Sasuke and I argued the whole way to the training field, but in the end, I won by dint of him being completely unwilling to go with my alternative (namely, having Naruto move in with him). That wasn't to say I'd given up on my idea; it just meant I'd have to plan more thoroughly to make it happen.

Training followed a similar pattern as the previous day. We split off into the same groupings, Ten-Ten and I working on our throwing styles. She was amused when I removed a small armoury from my satchel.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you have a storage seal on your bag."

"What's a storage seal?" I asked, drawing out arrows, senbon, shuriken, twin dao shortswords…

Ten-Ten unravelled one of her scrolls. "They're the seals I've been using for my weapons. It's just more convenient than walking around with that much metal on me. Would you like to learn how to make them?"

I hesitated a moment before replying. "I've got a book on seals at home, and I'm going to be honest… they're a little over my head. Too much physics and mathematics." I shrugged. "It's not that I'm bad with either of those things, but..."

She smiled. "Yeah, I guess I can see why they might be a little confusing. But let me know if you ever change your mind."

I smiled back wanly. I'd always been able to stay thirty paces ahead of my schoolmates, and as such, learning something that didn't come easily to me was almost physically painful. "I'll keep that in mind."

She nodded at the twin swords I'd pulled out of the bag, readjusting the weights on her arms before throwing a handful of kunai. "Are you going to throw those? I don't know if that would work well in battle unless you plan on tying a chain onto them..."

I shook my head, unsheathing the blades and hefting them experimentally. "Nah, I just wanted to try them out..." I wanted very badly to tell her that my little brother loved playing Beat Saber at the local arcade. I wanted to tell her Zuko in Avatar looked incredibly cool with twin swords. But unfortunately, Ten-Ten was among the many that I wasn't allowed to tell about my other memories. As far as she knew, I simply had amnesia. "I just thought they might be fun. Want to throw some non-pointy objects at me?"

She grinned and put away her kunai. "Sure, let me look around a bit..." After a few moments searching around she returned with an armful of pinecones. "You ready?"

I shrugged, falling into stance with the swords. "Probably not, but I'll give it a shot."

She whipped her arm out lightning-quick and a pinecone sailed toward my left shoulder. On pure instinct, I twisted the blade through its path and cut it clean in half. I didn't have time to be impressed with myself as she sent another two cones sailing for my face, and I arced the other blade to intercept both. She dropped the armful and with both hands flung four at me with once, and hardly knowing what I was doing, I twirled both blades around and caught two with each.

She stopped and stared at me.

I stared back.

"I think," she said hesitantly. "You might be more of a short-range fighter."

I looked blankly at the dao in my hands. I genuinely never expected skill in video games to translate to anything useful in real life… Man, if only Sis knew. I shook my head. "I'm not sure I want to be a short-range fighter. I'd like my enemies far, far away."

She smiled and chucked another pinecone my way. I darted a blade out in reflex and neatly bisected it lengthwise.

"Well, it can't hurt to do well at both, right?"

We continued with this for several minutes when I felt an ominous presence from behind me. I sheathed the swords and turned around to find Sasuke glaring daggers at me, Neji several paces behind him.

"… What's with that face?" I asked.

"Seriously? Seriously? Since when are you a master swordswoman?"

I shrugged, confused in the face of his anger. "I don't know, I just wanted to try it out."

He put a palm to his face. "How are you so good at so many things? Have you even held a sword before?"

I scratched my head. "Uh, kinda. Um. A lifetime ago," I hinted. I hoped he'd never ask for the details, but then again, he'd probably consider a video game about cutting things up as a form of training. He didn't seem the type to understand entertainment.

"I actually hate you," he grumbled. "We're switching. Ten-Ten, you take Neji. Sakura, you're showing me how to use swords."

"Nope!" I said. "We're here to learn how to work with other people. Go get beat up by Neji, I need to learn how to throw things. We'll slice things up another day."

"Hate," he repeated, but he relented.

Once he was gone, Ten-Ten frowned at me. "Are you two dating or something? You seem to argue a lot."

I arched an eyebrow. "Ten-Ten. My friend. If the first thing you think when you see people arguing is dating, I'm worried for you." Sometimes I thought the people my age in Konoha were more mature than the kids I used to go to school with. Namely, they were a bunch of child-soldiers. But moments like this reminded me that they were, in fact, still kids. Dating. Seriously. Don't people ever think of anything else? We're practically army units.

"Anyway," I continued. "Show me the wrist motion for throwing senbon. I want to see if it works with arrows."

