Sakura stared at Akira in mute shock. Her teammate? What did he mean? They weren't teammates! She had never even seen him before. He had hurt her, hell, what he had done… it could be classified as… as torture. Her stomach churned uncomfortably. She'd thought she would die as Ami had dunked her head into the water.

"I see that you are out of sorts," Akira noted, watching her face closely.

Sakura nodded minutely, though a part of her was preparing to be hurt again. Would he?

"Well, I can't fault you," he continued, standing from his previously crouched position. "Need a hand?"

Sakura faintly shook her head and pushed herself to her feet. She felt shaky, but she'd much rather not be touched by anyone. She wrapped herself in the towel and wished she was alone, wished this was all a nightmare. From the corner of her eye, she could sense Ami looking at her suspiciously.

Without meaning to, Sakura stared back and they ended up having a silent stare down. Ami's expression was guarded and passive, whilst Sakura probably did a good frightened kitten impression. Thankfully, her former bully looked away once Akira spoke again, his voice carrying across the sewer:

"Thank you all for your time." He was clearly addressing the rest of his entourage. "I will handle it from here."

Now that Sakura wasn't being held down, she could count the number of his followers clearly. There were, including Akira and Ami, eight people in the sewer. Somehow not as many as she'd first assumed, but still a lot. She watched quietly as Akira talked to two of them. Platitudes were exchanged and an appointment to "meet up at the rats' cage later on" was made. Their talk was short and to the point, albeit seemingly friendly. Even so, Sakura had time to notice that one of the interlocutors speaking to Akira was missing a finger. She watched, entranced, as the four-fingered hand waved a goodbye in the air – and then, a second later, Akira's henchmen were gone, disappearing past a corner of the dark sewer. Even Ami, with one last glance at her, turned tail and left. Only Akira remained.

Sakura was hoping he would leave as well, but of course she couldn't be that lucky. Instead, he looked her over once, and then, with a deft jump, leapt halfway up an old, iron ladder – the one Sakura had been dragged down from at the beginning of the ordeal. It was the exit. She watched Akira as he finished climbing the ladder and pushed the manhole cover up, only minutely so, peering carefully into the street. Seemingly satisfied with what he'd seen, Akira turned back toward her.

"The coast is clear."

With these words, he climbed out into the open. Not knowing what else to do, Sakura followed.

It was strangely anticlimactic to be outside again. She had gone through an ordeal and yet, to the outside world, nothing had changed. The street was the same, the people were the same, their carefree day was the same.

"Fancy some taiyaki?" Akira queried, as if wanting to shake her up even more.

Before Sakura had time to snap out of it and reply, he'd placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and was steering her down the street, to the nearest tea shop. Quietly, she marveled at how such a reassuring gesture could feel so threatening under the right circumstances. A few minutes later, they'd settled down in one of the shop's booths, each with a plate of taiyaki in front of them. Sakura wondered if hers was poisoned or if she was just being paranoid.

"You're awfully quiet," Akira commented, as he bit into one of the fish-shaped sweets. Red bean dripped down his jaw and onto his plate, like blood as it drips from a wolf's maw.

"What do you want from me?" Sakura said shakily after a moment, realizing this was her cue to speak.

"I told you, I'm your new teammate."

"Tsunade-sama never mentioned that."

"You'll just have to inform her then, won't you?" Akira concluded.

Sakura's fists balled in frustration. "But why? Why would you even want to be my teammate? Is this your decision or is someone else behind it? I don't understand."

Akira helped himself to another piece of taiyaki.

"My reasons are my own; all you need to know is that I wish to make chunin, the sooner the better – and you, Haruno, are the best way to go about accomplishing that."

Sakura stared at him confusedly. "I… don't follow."

"Well," said Akira, "it's not really you that interests me, but rather: your reputation. Word on the street is that you're a cold blooded psychopath capable of murdering jonin–" here Sakura choked "–and regardless of whether that's true or not, some people will believe it and avoid crossing you, crossing us . If we can keep that belief up for at least the first few stages of the chunin exam, we will have an advantage that most clanless teams would not. You will give us that advantage."

Wait, what?

