"Alright lets start with the easy part. Take off your shirt." Tsunade demanded, pulling on some gloves she'd hidden away in her kimono.

Sakura turned away from her mentor and removed her baggy shirt carefully. She expected the sharp inhale Tsunade made.

"Good lord girl what have you got here?" the Hokage whispered, gently feeling along the skin at the edge of a protrusion. "It looks like you're growing fingers out of your back!"

"What?!" Sakura shrieked, freaked out.

"Yes, but there are no joints or finger nails, just bone and flesh. Some of them are bigger than others too. When did you start noticing something was wrong?"

Sakura paused to think. She had been waiting in town for a month, alone in the forest close to four months..."Around five and a half months ago" she admitted.

"And the sleepwalking?"

"I noticed it a couple of weeks before Akatsuki first found me."

"What is this?!" Tsunade demanded, pointing to the middle of Sakura's back. There was a nondescript spot next to her student's spine.

"I can't really tell you shishou. I don't have eyes in the back of my head." Sakura joked, only to receive a slight cuff upside the aforementioned head.

"Don't get fresh! You have a seal here!" Tsunade scolded.

"Really?! What does it say?" she asked curiously but also kind of frightened.

"Nothing, it's just a dot infused with chakra. Your chakra." her shishou accused.

"But I didn't put it there, I can't even reach!" Sakura protested.

"I know that brat, what I don't know is what it's for. Without a symbol I can't tell if it's a repressive seal or expressive seal. I can however tell that it is starting to weaken." Tsunade said, pulling away and removing her gloves.

"So basically the seal, which someone somehow manipulated my own chakra to place on me, could be triggering my symptoms?" Sakura asked, reaching for her shirt.

"Precisely. Or it was placed there in attempt to suppress them." Tsunade reminded her.

"I have a feeling it's the former situation. Someone must have placed it on me while I was sleepwalking." Sakura muttered, pulling her baggy shirt back on.

Just then the doors blew open and two people walked in.

"Ah Tusnade, so nice to see you." Orochimaru said, dodging the reflex thrown kunai to his head. The kunai in question stuck almost hilt deep in the wall behind him, quivering with residual momentum. "Now is that any way to treat your old team member? Especially when I'm about to do you a a huge favor?"

"Forget about me, you can do the world a favor by dropping dead." Tsunade hissed, fingering another kunai.

"On with my proposition...I'm willing to extend protection to your apprentice as long as she assists my main medic in his research." Orochimaru said, nodding towards the silent Kabuto at his side. "Of course she won't actually have to participate in anything, purely the clerical kind of research. In return she will be given her own room at my compound, which will obviously remain unknown, and protected from Akatsuki's grasp. Now I think that sounds rather generous of me, don't you?"

"You're bat shit crazy if you think I'll just hand over my apprentice to you. Clerical work? Ha! You'll pull her apart body and mind to discover any secrets she holds about Konoha. Forget it!" Tsunade scoffed, knowing her ex teammate well enough to tell when he was lying.

"I have no interest in using her for experimentation. Yes I will hide her away, but that is for everyone's benefit when it comes to Akatsuki. If you are truly worried about safety I can arrange for her to send you an untraceable monthly message."

"Make it chakra infused, any idiot can copy handwriting." Tsunade demanded.

"What?!" Sakura gasped, "You can't be serious shish-"

"Quiet! He's the lesser of two evils here. Your main medic you said?" Tsunade asked.

"He is, of course, not up to your caliber but Kabuto's medic skills are nothing to scoff at." Orochimaru said, trying to butter Tsunade up a little.

"Cut the flattery. I want something else in return for her services. In addition to protection from Akatsuki your main medic will study what ails my apprentice. This information will remain confidential between her, your medic and I, under protection from a seal of silence."

"You will not place a seal of silence on my medic. It can be manipulated to an unacceptable extent. I counter propose a blood contract on a sealant scroll. It's contents known between only the three of you and violation results in death."

"As long as I retain the original contract and yours is the copy." Tsunade finalized the deal.

Sakura felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, what had she just gotten into...