We resumed the same practice we'd been doing the previous day, with the changes Gai had suggested. I switched between as many weapons as I could, and though the different weights and shapes tripped me up a little, I slowly became more accustomed to adjusting on the fly. Ten-Ten also seemed to be growing more comfortable with her weights; the senbon she threw were driving further and further into our targets.

In due time, Gai-sensei collected Team 7 and Neji for a mission. Lee joined Ten-Ten and me for practice for a while; he seemed to enjoy trying out my swords. Even if he couldn't use chakra, I supposed there was no reason he couldn't expand from taijutsu to weaponry.

Before long we were all going our separate ways. I considered staying longer for more training, but I wanted to make sure I visited Ino before my appointment at the hospital. I checked the Yamanaka Flower Shop first since it was nearer to our training ground than her house. Fortunately, her mother said she was arranging flowers in the back and let me through to her. She was kneeling on a cushion on the floor, carefully arranging blossoms in a vase. She looked up at the sound of the door opening. Her eyes widened.

"Hey, Ino," I called out. "Where were you last night?"

She sprang to her feet, nearly toppling the vase over, and threw her arms around me. "Sakura! I'm so, so sorry!"

My eyebrows jumped to my hairline as I patted her back awkwardly. "Geez, Ino. It was just dinner, it's no big deal. I was just worried, that's all." I gently pushed her back to see her face; she was distressed. "What happened, anyway? Where were you guys?"

"Huh?" she asked shakily.

I frowned. "Dinner last night. Nobody ever showed up except for Shikamaru. I was worried something had happened."

Her face smoothed out into a mask of surprise. "Of course we didn't! What kind of date would that have been?"

I released my grip on her and stared. "Wait. Date? You said to meet your team there for dinner, didn't you?"

She frowned. "No, I told you to go there so you could relax! You were supposed to have a nice date with Shikamaru!" She huffed and covered her face with her hands. "I didn't think he'd make you play shogi the whole time! You didn't even eat together!"

"Ino," I said patiently. "Why were you trying to set me up on a date?"

She groaned. "I thought it would be a nice surprise for you two… It's just you're both so smart, and Shikamaru told me you were perfect and that I should learn to be more like you! It was the nicest thing I'd ever heard him say about a girl! He usually hates women!"

"Ino." I rubbed at my temple. "Why, for the love of… Why on earth would I want to go out with someone who was rude to you and hates women?" I could feel a headache growing. This hadn't been what I'd expected at all, and honestly, I should have.

Perhaps Shikamaru and I weren't so smart after all.

Her eyebrows drew inward. "Not like hate-hate! He just has trouble with girls! He's intelligent about most things, but he can be strange about this kind of thing… I thought it would have been the perfect match!" Her face scrunched up. "I can't believe it went that poorly."

I sighed and patted her on the shoulder. "Well, for one thing, telling us might have been a good plan. For another… Ino, I'm not interested in dating anyone. I have other stuff going on."

Why, oh why, does it always come down to dating with people? They're young! They're soldiers!

She frowned. "You really have changed a lot. I thought if you were over Sasuke, maybe you just needed a little push..." She slumped forward.

"Ino," I sighed. I leaned forward to give her a light hug. "I appreciate that you want me to be happy; just don't set me up on dates. And it wasn't terrible. We just played shogi, it was nice. The only bad thing was being worried about you. So please be honest with me next time, okay?"

She sighed and returned the hug. "I understand. I still think it could be a good match, though." She leaned back and grinned. "You had a good time with him? Did you talk about things other than shogi then? That's all he mentioned, so..."

I groaned.

Eventually, I managed to sidetrack her attention over to herbs and poisons for a while. She went over the different plant varieties that grew locally to Konoha, and which had medical or poisonous qualities, and also which local plants would be edible.

Though the visit started on a rough note, we were both happy and relaxed by the time I left.

I checked my watch and decided to return home for a quick lunch, before heading out again for the hospital. It was a fairly busy building, but the receptionist signed me in easily and directed me to the floor and room I'd be waiting for Tsunade in.

To my surprise, it wasn't a regular hospital room but what appeared to be her office. I sat on a bench in a small waiting area, half-heartedly reading through magazines while I waited. It wasn't long before she arrived, snapping the door behind her closed with a tense expression.

"Good, you're already here. Come on, kid." She led me through into her office; it was much bigger than I would have expected, but then again, the hospital staff were probably pulling out all the niceties to keep her around.