…he wanted her for her bad reputation? Sakura stared at the taiyaki plate in front of her in stunned silence. That someone like him would call her reputation 'bad'... it was a hard pill to swallow. She was no longer herself, no longer the innocent civilian girl with bookish tendencies – all others saw her as was Backstabbing Sakura now. Even this… gang leader, or whatever he was. Regardless of who he really was, Sakura wasn't stupid enough to delude herself into believing that she had a way out of Akira's scheme. This guy had decided he would be on her genin team and there was nothing Sakura could do about it. Except perhaps–

"You've… you've graduated from the Academy?" she asked carefully, hoping he'd say no.

Unfortunately, Akira nodded. "I did. Didn't get a jonin sensei, though. People like me, they never do." He paused to glance at her. "Except… you. You did, Haruno. Why is that?"

'People like me?' He must mean those of civilian descent. Sakura swallowed.

"I… I had good grades, I worked hard, I…" Her mouth clicked shut when she saw the look on Akira's face. At first she'd thought he'd be insulted, yet his countenance wasn't angry. Rather, he had an expression like knew something she didn't, the tilt of his brow almost pitying. Sakura swallowed and told herself it was nothing, even as the sudden silence began to stretch.

Finally Akira spoke again.

"It's curious. You don't strike me as much of a fighter, Haruno." His comment struck her as an observation rather than an insult. This is why Sakura could admit:

"No, no I'm not."

"And yet you managed to detonate an explosion tag seal. The inner workings of those are usually only known to chunin and above," he noted. "Not even I am privy to them. So how?"

Sakura frowned. "We covered the topic of seals briefly in the Academy, in one of the extra credit lectures during third year. I deduced how to activate a tag with chakra based on Iruka-sensei's lecture, and I guess that knowledge stayed with me."

"I see." Akira was looking at her with interest now, and Sakura wondered what it was that he saw. "You would've been… ten at the time, no?"

Sakura didn't like the line of questioning. "Yeah, but…" She tried to change the topic. "Do you… do you have anyone in mind to be our third teammate?"

At this Akira's brow quirked, but he let it go. "Yes, I do."

"W-well… who is it?"

"You are rather non-threatening, so I decided someone physically imposing would balance you out nicely," said Akira.

"So it's not… uh, Yami?"

He cocked his head curiously, as if noting her aversion and filing it away for future reference. "No, no. I considered her, but two females on a team might make others think we're weak. The aim is to appear strong, so, despite Yami's skill, I decided someone else would be best."

Sakura nodded slowly, relieved.

"Well… then when will I meet him?"

Akira hummed thoughtfully. "I'm not sure. That depends on you."

::::::::::::::::::::

Even in my worst times, you could see the best of me

Flash back to my mistakes

My rebounds, my earthquakes

Even in my worst light, you saw the truth of me

–T. Swift

::::::::::::::::::::

When Sakura made it back to her little flat that afternoon, she felt almost like a different person. So much had happened in such a small timespan. She had spoken to Tsunade-sama, been kidnapped, been tortured and then she had had a chat with her new teammate, who seemed really shady and was also the instigator of the aforementioned kidnapping and… unpleasantness. And all of this in under three hours. Now she was back home, not knowing what to do with herself – or well – back to her temporary hole, as her little one-room flat could hardly be called a home.

Without much ado, she threw herself on her ratty mattress, prepared to sleep for all eternity, noticing only then that she was still wrapped in the towel Akira had given her. It was dirty and now that she had noticed it, she knew she'd be unable to sleep. Regretfully, Sakura got up again and dragged herself toward her minuscule bathroom, placing the towel in her laundry pile. It was only then that she saw her appearance: the small attached bathroom had a mirror, and, though it had cracks and was full of dust, it worked well enough to show her just how much of a fright she looked. Her clothes were stained greenish and brown from the unnamed substances available at the sewers. Her hair was standing on end, half wet half tangled in horrible knots. Her face wasn't obviously tear-streaked though she could feel the salt on her cheeks still, and on her knees bloomed blue bruises. Defeated, Sakura resigned herself to the ice cold mercies of her mini shower cubicle, trying not to make too much noise as she hopped about under the cold spray.

::::::::::::::::::::

My castle crumbled overnight,

I brought a knife to a gunfight,

they took the crown but it's alright

–T. Swift

::::::::::::::::::::

When she was finally done fixing her sorry state, it was already past lunch hour. Not for the first time, Sakura felt lonely. Previously, she'd been afraid of leaving her apartment even for something like eating, but now? The worst had already happened, what was there to be scared of?

