[Chapter 2]
The days at the academy passed by quickly, and soon the last remaining touches of summer had truly disappeared, leaving only crackling leaves underfoot and burnt orange coloured trees. Daylight grew shorter, and the nights grew longer.
Sakura had quickly become closer friends with Sasuke and Naruto, aided in part by how most of the other girls in their year had started fangirling over the young Uchiha. Pretty soon, they were the only two he found bearable.
Inner Hermione had told Sakura with pride that they reminded her of Harry, Ron and herself, the golden trio of Hogwarts.
And as it turned out, their supposed kenjutsu teacher, Hayate Gekko, had never shown up, despite Iruka's promise to make him come. Word was that he had proposed to his girlfriend, and that he was now 'too busy with wedding preparations' to help. As a result, Genma had practically become their new kenjutsu teacher, and with each practice fight against him Sakura knew she was improving significantly.
She'd been training on her own time too, of course. After realizing during their endurance training on the second day of school that she was completely, frustratingly, average in the strength department, Sakura had thrown herself into training. She'd thought she was relatively athletic because of all her running around and adventures in younger years, but she'd quickly learned that she didn't even hold a flame to boys such as Sasuke and even Naruto.
Now, despite her parents complaints, she woke up at five every morning, and came home at ten, determined to catch up. Her inners had only encouraged her, and Sakura could finally feel some of their combined efforts showing. As Katniss, she could hit the innermost ring nine times out of ten with both kunai and her old bow. And as Ahsoka, she'd adapted and strengthened her body enough to allow her to perform some of the more complex Form V movements.
Every day almost felt like routine now, with her waking up before dawn to begin training. She wouldn't let herself waste training time, even when sleeping over at Naruto's house, or more frequently, the Uchiha compound.
It was one of these mornings that the chance encounter occurred. The Uchiha had a multitude of training grounds both within and outside their clan compound, including a large one which was reserved specifically for the main family and whoever they invited. This was the one Sasuke had told her to use. Some mornings, he would accompany her and train alongside her, but today she went alone.
And it was there, practicing with the bow and arrows her father had given to her, that she really and truly met Itachi Uchiha for the first time.
"Is that a bow?" Itachi asked, curiously, dropping down from a nearby tree without a sound and examining the weapon in her hands.
Sakura, by now used to how advanced shinobi would sneak up and appear without warning, nodded.
She'd met him before of course, with the first time being at the academy. But this was possibly the first time he'd ever approached her, their other conversations consisting of meaningless small talk.
"It's a bow, and I have the arrows in the quiver on my back."
"That is a samurai or civilian weapon, is it not? I have never seen a shinobi use something like that. Most would probably consider it too clumsy or useless" Itachi commented, as he continued to watch her from a few meters away.
Sakura shot another arrow into the target she had been aiming for and frowned slightly. "I suppose it is."
"My apologies, I did not mean to offend you."
She nodded, accepting his apology.
"I only meant that it would be easily breakable" Itachi said, continuing. He paused and for a moment there was only the sound of arrows thudding into the target. "Do you know why Shinobi katanas and other non-projectile weapons do not break despite the tremendous force behind them?"
At this, Sakura stopped her shooting and let her arms relax for a moment, turning to face him with a furrow in her eyebrows. She actually didn't know.
"Is it because the weapons are made from stronger materials?" she guessed.
Itachi shook his head. "We infuse our swords with chakra. It strengthens both the metal of the blade and helps to absorb the impact of a hit. I would assume it is much the same with any weapons a shinobi would use."
Sakura thought about it. It make sense, I suppose, that chakra, the substance which strengthens our own bodies, could also be used to strengthen something else. And it stands to reason that you could insert chakra into a weapon, just like we pushed our chakra into the leaves on the first day at the academy.
She could feel inner Hermione thinking about it too, the young witch's intelligent mind already thinking about ways they could use this information.
"Why are you telling me this?" She asked Itachi.
"Your bow," he replied, walking over to her and taking the weapon from her hands. "You hold yourself back while using it do you not? You fear to break it."
Sakura ignored the urge to grab it back, knowing he wouldn't be careless enough to damage it.
Itachi closed his eyes in concentration, and the hand he was holding the bow with glowed a bright green, much brighter than her leaf had been during the chakra control exercise. Soon the entire bow was glowing the same colour. He dropped the weapon suddenly, letting it fall to the ground. The greenish glow surrounding the bow disappeared as soon as it left his contact.
Sakura didn't hold herself back this time, and rushed over to pick up and cradle the bow, examining it to see if it had been damaged.
Itachi chuckled. "It will take a lot more than a simple fall to break that now."
