Chapter 2

She woke to the smell of flowers. Lots of different flowers to. She looked around curiously, where was she?

"Sakura!" yelled a voice happily "You're awake!"

She blinked dumbly. Huh?

She was met with the faces of her teammates and crippled sensei. What.

"NO SHOUTING!" yelled a hypocrite nurse as she walked in the room.

Silence.

The nurse checked on her physical state in amazement, muttered something, and left. Ok...

Other nurses walked in and also did some random (to her) check ups and then left. After the third group of nurses came and left, Sakura was getting worried.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"You just came out of a coma done to you by an S-rank criminal. In a single night. Everybodys trying to find out why." Explained Kakashi. Oh.

A few other nurses and doctors walked in and checked on her, and then she was allowed to leave with a recommendation to 'take it easy'.

"So...what Now?" she asked the rest of her team as they left the hospital. "Now we go find Iruka-sensei." Said Naruto.

She frowned in thought. Iruka was a chunin, and while they still had a lot to go to get to his level, it didn't make sense that he would teach them while they still had Kakashi (even if he was a cripple now, one does simply not underestimate a jonin, even if they were 9/10th dead) unless...

"Guys...are We still team Kakashi?" she asked fearfully. "Sasuke confirmed her fears."

"I don't get it though" said Naruto with a frown. "Why Iruka? Why not just go to some other jonin?"

"Protocol" she replied. "Konoha can't afford to give secrets to people that might turn traitor later on, so they only hand out secrets to the most trusted, and everyone else has to work on their own..." She noticed Sasuke was thinking hard about something "...but the academy is an exception. Even if every country in the world knew everything we learnt in the academy, it still wouldn't help much to a person outside Konoha: the leaf floating exercise for example, is completely useless in Suna and Iwa, and not very helpful in the other countries,on the other hand it teaches Konoha children how to focus their chakra and learn how to release it from their body at a constant pace. While it isn't the best option, it's better than training ourselves."

Everybody nodded at this, even Naruto.

Despite the resolution, the walk to the academy didn't happen immediately. First things first Sakura went home to tell her parents that she was fine.

She had hoped that they were still in the dark about things, but that turned put to be wishful thinking. Not only did they know everything, they were intent of taking her out of the shinobi system, something they weren't allowed to do thankfully.

As much as Sakura wanted to just run away from the problem, she just couldn't bere to abandon Sasuke, Naruto and even Kakashi like that. She had to fight on.

While she won in the end, (thanks to konoha law viewing her as an adult the moment she became a full fledged genin) it was still a long and tiring fight that took up the rest of the day. She and the rest of her team intended to go to Iruka straight away, something that turned out to be pure optimism.

Still, as soon as she woke up the next day, she immediately got dressed and headed to the academy. Sasuke was already there and Naruto came shortly after.

It was a Tuesday (Sakura blinked in surprise about the difference of relevant information in her life: just a mere month ago she always knew the day, date and time, now she didn't even know what month it is) so the classes were still on, so the academy teaches were working. She had voted to wait in the school library, while Naruto voted that they should wait in the training grounds.

Sasuke had acted like a mediator and reluctantly made them agree to do both, pointing out that a shinobi trains his mind and body.

So they had read a bit, and then gone to the training grounds for a bit of light exercise. After a light snack, the academy bell rang and classes were dismissed. It didn't take long for them to find Iruka.

The chunin was surprised at seeing them: never to be much of a gossip, he still didn't know that their team had been disbanded, so hadn't even imagined seeing them again. Still, being the ever professional, he quickly got over it and instructed different exercises on the fly. If teaching could be ranked in a scale from one to ten, Sakura guessed that Iruka was a twelve, the amount of efficiency that he demonstrated in just a few minutes was something else. She had expected him to be good, not only because he was passionate about his job, but because he was also a professional (Naruto had mentioned that all the adults knew his secret).

They all had different schedules, that could be done together and on their own. Iruka had said that it was better to separately do training different from each other, and do the same training that they had together for team bonding experiences (training exercises that were conveniently highlighted in bright green).

Sakura had a lot more endurance training than Naruto and Sasuke put together , but it was fair since she didn't have much stamina (Sakura noted with private glee, that she had about 1/10th the amount of chakra control exercises than her teammates put together).

Iruka was many things, but biased was not one of those.

She had privately asked if their was anything that she could do to catch up to her teammates, and the man suggested to create new strengths instead of getting rid of weaknesses. He gave her a piece of paper that one could use to sign up to the medic corps, a few tips on genjutsu and fuinjutsu, and another sheet of paper with a list of names of a few civilians that were decent enough at kenjutsu to benefit her (since they were civilians that had never been shinobi in their lives, they weren't apart of the 'not train others law', Sakura noted this piece of information with interest).