As such, Sakura found herself packing her great-grandfather's sketchbook into her back for entertainment as well as some money to pay for lunch. As was her usual, she henged into a plain-looking girl and donned some plain-looking clothes. Without further ado, she was out of the door.

There were few places where one could be surrounded by people without having to pay in some shape or form. This is why, after munching on some stale sushi that had been sold with a hefty discount, Sakura's feet took her to the library. The Konoha library was a building she hadn't visited in a long time, and somehow, seeing it took her back to her childhood.

Sakura went in, looking around in fond reminiscence, and sat down at one of the desks by the window. How many afternoons had she whiled away at this very desk as a child?

For an indiscernible amount of time, she leafed through her great-grandfather's drawings, appreciating their quiet beauty. By this point she had already seen all of them, but there were always new details to be appreciated, new mysteries to wonder about. One of the things that intrigued her the most were the rare few people that sometimes appeared. Especially the two boys who only appeared at the very beginning of the notebook, when the author had been less talented.

Sakura marveled at their old-fashioned clothes that looked from an entirely different era, and at the lack of modern… well… anything surrounding them. She wondered what had happened to them. They seemed so endearing in the drawings…

Her favorite was perhaps the boy with the two-toned hair. She had to wonder whether her great-grandfather had taken some artistic liberties with him, because Sakura had never seen anyone with both white and brown hair, the colors split perfectly in the middle. It was odd, especially given the realism of every drawing. Even so, it was hard to tell the boy's age. Sakura wouldn't have placed him as anything above nine, though his arms and legs were quite toned. Again, was that an artistic addition or the boys true appearance? In truth, most of the characters in her grandfather's sketchbook were incredibly toned, even the woman that appeared at the end, so perhaps he just had a thing for muscly people?

Yeah, right…

Regardless of the muscles' veracity, the boy in this sketch seemed agile. He had been captured in the act of climbing a tree, his hand outstretched to grasp a fruit, cherubic face flushed with joy as he showed off his accomplishment to the artist, to her great-grandfather, to her. Looking at the drawing felt like the boy was grinning directly at her… his sun-kissed face and grin so cute, his manner lovable in the way only a talented artist can portray.

Sakura wondered who that boy had been to her great-grandfather. It would all depend on his age while drawing this. It could be a younger sibling, perhaps? Or a little cousin? Though in that case he must've been quite young when he drew it. Maybe it made more sense that the boy had been his son, or perhaps he had been a friend's younger brother.

There were other people in the drawings, though never any writing, much to Sakura's dismay. It would've been nice to have something to call them by. She especially wondered about the two boys from the beginning. Her grandfather seemed to have put great care into the drawings, and yet had never drawn them again. Sakura worried her lip.

The other boy that had disappeared at the beginning was slightly older-looking and with brown hair, a scar on his cheek. He had appeared twice. Once crouching low, as though prepared to pounce at any second, another time curled up around a fire, like a pleased cat. He looked like a cocky little rascal, that one, especially in the drawing where he was crouching: there was a daredevil little smirk on his face, as though he'd been about to pull off a prank or a trick.

Sakura wondered with a heavy heart why neither boy had ever appeared again, and hoped that her guess was wrong.

Tearing her mind from such dark thoughts, she continued leading though the sketchbook, pointedly skipping the first few pages. It occurred to her that perhaps the author had attempted a self-portrait at some point, though in all of the drawings, Sakura hadn't seen any one character who bore an obvious resemblance to her or her parents. However, this oddly made sense to her. Something told her that her great-grandfather wouldn't have bothered with a self portrait. Drawings including people were rare for him. It was therefore possible that he only drew those close to him, close to his heart, rather than seeking out models at every turn, and perhaps he was the sort of person who didn't care enough about himself as a subject matter to attempt a self portrait.

The most frequent theme of his sketchbook, after all, was not humans, but rather – water. Her great-grandfather seemed to relish in drawing it at every turn, especially as the sketchbook progressed. There were amazing renditions of water in its most terrifying shapes – a whirlpool that made the hairs on her arms stand on end, a wave that dwarfed everything around it, waterfalls as viewed from below, which looked like they could crush anything in their path, majestic drawings of rivers running off course, of thunderstorms in the sea… it was truly amazing, in a way. But then there were also drawings which made water into the epitome of peace, sketches of small creeks and gentle drizzle, of the magnificent calm sea, and precise renditions of the small waves in a pond, or frosty morning dew after cold nights. It was odd how water seemed to be her grandfather's only muse, Sakura though with fondness.

