'Haven't you guessed yet? I'm a ghost.'

'I think that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and I've been in a classroom with Naruto,' Sakura thought to Shisui flatly.

Still, whatever Sakura thought of Shisui's statement, it provided an explanation of the weird hallucinations she'd been seeing. But then what did that make Inner Sakura? She couldn't have been a ghost, could she? And where did she go? With a sinking heart, Sakura realized it was very likely that Shisui's place in her head meant that he had kicked Inner Sakura out. If it were a choice between Shisui or her Inner, Sakura didn't think she'd choose Shisui. With that in mind, she thought to Shisui again.

'Can you leave? I think I'd rather have Inner Sakura back.'

'Well that's not rude or anything,' Shisui replied.

Sakura hoped that her mind was able to accurately convey how ironic she found Shisui's statement. As if he hadn't been anything but rude since he first started talking to her.

But Sakura was distracted from her conversation with the apparent ghost in her head when two more Kakashis abruptly poofed into existence. She waved the chakra smoke away in annoyance. He had to have done that on purpose, there was no way Kakashi didn't have the control to prevent chakra smoke. Sakura's train of thought paused as her brain stumbled over that piece of information, bemused.

"Ehh?! Kakashi-sensei, you know my Kage Bunshin jutsu?" Naruto exclaimed.

"It's a common technique amongst jounin," Sakura said distractedly.

'How do I know that?'

Shisui sounded equally as puzzled. 'From me, most probably. Are you sure you didn't already know that?'

'I didn't even know what Kage Bunshin was until yesterday when Naruto used it,' thought Sakura.

"Sakura is right," Kakashi said. "Even though it is called a forbidden technique, many jounin can perform it. It can be a very useful and versatile technique when applied properly." His voice was bland but somehow Sakura got the impression that Naruto had not used it properly at all yesterday. But how did he even learn it in the first place?

Kakashi continued, "With Kage Bunshin, I'll be able to split my attention between the three of you fairly. But first, you must complete your team exercise."

"What exercise?" asked Sakura. Everyone lapsed into an awkward silence as they stared at her. She shifted uncomfortably under her team's gaze. She hadn't missed something important while she had been talking to Shisui, had she?

"Kakashi explained that our team exercise was to make it to the top of the Hokage Mountain as fast as we could, as an entire team. We could not leave anyone behind, even if it meant arriving quicker," Sasuke explained. Sakura flushed with embarrassment and resolved to completely ignore Shisui until team practice was over. Talking to him inside her mind was going to get her skewered some day. Plus, it made her look like the idiot of the team when she spaced out enough to miss simple instructions. Still, Sakura smiled to herself, Sasuke spoke to her!

'Cha! Take that, Ino-pig!'

"I will be waiting here for when you three return, where I will go over your individual training session." Kakashi's eye crinkled in a smile that felt very false. "Have fun!"

Naruto and Sasuke immediately broke into a sprint. Sakura realized belatedly that she was meant to follow and they had to run to the top of the mountain from the training grounds, not the mountain's base. She darted off after them, already seconds behind and losing ground due to their higher speed.

She pushed herself harder, willing her legs to run faster but to no avail. Even Naruto seemed to have no problem keeping up with Sasuke's superior speed. He wasn't as fast, but his stamina let him continue to push hard and follow along behind their teammate. For the first time, Sakura faintly wondered if it would have been a better idea to put more focus into her physical training over her academics.

The three of them had just cleared one set of training fields and were entering another when Sakura, frustrated with Naruto and Sasuke leaving her behind and faintly bickering with each other while they were at it, bellowed, "Hey! I'm still back here!"

They both slowed to a stop so she could catch up, and to her consternation, neither of them were breathing hard. Sakura wasn't quite panting, but she wasn't exactly breathing evenly either.

'You are really out of shape.' Shisui noted.

'Shut up.'

"We're supposed to get there as a team," she stressed. "That means you need to run slow enough for me to keep u-" her sentence ended on a shriek when a force suddenly yanked on her legs and Sakura abruptly found herself hanging upside down from a tree. Crouched on the branch she was dangling from was Kakashi, clicking his tongue at them in reproach.

