"I'm cute," I mused, staring into my bathroom mirror.

My physical appearance wasn't something I'd been paying much attention to. This body never felt like mine, so it hadn't seemed important. Yet this morning I found myself staring into the mirror, trying to trace my face out of the one I saw in front of me. Trying to find something I recognised.

If anything, Sakura and I were perfect opposites. She had fair skin and pink hair, where I had pink cheeks and white hair. It was something that had always bothered me; I'd always felt like a corpse that had been covered in blush. I'd wished I'd inherited my father's skin tone, as my siblings had.

I stared through the mirror into Sakura's eyes, and my own eyes stared back.

Goosebumps crawled up my arms. I'd been used to seeing my eyes in the mirror all my life, it hadn't occurred to me to be confused at still having them.

I leaned closer to the mirror, looking at every tiny transition in the iris that formed the green colouration. Identical.

"That's got to mean something, right?" I asked my reflection.

It did not have an answer for me.

I splashed cold water against my face and completed my morning ablutions, trying to drive the issue out of my mind. Nothing had changed; worrying about it now wouldn't make a difference.

I grabbed breakfast on the way out the door, letting Mebuki know I'd likely be home late. Today would be the first day of deliveries, and I had no idea how far the first town was from Konoha.

Not long after I found myself at the training grounds, well before either of the boys. Skipping my morning tea had left me here far earlier than usual; a glance at my watch told me it was only six-thirty.

I knelt in front of the Memorial Stone, running my hands through the grass. After a moment of contemplation, I gently pulsed chakra into the soil. I closed my eyes, trying to sense for anything injured, anything broken… perhaps a blade of grass perked up a little. Perhaps a few bugs in the soil moved a little more quickly. Perhaps not.

I pulled a kunai from my pouch and sank it into the earth, letting a light pulse of chakra travel down the metal.

The difference was incredible.

I felt the edge against a worm that had been scratched in the passing of the kunai, and let the chakra bleed outward and into the damaged tissue; just the tiniest trickle, a hair's-breadth of power. I could feel the tiny chakra system of the worm's body as cellular walls joined together.

I let more chakra trickle outward from the blade, tasting, feeling around the dirt…

"What are you doing?"

I startled and let a burst of chakra into the blade, feeling as bonds holding the soil together split, the kunai slicing in an arc out of the ground.

I dropped the kunai as though it had burned me and turned to face him. "Sasuke!"

He knelt next to me, eyes studying the small path of destruction I had left; the soil was overturned onto the grass around it, a sharp crevice in the earth as though it were the site of a tiny earthquake. "What was that?"

"As soon as I figure it out, I'll let you know." I replaced the kunai into my pouch. My next words came out a little shaky: "Just try not to startle me when you see me doing weird stuff with kunai next time, okay?"

Good thing I wasn't testing it on myself. I have a feeling nothing's going to grow in that patch of dirt for a while.

My initial idea had been to lay the kunai flat-side down against a small scratch I had on my arm.

Yeah. Going to put that idea on the back-burner for a while.

"I don't want to know, do I?" he asked.

I shook my head.

We sat side by side for a few moments longer, studying the ruined ground in front of us. He was the first to break the silence. "You said Sensei was teaching you how to sense chakra..."

I snorted. "I wouldn't call it teaching. It was more like he gave me some good advice."

"Coming from Sensei, that's the same thing. How do you do it?"

I gave him a sidelong look. The expression on his face was unreadable, but I thought I knew him well enough to understand where he was coming from. Any instruction from Kakashi was precious at this point.

"Well… you and Naruto have been working on your chakra control a lot. Since you've gotten the hang on paying close attention to it, maybe this will come more easily now." I put my hands on the ground. "Copy me."

He did.

"Now pretend you're just starting out learning Silent Foot again, but with your hands. You're not pushing your chakra into the ground yet. You're just feeling around."

Sasuke closed his eyes in concentration. A few blades of grass began to curl around his fingers.

"Feel, don't push."

He grunted in acquiescence. After several moments, his eyes opened. "… That's weird. It's alive." He frowned. "It sounds obvious, but..."

"Feeling it makes it clear, doesn't it?" I felt through the dirt and let my chakra wander. "Sensei said everything has chakra and living things have the most."

Sasuke removed his hands from the ground. "It felt like… trying to listen in the middle of a crowd."

I nodded sympathetically. "There's a lot going on in there. Here," I reached my hand over, palm side up.

He stared at me quizzically for a moment before realising. "You're sure?"

"I trust you to not explode me. Just, uh, don't explode me, please."

