"Look at this pint-sized little brat, Asahi! Why, she's barely tall enough to reach my knee!"

Sakura resisted the urge to respond to the shinobi's taunts as the two men turned to face her. Perhaps it was strange, but she also had to resist the urge to quiver with fear. She had faced down Gaara before, so why did these shinobi scare her now? She had Gaara backing her up, no less, which meant that these shinobi would barely even be a threat if she called on the Jinchuuriki to help her out.

But maybe it was because she didn't want Gaara's help, she didn't want anyone's help taking down these bullies, because she'd relied on others for long enough. This was going to be her first true solo mission, and perhaps that was what really scared her. She had to treat this like a life or death mission. No redos, no Gaara to back her up, no room for failure. She had to get these shinobi away from that child and make sure they didn't have a reason to come back.

Confidence. It was all about the confidence. Tsunade could frighten with just a single glare, so why couldn't she?

"You heard me." She retorted, straightening her back and attempting, maybe, to seem a little bit taller. "I said, put her down, or I'll show you what a real shinobi is capable of."

"A real shinobi?" The other man, Asahi, burst into laughter. Great. Intimidation: failure. "What village raised a little punk like you, huh? Why don't you come down off your high horse and take a look at what you're dealing with."

"Yeah, we're hot-blooded shinobi of the Plains!" The first man gestured boldly, dropping the girl just so he could pump a fist against his chest. "If you get on your knees and beg for forgiveness, maybe we'll let you live this once."

Plains? Sakura briefly look backed to Gaara, who looked equally confused. "There's no Plains shinobi!" She countered. "Sunagakure controls this territory."

"Sunagakure doesn't even know what they have out here! Hiroshi claimed this land years ago, and the foolish Kazekage hasn't even realized it yet. Those dumb brats never leave that silly little hole of theirs, which just means us real shinobi get access to all the fine pickings!"

A new shinobi village, huh? If Suna didn't know about this already, they'd probably pay a fortune for such information alone. It was too bad she'd pretty much turned Suna against her by taking Gaara along, otherwise she'd have quite the bargaining chip.

"Alright. So you're Plains." Sakura agreed. "That still doesn't give you the right to bully children away from their mothers. Like I said before, leave her be or I'll take you on myself, no matter what kind of shinobi you think you are."

"Whine, whine, whine." Asahi rolled his eyes. "I'm getting tired of listening to you talk. You had your chance to step down, so don't say we didn't warn you when we send you to the other side."

The man cracked his knuckles, and Sakura knew instantly that he was preparing to fight. And more importantly, she needed to move quickly if she wanted to get any sort of upper hand at all.

As the man moved to step forward, Sakura thrust her hands down towards the ground, focusing on the sensation of 'earth' that she had been working on over the past week. She didn't need a full tunnel; just a hole would do. She had to predict the location at which the man's foot would fall, and the approximate size of his foot...and then just add depth.

The ground beneath Asahi's foot sunk down about two inches. Not far, but just far enough that the man misstepped, tripping and falling flat onto his face.

Sakura grinned. So there was a use to her making potholes after all.

"Ow, son of a bitch!"

"Walk much, Asahi? Come on, you look like shit on the ground there." The other man laughed boisterously at his fallen comrade. "Gonna let a little girl show you up?"

"Fuck no!" The man leapt to his feet, then went through a series of hand signs. Sakura managed to pick up only the final one (tiger) before rocks began to pull themselves up from the ground and mold themselves around Asahi's hands, eventually forming what looked to be large rock gauntlets.

She needed to learn that move, Sakura decided. That move was cool, and she had about five seconds before that move would be trying to bash her head in. She needed a way to knock this guy out, and she doubted making small holes would continue to do the trick-

Asahi moved, almost too fast for her eyes to register, and there was a clash of sand and rock as a wall appeared in front of her. Sakura let herself take a breath. Gaara had just saved her life.

But that had been a failure, damn it all. She didn't have time to think in combat. She needed to move now.

Gaara's sand had seemed to rise up from the earth, like a Mud Wall technique. Sakura didn't know the Mud Wall, but she did know something about the Tunneling technique: upon refilling the hole the technique created, earth rapidly filled in from one end to the other, with enough force to push out anything that had been left in the hole. If she could harness that force, use it to her advantage…

Sakura had an idea. It was about as crazy as challenging these men had been, and she hated having to potentially rely on Gaara to cover her if this proved a mistake. But this man moved so quickly, and obviously she couldn't best rock fists in hand to hand combat.