"Now Sakura, it's not just their responsibility to slow down for you. You should also learn to speed up." He fairly radiated amusement.

Naruto tensed up and his nose wrinkled in his confusion. "O-oi, Kakashi-sensei, what are you doing? We're trying to get to the Hokage Mountain, like you said."

"Hm, yes. But you see, even though there will be times you will have a mission that requires you to arrive somewhere as quickly as possible, you may have enemies who want to make sure you never make it, or even prevent you from making it in time to, say, pass on vital battle field updates," he said. "For today's purposes, I am your enemy, preventing you from reaching the top of the Hokage Mountain in a timely fashion. And I've already captured one of your teammates." Kakashi gestured to Sakura blatantly.

She wriggled helplessly from the branch, trying to loosen the knots enough to begin untying them and free herself. Unfortunately, her efforts amounted to her just swaying back and forth. She nearly let loose a screech of frustration. There was no way she could rely on Naruto and Sasuke to work together the beat Kakashi long enough to free her. They meshed about as well as oil and water. Her best chance was to free herself while they distracted him. But, Sakura thought as she jerked again, she didn't even know where to start.

'Relax, relax, he hasn't even used a complicated knot or anything to tie you up.' Shisui's voice was filled with mirth at her predicament. Sakura halted in her struggles.

'You'll help me?' she thought hopefully.

'I shouldn't,' he admitted, 'but…well, let's just say you need to learn to take advantage of all your resources, and sometimes the enemy has resources you don't know about.'

In this case, Shisui was a resource Kakashi wouldn't know about. Sakura took a deep breath, ignoring Sasuke and Naruto for now, who had decided to try to move Kakashi from his position above Sakura, in order to engage him in a full assault without catching her in the crossfire.

'Okay. So what first?'

'Well, ordinarily if this were a real mission and you desperately needed to free yourself, I'd tell you to dislocate your shoulders so you could bring your hands in front of you to untie them before undoing your ankles. Since this is just a training exercise…' Shisui drifted off thoughtfully.

'Can you reach your kunai pouch?'

Sakura waggled her fingers back and forth in answer. 'I think so.' Kakashi had to be really treating them with kid gloves to not bother tying her fingers in such a way as to prevent jutsu or even just grasping objects. She had learned that back in the Academy. It never would have occurred to her to simply reach for a weapon while her hands were tied because even Academy students knew better than to tie a shinobi up so sloppily.

'Good. Take one out and get your hands loose. We can have an advanced lesson on escape art later.'

Her spirits lifted, Sakura obligingly withdrew a kunai and with a bit of fumbling where she nicked the side of her wrist, she cut her hands free. From there it was a simple matter of swinging herself upward with enough momentum to reach her ankles and cut herself down.

In the mean time, Kakashi had allowed himself to be chased from his position above her and was now lazily engaging Sasuke and Naruto, casually dodging shuriken from the former and batting away Kage Bunshin of the latter. Sakura grumpily noted that Naruto had enough chakra to apparently not worry about the fact that they weren't even a quarter into their run and that he might need to conserve it for later.

Sakura flung the kunai in her hand at Kakashi as a distraction and also to let her team know she was loose. Even if they couldn't directly help her escape, if this had been a mission, they had at least provided a distraction to stop the enemy from noticing her own efforts.

"Guys, we need to go!" she called.

"Sakura-chan, what are you talking about?"

It took effort not to roll her eyes at Naruto. "We already know we can't defeat Kakashi-sensei. We don't have the skill or the teamwork yet for it. That means if we ever want to reach the Hokage Monument, we need to retreat and keep running. The rules were just to reach the top right? That doesn't mean we have to beat Kakashi-sensei, he's just trying to stop us."

Sasuke was scowling deeply at her words. Apparently he wanted to finish the fight more than he wanted to complete their given objective. Thankfully Kakashi interjected.

"Maa, I can see who the clever one is on this team, even if she doesn't pay attention."

Sakura turned bright pink at his words. She should've guessed some kind of reprimand was coming for not listening earlier. She frowned. Was that also a jab about her slipping into the Naka River yesterday…? She shook her head and jumped from the tree, sailing over Kakashi's head and landing with her teammates.

