Two shinobi patrols had passed them in the night.

Gaara's sand covering them proved more than enough to keep them from being discovered, but Sakura still couldn't help but feel uneasy as they silently packed up their small camp. Until they were out of Sand country, would they truly be safe?

Now was the time, she decided, to really work on her sensing jutsu.

"I'll know if anyone comes within about two hundred feet." She explained aloud. If they were going to be traveling together, she figured Gaara needed to know what she was (and wasn't) capable of. "But right now the technique is just a pulse. I can't keep it up permanently."

"So every two hundred feet we check again." Gaara confirmed. "I will look for anything you miss."

"What I really need is a way to keep it going for a long time." Sakura complained, digging out her scroll to mull over the writing. "Right now I've only succeeded in the first two techniques. Basic sensing and nature affinity sensing and oh my god I just realized!" Gaara gave her a confused look as a grin came to her face. "Gaara do you know your chakra affinity?"

"Earth." Gaara answered, and that was it, that was piece one of a puzzle she'd been unable to get before.

"Hold still. Try to maybe channel some earth chakra for me, please."

Gaara did so and as Sakura concentrated her chakra the piece clicked into place and of course that was what earth chakra felt like: deep, solid, unmoving, unbreaking, like the ground beneath her feet. It was the energy that she'd felt on a fair amount of the Suna shinobi, the one that had put her at ease, and Sakura couldn't help but wonder if the other affinities were also as obvious as her mind wanted to believe they were. Suna was supposed to be Wind Country, so was that riling force that so many seemed to exude a wind energy?

"You wouldn't happen to know any techniques of a different affinity, would you?" Sakura asked tentatively, and though it took far more of Gaara's focus and a few hand signs, suddenly a breath of wind left his mouth and Sakura confirmed two things.

One, the riling force was absolutely wind energy, which meant now she knew two affinities for certain. Two, Sakura could use this technique not only for sensing the affinity of a person, but the affinity of a technique, which meant that if she could successfully use this sensing in battle, she could at least deduce the affinity that would work best against whatever technique was being used against her.

The trouble was, right now anyway, this sensing jutsu took up all of her focus. A shinobi didn't have the safety in battle to just sense without moving or protecting themselves.

"I need to practice as we move." Sakura confirmed. "And I need to practice while moving, which is essentially looking forward while looking everywhere else simultaneously." She let out a groan and slumped to the ground. "I'm not a damned Hyuuga." She lamented. "No wonder people fear them so much."

And it wasn't just chakra that Hyuuga could sense with their All-Seeing Eyes either, they could see everything in a 360 degree radius, see through walls, see the tenketsu points in the body that allowed chakra to flow, and all of this was a genetic skill they could access from childhood. Sakura was trying to emulate the finer points of a kekkei genkai, and now she could begin to admit that there might have been a reason that this sensing scroll was kept locked up in the most secure library in Konoha.

The other depressing fact was that this was only sensing. Just because she could sense a user and what they could do didn't mean she had the arsenal to counter them. Right now, all she could hope was that whatever she sensed, Gaara was enough to take them down, and while she was fairly certain Gaara was capable of holding his own against the majority of enemies they might come up against, that wasn't the point, she was supposed to be working to protect the Jinchuuriki, not the other way around.

So, Sakura concluded, she needed to learn. She needed to learn new techniques and practice her own, and hope to whatever gods might be out there that they didn't find any Akatsuki members on the road until then.

"So you are an earth user, but you've learned some wind techniques." Sakura spoke again. "Anything else?" Gaara shook his head. Too good to be true to hope he had another affinity up his sleeve. "Right. Well, that means if there's an earth or wind shinobi, I'll know, but I'll be guessing on the other three. Other than basic shinobi techniques like substitution, I only know one technique of use…" She let out another groan. "And that's the Tunneling Technique. Maybe I'm the one that should have been called 'dead last' in school. The most deadly thing in my arsenal is just me getting lucky with a shuriken throw."

"Tunneling." Gaara confirmed, thinking aloud. "An earth technique."

"Yep."

"So...you want to learn more earth techniques?"

"What? I mean, you know them?" Sakura didn't want to be surprised, but she'd kind of thought that Gaara's sand was his entire game. "Because I can't do the...do the sand thing, you know."

