AN: Three chapters back-to-back! Lucky you guys! Why didn't I put it all in one lump? Well, because I personally don't like really long epic-like chapters. I usually end up taking breaks and/or letting my mind wander during reading and that causes me to skip integral parts in a story. So by breaking it down, it's more friendly to those of us who can't sit still for those six thousand word chappies. Enjoy and don't forget to pet my muse by reviewwwingggg. It encourages her to do better!

On a serious note, I hope you are all familiar with Tsunade's jitsu, Ninpo Sozo Saise. It's a bit sketchy, but I hope that I didn't allow my poetic license to get the best of me. Oh and Maki-sensei is my own creation. And-and-and! Sakura and Kakashi are both the same bloodtypes! O, although I haven't found out what their Rhesus factor (RH negative or positive) was. My attempt at research can only go so far before I lose interest.

Disclaimers: Disclaimers still apply. No amount of begging or promises of good intentions will ever make them hand over Naruto to me.

Chapter 3

She woke with a start, Kakashi's name rushing from her lips. Blinking back the black spots that floated in her line of vision, she realized that she was in a hospital room and it was dark by the looks of things. The hospital was quiet as it must have been past curfew for visitors. The only people on staff were the skeleton crew, who were quietly making rounds or sipping coffee at the reception desk.

Standing slowly, she swayed side to side on her feet as she gained her balance. Looking down at her hands, she remembered them being caked with Kakashi's blood. Now they were clean and smelled slightly of antiseptic. Her clothes had been changed, she was in scrubs that the nurses usually wore, not her customary red dress and black shorts. Her body felt strangely heavy but she shrugged it off as being tired and fished around for her sandals which sat in a pile with the tattered remains of her dress. Lifting up the ruined garment, she sighed and wondered if Maki-sensei had gone too far by ruining her wardrobe. She sat on the bed once more and tried to get her feet in her sandals. They were too small. She glanced at them and then at her feet, wondering why they had shrunk. Another malicious joke by Maki-san, perhaps?

The lights turned on suddenly and Sakura lifted her head, watching as Tsunade, Shizune and Tonton came in. Tsunade stopped and stared for a moment, Sakura could have sworn she heard a muffled curse from the kunoichi behind Tsunade. "I guess we found out that your jutsu comes with a side-affect."

"What do you mean, my jitsu?" Sakura grumbled, her voice sounding a bit lower but again, she proposed it was exhaustion and dismissed it. "And can you tell Maki-sensei to give me back my shoes... he replaced these ones for ones that are too small."

"Those are your shoes, Sakura. Your feet have just gotten bigger." Tsunade said candidly, sitting on a wheeley chair and scooting across the floor to stop in front of her.

Horror slowly dawned over Sakura, knotting her stomach into a tight ball. She frantically pushed off the bed and ran to the mirror in the bathroom. Flicking on the harsh light, she blinked as her eyes adapted and then stared at the reflection of a stranger staring back at her. Her hair was long, longer than it had ever been before. It fell past her waist, the tips of it brushing against the back of her knees. Her face had gotten a bit longer, her forehead no longer looked really big. Eyebrows arched over the same almond shaped green eyes but her irises seemed brighter than before. Her lips were fuller, her neck a bit longer and the prominent juts of her collarbones were more pronounced. Her hands went from her face to the breasts that hung full beneath the rough fabric of her shirt. She squealed as they travelled downwards, over a hard belly and to her sides, resting on the round of her hip. Her legs were longer, she was taller! Her feet were a bit larger and long, delicately arched. Her toes were no longer blunt looking, but long and dainty. She lifted the hem of her shirt up and stared at the breasts, hardly believing they were hers. She screamed again and dropped the shirt, feeling the walls of the bathroom rapidly closing in on her.

"Oh... my... god..." She mumbled, resting her hands on her forehead. "What am I going to do?"

"It seems that subconsciously, your chakra was feeding your body the right amount of energy to maintain your young teenage body. In all actuality, when you sped up the process of aging, it was irreversible. When you had reversed the aging, it wasn't permanent and when you used up all your energy to heal Kakashi, it reverted back to its aged state." Tsunade said from the bathroom door, watching her pupil frantically feel out the unfamiliar curves of her body.