Sakura could indeed feel the same humming feeling of the chakra she felt beneath her skin every day coming from the bow in her hands. Turning to Itachi again, she looked up at him.
"Could you show me how?" She asked hesitantly.
Itachi nodded and gave her the same small smile she had seen him give to Sasuke on occasion.
"Of course."
He sat down on the ground and folded his legs, not minding the dirt that would undoubtedly ruin the pristine training outfit he was dressed in.
"You've probably done the exercise where you fill a leaf with your chakra and it sticks to your hand," he said, and Sakura nodded affirmatively.
"Good. Did you complete the task?"
"On my second try," Sakura said, remembering the pride she had felt.
Itachi didn't seem either surprised or disappointed. "This is much the same," he explained, "with the difference being that after filling the weapon with your chakra you must separate its flow from the natural one of your body, causing it to circulate indefinitely. This is the hardest part to complete, since chakra has an almost magnetic quality, and will try to return your body instead of circulating within the weapon as a closed system."
He handed her a kunai, hilt first.
"Try it on a kunai first, there will be less material to infuse."
Sakura accepted the weapon and concentrated on moving more of her chakra flow to her hands, and molding it into the kunai as well, trying to keep the flow going at the same time. Keenly aware of how the chakra was moving, she cut off her stream into the projectile, and rerouted the chakra returning back into her body from the metal to join its tail end, creating an infinite loop of chakra within the kunai. It was much easier than it had been at the academy, and Sakura realized it was because she hadn't had the additional task of balancing herself.
She handed the kunai back to Itachi, watching him assessing it.
He nodded silently. "Congratulations, you did it on your first try."
A smile stretched Sakura's face as she finally heard a bit of pride in the older ninja's voice.
Itachi studied her for a moment. "You have extremely precise chakra control it seems. That will definitely be useful for making up for your average sized reserves. From what I know, most shinobi tend drop the weapon at the same moment they cut off the flow, like I did before, since it ensures the chakra will continue to circulate within the weapon instead of uselessly pooling up. However, you seem to have no need for that extra help."
"Oh, that's... cool?" Sakura said meekly, unsure if having good chakra control but mediocre reserves was a good thing or a bad thing.
"It is. It means certain skills many ninja will never excel at will come easily to you."
"Like what?"
"Genjutsu and Fuinjutsu for starters" he said. She frowned a tiny bit, not knowing what those were.
Itachi seemed to hear her unsaid question. "Genjutsu are techniques that use illusions, and Fuinjutsu means sealing techniques."
There was silence for a moment as Sakura thought about that. They both did seem quite interesting, even if not the flashy techniques she had always seen herself using.
"Would you like me to show you some simple techniques as well?" he asked.
Sakura nodded eagerly.
And that was how she spent the rest of her morning training, continuously delighting the Uchiha prodigy with how quickly she learned. Surprisingly enough, her inners remained silent the entire time, recognizing Sakura didn't need any help.
Hours had seemed like seconds, and soon the compound had been awakening with noise, signifying it was time to join the others for breakfast before heading to the academy with Sasuke and Naruto. Sakura had thanked Itachi with a smile, and they had made their way back to the main house together. Secretly, she wished they could have had more time.
The next time she saw him while training early in the morning at the Uchiha compound he had taught her a bit more. The same thing the time after that. Until slowly Sakura began to seek him out instead of leaving the coincidence of their meetings to fate, finding him in the same spot every Thursday morning.
More weeks passed by.
It was early February now, but unlike the lands further to the north such as the Cloud and Mist ninja villages, Konoha saw only blue skies year-round, without a hint of snow. The excitement from the first few weeks at the academy had slowly begun to fade, and now her days were mostly spent training and playing around with Naruto and Sasuke. All three of them had discovered that they shared a sense of adventure and Sakura had since taken part in innumerable pranks, led by Naruto.
That particular morning though, they were practicing Kenjutsu with Genma again. Instead of having them do drills as they normally did, he had instructed them to partner up and have mock fights, with Iruka making sure no one got hurt.
Sasuke and Naruto had been arguing since the day before, and were quick to partner up, eager to fight each other. This left Sakura without a partner, not that she minded, since she had been planning to ask if she could face off against Genma instead.
"Genma-sensei, there's no else to pair up with. Can you be my partner?" she asked him.
She knew the jounin saw right through her, and knew why she was the last one to find a partner, but he didn't seem to mind and easily agreed, leading her to the outskirts of the large clearing they were practicing in.
"Have you been practicing, squirt?" he asked her.
"You bet I have, Genma-sensei! I've got a new move I want to try out" Sakura said, easily slipping into her character of Ahsoka, just like every time she fought him.