"Let's go!" she urged, already breaking into a run. Luckily they didn't seem to need any other encouragement to leave Kakashi behind them.

Forty-five minutes later saw the whole of Team 7 collapsed at the top of the Hokage Mountain at one of the scenic spots that provided a clear view of the village. All three of them were panting hard and were a combination of sweaty, bruised, singed, and completely drenched. Kakashi, on the other hand, looked completely relaxed.

His efforts to stop them, though undoubtedly gentle, had included such things as dumping them into a shallow river that wound through the village, dropping an impromptu illusion over them that had them running in the opposite direction before Sakura had caught on, somehow redirecting one of Sasuke's fireballs back at them, and just in general kicking them around and slowing them down as the ran for the top. Sakura had had it the worst of the three, being the slowest and having the least endurance, and she had nearly felt on the verge of tears when they had reached the mountain and she remembered that they had to run up all those stairs to the top.

"Well," Kakashi said over their prone forms, "that could've been worse."

Inside her head, Shisui was incoherent with snickers. It just made Sakura scowl harder.

'You are the most useless resource ever. You couldn't have taught me something to help me get past Kakashi-sensei?'

There was a momentary pause while Shisui took the time to get himself under control. 'Useless? I wasn't the one who didn't bother to check and see if I could reach my kunai to cut myself loose. Besides, even if I did teach you a jutsu, it doesn't mean you could use it properly against Kakashi. A jutsu is only as good as its user.'

'You were probably just some desk chuunin anyway,' Sakura grumbled.

Shisui made an offended noise. 'I'll have you know that I was a jounin myself. I was on the Kiri front during the Third War.'

'Was that before or after you jumped into the Naka River?'

Surprisingly, he didn't have an instant snappy come back for her, which Sakura was beginning to realize was his default. She waited for him to gather his thoughts while she listened with one ear to Kakashi, who was in the midst of telling them they had to return to the same training ground post haste to do their individual training. Her muscles were already screaming in protest and she hadn't even moved again yet.

'How did you know about how I died?' Shisui asked finally. His voice sounded serious in her head. It occurred to Sakura that maybe she shouldn't have been so cavalier about mentioning his suicide.

Kakashi clapped his hands suddenly. "That's enough of that. We can always repeat this exercise as often as is necessary. For now, I'll meet you back at the training grounds." He disappeared with a poof.

"I don't know if I can make it back to the training grounds," Naruto groaned. Next to Sakura, Sasuke scoffed, though she didn't think he had much room to go mocking Naruto. Sasuke looked as pale and as worn out as them.

Still, Naruto heard Sasuke's wordless response and couldn't keep himself from jumping to the challenge. "What's that sound for, Sasuke? Do you think you can beat me back to training? I'm gonna leave you in the dust!" Naruto leapt to his feet in a sudden burst of energy. Sakura dug the heels of her palms into her eyes. Where did he get that energy from? It was so unfair.

Sasuke also climbed to his feet, albeit with less enthusiasm. Naruto's words seemed to have lit the fires of competition in him and he was now eyeing Naruto with a calculating eye.

"You can try to beat me, dead last," he taunted.

Apparently that was all the signal the two of them needed to go tearing off for the stairs to race each other back to the training fields. Sakura sat up, feeling exhausted just watching them. Then she slowly sat up and set off into a light jog. She hoped individual training with Kakashi wouldn't last too long, because Sakura didn't know for how much longer she could stay upright on her feet.

In the end, even though Kakashi didn't attack Sakura on her way back to the fields, her slow speed and low stamina meant that she was only five minutes faster than she had been on the run to the top of the mountain. And of course, when she arrived, Naruto and Sasuke were already there and off to the side, each sparring with a version of Kakashi. Sakura privately hoped Sasuke had beat Naruto on the way back.

This was also the point where Sakura realized with faint despair that she wasn't even going to get a break. She staggered over to the third Kakashi, hoping he might take pity on her anyway. He didn't.

