"Sakura," Tsunade said when they arrived back at Tsunade's office some time later. "That tactic is, well, not necessarily forbidden in training with teammates, but the council and I prefer if shinobi didn't use their bodies in training against each other in any way that is sexual."

Tsunade took a seat behind her desk, which left Sakura standing, flooded with shame and disgust at what she had done. Kakashi had seemed truly, not frightened exactly, but definitely wary of the way she used her body against him. She used the only means possible to escape from what, in the real world, would be deemed a seemingly fatal situation. It was a simulation. And the knowledge she acquired, wasn't that worth the price she paid for it...?

No. No, it wasn't.

Tsunade was speaking again.

"This isn't a warning, Sakura. I think it's going to take some time to let Kakashi get used to the idea that his student is willing to use such deviant techniques against him. Konoha does not encourage such things at all, and it would be wise not to try it again."

Sakura bowed her head. She hated when Tsunade reprimanded her, and it was even worse when her master scolded her in such a cold and indifferent monotone.

She heard Tsunade shifting through some papers on her messy workspace. Apparently, their talk was done. But the Godaime hadn't dismissed her yet.

Sakura contained her sigh and instead let it out inside her head. If she was lucky, she might be able to apologize to her sensei when she saw him in ten years, if even then. When Kakashi wanted to disappear from sight for a while, he could stay invisible for months at a time, even in Konoha. Hopefully, he wasn't too scarred by her stupid antics and would let her say sorry to him. But that probably wouldn't repair their relationship. Gods damn it! Why? Why had she done something so… so idiotic! Something that was more Ino's style than hers! Gods… gods damn it.

Cursing the gods made her feel a little better, but she knew that all the blame still rested on her shoulders. She wished she knew where Kakashi's apartment was. Maybe she could snoop through the tax files later to find the address? Ugh, that made her feel even sicker. But what could she do? If she left the apology run overdue because Kakashi couldn't face her and she couldn't find him, then what? What would their relationship turn into?

She looked up sharply when Tsunade muttered a particularly obscene expletive.

"Dr. Fujioka was supposed to have this delivered this morning! Oh, damn it. Sakura!"

Sakura sprang to attention, pushing thoughts of Kakashi and her shame deep into the filing cabinets of her mind, to be sifted through later. Right now Tsunade was pissed about something, and while a contributing factor had to be Sakura's clueless actions, a bigger problem had apparently arisen.

"This is a very important scroll that the Aburame Clan's leader, Aburame Shindoh, requested yesterday. You need to take it to the Aburame compound at once. Understood?"

Sakura took the scroll carefully. Something stirred in the back of her mind. Hmmm. "Lady Tsunade, Dr. Fujioka gave Aburame Shino a scroll this morning at about 6:15 AM."

Tsunade looked at her with interest. Or maybe she had just figured out something. "And you saw him do this?"

"Yes, my Lady."

"One scroll?"

"Yes."

"Ah. There were two scrolls that needed to be taken to Aburame Shindoh. This one," Tsunade held up a thin scroll with a shiny black seal on it, "is the updated version of the scroll Aburame…Shino, you said, was given. Yes, this one is the most current version. Take it to the Aburame compound immediately."

Tsunade held out the scroll and Sakura took it, then put it into the pouch at her waist. She did have one more question, though.

"Where is the Aburame compound?"

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Calling a cartographer and having him sketch out a map would have taken far too long. Going to the library wasn't an option either, as it closed at around 5:00 pm on Saturdays. So, for half an hour, Sakura rooted around in the dusty storage cellars in the basement of the government building, not finding a single thing on the Aburame clan, though Tsunade thought the information might be somewhere down there. Giving up after 45 minutes, Sakura ran back to Tsunade's office, where she was checking off various reports and such. Exasperated with her prodigy, she quickly drew Sakura a vague map to the compound and bid her to leave before her temper boiled over. Sakura had never left in more of a hurry.