Iruka wasn't like Genma in that way. While Iruka preferred to call them formally by their last names as most teachers did, Genma had a much more laid back attitude, referring to his students however he wanted. It had been a source of exasperation for the former many a time, having to apologise to offended parents of the kids.
She crouched down, and waited for him to attack, holding the practice blade in the same reverse-grip she always did. After the first match all those weeks ago, Iruka hadn't talked to her about her fixing her grip anymore.
Genma attacked, and Ahsoka easily spun away, going on the defensive. She didn't plan to seriously attack anytime soon.
Flipping herself back to her feet or away from the path of the blade by using a handspring had been something Ahsoka couldn't do because of her limited strength and flexibility. Until now. She'd even asked Sasuke to help her with them, and today she planned to surprise her teacher.
Knocking aside and dodging a few more of Genma's strikes, while attempting a few half-hearted attacks of her own, Ahsoka tried to seem as if it was Genma forcing her to fall down on the ground by making her scramble backwards to avoid a sweeping blow.
She lay on the dirt, pretending to be exhausted. Ahsoka knew Genma had stopped attacking, moving towards her to see if she was ok, which was exactly what she wanted. The best part about a move such as a handspring, was that you didn't need to use all four limbs, mostly just requiring abdominal strength and a sudden motion to propel yourself upwards. This was especially useful in things such as sword fights and lightsaber duels, where you were constantly holding the weapon in one of your hands.
Sensing that her teacher had moved close enough, she immediately pushed herself upwards and off the ground using her legs, which she had conveniently curled under her when she fell.
She saw Genma's surprised face for a moment as she touched down, before she suddenly realized she'd miscalculated, using an excessive amount of force in her spring. Her body was way too far out from her center of balance, and Ahsoka found herself falling forwards. She dropped the practice sword she held instinctively to make her landing less painful.
Then she saw a navy blue flash and suddenly the world was tilted the right way again. Genma had caught her in a split second and propped her back upright on her feet again. Lazily, he held his sword to her neck.
The personage of Ahsoka disappeared, as she always did when the fight was lost, and Sakura was back.
She nodded and then sheepishly scratched her head when Genma let her go. "Sorry, Genma-sensei, guess I need to practice a bit more."
He chuckled and gestured for her to follow him to a nearby overturned tree, sitting down on the wide log. "It was a pretty good try. I definitely wasn't expecting it."
"Thanks," Sakura said, smiling, "can I try fighting you again? I'm not hurt at all."
"Nah, I think that was enough for an old man like me, at least for now. Besides, I want to ask you about something."
She looked at him curiously.
"I want to know where you learned to use a sword, Sakura-chan. I've looked through your file and it says you come from a civilian family" he said.
Inner Ahsoka blanched. "Oh no Sakura! What if he thinks you're a spy just because you channel me when you're fighting," she cried.
Sakura thought about it for a moment but then decided to go with the truth. If he was using her given name instead of calling her 'squirt' he was definitely serious.
"I learned by watching someone else fight and copying what they did" she answered honestly.
Genma studied her for a moment before replying. "I would guess the person you copied probably used two much lighter swords, one in each hand, with almost all the weight centered at the hilt. Am I right?"
Sakura nodded, surprised. "Yeah, that's right. And she held the swords in a reverse grip just like I do."
Genma seemed contemplative. "You can't keep using the academy's practice swords then," he said decidedly.
"Huh?"
"As far as I can tell the style fits a little squirt like you pretty well, so I definitely wouldn't want you to learn something else. But if you're really gonna stick with that odd way of fighting these bulky training sticks are probably detrimental to learning it properly."
"You're not going to ask who I was watching fight?" Sakura questioned, a tad confused.
"Well I can't say I'm not curious, since I definitely don't know anyone else in the Konoha ranks who fights like you do. But no, I'm not going to ask you that." He said, smiling. "I'm just doing the best I can as a sensei, you know."
Inner Ahsoka melted at that. "He's such a great guy" she said gushing. "Almost as amazing as my old master."
Sakura smiled back hesitantly. "Well, where am I supposed to get a sword like the one you described, Genma-sensei?"
The jounin nodded sagely. "From the only superior-quality weapons store in Konoha. Tenzin's Ninja Outfitter and Weaponry."
Sakura's spirit sank. She had indeed heard of the shop, known for its high quality weapons. However, it was also known for being expensive, and it wasn't like she had loads of money to spare, spending the meager allowance she got on the equipment needed for the academy.
"Oh, thanks. I'll check it out sometime" she said. Genma eyed her as if he knew.
He smiled at her without commenting though. "That's all. You said you wanted to go another round squirt?"