"I had to gain a fundamental understanding of earth nature to fully know how to manipulate the sand around me." Gaara explained. "I may do so differently than most, but my sand techniques mimic earth techniques that other shinobi know." He lifted a hand, and Sakura watched as he began to demonstrate. His sand flowed out from the scroll on his back until a decent pile sat between them. With a flick of his hand, it shot upwards, solidifying into a wall. Then, with another hand movement, the wall separated into small pieces. The pieces shot forward like small projectiles, burying themselves into the sandwall that made up the cave.

It was...simple, but impressive. And of course, there was a problem. "You're doing that without hand signs." Sakura lamented. "Us non-Jinchuuriki usually need hand signs to make a jutsu work."

"The strong ones don't."

"...oh come on."

Sakura hated that Gaara was right, hated it because now she had another goal to stack on her never ending list of probably impossible goals she'd never reach. Kakashi still had to use hand signs for his jutsu, Sakura didn't know anyone short of Hokage level (other than Jinchuuriki of course) that had the control for such a feat. And without a teacher, she didn't even have a place to start, other than to just…do it.

"One kick at a time." Gaara told her, and Sakura was really beginning to regret planting that thought in his mind.

It didn't take long for a training schedule to make itself known.

When the sun began to set, Gaara would wake her, and the two would begin Rock Lee's Youthful Training Combos. Gaara would erect a pillar of sand for them to use as a punching dummy, and Sakura couldn't help but find it humorous that the pillar always seemed to sort of look like an air conditioner.

Once physical training was done, Gaara would begin to pack up the camp, and Sakura would try to cast a jutsu with only one hand sign. She needed to take steps; there was no use in cutting out hand signs entirely until she was certain she was capable of negating any at all. The Tunneling Technique was a rough start, but Sakura figured if she could maintain the dimensions of a tunnel in her mind and understand the chakra manipulation needed to dig simultaneously, well, there'd be nothing she couldn't do.

Once Gaara had finished packing, they moved out. They ran at a steady pace northwards, not too fast, but always pushing themselves. Sakura's job was to pulse for chakra signatures every couple hundred feet, and Gaara's job was to ensure she didn't run into a rock while doing it. Sakura never thought she'd consider running to be the easiest part of her day, but hitting a rhythm seemed to calm her, as well as knowing for sure that they were progressing and nobody had caught up yet to stop them.

Sunset, and then came finding a place to camp. Sakura insisted on trying to dig camping holes into the desert sands herself, failing miserably at first until Gaara sat her down and began to explain the different layers of earth beneath her, how sand was light and typically did not pack well unless acted on by a stronger force, and that the dirt and clay beneath the sand required far more energy to move aside. The comprehension was enough to help her move the earth more efficiently, but at the end of the day her holes were only just big enough to fit two people standing side by side.

After enough failures, Gaara would make a cozy sand nest for them, they would eat, and Sakura would continue with training jutsu without hand signs. She would never last long before chakra depletion and exhaustion overcame her, and more often than not would simply pass out where she sat, waking up the next morning covered by a warm blanket.

It was on day four that Shukaku spoke again.

Morning had come and the two had taken shelter beneath the sand once again, and thus began another of Sakura's fruitless efforts to create a tunnel with a single hand sign. Without a single sort of indication to any progress, Sakura didn't feel great about the training. No way of telling what she was doing wrong, no way to correct herself…

And then Gaara began to mutter to himself, which he hadn't done since he'd nearly attacked Sakura on their first night out of Suna. This time though, the mutterings did not seem desperate or scared, only confused.

Sakura felt brave enough to approach; Gaara had resisted the urge to kill once, so she figured her chances were fairly good. As she sat down next to him, she gently put her hand on his shoulder again, and immediately she noticed Gaara take calmer, more even breaths… did touch mean so much to him?

"What is it saying?"

"That humans are weak and useless and can't do anything right." Gaara replied. "It's… he's laughing at you."

"He?" So Shukaku was male? That had interesting implications. (What was gender to a beast of pure chakra, anyway?) The laughing didn't surprise Sakura; Shukaku seemed confident, perhaps haughty, and she was fruitlessly bashing her head against what was probably the most difficult ninjutsu concept ever. "He could help, instead of laugh." Sakura pointed out. "A centuries old chakra beast probably knows one or two things about how chakra works."

Silence, and then Gaara began to shake. "No. No no. He won't…humans aren't worth helping. Useless. Weak."