So Sakura backed up, putting some distance between herself and the man. He'd been startled enough by Gaara's interference, which gave her precious seconds. He'd come for her again, likely just as direct a path towards her as before. Once again, she had to predict where he would run and when he would reach a certain spot.

She focused on the spot, praying her calculations were good enough, before focusing her mind to picture something she'd never quite thought of picturing before.

She pictured an imaginary tunnel forming upwards from the spot she'd chosen. It wasn't very thick, wasn't very wide, but it was taller than the man's height, a good seven feet. And then, as Sakura quickly began her hand signs, Sakura pictured herself not making the tunnel, but filling it.

She felt her chakra rush from her towards the ground, and her eyes widen as she saw the earth at that very spot begin to swell and shoot upward...stopping about four feet short of her seven foot goal, but the three foot pillar was, unfortunately for Asahi, about the same height as his nether region. Asahi's dash forward put him right in the path of the pillar, and Sakura winced as the man crashed into it, folding in half with a cry of agony.

Alright, so her Reverse Tunneling Technique wasn't exactly how she'd pictured it but...well, she couldn't deny the results.

Score one point for Sakura.

"For fuck's sake, Asahi." The other man rolled his eyes as he watched his companion writhe on the ground. "She's like, ten years old."

"I don't care how old she is, Touma, kick her ass." Asahi replied with a pained growl.

Sakura braced herself, ready to dodge as she faced down the second man. Asahi would be down for a while, she hoped; groin shots were notoriously painful. That meant she could keep her focus on the new guy.

Touma put together four quick hand signals and Sakura saw his mouth seem to fill, his cheeks expanding. In quick succession, the man began to fire bullets of water directly at her.

First thought: so that was probably a water chakra she'd sensed on the man earlier, and though she didn't want to waste her chakra confirming this on the bullets being shot her way, she could probably reasonably assume that the nature was water, which meant that now she only had lightning and fire left that she had to learn to distinguish.

Second thought: these were a pain to dodge.

Admittedly, all of the running and training she'd done in the past weeks had been enough to quicken her stride somewhat. She ran in a large circle around Touma to dodge, keeping just at the edge of the man's aim. So far, Gaara's sand hadn't come up to defend her, which meant she was dodging this all on her own which was a step further in becoming stronger. But she couldn't dodge forever, she had to think.

This Touma had seen her use her Reverse Tunneling and was now trying to keep her on her toes. She needed to stop and touch the ground in order to use that jutsu, and the instant she did, the water bullets would be on her. Plus, the surrounding terrain was just hills and plains, nowhere for her to hide behind for any sort of cover. That was what she needed, she realized, cover, and since she didn't know the Mud Wall technique or anything similar, she was a sitting duck the instant she tried to slow down.

There was no way for her to spontaneously learn a cover jutsu in the heat of battle, and Sakura came to the unfortunate conclusion that in any other case, she'd be out of luck. She could hope to move to the offensive, hope to be good enough to dodge the water bullets long enough to get in close with a kunai...and then she didn't know what other abilities the shinobi might have for close range combat. And she would have to do this all quickly, before the first shinobi recovered from the groin shot.

Sakura just couldn't do that on her own. She wasn't good enough yet. And maybe, at this point in time, there was no harm in admitting that to herself. After all, she wasn't alone, like she'd expected to be.

She had Gaara. And that meant, by the luck of it all, that she would have cover if she asked.

Konoha shinobi were prided for their teamwork, right? There was no harm in relying on someone else to cover your back where you were weak. And this would only be until Sakura was strong enough to handle such situations on her own.

Sakura made her way to Gaara's side, taking a deep breath of relief as his sand shot up automatically to protect them. "Sorry." She wheezed. "I'm just...not good enough to dodge those forever."

"You're apologizing?" Gaara asked. "It's not as though you didn't ask for me to watch your back."

"That's fair." Sakura acknowledged. "But I had hoped I'd be able to take these guys on my own."

"...you got one of them." Gaara nodded in the direction of the first shinobi, still on the ground. In the distance, the second was still firing water bullets in a constant stream, no doubt attempting to test the limits of Gaara's defense. Sakura was once again baffled by the sheer strength of Gaara's sand barriers. She'd seen Sasuke's Chidori best it once, but other than that, was anything capable?

Sakura's first thought was that she needed a defense that good. But then again, she already had something that good. Sasuke and Naruto had both left her behind, her old teammates, but Gaara…

Gaara had chosen to follow her.

Gaara was her teammate now.

And teammates worked together.