As she followed the poorly drawn map somewhere to the outskirts of Konohagakure, she wondered what would be so important as to have the Hokage herself send a report to the Aburame clan. Had it to do with…war? Maybe the products the Aburame clan provided Konoha? Sakura could feel the scroll bumping against her hip. It was annoying her in more ways than one. But… Tsunade had said, 'the most current version'. So it had to do with something that changed very quickly. Daily, maybe, as there had been two scrolls that had needed to be delivered. One for yesterday that Dr. Fujioka had forgotten to send off, and one for today, perhaps. If it wasn't classified (she couldn't remember if a black seal meant classified information or not) then she could just ask Shino when she saw him next. But she never saw him, really. And he was so odd. Not that he wasn't a nice person, but… well, Sakura didn't know him enough to judge him based on his personality. His looks, however… oh, that wasn't fair. And it was the same thing she'd based her first knowledge of Naruto on. Like the clichéd saying goes: Never judge a book by its cover. And she wouldn't. Even if Shino looked a bit like a creeper.

Wasting 20 minutes going around in a circle because of a weird stop-sign Tsunade had drawn in 2 dimensions, she finally found the Aburame compound.

Set on the outskirts of Konohagakure, the compound looked dark and foreboding. But that was probably because it was almost 7 o'clock at night. It was surrounded on all sides by a rusty chain link fence (what the—was that electrocution wire on the top part? The hell? That wouldn't stop any serious shinobi), and Sakura could see with no small amount of surprise that there were actual towers that the Aburame family could station guards on. What the hell were these people hiding?

She walked around the perimeter of the place but could find no entrances. How did the Aburame family get in—or get out—of their stupid compound? Ah, well. She supposed she could hop the fence. It didn't look too difficult a jump.

There weren't any guards or marines or soldiers waiting for her on the other side. She had ripped part of her medic uniform and subsequently discovered that the electrical wire was not electric at all. Something was strange here. She'd never before been to the Aburame family households, but she knew wealthy people didn't put electrical wire or guard towers on their property for show. And there were no guards. Nor alarms or dogs, or any security. Sakura decided her best course of action was to proceed with caution. Maybe the guards were just all getting coffee. At the same time. Yeah.

Sakura looked around. Wow, the grounds were…kinda messy. She could see, despite the limited moonlight, that the lawn was overgrown and the hedges lining the sidewalk paths needed to be trimmed. There were also little hutches here and there, presumably holding different types of insects, that were in want of new wood and paint. She started walking, following the first pathway that appeared to her. In the Uchiha compound, where she used to play with…Sasuke… when she was small, the first pathway from the entrance gates led to the leader of the clan's home. In the Nara and Hyuuga compounds, the same was true. So Sakura wildly guessed that the Aburame clan had a similar set-up.

She did not sense a thing as she walked into the compound. This unnerved her. She didn't know how many people lived in the Aburame compound, but surely at least one person would have asked her what she was doing here. But she had a missive to deliver to the clan leader. And apparently, it was very important. So she continued along the walkway.

She passed numerous large buildings, noting the oddly dark coloring of the exteriors. She walked by a rather large, well-maintained courtyard in which she could hear tinny thrumming, which must've been coming from those tiny hutches planted feet apart from each other.

Then, quite suddenly, an enormous wave of power rolled over her and shocked her system. She fell involuntarily to the ground where she immediately curled up into a ball and put her head between her knees. She had never felt that amount of raw chakra of such magnitude before.

Head spinning and feeling the need to retch, she kept her eyes tightly closed and rocked herself slightly in a gentle back and forth motion. The nausea passed, though she didn't know how long it took. Still, when she stood up she had the unpleasant feeling of vertigo singing up and down her body. Standing still and allowing herself to breathe deeply in and out helped soothe her frightened body, which, aside from a few bruises already forming along her arms at several key chakra points, seemed to be fine. She tried forming a ball of green healing chakra in her hands and could still manage it. Now, to find the source of that energy.

