It hurt to breathe.
Sakura twisted just in time to dodge a fist that would have punted her halfway across the village. Her broken rib creaked in response but she couldn't afford to stop moving because Tsunade-sama was making it clear she had not one but two fists equally capable of rampant destruction. Sakura ducked. That turned out to be a mistake.
Tsunade-sama had feet too. And one of those feet rose to meet Sakura's stomach in a light kick that nevertheless had enough force to send her flying back several meters. If it weren't for the massive slug that suddenly materialized on the tree, Sakura's head would have impacted against the rough bark and cracked open like a watermelon.
"Slow," Tsunade-sama barked.
Sakura wheezed slowly in affirmation.
She willed her body to unmold itself from Katsuyu's embrace as Tsunade-sama stalked towards her, but her legs refused to cooperate. There was only so much stress the human body could endure before forfeiting the fight or flight response. It was likely that a moving, human earthquake such as Tsunade-sama qualified as one of those unendurable stressors.
But instead of going for the kill, Tsunade-sama simply squatted down in front of Sakura with all the lazy grace of a lioness. If it weren't for the fact that the once flat, level training ground now resembled an activated minefield, no one would be the wiser that Tsunade-sama had recently used her apprentice as a punching bag. She wasn't even out of breath. "You know what to do," she commanded.
The slug wiggled its antennae encouragingly out of the corner of Sakura's eye. Or rather, Sakura interpreted it as encouragement because she needed it after being—there was no other word for it—whooped so thoroughly.
Sakura nodded, grimacing. While she'd developed a profound love for Katsuyu's life-saving squishiness, she hadn't yet come around to the sensation of being covered head-to-toe in mucus. She wiped her hands on the least slimiest part of her shirt and ran through the painstaking exercise of summoning unadulterated yin chakra to her fingertips. It flickered between various shades of blue before she finally managed to produce a consistent flow of the gentle green she was looking for. Healing a broken bone didn't require much chakra, but controlling that chakra was like trying to thread twine through the world's tiniest needle. When Tsunade-sama nodded in approval, Sakura set her glowing hands on her side and closed her eyes.
She probed gently, finding the broken rib and in her mind's eye, prodded until the dense bone eased back into place. Then, it was a matter of convincing tiny tendrils of osteocytes to shoot out like saplings. Little by little, the disjointed fragments knitted together under her touch until they formed one seamless piece of bone. She took a deep breath and was almost giddy to feel her rib cage expand to accommodate life-giving oxygen.
Sakura beamed.
Tsunade-sama yawned. "Still slow," she said, shaking her head as if she'd had nothing to do with the broken rib. "Your enemy won't be as nice as me and choose to take a nap while you take your time patching yourself up." She pursed her lips, considering the grin that was sliding down Sakura's face along with slug slime. "But you've improved," Tsunade-sama conceded at last.
"Next time, let's see if you can perform Mystical Palm while dodging," Tsunade-sama said with a hint of teeth. Then she dusted invisible dirt off of herself and disappeared along with Katsuyu, leaving Sakura to slide down the tree.
The exact details of next time were always left indeterminate until she was summoned by messenger but Sakura suspected—after a year of being kicked, punched, and tossed around—that her lessons coincided with Tsunade-sama's peaking stress levels. There was just something about the way she smiled when she threw Sakura like a beachball.
How long was a year? A year was long enough for a teenage girl to hit a growth spurt that had her startling when she realized one day that she was looking down at her mother. Long enough for an insecure girl to learn her aptitudes and start to develop them into strengths. Long enough for the world of a fresh academy grad to expand beyond the limited possibilities she'd been taught in the Academy.
A year was long enough for a bleeding, gaping wound to heal but not disappear.
She'd learned how a fish worked, then a frog, then a cat, then finally a human being. She'd learned that within something so small and contained as the human brain, there existed a brilliant galaxy of neurons woven together in an impossibly intricate tapestry of glittering synapses. And if she'd learned how a human body worked, she'd also learned just how little it took to make it not work. The human body was capable of so, so much. But for all its wonderful complexities and infinite potential, it could be utterly derailed by something as tiny and simple as a blood clot.
It was beautiful and exhilarating. But more than anything, it was terrifying.
By the improbable generosity of the Hyuuga clan, Sakura could learn the exact coordinates of all 361 tenketsu points but it wouldn't be enough. She could have all the knowledge in the world but it still wouldn't be enough. What good, after all, was perfect knowledge contained in an imperfect body? It would only take one moment of distraction, one uncontrollable tremor, one blink of an eye to ruin a person irrevocably.
The thought made her shiver.
Tsunade-sama kept telling her not to think, that healing had to become as natural and thoughtless as breathing. But how was it possible not to think when she held a person's future in her imperfect hands?
"You smell," a grumpy voice said.
"He's right," a less grumpy voice added.
Sakura glared upwards. Pakkun was looking down at her from his perch on Kakashi-sensei's shoulder. "To think that we use the same shampoo. You're making me look bad," Pakkun remarked, lip curling with disgust.