"S-so... I just lost like ten years of my life because of this?" Sakura asked, tears flooding her eyes.

"I think that you might be able to maintain your body at that state until your mind catches up. Unfortunately, this is something that will always eat away at a bit of your chakra." Tsunade answered. She motioned to Shizune, who quietly shut the door as she left with Tonton, leaving the two women alone.

"What can I do?"

Tapping the ever-present tattooed diamond on her forehead, Tsunade said, "I can teach you my Ninpo Sozo Saise. This will help preserve chakra for when you need it the most. It'll compensate for the chakra that you lose while trying to keep yourself looking younger."

Sakura nodded numbly. "A-alright." Never having seen the technique before, she was curious.

"Your lesson will have to start now. I'll tell you how to gather the chakra in a certain spot on your body. When the time comes and you have enough stored, we'll use it to return you back to your normal state. For now, I don't think you have enough and I'm not going to do it for you. This is a lesson you'll have to learn the hard way."

"B-but what about my parents? What about the other villagers?"

"They won't recognize you. We'll just say that Sakura is gone with her parents. Your parents aren't expected back for a few more weeks. In that time, you'll be back to normal. Your name is now Haruno Naoru. Since Konayume is an absolutely ridiculous name and it would raise suspicion since you're living at the Haruno household and have their trademark hair colour." Tsunade explained logically, "Remember the Leaf Chakra training they make you do in the academy?"

Sakura remembered Iruka-sensei pulling out the leaf and sticking it to her forehead with kindly instructions to concentrate all of her energy into it. "Yes, I remember."

"The beginning to the Regeneration technique goes along with these principles. First, pick a spot where you want to gather your energy." Sakura nodded encouragingly after picking the spot out and holding it in her mind's eye. "Now, the shape of the mark. Something simple." Again, she nodded after figuring out the simple shape of her mark. "Now, here's the hard part. You've got to start channelling Chakra into it without completely bleeding yourself dry. Be careful because you might get too zealous at first and leave yourself with absolutely no energy."

Sakura felt the back of her neck itch and burn as she tried to summon what energy she could into making the mark. She winced and clapped a hand to the spot at the base of her neck. "It hurts!"

"It will always be like that when you feed chakra into it." Tsunade explained, "But after a while, you get used to it."

Nodding after that encouraging bit of advice, Sakura again closed her eyes and focussed her energy on making the mark. The burning and itching intensified as she poured a bit of chakra into it. "What now?" She bit out, trying to keep the energy from escaping.

"Tie it off."

She struggled with it but eventually, the energy flow to the small mark on the back of her neck was cut off and tied. It vibrated slightly but was no longer painful, much to Sakura's relief. "It's still vibrating."

"That's because it's trying to escape and return to the normal flow of chakra in your body. For a while, you're going to have to make a conscious effort to keep it in place. Eventually, you'll do it without even noticing it." Tsunade looked thoughtful for a moment as she fished in the deep pockets of her green robe. With a small, triumphant 'ah-ha!' she pulled out a Bandaid. "Here, put this on it for now. It should help you keep the chakra from returning to your body."

Sakura took the Bandaid and peeled of the paper, putting it over the small vibrating spot on the back of her neck. Immediately, the vibrating stopped and it lay dormant on her skin. She felt it still, like a coin resting heavily on the vertebrae beneath the smooth confines of the Bandaid. She gave her sensei a bright smile, "It stopped vibrating but I can still feel it."

"Yes. Just don't forget about it and from time to time, feed it chakra. You'll have to let the mark expand as learning to concentrate it in one small area is something you'll learn to do in time."

"So the mark will get bigger?"

"Yes."

Sakura nodded. "Fine." She felt relief flood over her and then she groaned, looking down at her newly acquired breasts that were straining against the material of her borrowed scrub shirt. "What am I going to do about clothes?"

Tsunade opened the door. "That's something you're going to have to figure out yourself." She said before leaving.

She fished her hitai-ate out of the remains of her clothes and tied it around her neck before pulling it up over her face to rest on her head, pushing the wayward strands of pink hair out of her eyes. There were paper slippers at the edge of her bed that she put on before venturing further out of her room.