"I'll definitely get the handspring this time" Sakura agreed eagerly, temporarily forgetting about the curious expression her teacher had worn.
She actually had ended up getting the handspring right that time, although she hadn't managed to land a hit on the jounin. Unfortunately, it was only later that night that she remembered her conversation with Genma, reminded by the fact that her sensei was crouched on the windowsill to her bedroom, knocking loudly.
Not quite knowing if she was dreaming or not, Sakura waddled to the window, her blanket wrapped around her, and opened it.
"Genma-sensei?" she asked drowsily.
Wordlessly he handed her a package. She removed her arms enough from the blanket to take it from him. It was lighter than it looked, she noted with surprise, and unwrapped it slowly.
Inside were two identical swords. They looked almost like katanas, except with a straight blade. The hilts were slightly rounded at the bottom, flowing kanji were engraved on the blades, and most of all, they were beautiful.
All the previous tiredness gone, she stared wordlessly at him, stunned by what he had given her.
"Don't just stand there! Thank him!" Inner Ahsoka said hurriedly, just as surprised as she was.
"Genma-sensei… this…" she started.
Genma only laughed softly. "Don't worry about it, I knew you couldn't afford it. And I'll leave it to you to figure out what it's made of. Just a hint, try using your chakra."
"Do you… just go around gifting random genin in the village expensive gifts?" Sakura asked, not knowing what else to say. She hoped he could feel how grateful she was.
"Nope, only the pink-haired ones" he said brightly. For a moment they stood there facing each other, and then Genma saluted her once, jumping off her windowsill to disappear into the dark.
Sakura remained standing there, swaddled in her blanket and holding the swords for a bit longer, serenely gazing out to where her teacher had disappeared. Finally, she felt the chilly breeze drafting in through her window and hurriedly closed it. In a daze she hid the swords underneath her bed, and clambered back into her bed.
She had a hard time falling asleep that night though, asking herself too many questions she didn't have the answers to.
And even more questions appeared the next morning when she tried to channel chakra into the swords much like Itachi had taught her and they glowed a bright green. The kanji she had noticed the night before, spelled 'light' and 'saber', one on each of the blades.
In her mind, Sakura knew Ahsoka was literally bursting with joy, and the emotions transferred to her. Abandoning any hope of training that morning, she ran into the village in the hopes of finding Genma.
Konoha was relatively silent at this time of day, shinobi being the only ones awake. Despite this, it was only about an hour later that Sakura finally caught a glimpse of a person who looked like Genma, jumping from rooftop to rooftop with incredible speed. She called out his name but he didn't seem to hear and after briefly entertaining the notion of trying to chase after him, she gave up. It'd be years more before she could move that fast.
The next time she saw the jounin was two days later. It was Wednesday after school, and she'd heard loud voices coming from one of the empty classrooms. The door was cracked open, but Sakura would probably have passed right by, if not for the fact that she heard her name. Indecisively wondering what to do, but her curiosity finally winning out, she looked around to see if she was really alone and crouched behind the door, her ear to the crack.
"I'd like to request time to personally train Sakura-chan during kenjutsu lessons" she heard a voice that she knew belonged to Genma say to someone else.
Inner Ahsoka gasped. "Expensive katanas and now this? I was wrong, Genma is waaaaay cooler than master Anakin was"
The other person turned out to be Iruka, who let out a long sigh. "You know I can't let you do that, Genma-san. If any of the students told their parents, you could get in trouble for favouritism."
"As if all the other teachers don't favour the clan-born brats!" Genma said, a hint of outrage evident in his voice.
"I know. Even I find myself doing it sometimes. But the point still remains, it is exactly the clan-born kids who have parents with enough influence to make accusations of favouritism an actual problem" Iruka replied tiredly, and Sakura could imagine him running a hand through the ends of his ponytail, just like he always did when he was running out of patience. "I'm sorry Genma-san, I really am, but if you want to train Haruno-san individually, you'll have to do so on your own time" he said.
"I understand. Thank you for your time Iruka-san" Genma said, and Sakura couldn't tell what emotion was in his voice.
"No problem. I'll see you on friday for the kid's kenjutsu lesson. I need to finish grading these papers so go on ahead" Iruka said dismissively.
Sakura heard footsteps making their way towards the door. The realization that she really wasn't allowed to be here, spying on an obviously private conversation came too late.
Scrambling away from the door and trying to casually stand up, it opened suddenly, and a large shadow fell on her, causing her to fall down again.
Looking up, she saw Genma's amused face.
"Don't worry, we both knew you were here squirt. As if an academy student could fool two shinobi" he said, chuckling at her and offering a hand to help her up.