"Consider this your next lesson for today: you won't always have time to stop and catch your breath on missions, and may even have to fight through your own exhaustion in order to complete the mission and return home. Now you'll be learning how to fight through that handicap."

Sakura barely withheld her huff of frustration. Her limbs felt like jelly and her body was battered. How could she fight like this? She stood in front of Kakashi and waited for him to move first, staring at him with dull eyes.

Kakashi seemed to sense that she wasn't going to take the initiative and attack first. He reached out with an obviously lazy swipe of his hand that Sakura dodged halfheartedly. He struck at her again, faster this time, which forced Sakura to put more effort into the fight. Slowly he pushed at her until she was fighting at what felt like her limits, barely able to draw breath and struggling to block his blows. Kakashi's breathing was still even.

'You're so slow. I've seen more interesting fights between geriatric cripples.'

'Shut up.' Sakura repeated for the second time that day. She could have really used a burst of enthusiasm from Inner Sakura right about now. Unfortunately, she no longer existed, apparently.

Kakashi took advantage of the distraction provided by Shisui and grabbed Sakura in a grappling move that allowed him to toss her over his hip. Sakura landed hard on her back, the air momentarily gone from her lungs.

'You suck at taijutsu. You need to put some distance between the two of you so you can fight at a longer range with your ninjutsu or genjutsu.' Shisui told her.

Sakura wheezed and thought about not moving ever again. 'I don't know any jutsu besides the Academy three.'

Shisui went so silent in her mind she thought she could almost imagine crickets chirping. She couldn't even feel his emotions.

'You don't know any ninjutsu?'

'If it bothers you that much, you could teach me some.'

"Sakura, while playing dead can sometimes be a useful tactic, it doesn't work when your enemy is staring right at you," Kakashi said dryly.

At the same time, Shisui snorted. 'As if I'm going to teach an ungrateful brat like you. Useless resource, indeed. Apologize first.'

"There's no way I'm apologizing for something that's true," Sakura accidentally said out loud. Kakashi blinked at her.

"Well, I wouldn't say you should never apologize for things that aren't true. It can spare you a lot of trouble. But I wasn't asking for an apology for you laying in the grass," he said. Sakura flushed.

"R-right. Sorry sensei." Sakura reluctantly clambered to her feet to begin the spar anew.

Shisui stuck to his word and refused to teach Sakura even the simplest of elemental ninjutsu or genjutsu. He did, however, call out tips, as late or unhelpful as they were. Things like:

'You should dodge that kick coming at you from the left side.'

'Try actually using your kunai and shuriken for once.'

'Quit being so slow.'

And her personal favorite, 'You could try not blocking things with your face.'

Eventually Kakashi decided the three of them had had enough and ended the spars. All told, they probably hadn't lasted more than fifteen minutes. To Sakura, it had felt more like an hour. Still, Sakura supposed one way to encourage bonding amongst a team was a shared hatred for their instructor.

"That wasn't great," Kakashi said slowly, "but I suppose it could've been worse."

Meanwhile, Shisui continued his commentary, bemoaning her speed as if it were somehow a personal offense. 'He's being nice. You have no concept of taijutsu, you forget that bladed weapons are a thing that exists, and you are so, so slow.'

"-but you should have plenty of time to get a quick lunch and then return here," Kakashi finished. Sakura resigned herself to constantly missing half the conversation for as long as Shisui was in her head, which was for the foreseeable future. The most important part, she reassured herself, was that they were evidently taking a break for a late lunch. He disappeared in what Sakura suddenly recognized was a Shunshin and left the team to their own devices.

There was a brief silence after he left that was, of course, broken by Naruto. "So, Sakura-chan, you wanna go get ramen?"

"Only if Sasuke-kun wants to come along," Sakura turned her eyes to her crush hopefully. There was no way Sakura was going to a public place alone with Naruto. And any time spent with Sasuke was better than none at all, even if it had to be shared with Naruto. Besides, maybe it could work as team bonding or something.

"Tch. You two do whatever, leave me out of it," Sasuke said. The rising hope in her chest fell as if attached to a lead weight.