"Oh." Sakura replied, her tone innocent. "I guess he doesn't know anything about chakra control then."

Gaara gave her a look of confused desperation, but Sakura did her best to keep a poker face. She'd only heard Shukaku's words through Gaara once before, but she had a feeling, an inkling, that she might be able to use that small interaction to her advantage. And first she had to get Shukaku's attention.

"That old lump of sand has been sealed inside Jinchuuriki for so long, I bet he doesn't even remember what a hand sign is." She continued, looking towards Gaara with a smirk that she hoped beyond hope Shukaku could also get a glimpse of through his eyes. "He talks real big game about humanity being unable to learn, but maybe he's just a really terrible teacher."

Sakura could feel Shukaku's chakra blast its way into Gaara's body, and the aura of killing intent radiating off of him was enough to make her scoot back a couple of inches. But Gaara held firm, gripping at the earth beneath him to steady himself.

"He… you shouldn't have said that."

"Oh, so now he's mad because I'm telling the truth." Sakura tried her best to keep up the grin, though with the amount of adrenaline running through her she probably looked more like she was gritting her teeth. "That's too bad. All he'd have to do to prove me wrong is help me out with my ninjutsu, but if he can't do that, that's just going to prove my point."

All at once, like a balloon popping, the energy around Gaara seemed to deflate. Gaara took gasping breaths as he regained control, and Sakura regretted, briefly, putting him through the ordeal.

"He… he says… " Gaara suddenly turned bright red, closing his mouth and looking away.

"Well, what? Now you have to tell me."

"He says you're a crazy bitch."

Sakura snorted. Not the reaction she'd been expecting. But not a terrible one either.

Gaara took another breath and began to speak.

"You think too much. Using chakra should be natural, like breathing. When you try too hard to bend it to your will, it begins to work against you. Chakra is the connection between you and the world. It shapes you, you do not shape it, you snot-nosed-" A pause. "... I'm not repeating that."

"What, more cursing? He could come up with more original insults." Sakura laughed. Poor Gaara, stuck as a translator between a grumpy beast of impossible power and a thirteen year old who was more than definitely in over her head.

But it was something, she had to admit.

"Alright." Sakura stood up, cracking her knuckles as she made her way back to the center of the pit. "Chakra is the connection between me and the world. Using it should be easy." She looked back to Gaara for confirmation. "Well, I'm no Bijuu, but I'll see what I can do."

She concentrated, focusing at first on the ground beneath her feet. She had thought Tunneling involved pushing her chakra into the earth and moving it into the shape she desired, but if Shukaku was to be believed… was chakra work more akin to making one's energy resonate with the energy of what they were working with? And what of shinobi who could shape their chakra into such forces, summoning fireballs and waterfalls and such with a few grand hand gestures?

There was more to it than that, Sakura wasn't stupid enough to think otherwise. But maybe, just maybe… Shukaku was starting her on something basic.

Chakra connected herself to the world.

That meant that she had energy and the world had energy.

The ground beneath her feet was steadfast and strong. It would not easily move. Shukaku had said its will would shape hers, not the other way around. So, maybe she had to stop thinking like a shinobi, and start getting into the frame of mind of her technique.

So, in her mind, she pictured the tunnel she wanted it to create. She pictured it unyielding and dense, the walls holding themselves up with enough strength that one could crawl through without fear of collapse. She imagined the feeling she got when she sensed Gaara's earth chakra, that feeling of peace and protection.

And without further thought, Sakura put her hands to the ground and send out her chakra.

With a small puff of dust, a hole appeared in front of her. It was only an inch deep, a fraction of what she'd imagined, but its diameter was exactly what she'd pictured, and most importantly…

She'd done it without hand signs.

She looked back to Gaara gleefully. "I did it." She said simply. "I did it, I made a hole!"

"You did." Gaara replied, a small smile on his face. "...And now Shukaku says, you need to make another one that's not so pathetic."

Not even the insult could bring her mood down. Sakura simply stuck out her tongue in Gaara's direction before turning back to what she now considered her best work. A small hole, not very deep, not very impressive, but it meant that it was possible, she could do jutsu without hand signs if she just kept practicing, just kept training.

And that was a small spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, she wasn't quite as behind Sasuke and Naruto as she'd thought.

The scenery changed in a shock of green as the shifting desert sands began to slowly show signs of budding grassland. The sun didn't shine quite so harshly in the day, and the winds that used to whip up bits of gravel into her eyes quieted down into a gentle breeze that teased at Sakura's hair and made her want to run through the grass like a child.