She took the offered hand, blushing and refusing to meet his eyes.
"So? How about Tuesday morning?" Genma asked her as he accompanied her down the empty hall towards the front entrance.
"Huh? Are you asking me on a date, Genma-san" Sakura said, confused.
All three of her inners groaned in exasperation.
Genma joined in, groaning as well. "C'mon, you were listening to our conversation, don't even try and deny it. What do you think I'm asking you? Use your brain!"
"Training?" Sakura said slowly, casting her eyes nervously up to Genma to see if she was right.
"Of course!" Genma said, rolling his eyes at her.
"But I don't have any money" Sakura protested weakly.
"I thought it was pretty obvious I don't care about money when I bought you those swords" Genma replied softly, ruffling her hair with a hand.
She stopped walking and he stopped as well, turning to her to see why she'd stopped. Suddenly she flung her arms around him and buried her face in his vest, feeling surprisingly emotional.
"Thank you, Genma-sensei. Please teach me as much as you can!" she said with a shaking voice, her voice muffled by his clothing.
The jounin laughed and Sakura could feel the vibrations. "I'll try my best Snips."
Sakura suddenly glanced up at him in surprise, her arms around his waist loosening.
"Snips?"
"Padawan and master right? Why do you think I got you swords made from chakra-sensitive metal… not all of us come from shinobi clans" he said playfully.
She thought inner Ahsoka might be crying, and her own eyes were definitely damp. "So you knew all along where I got the idea for my fighting style from?"
"It tickled my mind the first time I faced you, but yeah I eventually dug some old childhood memories up," Genma said, "so thank you for that. I'd forgotten about sweet moments like reading comics growing up, mostly because of the war happening at the time."
He narrowed his eyes at her with no real malice. "I'm extremely impressed though, that you managed to create a completely identical and adaptable fighting style from a few drawn, two-dimensional panels. Even some of the most talented shinobi I know, the copy-nin among them, couldn't have accomplished a feat like that."
Sakura felt pride swelling in her chest. Ahsoka, thank you… she thought to her inner.
She smiled up at Genma. "I guess I just pretended I was actually Ahsoka, and that's how I learned" she said.
The older male looked curious at that as if he wanted to ask another question, but he instead settled for ruffling her hair again. Sakura immediately tried to smooth it down.
"I'll see you next Tuesday morning then! Five-thirty am at training grounds three! Don't be late" he called, walking away and out of sight.
Sakura brushed a fear tears of joy from the corners of her eyes. She wasn't sure if they had come from her or inner Ahsoka, but nonetheless, she fixed a firm smile and ran outside, determined to learn enough before Tuesday to impress Genma.
More time passed. Naruto, Sasuke, Itachi and Genma had started to become almost constants in Sakura's day-to-day life.
The seasons changed, and while most of Konoha's mokuton-created trees stayed the same beautiful green colour, fire country's cherry blossom trees had begun to bloom. Sakura's namesake trees were planted all around the village, and it seemed like there was a constant rain of pink flower petals falling everywhere.
The beauty of her surroundings didn't help improve Sakura's mood at the moment though, as she sat beneath an old tree in the center of one of the clearings. The last few days at the academy had been almost mind-numbingly boring, but as if to make up for that, Iruka mentioned something incredibly interesting today at the end of class.
Shunshin, or the body flicker technique, was a D-rank jutsu which allowed a ninja to move a short distance at an untraceable speed, making it seem as if the user had teleported. Iruka had talked for a few minutes about the theory behind the jutsu, but the bell had rung before he had time to go into more detail. Sakura had never hated the stupid bell more than that moment in all her existence.
This was the first real jutsu Iruka had ever started teaching them, and she was ready beyond belief to finally learn some jutsu beyond the genjutsu and fuinjutsu techniques Itachi had been helping her with.
Unfortunately, she'd cautiously tried it a few times herself, not succeeding in even moving a centimetre.
"Let's go through the theory one more time" inner Hermione recommended, "ninjutsu theory seems suspiciously similar to the theory of magic so I can try instructing you."
Sakura reread the notes she had jotted down.
chakra temporarily vitalises body
extreme speeds
amount of chakra input = distance + elevation from user to destination
smoke to disguise initial movement
"Ok," inner Hermione said thoughtfully, "vitalising the body with a burst of chakra, that would be like speeding up the flow of chakra incredibly quickly right. In theory it would be the opposite of slowing down chak-"
Suddenly inner Hermione fell silent, and Sakura knew she had connected the dots between this and something else somehow.
"Arresto Momentum" inner Hermione thought with a grin. "That's it!"