Iruka had said that she should at least check out one of these things.

Sakura smiled, nodded in thanks, and went to check out all of them. Why get one strength instead of four?

"Life rule: when stumped, ask others" Sakura thought to herself in amazement.

After checking out what the academy had on genjutsu and fuinjutsu (a decent amount on the first, barely any on the second) she had gone to the hospital.

She expected a complicated test to prove her worth, or maybe an assignment of the 'if you master this jutsu in X amount of time, you pass" but instead, all they did was ask her name and surname, take a quick glance at her academy results, and she was in.

It was so anticlimactic, that it wasn't even funny.

They hadn't taught her anything though, as she needed to go to a lot of classes first: the academy taught the basics of the human body, but the basics weren't enough to become a medic.

So she had gone to the civilians that Iruka had named (with their addresses conveniently right to the side) and tried to request training...

Which they granted without a second thought. As if their abilities wasn't a personal treasure or something.

All they asked was for money. Money that her parents could easily afford, and that she could only dream of (unless she went on another five A-rank missions), and of course, her parents wouldn't pay: "I won't pay for your death" was her mothers opinion, while her father just remained silent. She had tried to...not exactly blackmail, more like mention that she would be a ninja anyway, and no training means increased probability of death. Her mother just shook her head and said something along the lines of "parents don't pay for the death of their children" and that had been it.

In an act of desperation, she held an emergency team meeting (an idea that Shikamaru had came up on the last day of the academy) between her graduation class, and asked for help from her piers.

She had thought about 'money making missions' and the like, and instead she got chakra exercises for increased muscle tissue from Chouji and Kiba,mental awareness exercise for genjutsu detection from Ino, more chakra control exercises from Hinata and Shikamaru, and a special bracelet from Shino which he didn't mention how or why he had it, just that it would suck chakra from her, therefore forcing her body to increase it's reserves.

She thanked them all profoundly and made a mental note to make it up to them someday, and got to work.

For the following week she trained as much as she could, using all the pointers that she had got from different people, and had grown immensely (according to Iruka), even if the hospital took up most of her time.

Sasuke had disappeared for the entire week, and had randomly given her and Naruto Ninjutsu scrolls from...somewhere (her breath hitched when she saw the uchiha clan sign on it, and realized that he had gotten it from the famous uchiha library), while Naruto had abused the heck out of his shadow clones ability to act without surveillance, and done who knows how many D-ranks (for a single genin wasn't allowed to do more than that) and had randomly donated a huge amount of cash to her and Sasuke.

She blinked in realization when she had nothing to give, so she quickly wrote down the same list of names that she had got from Iruka (of course she had memorized them) with the addresses.

Sasuke had frowned, causing her to look down in shame while Naruto winced, reminding her how unpopular he was with the adults. Noticing her look of distress Naruto patted her on the back and encouraged her, saying that he didn't mind and that he was sure that next time she would do better.

She had nearly cried than, but didn't when she remembered Naruto's mentality (want something? Then just get it!), and nodded to both of them.

"New objective" she thought "find way to become powerful, and share it with the others". She would pay them back. End of the story.

It was easier said then done. She spent the rest of the morning trying to brainstorm ways to power, when she remembered her earlier resolution, and decided to pay a visit to the local library for ways to summon demons.

She expected difficulties, but not out right failure. She was wrong. After checking out the library she went to a temple on the outskirts of Konoha, but she recognized the fake news when she saw it, and realized that they didn't have a divine connection at all.

So now what?

"How did others get demonic powers?" She wondered to herself.

She thought about clans. Yeah no, she wanted powers for herself, not to fuck a demon and have a hybrid kid.

She thought about Naruto. Hell no, she wouldn't become a jinchuuriki for all the money in the world (not that she could), finally, she thought about Kakashi. His thing with the sharingan was awesome, even if it was a bitch on his reserves.

And while the sharingan wasn't an option because lack any clan members (and like hell was she going to take one from Sasuke), she also didn't like it because she'd have no way to pay back the others.

"It has to be something that isn't hard to give to the others" she mused.

A jutsu? Perhaps? No it had to be more than that. She had received a permanent foundation from the others, and she'd be damned if she didn't give twice as much back. It had to also be something that nobody knew about. Something obscure yet existent...

"I'm thinking about this in the wrong way" she thought to herself. "I should treat it as a problem I already solved, and find the answer from there: I'm obscure yet known, complex but useful, what am I?"

The answer came like a bolt of lightning.

"Fuinjutsu".