It rankled to be judged by a dog, especially one as sour-faced as Pakkun. "It was mine first," Sakura snapped, flinging a handful of slime indiscriminately towards Kakashi-sensei's direction. As expected, he didn't have the decency to stay put and was gone by the time it landed. But it made her feel better.
"You missed," Kakashi-sensei supplied unhelpfully from behind her.
Sakura was already whirling around. Her fist collided with something substantial but too light to be an adult man. Helpful of Kakashi-sensei to leave behind a weapon, she thought, grabbing the telltale log and pitching it like a javelin in the direction of the shadow overhead. A sharp gust of wind sent it plummeting back down, and Sakura sprang back just in time to avoid greeting it with her face.
"Slow," said a pair of hands rising from the earth like some horror movie, yanking Sakura underground. Kakashi-sensei materialized in a whirl of leaves before her as Pakkun decided to claim Sakura's exposed head as new territory. "Slow," the dog repeated, balancing gingerly on the parts of her head that were least covered in slime. "And still smelly."
Sakura smiled sweetly. She'd been working chakra through the tightly packed earth to free her hands and had prepared a nice surprise for Kakashi-sensei. As soon as he leaned over to gloat in her face, she released the plume of fire that she'd been kindling at the back of her throat. It wasn't even half as big as Sasuke's, but Sakura favored the theory that the flames were proportionate to the size of one's ego.
Pakkun tapped her forehead thoughtfully with a soft paw. "Sneaky," the dog said, managing to sound reproachful and proud at the same time.
This one she could accept. "Sneaky," she repeated, smiling widely.
"Mean," added a flat voice. Kakashi-sensei swatted the flames aside as if they were nothing more than pesky flies. If she squinted, she thought she could see some smoke rising off burnt hair, but then she blinked and realized it was only her imagination.
Kakashi-sensei reached down to flick Sakura's forehead only to raise an unsurprised eyebrow when the forehead dissolved into a pile of dirt. "Sneaky," he agreed, scratching his chin ponderously.
A sharp, whistling sound was the only warning before the sky exploded in a flash of light. Sakura grinned for no one's benefit as everyone nearby would have been thoroughly blinded. She'd bought herself five seconds.
Five. She took a steady stance and expanded the chakra pooling in her feet outwards. Four. Her eyes were shut tight, but she could sense Kakashi-sensei moving through the vibrations in the ground. Three. She created two earth clones underground right below Kakashi-sensei. Two. Her clones reached up out of the ground as Sakura sprinted towards them. One. Her clones' hands closed around two ankles and yanked. Zero. Sakura opened her eyes and beamed at Kakashi-sensei's exposed head just as the light winked out of existence.
His one eye squinted blearily up at her.
"Any last words, Sensei?" Sakura asked cheekily, reaching down to flick his forehead. But to her horror, it caved and disintegrated into a pile of dirt. She spun around, bracing her arms for an incoming blow, but there was nothing there. The empty feeling under her feet told her he couldn't be in the ground either.
"Above," said a grumpy voice.
"Above," agreed a considerably less grumpy voice.
Sakura flicked her eyes upwards and ended up rolling them when she saw nothing but an innocuous piece of paper fluttering down. It cost her a precious second to realize there were markings on it. Shit! She launched herself backwards and threw up a wall of dirt as a last ditch effort to protect herself from the impending explosion. As far as last words went, she felt that "go to hell, Kakashi-sensei" held a certain poetic quality that would be appreciated by the gods above.
"Mean," drawled a familiar voice, echoing Kakashi-sensei's remark from the fire. She paused mid-curse and opened her eyes. Pakkun was sitting right in front of her, cocking an ear. It was distinctly unfair. Pugs weren't supposed to have the emotional intelligence required to convey complex feelings like disdain.
Of course. Sakura threw an accusatory glare and resumed cursing at the piece of paper that had landed on the ground and failed to blow up. The markings she'd seen consisted of a pair of dots and a wobbly line. She eyed it critically. A generous person might have considered it a modern art rendition of a smiley face. But Sakura couldn't be considered generous even on her best days and today was no exception.
"Well, well, Sakura," Kakashi-sensei remarked as a pair of feet walked into her view. He waggled a chiding finger at her. "Spend too much time looking underneath the underneath and things will go right over your head."
She pulled herself up with all the dignity and poise she could muster with mud caking her cheek. "You're a terrible artist," she replied scornfully.
Kakashi-sensei reached out, but paused just short of patting her head, eyeing the slime and dirt that had joined forces to create a muddy gel on her hair. He dropped his hand pointedly. "Good enough to fool you, Sa-ku-ra," he said.
"Only because you're actually crazy enough that you'd try to blow me up," Sakura sputtered but might as well have said nothing because Kakashi sensei was ignoring her in favor of something over her shoulder. He waved at it jauntily. Sakura just snorted and rubbed at the mud on her face. She knew that trick.
"For the third time, genin-san," said a modulated voice that was neither male nor female. "Kindly refrain from setting off your emergency flares in non-emergency situations."