Sakura waited for the intelligent witch to explain further.
"I remember using it in 1998 to try and cushion someone's fall. It didn't work, but I know the theory behind the spell. The literal translation of the spell has to do with bringing a moving force to a stop, and doing the shunshin is as simple as trying the exact opposite."
Ok… Sakura thought to her, still confused, so how do I do that?
"Chakra is like a moving stream of water, constantly flowing" inner Hermione explained. "It's extremely difficult to stop the flow of water, and would be really inefficient. The easiest way to stop a stream from flowing would be to cut off its source right? Well at least I'd assume it's the same for both chakra and magic."
"Your flow of chakra must have a source, something like the heart pumping it throughout the entire body. All you have to do is find that source and somehow either increase its speed of pumping immensely for a short period of time" inner Hermione said.
"The source of my chakra" Sakura said, repeating the words out loud. Closing her eyes, she tried to feel the flow of chakra throughout her body. And indeed she could feel it with a strong awareness, but she was lost as to where the source was
"Try running along your chakra. It might be like a roll of tape, where it's hard to find the beginning" inner Hermione said thoughtfully.
Sakura followed her instructions, starting at her lower stomach and making her way along the main stream of chakra throughout her body.
It all seemed relatively similar although with different consistencies, much like how a river flowed at different speeds.
"I can't find it" she murmured.
"Keep looking" inner Hermione responded.
She examined the main stream of chakra for a second time, this time paying even closer attention. She felt her focus slipping a little, when suddenly she noticed a tiny notch in the chakra she hadn't noticed before.
It was like a small dam, Sakura decided, putting all of her attention on the little detail she'd found.
I found something but it feels more like a dam than a pump Sakura thought to inner Hermione.
"It should still work the same way. Opening the dam will increase the flow while closing it further will decrease it. It seems to be about halfway between open and shut right now which would make sense" Inner Hermione said.
Keenly aware of that small dam controlling the flow of her chakra now that she'd found it, Sakura tried to find a way to change its position.
It wasn't a physical object so it wasn't as if she could just open or close it, but maybe she would be able to control it just like she could the rest of her chakra. It was a part of her after all.
Sakura would've found it hard to explain in after sight, but almost instinctively, as soon as she tried to control it, to open it, it did.
She could feel the flow of her chakra increase exponentially in milliseconds, and surprised, she opened her eyes again.
Sakura wasn't where she'd been sitting before, maybe a metre away, but the first thing she noticed was that everything seemed to be moving incredibly slowly.
The next was that there was some indescribable feeling pushing her forwards, telling her that she couldn't stop moving or she'd die, and so she took a single step forwards. Suddenly she was metres away from where she'd just been, and she felt compelled to take another step, and then another. It was almost like the world was swimming through syrup and she was soaring through the skies on wings.
Almost detachedly, she noticed she was running now, and still moving at an incredible speed where everything else seemed to stand motionless.
The tree leaves didn't flutter and the few animals she saw didn't move.
Sakura was having a harder time now though, as her unstoppable speed brought her to the edge of the forest and into the heart of the village.
People were moving at a barely perceptible speed to her, but at the speed at which she was moving she knew she couldn't even graze them. It would be like hitting water from a great height.
"You have to avoid them Sakura. Even if you somehow didn't die, they probably would" inner Hermione confirmed, not sounding at all calm and collected like she normally was.
Sakura dodged a few people and buildings, feeling as if she was in a video game. A video game with real life consequences.
Realizing she wasn't slowing down, if anything she was starting to move even faster, Sakura finally started to panic for real.
"Hermione how do I slow down?" She wanted to scream. Except she couldn't. For some reason her words came out fast as well, much too fast to understand.
Inner Hermione was part of her though, so she instinctively felt the same fear as Sakura.
Sakura would have sobbed if she could, as she barely managed to dodge the next group of people and awkwardly spaced buildings, not able to coherently think about anything except somehow getting the hell away from the center of the village and back into the deserted forest she had come from.
"Sakura! You need to calm now. You have to close the dam!" Inner Hermione yelled at her.
Sakura brokenly processed her words due to sheer panic, as she finally escaped the maze of downtown konoha and found herself speeding through a dense patch of forest and towards a large training area.
Trying to feel her way back to the small dam in her chakra was harder than the first time, not aided by the fact that she had to focus on not colliding with any trees.
"I can't find it! I can't find it! I don't know where the dam is anymore!" Sakura shrieked, blindly feeling around her chakra network for where she remembered the notch to be.
She grasped at a random portion of her chakra, and heaved a painful sigh of relief when it turned out to be the small dam.
"Sakura!" Inner Hermione called frantically.