She'd tested her strength. She'd done fairly well for a first battle. But now it was time to see what the two of them together could do.

"Gaara, let's take this clown down." Sakura spoke with resolve, turning her focus back to the water shinobi. He'd stopped the bullets, for now, and was rapidly performing hand signs, no doubt for a far stronger jutsu. He'd be distracted, if only for a moment, not thinking about the area around him so long as he thought Sakura was hiding behind Gaara's sand. And that was a good situation for her to be in. "I want you to put up your strongest barrier for him. And whatever you do, don't let him see what I'm about to do."

Gaara seemed curious, but did as she said. He raised a hand, and a thick wall of sand erupted from the ground in front of them. And damn it all, it was obstructing her view too, but…

But she didn't need to see the shinobi, he was building up so much chakra for that water attack that Sakura was certain she could just sense him. A couple of hand signs later and her senses pulsed out. Chakra, water chakra, was building, and whatever this attack was would be huge. Earth was strong against water, however, and Sakura trusted Gaara's sand would hold. She just had to move quickly while she had an opening. But what could she do?

Three things at her disposal. Sensing, Tunneling, and shinobi tools.

A smirk grew across Sakura's face.

With some more signs, she thrust her hands to the ground and created a tunnel, making the exit appear mere inches behind the water shinobi.

The next step relied on two assumptions.

One, whenever she filled a tunnel, earth poured in from her position, quickly filling the tunnel from one end to the other, not filling the tunnel all at once. The first half of the jutsu dug the tunnel, the second half refilled, both following similar motions.

Two, if there was anything in the tunnel when she filled it, logic dictated that the rapidly filling earth would push anything inside out through the exit hole. (And considering the rate at which the tunnel filled, Sakura could assume said object would be pushed out with a decent amount of force.

So Sakura turned to Gaara for help with her next step. "I need a small ball of sand, quick!"

Now perhaps even more confused, Gaara obliged, holding out a packed ball for Sakura to grab. Sakura took it and reached inside her own pouch for a small slip of paper before putting it onto the ball.

A timed paper bomb.

She activated the bomb before tossing it into the tunnel she had just created. Then, in a quick motion, Sakura filled her tunnel.

There was one second of heart-wrenching silence. Then, several things happened at once.

The first was that the water shinobi's jutsu hit Gaara's wall with incredible force. The ground shook around them as the two powers collided, but Gaara's wall inevitably proved the victor, standing completely firm against whatever it was the shinobi had sent out.

Then, immediately after the ground had settled, it shook once more as Sakura heard an explosion, the sign that her paper bomb had gone off.

The sand wall in front of them slowly faded away back into the earth, and Sakura looked upon the now scorched area beyond them. She saw small flames licking at the grass, and a charred circle around where her exit hole had once been. Lying on the ground, blackened from flames and the sheer force of the bomb, was the body of the water shinobi.

Sakura's heart stopped for a brief moment as she realized she'd killed him.

(And it was her first kill, the first time any of her skills had been enough to match another, let alone best them, she wasn't even sure that Naruto or Sasuke had a kill count yet, and suddenly here she was with that tally mark up to 'one'.)

The other shinobi looked on with horror at the scorched area next to him, and though he still looked pained from his injury, he began to crawl away. Without even thinking, Sakura spoke to Gaara.

"S-stop him from leaving."

And Gaara did, his sand reaching out to entwine around the shinobi's legs and hold him in place. To his credit, he did not use much more force than that. How funny, Sakura thought, that the famed killer showed such restraint now, and she, no doubt considered the weakest of Team Seven, had just killed with more ease than she'd thought possible. A single paper bomb.

"Sakura?"

Sakura forced herself back into reality. Gaara seemed...was he worried? Seeing that look on his face was perhaps one of the worst things she'd ever seen. Only when Shukaku reared his power did calm, collected Gaara ever show much emotion, but now...now she could see the worry lines on his face. No, she couldn't fall apart in front of him. She couldn't fall apart here. There was still an enemy, and she had one thing left to do.

She walked to the earth shinobi's side, kneeling down so that she could look him in the eyes. "Alright." She spoke, pulling back the tremor she knew wanted to sneak into her voice. "This boss of yours, Hiroshi. You're going to tell him to stop harassing children into being his soldiers. You tell him this stops now, or he's going to be next. You got that?"

"Y-yeah, yeah, I got it, I got it!" The shinobi insisted. He was afraid of her, Sakura realized. "Please, just don't kill me!"