"Where is Hatake Kakashi located?" She asked an orderly who was walking by. He gave her directions and with one appreciative glance, continued his way down the hall. Sakura scowled at his back, wondering fleetingly what he was looking at before remembering she was no longer the flat-chested girl she used to be. Self-consciously folding her arms across her breasts, Sakura went in search of Kakashi's room.

She found him fifteen minutes later, two floors up. The steady beep of the heart monitor could be heard from a few doors down. She smiled at a male nurse as she walked by, he was reading a clipboard. He glanced up and stumbled before blushing and turning back to his paperwork. Wondering about that strange reaction, she walked into her former sensei's room and soon forgot it.

Kakashi lay lifelessly in the bed, hooked up to wires and tubes that coiled about his body like snakes. Tears of guilt and sadness threatened to fall anew as she neared, his face was covered by tape that held tubes in place in his mouth. She took the clipboard that was hanging off the edge of his bed and walked out to the hall, giving herself a break from terrible sight. Concussion, broken ribs, damage to carotid artery, damage to subclavian artery, massive blood loss due to damage to major arteries...

A polite cough broke her concentration, she looked up and into the hated face of Doctor Maki. "Yes, Maki-sensei?"

"Sakura." She looked at the man, shocked that he recognized her. "Hokage-sama told me to keep your identity a secret and I will, I just wanted to let you know that you did a very good job with treating Hatake-san's injuries. If you hadn't acted the way you did, he wouldn't be alive right now."

"I knew what had to be done... and you were all busy with other patients. Besides... Kakashi-sensei is important to me." She said softly, hugging the clipboard to her body.

"Listen, I'm sorry for treating you harshly. Truce?"

"Apology accepted." She had a feeling that she was going to need as many friends as possible in the next few weeks. She glanced down at the clipboard she had been hugging. "Ano... Maki-sensei. About the blood loss. Do you have enough for Kakashi-sensei?"

"We've run a bit short since this afternoon... As you know, O is a universal donor so we've been using it a lot lately. Why?"

"That's my blood type. Will you let me donate to him?"

Looking at the woman-child, Maki sighed, "Sure."

A half hour later, Sakura was strapped to a chair in Kakashi's room with the blood being pumped from her arm. She sat, transfixed on the crimson liquid as it flowed from the tube in her arm to the bag that sat at her side. She smiled as that gaze slid from the bag of blood to Kakashi's still face. Doctor Maki came in with a can of pop in one hand and a bag of gauze and antiseptic swabs in another.

"He's an awfully lucky man to have such a beautiful woman looking after him." Sakura blushed, unaccustomed to such flattery. "You really care for him."

"More than I should. He's been one of the few constants in my life. And one of the many inconsistencies too." She grinned, remembering all the times he was late. His corny excuses. His dirty books. He had taught her a lot about being a strong shinobi who valued the ways of the ninja, with much emphasis in finding her own path. He had taught her a lot about herself, as well as the customs of her given profession. Not to mention the countless times he had saved her life or the life of her friends. Sakura found herself wandering through memories she hadn't indulged in a long time while her new found friend quietly went about removing the needle from her arm. "He'll be alright, won't he?"

"I'm sure he will, Sakura." Doctor Maki smiled at the young woman. "This will go a long way to improving his condition, too." He said as he hung the bag of newly donated blood up to replace the empty one.

"Good." She took the can of pop that the doctor had handed her and opened it. "Yum, my favourite." She said as she took a deep drink of the cherry flavoured carbonated beverage.

"Now, you need to sleep. Go home for a while and come back tomorrow. Don't think you are going to be shirking just because of your present... condition. Naoru will be replacing Sakura as of tomorrow, since Sakura will be off recovering from the stress of saving her former teacher's life." He said as he taped a cotton swab to the inside of her elbow.

"Yes, Maki-sensei." She grumbled after finishing her pop.

When the doctor left, she looked at Kakashi and smiled. Leaning down, she placed a kiss on his forehead before leaving him to whatever it was that he dreamt of.

TBC