Besides for these 'clear cut' drawings about water, there were also pages upon pages of blue. These also depicted the universal life-giving liquid, yes, but the type of water body wasn't really discernible. A few times, something or someone would be mirrored in its surface (none of the humanoid shapes were discernible – Sakura thought that this was perhaps the closest her great-grandfather had ever gotten to a self portrait), but just as often that was all there was to the drawing: water, captured in its most basic essence. And yet, despite their conceptual similarity, every single rendition was different, each one so realistic that a passing bird might accidentally try to drink from the sketchbook.

The logical part of Sakura didn't understand her great-grandfather's seeming hyperfixation. After all, it was just… water? Nothing much to it. However, another part of her felt strangely entranced watching those drawings. It was a different way of viewing something she saw every day, of realizing something as harmless as water could be deadly and yet life-bringing. She was amazed at the dichotomy, at the oxymoron of water as a life-bringer and death-giver, amazed at the accuracy of the sketches and at the perspective and insight that they gave, amazed at how anyone could draw water as well as he did.

It was almost by accident that the thought began to sneak up on her. How well would she fare at drawing it?

Just as she was thinking this, the tag thingy once again fell out of the sketchbook. The sealing array her great-grandfather had most likely made. Sakura hadn't dared to touch it in the past few days lest it explode, though her curiosity about it had steadily continued to climb. It was a seal, that much was clear, but what did it do? And what was inside?

It was then that Sakura remembered Akira's expression as she'd told him how she'd figured out how to activate a seal. He had seemed impressed, if she hadn't read that wrong. She hadn't previously given her ability to activate a sealing tag much thought, but judging by Akira's reaction, she realized that it actually had some merit. No one had outright explained it. Iruka's lecture for the extra credit workshop had been very basic and simplistic, they hadn't been allowed to touch any sealing tags and he hadn't explained how to detonate them either… Sakura had just sort of concluded how to based on what little he had said about their inner workings. Thinking back on it, it was sort of cool… she had never thought her bookish tendencies would ever pay off in such a way, and somehow it made her warm inside.
That being said, Sakura was well aware that knowing how to activate an explosion tag and having what it takes to decipher an age-old mysterious seal were two very different things… and yet… suddenly she felt like maybe she'd give figuring her great-grandfather's seal out a shot.

With a sudden gleam in her eye, she proceeded to pocket all of her supplies, careful not to touch the seal, and, since she was already at the library, decided she could look around for any books on sealing tags knowledge.

Naturally, there were none. To shinobi, information was the most valuable currency, even Sakura knew that. Hoping that they'd leave any secret ninja arts scrolls lying around in the library for any spy or infiltrator to find was a fool's errand, but, well… at least now she knew that looking at the library was out for certain. However, Sakura had already assumed that she wouldn't find anything useful there, so she wasn't too bummed out.

From what she could gather, most clans had great private collections of scrolls, but of course those were only accessible to clan members. Sakura didn't know anyone from a clan besides for her ex-teammates, who, before she'd ruined everything, would have sooner stabbed themselves than let her into their library… never mind their possible reactions if she were to ask now. And who else was there she could ask for help? She wasn't from a clan, and clan children barely interacted with civilians. Well… she had used to be friends with a clan-girl she went to kunoichi classes with, Ino Yamanaka, but Ino had graduated one year before her, not to mention that she'd probably heard about the whole Backstabbing Sakura business. Sakura hadn't seen her for almost two years by now, and she wasn't delusional enough to think that Ino would help her.

That left her with very little options on how to learn more about scrolls… except, Sakura thought, through the source.

Kimchi: I'm glad to hear you'd react as Sakura did [in the cave] as well. Honestly I was trying to make it sound like a plausible course of action while still keeping it controversial at the same time. In the previous chapter it was addressed that career genin (those who don't pass their jonin test) don't really have a jonin. Tsunade warned Sakura that if she were to team up with a career genin, she would lose her right to a jonin sensei, so...

Your review made me really happy, and what do you mean you're sorry it's long? I mean the longer the better! At least for me! I really enjoy getting to know my readers! Also, thanks for your defence. I really appreciate it. :)

I didn't really have any other reviews (that weren't flames) last chapter so I'm leaving the replies here. Hope you enjoyed this one!