Sakura looked up to find someone in front of her. She didn't even have time to take in his features before she frantically slammed down the dam, hoping that inner Hermione was right and it would stop the incredibly fast flow of chakra through her body, which had started to feel as if it was burning her veins from the inside out.
Sharingan red eyes and a worried expression were the last thing she saw before everything went dark.
To say Shisui was surprised when a pink haired suddenly appeared out of thin air in front of him and crashed to the ground, would be an understatement.
He'd been training by himself in his favourite spot, far away from the Uchiha compound and all the dreadfully heavy weights pushing down on his shoulders there, when suddenly there'd been a blur moving towards him, his sharingan eyes barely able to keep up with the movement. He'd been so astounded that he suspected if the little girl hadn't done whatever she had to stop herself, he probably wouldn't have thought to jump out of the way in time.
Staring down at the pink haired girl lying motionless in front of him, Shisui felt a bit of worry overcome him. The sharingan wasn't as good as the byakugan for seeing the flow of chakra through a body, but it was good enough to be able to see that there was something seriously wrong with the girl's flow. As if it wasn't flowing at all.
Shisui narrowed his eyes as he crouched down and checked the girl's pulse. It wasn't there. That was impossible, how could she have been moving towards him one moment and dead the next.
Shisui felt the urge to probe around her body a bit with his chakra to figure out what was wrong with her, because it was just so interesting, but the more rational part of his mind took over, scooping her up like she weighed less than a feather. He rushed towards the Konoha hospital, going as fast as he possibly could — or in other words, very very fast.
When Sakura opened her eyes, she noticed she definitely wasn't in the forest anymore. Everything around her was white and sterile and clean and medical, so she quickly made the leap that she was currently in the hospital.
Suddenly a face appeared above her, and Sakura faintly recognized the red eyes and black hair.
"Itachi-san?" She asked groggily, sitting up with the help of the man beside her.
The unknown person chuckled. "Not me, although I do know him."
He propped up a pillow behind her to help her sit up. "Shisui Uchiha at your service" he said cheerfully.
As she blinked the fog from her eyes Sakura studied his face and noticed he really didn't have much of a resemblance to the Itachi, excluding the eyes and hair that practically everyone in the Uchiha clan inherited.
"Who are you?" She asked suspiciously, looking around the room to see if there was anyone else present. There wasn't.
Shisui lost the smile he had previously worn at the sign of her distrust.
"I believe a better question would be who are you?" He asked seriously. "And what compelled you to try and kill yourself by completely halting the chakra flow of your entire body. I just barely managed to get you to the hospital in time, and you're only alive because one of the nurses was able to stimulate your flow of chakra again, although it's still running slower than usual."
Sakura tried to process the information. Feeling inside her for the little dam, which she found much easier now that it wasn't during a life threatening situation, she realized she'd accidentally pushed the dam down much too far in her frantic panic. It was a wonder her chakra was even moving through her body right now. She subtly opened the dam a bit more to try and let her chakra flow get back up to normal speed, but she saw Shisui's eyes narrow and she knew he had noticed with his sharingan.
"I would also like to know," he said calmly, "how you were able to accomplish such a feat."
With her chakra flow back at a normal speed, Sakura felt as if she could finally think clearly again.
"My name is Sakura Haruno" she answered, nervously biting her lip. She looked away from Shisui's burning gaze. "I was trying to do a shunshin."
The words processed, and Shisui was suddenly struck by the irony of the situation.
Sakura mistook his bitter amusement for disbelief though, and glared at him.
"I didn't just try to do a shunshin, I did a shunshin! I started in that large clearing on the North side of the Konoha forest" she said angrily. Despite having almost killed herself, Sakura knew she must have successfully done the shunshin no jutsu to have moved at such speeds.
Shisui seemed to know the clearing she was talking about, based on the way he frowned thoughtfully at her.
"If that's really true then how do you still have almost entirely full chakra reserves... using a shunshin to cross the entire village should have caused an immense strain in chakra with the rate a body of your size would be expelling..." he said, almost as if he was speaking to himself. "Unless of course you weren't expelling chakra..."
Sakura looked at him curiously. "What do you mean, Shisui-san?"
The Uchiha glanced sideways at her. "How exactly did you think you were supposed to do the jutsu?"
Sakura looked slightly sheepish.
"Well Iruka-sensei didn't explain it very well, just something about vitalizing the body. So I kinda assumed the jutsu required you to speed and slow down your chakra flow really quickly," she said. "And so I found the source of my chakra flow, but it felt kinda like a dam. Those are supposed to slow the flow of water down, right?. It made sense, so I opened it cause I thought that would increase the speed of the flow. Except then suddenly everything was moving really really slowly and I was moving really really fast and I couldn't slow down! I was trying not to bump into things because Hermion- I knew it would probably kill me, and then I realized I had to slow down so I tried to do the opposite of before and shut the dam. But I was freaking out, and I guess I shut it too far because I don't remember anything after that."
