepened and his teeth grew fangs. Only for the eighth of a second; Naruto knew the dangers of the Fox, but that was enough. His eyes slid away from the deep scores along the ribs of the dead bandit, and he turned to her with glassy eyes. The next day the bright (plastic) smile was back.) Naruto is terrifying on the battlefield because he almost never loses composure. He stays cheerful till the bloody end. He lives solely in the present, but dreams of the future. The past is ignored, to his own detriment.

Naruto isn't a true shinobi though. To borrow Kakashi's words, Naruto is the most "surprising" ninja. Not only is he loud and attention grabbing – the antithesis of an assassin – but he also fights against anything that clashes with his ideals. This includes most of the shinobi world and lifestyle. Naruto believes in heroes, and in a clear-cut right and wrong. He exists in a certainty that draws people in, that makes them want to believe in him. (Sakura, however, hasn't had the luxury of certainty for a long time. Before she became genin, her certainty was Sasuke – but that broke during the Chunin Exams. Then it became her team – but that too was shattered as they followed their respective Sannin to set themselves on opposing paths. Sakura lost her certainty before she became Chunin. )

But Naruto's dreams border on delusional. She doesn't mean his proclaimed goal of Hokage; no, Sakura means the reasons behind his act. Naruto wants a world without injustice, without pain, without backstabbing. When Sasuke left, he trusted in the bond of teammates to bring the Avenger back – he trusted that somewhere in his obsessed heart, the traitor had some good left to him. He believes in humanity's better angels – Naruto lives in a paradox of a bloody, dark world and the overlayering vision of cleansing rain.

No, Sakura is left to be the sane one. On the mission to Wave, when the Demon Brothers attack, her first thought had been "the client has priority" and she had acted accordingly. Sasuke had rushed immediately to their opponents, intent on fighting them, but that wasn't the purpose of the mission.

Later, on the bridge, Kakashi would assign her to protect Tazuna – not just because she is the weakest, but because she is the only one who could be trusted not to desert him and go after their enemies.

She can't afford to have many morals – her profession either breaks them or destroys the shinobi – and so, to her, the mission has top priority. That isn't to say she blindly follows the rules – if one of her closest people were hurt… well, Sakura is selfish.

Selfishness, she supposes, is a good descriptor.

Sakura was never meant to last – she is named for the cherry blossoms, and they are most beautiful when they fall. She takes what fleeting happiness she can catch and allows it to slip out of her grasp when the breeze stirs. Ino had once told her that she was waiting for a bud to bloom, but she forgot that once a flower blooms it is never long till it withers.

It is unnatural for a flower to last longer than a few days.

Sakura was never meant to last – she is the civilian kunoichi on a team of powerhouses; nobody expected her to be noticed, but even the sakura has its time. But her time has ever been short.

So she left.