This hurt his pride enough to overcome his hesitation. He gripped onto my wrist and closed his eyes.

Huh. The boys were right. It's weirder from this side. My chakra felt agitated in the area he held; it made it difficult to concentrate on separating the feeling between his chakra and mine.

After a short moment, he let go. "Huh."

"So what's it feel like?" I pounced. In a way, it almost felt like an opportunity to learn your horoscope sign or animagus form. Chakra was the sum of your spiritual and physical energy; it was something that marked who you inherently were.

He shrugged uncomfortably. "… Dirt?"

I stared.

He glanced away. "Wet dirt?"

"… Wet dirt," I echoed.

Sasuke grunted and pulled out a kunai, stabbing it into the ground and dragging it upward. He'd done it right next to where I had. The effect was barely noticeable compared to the path of destruction mine had left. He frowned and studied the area thoughtfully, clearly having moved on from pondering chakra descriptions.

I sighed. I guess I was the one expecting something like poetry from a pre-teen boy. Typical.

I hid a smile and stood up, dusting off my knees. I gestured him toward the clearing with one hand, pulling out a handful of kunai with the other. "Want to throw stuff for me to hit, this time?"

Once Naruto arrived we continued the same casual pattern of yesterday, conserving our energy with light chakra control exercises.

I bounced experimentally on the surface of the stream, then tried to push myself along as though I were skating. It was a rare sensation, feeling my feet balance atop the water's fragile surface tension, work against the natural flow of water, and propel myself along the surface.

There was a tiny splash in front of me; Naruto had broken through the puddle I had set up for them again.

"You overdid it," Sasuke said, fighting to keep steady over the rippling water.

"Yeah, yeah," Naruto groused, stepping back onto the surface. This time, he held steady. It had been the only time he'd fallen in the last hour.

"You guys are doing awesome today," I said. "You'll probably be good to move to the stream by tomorrow. And if you can do that…" I hinted.

"You think I'll be ready?" Naruto beamed. "Awesome!"

When he'd arrived, I'd explain the chakra-sensing exercises Sasuke and I had gone through. I promised Naruto I'd help him work on it once he proved he could stand on water without exploding it.

"Just don't fall in," Sasuke said. "I don't want to hear you complaining all day tomorrow if your clothes get wet."

I grinned and checked my watch. "I think that's enough for today, though. We should head out to meet the farmer." I walked out of the water and onto the grass as though it were the most natural thing in the world. In a way, it was.

It was incredible what a week in a magical place could do to one's worldview.

Before long we found ourselves back in the fields, gathered around the farmer as he showed off the cart of goods we'd be delivering.

I had originally been expecting a wagon, but our cargo was instead stacked on what looked like a long, flat palanquin. The produce was arranged in several stacks of small crates, each holding different vegetables. There weren't many of them; perhaps a few dozen. There was still so much room left on the cart that several people could comfortably sit on either side of the crates.

"We're starting with our smallest delivery; I know a grocer in a town just outside of Konoha. They're more of a commercial district, so we're the closest farm around… at least, the closest with this kind of quality!" The farmer gave a big, toothy grin.

I gave the vegetables a considering look. They didn't look much different to the produce I remembered seeing in supermarkets, but then again I was trying to compare fresh vegetables to those where half the products were covered in shiny wax.

"The, uh, tomatoes are really big!" I tried.

Sasuke grunted in agreement, making me feel slightly less awkward.

"Whatever, old man, let's go!" Naruto grinned, splitting himself off with three more clones.

I stared at him. "Naruto… there's four of us and four places to carry the cart. It would have been fine."

All four Narutos shrugged. "We've got this!"

Sensei sat on the edge of the cart as the Narutos foisted it in the air, pulling out his orange book.

"Lazy." Sasuke crossed his arms as we trooped off after them, the old man leading the way.

"At least walk, Sensei…" I said weakly. "The client is walking..."

"Ne, old man, get on board. Just tell us where to go!" Naruto hooted. "Don't want you wearing out!"

He demurred, but after several minutes back-and-forth with four enthusiastic Narutos, relented.

And so we found ourselves exiting Konoha's gates into the big, wide world… or at least starting toward a town a few hours away. With the old man on the cart, we were free to go much faster than we otherwise would have been restricted to.

It was strange. In a previous life, running for hours on end would have decimated me completely. Chakra is a wonderful, beautiful thing.

The town we eventually arrived in felt closer to a small city; it was jarring to think such a busy place was so near to our ninja village. Throngs of people walked down the streets, numerous hotels lining the walkways. This must have been something of a tourist attraction.