By their calculations, they still had not reached the border of Land of Earth, but rather had hit a more habitable part of the Wind Country. Sakura couldn't help but wonder why the village hadn't been set up in a place like this, where livestock could graze and the sun wouldn't burn their skin...but shinobi were notoriously stubborn. Probably had thought what didn't kill them would only make them stronger. (And to their credit, they were right.)

Sakura amused herself with the sight of hundreds of sheep being herded across the land. There were livestock in Konoha, usually cattle, and never quite so much as out here. These areas likely fed the entire country.

Sakura wondered if shinobi ever really had cause to come out this far, other than passing by on missions. Were any of the civilians chakra users? A quick pulse refuted this theory, but that didn't mean they weren't out there. There might be children born into the shepherd's life, raised and grown without ever knowing they had chakra, that they could be warriors of great strength and skill.

Never knowing war. Never knowing battle. Never knowing death or betrayal or fearing for the lives of those they held dear.

Sakura started envying shepherds after that thought.

She should have known the peaceful days of travelling were too good to be true, that they couldn't last forever. She was actually the one who sensed the trouble first, though she had not expected it at the time. An aptly timed sensory pulse, for the first time in days, came back with two chakra signatures far ahead of them.

"One's earth." Sakura confirmed to Gaara, halting them in their tracks. "The other...not sure, not one of the two I know. If they're Suna patrols, we'll have to avoid them. But, on the other hand, if we can get close, maybe we can figure out what the other affinity is."

"I'll deal with them if they become troublesome." Gaara answered simply. Sakura didn't want to think too much about what 'dealing with them' implied.

They made their way over one of the rolling grassland hills, a mild layer of fog only somewhat obscuring their eyes as they approached the two signatures. Sakura's intent was to ask for directions, maybe see what the shinobi were up to. Play it cool, play it cool.

What Sakura wasn't expecting was to find two men wearing headbands that definitely did not have the Suna hourglass engraved upon the metal. Instead, she saw a single line, the top half of a circle. Not a village symbol she recognized, and judging by the slight furrow on Gaara's face, not one that he recognized either. And while the first thing she wanted to do was ask what village they hailed from, the men were otherwise occupied by the two people in front of them: a mother and daughter.

"You know the agreement." One of the men, the earth user, spoke up. He was a large man, as solid-looking as the element he wielded, and needed no weapons in order to look intimidating. Sakura was sure the man could snap her in half with his fists. "She's chakra sensitive. Hiroshi needs to train shinobi from a young age so we can start making a name for our village."

"She's four years old!" The mother protested. "She's too young!"

"I said, you know the agreement." The man reiterated. He reached out, grabbing the young girl by the arm and yanking her from her mother's grasp. "She'll be well compensated for her work. Probably better fed than in this dump of a farm anyway."

Sakura could logically argue that she had no right to stick her nose in the affairs of foreign shinobi. Sakura could logically argue that even with Gaara on her side, there was no real benefit to taking out this shinobi. Their leader would still demand child soldiers, the repercussions would fall on her and this child, and she wasn't trained well enough in battle to guarantee that she could stand much of a chance, or even do any good at all.

Logically, backing off and living to fight another day was the smart thing to do.

Well, smart moves sure as hell hadn't gotten her here.

"Gaara, I need you to do something for me." Sakura spoke up, quiet. "I need you to watch my back and make sure I don't die."

"You're going to fight them?" Gaara asked.

"Hell yeah I'm going to fight them. I have to learn how to hold my own somehow, and this is as good an excuse as any." Notwithstanding that they would be helping a little girl and her mother. That was worth brownie points to the universe, wasn't it? Sakura took a deep breath, steadying herself.

She had three things at her disposal: sensing jutsu, Tunneling Technique, and the basic ninja tools and techniques she had learned at the Academy.

And she needed to take down two enemy shinobi of unknown strength level with just that knowledge.

She brought her hands together, cracking her knuckles in preparation.

This time...I start making good on my promise. Naruto, Sasuke...this is the first step to making sure I'm on your level.

Another deep breath, and Sakura shouted as loud as she could.

"Hey rock for brains, put that girl down!"

The man turned to look at her, and Sakura's last thought before the fight was that Shukaku was right.

She was a crazy bitch.