"Oh mother of Madara," Sakura blurted, dignity and poise forgotten as she scrambled to her feet. Gathering her filthy hands, she lowered her head in a deep bow. "Sorry," she said meekly to the masked ANBU operative crouching in the trees. She offered her best look of contrition—the one she gave to her mother every time she came home with another load of grimy clothes that needed laundering—ignoring the way Kakashi-sensei positively radiated with smugness. "I won't do it again," she promised.
The ANBU vanished. The burning in her cheeks did not. "I did try to warn you," Kakashi-sensei said cheerfully. "May this serve as a lesson to heed the wisdom of your sensei."
Pakkun pawed at her knee with a stern expression. "Seems like the only thing you're learning from Tsunade-sama is language."
"Is that right?" Sakura said, cracking her knuckles. "Do you want me to show you what else she's teaching me?" It was like a healing balm for her bruised pride to see Pakkun's ears flatten submissively. She smiled, pleased that the dog had the good sense to scurry into Kakashi-sensei's vest.
"Mean," man and dog chorused in unison.
"Oh grow up and read a book," Sakura hissed. "The two of you combined don't know enough words to write a sentence." Kakashi-sensei gave her a blank look over his dog-eared copy of Icha Icha Paradise. Something inside her—probably her irredeemable dignity—withered when she caught herself eyeing the folded corners with curiosity instead of righteous anger. What exactly did Kakashi-sensei find worthy of bookmarking?
"Icha Icha is quite advanced, you know," Kakashi-sensei said, turning a page and ignoring the way his pupil's face now matched the color of her shirt. A more concerned man might have been worried that she was in need of medical attention. But Kakashi-sensei had decided long ago that concern was reserved for dogs and the end of the world only.
And Sakura made the unilateral decision to abandon a conversation that would only conclude with the loss of her sanity. "Sensei," she chirped, offering up her most charming smile, "I promised that nice ANBU officer that I wouldn't use my flares again—"
"—That's why it's in the adult section," Kakashi-sensei continued, tapping the very advanced book against her nose.
"—so I would like to heed your wisdom and learn a jutsu," she said in her best impression of the obsequious diplomats who came from Suna's court seeking Konoha's forgiveness.
Kakashi-sensei paused mid-tap. "Ah," he said, whipping his hand out and glancing at a nonexistent watch. "Look at the time. I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me. Don't want to be late—"
"—That's never stopped you before," Sakura reminded him, catching him by the elbow. But holding onto him was another story for Kakashi-sensei had an annoying habit of slithering out of people's grasps like a slippery eel.
"No really," he protested. "I have a long-term mission. I was supposed to leave…" he paused, looking up to gauge the position of the sun, "... roughly an hour ago."
"Oh." Sakura sat back and gave him a long, considering look. It had been some time since his last long-term mission since he was still technically a jounin instructor leading a genin squad even if said squad consisted of only one person. She wondered if it had anything to do with the rumors floating around the village about that abandoned Sound base that had been discovered recently. Shinobi were generally a secretive bunch, but tight lips were prone to loosening when there was enough flattery and interest. And nowadays, stories involving Orochimaru were received with keen interest —especially those that involved monsters.
"Don't worry, Sakura," he said cheerfully. "That's why I brought Pakkun—"
"—Really, sensei? You're making me dog sit again?"
"Oi," Pakkun growled, poking his head out of Kakashi-sensei's vest like a grumpy, well, prairie dog. The name made sense now, Sakura mused. "I'm the one stuck babysitting you, brat."
"Now, now children," Kakashi-sensei chided, petting Pakkun's head. The dog lifted his nose condescendingly at her even as his tail wagged with pleasure. "Let's all try to get along."
"How long will you be gone?" Sakura asked, accepting Pakkun in her arms. She ignored his sudden squirming and pressed a firm hand on his back to fix him in place. "Behave," she muttered into the dog's ear.
Kakashi-sensei just scratched his masked nose oblivious to her concern. "Maybe you should try a targeted genjutsu instead of blinding your allies, hmm?" he said rather than answering her question.
She brightened at that. "And what genjutsu are you teaching me, Sensei?" she asked, batting her eyes.
Kakashi-sensei shrugged. "Beats me."
Her foul mood came back full force, not at all improved when Pakkun released a tiny, scornful heh. The hand holding him down tightened around his soft neck in warning, making him whimper pathetically and lick her arm for mercy. "For someone who knows a thousand jutsu, you're not very generous," she said sourly.
"And did you think I was able to collect a thousand jutsu because I hand them out like candy?" Kakashi-sensei said, getting up to leave. "Surprise me with something new when I come back." His eye crinkled happily before he turned and started walking away.
She couldn't help the worry that bloomed inside her at the sight of his receding back. "Don't die," she called after him. It was meant to be a joke, but her voice sounded unnaturally light and small even to her own ears.
Kakashi-sensei waved a lazy hand without turning back. "I never have," he said. And then he was gone in a flurry of leaves.
By the time she got home, the mud covering her body had congealed into a hard clay. Her mother didn't look surprised, simply giving her a long-suffering sigh and stopping her at the door to be hosed down before letting her into the house.
And because Sakura was still a young girl who hadn't quite grown out of the childish habit of sharing her day with her mother, she exclaimed, "Mom, I healed a rib today!"
"You broke a rib?"