Shisui has sat through her explanation patiently, nodding along at parts, but now he laughed incredulously. "After that you completely stopped your chakra flow, Sakura-chan. Which by the way, normally leads to death, since our bodies aren't equipped to function without any chakra. It's the same idea as complete chakra exhaustion."
Sakura blinked a bit at that, the fact that she'd really just had a brush with death not affecting her as much as she'd thought it would.
"How good is your chakra control to do something like that," Shisui said, almost complaining, as he huffed a bit. "I've never even heard of the supposed 'dam' in our chakra flow you found."
Sakura leaned over and tapped his chest in the same location she knew her own was. "It's right there. It's barely noticeable though, and it took me a while to find it."
Shisui wrinkled his forehead for a second as if trying to find the dam, but gave up after a few moments.
"Nope, can't find it" he said, not seeming very perturbed.
He looked over at her small form on the hospital bed contemplatively. "Do you want me to teach you how to actually perform a shunshin?"
Sakura laughed dryly. "I'm guessing you have to expel chakra and not completely stop its flow?"
Shisui grinned, tapping her nose with his index finger. "Clever girl" he complimented. "How about tomorrow at noon? You can meet me at the same training grounds you almost died on."
As if she'd heard him, a young woman with long red-brown hair suddenly rushed in, pushing Shisui out of the way and fussing over Sakura.
A nurse maybe?
"Uchiha-san, I will not allow my patient to train or perform any strenuous physical activity until she is completely healed" the unknown nurse said firmly.
"Ok, ok. No strenuous activity, got it. I'll get going then."
Shisui held up his hands placatingly, but just before he disappeared from the room Sakura saw him wink at her.
The nurse quickly turned to her and started worrying over her, laying out a soft blanket on top of her and sternly telling Sakura that she wasn't to leave the hospital until next Tuesday at the earliest.
Sakura sneaked out the next day anyways, meeting Shisui at training grounds 32, where, as if to aggravate the nurse further, he had her doing a whole lot of strenuous activity.
"You gotta gain a bit of muscle before trying the shunshin" he told her with a dark smile on his face.
Sakura groaned, but did as she was told and started on her first set of one handed pushups.
That day, their training was cut short when a masked ANBU dropped out of nowhere, telling Shisui that the Hokage was requesting to see him.
Later, she found a message from the Uchiha, apologizing and telling her to meet him in the same spot the next week.
Dutifully she showed up, and that day she learned that shunshin really didn't require muscle strength, despite what Shisui had been insisting, and instead it was basically done by expelling a small amount of chakra from the body's pores. This strengthened the muscles to an unbelievable point for a few moments, allowing the user to move with barely perceptible speed, making it seem as if they had teleported.
She also learned that day, that the easiest way to perform the shunshin no jutsu was by using hand signs. Both her and Hermione found themselves wanting to hit their head against a wall after learning that, because in hindsight it really had been pretty obvious that any jutsu they were taught in the academy would have corresponding hand signs to help channel the user's chakra in the right pattern.
But she still hadn't successfully done a shunshin yet, and so Shisui met her there again the week after.
That day, she'd finally managed the jutsu. She'd been ecstatic. And then quickly realized she'd ended up about 30 feet in the air and was falling towards the ground. Shisui had caught her lightly, absorbing the impact perfectly.
"You're lucky I'm here or you might have broken a few bones" he'd said, chuckling. "Next time, focus on where you want to go, yeah?"
And so she came back the week after that as well, and tried it again. This time she ended up exactly where she'd planned, except suddenly she'd been stumbling into a strong body and there had been the cold touch of a kunai to her throat.
"Don't make it too obvious where you're going" Shisui had told her.
At this point Sakura had strongly suspected Shisui had really just grown fond of her, and so she'd casually asked what he normally did every Saturday at noon — the time they had been meeting up.
Shisui, equally as casual, had replied that he was normally completely free. He'd added that if she begged him and called him senpai he'd maybe think about continuing to train her.
Sakura had grinned back and did exactly as he'd said.
"Shisui-senpai! Please teach me!"
And so their meetings soon become a regular occurrence, just like with Itachi and Genma.
Only a full month later did Sakura actually learn through Itachi who exactly her new senpai is.
Shisui of the body flicker huh? She thought to herself.
It was a good thing Sakura believed in lucky coincidences.