"It's a bit of a gambling town," the old man explained, pointing us down a side street to a quieter section dominated by smaller shops and houses. "But the folks who live and work here got to eat too, and they need something to serve in those fancy casinos of theirs, eh?"

The transfer of crates into the storeroom of the grocer took no time at all, the old farmer chattering away happily about the recent weather, ideas for new crop rotations, and plenty of compliments about his "little helpers."

I gently stood on Naruto's foot as his mouth popped open to protest. He shut it with a snap.

A half-hour later found us back on our way toward Konoha, the cart now carrying only the farmer and Kakashi-sensei.

"That was a bit anticlimactic," I said. We were making our way back in a light jog; it was only early evening yet and we weren't in a particular rush. The sun was setting and the sound of crickets had started to fill the air.

"If there are any bandits, this is the time of day we'd be most likely to see them," Sasuke said.

I snorted. "Yeah, to steal from our big empty cart."

Sasuke frowned. "That's worse. Empty cargo means someone got paid. Don't lose your focus."

"Oh. Right."

All in all, though, it was looking the same as any other D-Rank mission we had done. We'd be back in Konoha in only a few hours, and-

Three Narutos vanished in a puff of smoke and the cart fell to the ground, skidding forward several metres before halting.

"AGH!" Naruto cried.

I spun to face him and saw an arrow lodged into his shoulder, and red, red, he was bleeding- and something massive was charging forward into the cart and Sensei flying forward to meet it and-

Something slammed into my back and wrapped around me, knocking me onto the ground. I writhed helplessly, trying to break free of the hold, before realising it wasn't arms that held me but a strange cocoon. I fought furiously against it, craning my neck around to try to see from my position on the ground.

"Sakura!" a voice growled- Sasuke!- and a presence I'd barely noticed was yanked away, the cocoon I was held in dragging along after. I had finally twisted to where I could see the man standing only a few feet away. His back was facing me, but I could see six arms attached to his body.

Unnatural! my mind panicked.

A few yards ahead of him, I could make out Sasuke, hurling shuriken that were summarily knocked out the air like so many flies.

"I'd suggest you stay out of the way of this," the man spat- literally- and a ball of webbing struck Sasuke's chest, and it was spreading over him, and the man was pulling out kunai with each of his hands-

"NO!" Hardly knowing what I was doing, I felt my chakra flood out from my arms and legs, from the same muscles I was so used to channelling it through, and I pushed.

A smell like burning hair filled the air, and I felt as the tiny bonds in the webbing, the chakra in the webbing, split apart and snap around my skin.

The man gave a strange grunting noise, but without hesitation I was reaching into my weapons pouch and throwing three kunai with all my strength, hand already dipping back down for another-

They thudded in a perfect line down his back.

He was still. I froze.

And then, slowly, he turned.

"You, little thief," he began, and lightning-quick had a hand around my throat and was lifting me into the air. Black spots burst in my vision as the blood to my head was choked off. "Are starting to get on my nerves."

And then with another of his hands, a glass bottle of something was being pressed against my mouth.

"Don't think for a second I need that body of yours functional."

The liquid splashed onto my tongue, burning like acid. I choked and coughed reflexively, my tongue swelling up against the burning, my mouth and throat on fire.

His cruel face swam in front of me, the darkness now starting to colour the edges of my vision.

I clenched at something in my hand- I still had a kunai. Without thought, I shoved it with all my strength into his stomach.

He laughed.

"You don't learn from your mistakes, do you?"

I pulsed my chakra into the kunai.

I felt as his body accepted the chakra as part of himself, his flesh trying to seal the kunai within him.

I gathered up all the chakra I could until it nearly blistered in my hands, and shoved.

Bonds in tissue, breaking. Cellular walls, bursting. Blood separating; white, red, plasma. They, too, fell apart. Veins rupturing, tangling within themselves, trying to find purchase.

With chakra pulsing in my muscles, I dragged the kunai upward into his chest.

And then there was red.

Red as the fissure ripped through flesh, so much like the upturned earth not long ago.

Red as his body crumpled wetly to the ground, and I was on my back, the black edges still in my vision, my mouth burning with the acid still lingering on my tongue. And then the world was shaking, and red, red eyes above me.

Red eyes, a mouth moving, trying to speak from too far away. Red, red eyes trying to tell me something. A silent command I didn't know how to meet.

I tried to move my lips, but they were numb with the burning. Tried to move my arms, but my tendons had become yarn in my flesh. Tried to move at all, but my body was a brick.

Red eyes staring into my own, until they were overpowered by the darkness.

Red, black, and then nothing at all.

"All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison." - Paracelsus