No…she wasn't a killer, she told herself (only she was now), and there was no point in causing more death today. She gestured to Gaara, who pulled back his sand without another word. The shinobi didn't need prompting. He pulled himself to his feet and began a sort of crippled run, looking back only twice before being convinced that Sakura would not pursue him further.

The young girl, Hatsuko, was enamored of the 'lovely lady' that had saved her from the 'bad shinobi'. Her mother, Kozue, was (perhaps rightly so) a bit more wary of the woman who'd taken out an enemy so quickly, but was also more gracious than fearful, insisting that Sakura and Gaara both come stay at her home for their trouble, and have dinner with them, naturally. Sakura couldn't help but think the arrangement was for further benefit to the small family; if anyone else tried to come and take Hatsuko, Sakura would of course be obligated to protect her again. But Sakura wasn't going to be stupid enough to turn down warm food and a roof over her head, not after so long camping in the desert.

"Hiroshi is a bully, of course. I'm sure someone like you has seen it a million times before." Kozue explained as she fussed over a small stew pot. Her house was on a quaint farmland; it was not always so, but at the moment it was just her and her daughter. "My husband and my eldest two have already been recruited into his new army. At some point he hopes to challenge Suna for rights to the land and rights to call this place a new shinobi village. With the current Kazekage dead…"

"There won't be much to stand in his way." Sakura deduced, looking over to Gaara with a frown. Gaara was the Kazekage's son, and no doubt he knew better than anyone how ill equipped the recovering Sunagakure was to deal with such a menace. Their quick war with Konoha had thinned their ranks and left them without a leader. Now, with Gaara gone as well, Suna had little hope of putting up an adequate fight against a growing shinobi army.

"I do appreciate what you've done, but it's only a matter of time before they come for Hatsuko again. And you will not be able to stand against them all." Kozue continued. "I'll provide for you, for your kindness, but if you wish to live, you'll leave first thing tomorrow."

It was sound advice. Sakura was still trembling over the fact that she'd managed to kill a shinobi at all, how could she possibly hope to fair against an army? Even if she'd wanted to stay and help these people, even if a part of her wanted to go against Hiroshi...she and Gaara were only two. That wasn't nearly enough, and she definitely wasn't strong enough. She was just...passing by.

When night finally fell, Gaara wasn't the only one with insomnia.

Every time Sakura closed her eyes, she saw the charred body, over and over again. She'd seen death before, hell she'd seen worse than death before during the chuunin exams, but someone just the knowledge that she had caused it made it that much more difficult for her mind to process. So she made her way to the roof outside, hoping the fresh air would clear her head. Gaara, of course, was there, keeping a vigilant watch on the surrounding plains.

It was quiet, so quiet, so peaceful…

And in the distance, it was still there, that charred spot.

Sakura allowed herself to cry. She'd earned it, damn it all. It shouldn't be easy to take a life at all, it shouldn't ever get easier, even if a shinobi was supposed to bury their emotions. Those two shinobi had been comrades of a sort, and she'd killed one of them. Did the survivor feel remorse? Guilt? Were they spending the night mourning their comrade? Had the water shinobi had a family somewhere too, someone who would miss him?

She flinched as she felt a sudden hand on her shoulder. Gaara had moved next to her, eerily quiet as always, but the fact that he was here to comfort her was...well, comforting.

"I think sometimes I hate being a shinobi." She admitted, reaching up to wipe her eyes. "But if I can't kill one stranger, how can I possibly hope to protect my friends? Akatsuki, Orochimaru...they'll do worse than kill them. I shouldn't even think to hesitate at all."

"That's how I used to think." Gaara replied. "Then Naruto knocked some sense into me."

Sakura blinked as she looked over to Gaara. Was he...was he making a joke?

She couldn't help it. She burst into laughter, ripples of it making their way through her body as she collapsed into a giggling heap.

"Knocked it into you alright." She wheezed. "Gaara, holy shit."

Gaara just smiled.

And damn it all, he was right once again. What was it she had told him on their first night out? He didn't have to kill. There was another way. And that also meant that she didn't have to kill if she could find another way. Maybe Akatsuki and Orochimaru wouldn't give her a choice. Maybe her hand would be forced. But if she could find a better way, shouldn't she? Shinobi had always followed a path of war, death, and destruction, and if things were ever going to change, it needed to start somewhere.

It could start with her and him. It could start here and now.

"Gaara." Sakura decided. "I want to do something really stupid."

"Yes?"

"I want to take this Hiroshi down a couple pegs."

"Where do we start?"