Sakura didn't want to stray off the path that perhaps led to the clan leader's house, but she didn't really have any other options now. The pathway ended at what must be the main access point to acres of land; rolling greens hills dotted with fruit trees, ponds, and those insect huts. And even though she was probably a hundred yards away from the nearest hutch, she could hear an eerie humming coming from it. In fact, the sound was coming from the whole congregation of them.

Frustrated and a bit unnerved, Sakura turned around to face the rows of houses in the pitch dark compound again. There was nowhere else to look, there were no lights on in any of the residences as far as she could see. No movement, no chakra signatures. No human being for miles around. Surely someone…something...would spot her?

"This is so confusing. How in the hell am I supposed to do my stupid messenger job if I don't even know where this old guy is? How the hell does those messengers even do their jobs? Do we all have tracking devices on us or something? Christ!"

She turned back to the field and frowned at it. A breeze ruffled all of the grass blades in tandem, and even in the blackness of the night Sakura could see the waves of grass bowing in her direction, as if apologizing for their masters' over-the-top mysteriousness.

"Thanks a bunch, but if you can't tell me where this…" She looked at the name written on the top of the scroll, "Aburame Shindoh guy is, then I've gotta go."

She was just about to stomp away into the night when she saw a flash of aquamarine light out of her peripheral vision. She turned around and then stood stock still, waiting for the light again so that she could determine where she should start running to. It may have only been a firefly, but it also may be a clue as to where those sneaky Aburame people were. After all, there wouldn't be any reason as to why the clan couldn't have a meeting with all of its members way out in the middle of a pastoral field at like 8 o'clock at night. Other than that it was completely ludicrous and forced messengers to go out of their way to find the place. Yeah. Just to screw with them. They must hate messengers or something.

"Come on, you damned light. Flare up or I'll make you flare up. I can do that ground-punching thing now, upend all your little trees and ponds and stupid creepy insect houses. Seriously, why do you have them all over the place?"

A thought occurred to her. "Did you ever consider that one of your people might have an innate sense of entomophobia?"

The flare of light answered her, though not in any specific terms. She must have angered it, because the aquamarine light flashed brighter and higher than before. She could only hope it was for longer too.

"Aha!" Sakura grinned as she ran as fast as she could towards the light. "Not gonna get away from me, no you aren't."

She ran with the wind, bending her body to the slopes and rolls of the hills. Clearing large ponds and using the insect huts and trees as push-off points came like second nature to her. After running approximately 5 miles into the fields, she still had a ways to go before the light disappeared and she lost her target. Once a tiny pinprick, the light was growing larger in her field of vision. She was closing the distance between it and her fast.

At last she arrived. Not one bit out of breath, she nevertheless was knocked down again when another powerful blast of pure energy rocked her body and sent her eardrums throbbing and her body dry-heaving on the ground. Since she was so close to the source of the raw chakra this time, she took a good hour resting before she stood up. And that peculiar sense of vertigo assaulted her again, but she stood still and let it pass. Now she was ready to give the scroll to this guy and get the hell out of here. It was about 9 o'clock, telling from the moon's position.

Before her stood the source of the light. Or rather, the cover to the source of the light. Now that she was this close to it, the circle of light emitting from underneath the large object was blinding white. She took a few steps back to look at the covering.

It was a huge fountain, towering above her by several feet. It was one of those wishing fountains, too, chiseled pools growing smaller the higher up the statue. The base was a big block of granite, but as Sakura knelt to look for a way into the hole, she saw that the rest of the fountain was being held up by five beetles. The light reflecting off of them made them seem real, alive, glittering. But they too were made out of granite. Sakura's eyes traveled up to the first and largest pool. It was a butterfly cupping its wings to make an oval shape. Her eyes followed to the second, third, fourth and fifth tiers of the fountain and found that the pattern was copied. Block of granite holding beetles, granite beetles supporting granite pool shaped with granite butterfly wings. And at the top, the moonlight made the fountain topper, a golden beetle, shine.

'Well,' Sakura thought, 'that's real nice and all, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to move and/or destroy you in order to complete my job. It's nothing personal, you know, it's just business.'