"B-but Sasuke-kun…"

"It's okay, Sakura-chan! We don't need that bastard anyway. It can be just like a date," Naruto insisted. He scowled at Sasuke's turned back. "And you shouldn't be so rude to Sakura-chan!"

Sakura cuffed Naruto's shoulder. "You shouldn't talk about Sasuke-kun like that. He doesn't have to eat with us if he doesn't want to."

'Even though I really wanted to spend time with him…'

"Aw, c'mon Sakura-chan. He's just being a sore loser because I beat him back to the training grounds," said Naruto. Sakura's eyes flickered in Sasuke's direction, where she noted his shoulders had suddenly tensed up.

'Well, if he really didn't make it back first, he is probably just being a sulky brat. Kids do that a lot.' Shisui said knowledgeably.

'There's no way Naruto beat him back. Sasuke is the best!'

"As if I would ever lose to you." Sasuke had turned around and was now scowling at Naruto. Sakura felt exhausted just looking at them posturing for an impending fight.

'There's always at least two on a genin team that butt heads. They'll get over it. Maybe. In the mean time, you should just ditch these guys and get some food.'

'But what about Sasuke-kun?' Sakura asked uncertainly. She didn't want to leave him alone, or pass up on the chance of spending more time with him.

Shisui sighed. 'Look kid, he already said he wasn't interested. It's best not to push these things. Listen to me, you know, the actual jounin, and get some food, preferably with lots of carbs and protein, drink lots of water so you don't get dehydrated, and let them waste their own time.'

'But if I eat lots of carbs, I'll gain weight!' Sakura fretted.

'Not with the kind of work out you had today, you won't.'

While they argued, Sakura unconsciously turned away from the still bickering Naruto and Sasuke to look towards the village center.

'Just go to like, an Akimichi grill and eat some barbeque and rice, you'll be fine. You could use your kunai to cut the meat up, since you apparently don't use it in a fight or to, you know, cut yourself free from some ropes.'

Sakura rolled her eyes. 'Would you drop the kunai thing? Okay, I get it, it was a stupid mistake, just shut up about it. And you are such a guy. Girls have to take good care of their appearances, you know!'

'Are you kidding? I am never going to forget that you didn't even try to reach for your kunai. And maybe if you spent less time trying to be pretty you might actually know some ninjutsu and not be as slow as a snail. '

"Will you shut up about how slow I am already?!"

Birds fluttered from the trees, frightened by the volume of her voice. Sakura clapped a hand over her mouth when she realized she had yelled that out loud. That was the second time she had responded verbally to Shisui.

"Sakura-chan, no one said you were slow," Naruto said carefully. She glanced over at her fellow genin. Naruto and Sasuke were both staring at her oddly, their hands gripping each other by the front of their shirts.

"It doesn't mean she's wrong," Sasuke pointed out. Sakura gritted her teeth. Today, it seemed like the more Sasuke opened his mouth the more the shine rubbed off him.

She dragged a hand down her face in frustration. "Whatever! I'm going to go get lunch now. Just leave me alone!" At this point, she honestly wasn't sure if she was talking to her team or to Shisui. She was equally annoyed by everyone. At the rate she was going, her whole team was going to think she was going crazy, if she wasn't already. Sakura wasn't sure that she wasn't.

'This is all your fault.' Sakura hissed at Shisui. 'All this, this nonsense about eyes and rivers! And talking to me and distracting me from training!'

'Sure, sure, whatever you say. Hey, I've changed my mind. I could really go for some spicy curry right about now, how about you grab some of that? Mm, spicy pork curry, that sounds great.'

Sakura stomped away from her teammates in search of food. 'No way! I hate spicy food. We are going to have what I want. And I want anko dango and anmitsu and some umeboshi.'

Shisui made a whining noise. 'Oh c'mon, that's almost all sweet stuff. What about something spicy? Or even something with some meat in it?'

'My body, my rules.' Sakura thought viciously.

'That's mean.'

'Maybe you should have thought of that before you possessed me.'

The line about Sakura blocking things with her face is borrowed (and has been reworked from the original) from Tozette's "Dirt and Ashes" fic, a fic about Jashinist!Sakura.