She directed me to a chair and sat behind her desk, pouring out a drink from a porcelain flask.

"Is that… alcohol?" I asked incredulously.

"You'd need a pick-me-up too if you had to deal with the people I do," she grumbled. She knocked back the drink with a pleased sigh, leaning back and shuffling through some papers. "Alright, kid. Lay it on me. What the heck happened to your head?"

"Oh!" My hand flew up to my forehead. With all the excitement of the day, I had completely forgotten about that morning's incident. "Um, I woke up dizzy and disoriented, and there was this dried blood over the seal but no visible wounds..." She frowned as I rambled through my explanation.

"So is that normal?" I asked.

She sighed, propping her chin up in one hand. Something about her unprofessional demeanour was relaxing. Although… "Nothing normal about it," she said. "That seal you have is unique." She stood from her desk and walked around to put her hands over my head, frowning. I could feel the gentle flow of her chakra poking around my skull; it felt oddly curious. Eventually, she moved her hands away. "Why didn't you come in immediately?"

I shrugged haplessly. "How am I supposed to know what's normal?"

She snorted. "By asking your doctor, of course."

Oh. Right.

"But you don't know either, do you?"

She sighed. "I couldn't detect any differences in your seal or your chakra."

My stomach dropped. She doesn't believe me.

Before my discomfort could grow, she continued. "Is there anything else unusual that has happened? As the seal directly affects your spiritual chakra, any change in your thoughts or feelings may prove enlightening."

Oh. She does believe me. Well… "Um, about that. What's the difference between spiritual, mental, and physical chakra anyway?" I waved a hand vaguely. "I mean, the mind is in the brain, and that's also physical, so..."

She rubbed her temples. "See, this is why I keep telling them, you can't just cut off structured education when you kids turn twelve. Sensei can only do so much."

I shrugged. "If it helps, I have zero memories from schooling here. So if it's something obvious, I might just be missing it, on like, a cultural level."

She poured another drink. "No, I still receive these questions from full-grown adults working under me. People are so eager to see chakra as something mysterious, but there's no such thing as a part of the world being mysterious; it's only our lack of knowledge." She took a small sip from her cup. "Think to what you do know about chakra. It's just a composition of energy. And what is energy?"

Shit. Physics. "Um, it's like… light or heat, right?" I shrugged. "And you can get it from metabolic reactions or generate different types of energy from outside forces."

She nodded. "A good enough explanation for where we're going with this. Now think to yourself: how would a body produce this energy? Where would it produce it? How might that energy turn out differently, depending on how it's created?"

I frowned and thought. After a moment, I replied slowly: "My doctors said… both mental and physical chakra are formed in the brain. So… two things are happening in the brain that produce different kinds of energy? And- and other points in the body produce different types as well?"

She nodded.

"So… different processes in the body and different actions? So learning something new might produce mental chakra, and running and lifting weights would produce physical?" I frowned. "But why does the body make that distinction? It seems like the sort of labels we would put on something that is fundamentally the same."

She smiled. "I can tell these visits are going to be a treat." I couldn't tell if she was being serious or sarcastic. "The reason we know they are different is that we can feel, see, and measure the difference. That's why people use the words 'mental' and 'spiritual' interchangeably, and we often use 'energy' and 'chakra' interchangeably. It's an old habit from when we didn't know better."

"Oh!" I had almost forgotten. "That reminds me! When I produce chakra in my hands, to the point where I can see it, it looks… weird." I frowned. "I have no trouble using jutsu, or redirecting the chakra in my body to other points, like for strengthening muscle… But when I try to produce pure chakra outside my body it looks like, well, this." I demonstrated for her, a soft blue-green light glowing between my palms. "We- my team thought it might be a mixture of regular and healing chakra."

Tsunade let out a slow breath. "And how long has this been happening?"

I shrugged. "Ever since I woke up here. Inoichi-san asked me to demonstrate how I would make healing chakra. I told you about that story when I woke in the hospital last time… I thought it might just be a mental block since I started that way, but it's stayed like that ever since."

She smiled slightly. "It likely is a mental block. The harder you try to 'fix' it, the harder you're going to make it on yourself."

I furrowed my brows. "How so? How am I supposed to fix it if I don't try?"

She chuckled softly. "Just what do you think healing chakra is? It's the pure intent to fix something."

Oh.

Oh my God.

"So you're saying," I said in a strained voice. "I won't be able to use normal chakra until I calm down and stop worrying about doing it perfectly."

She smiled. "Precisely."

"I think that might be physically impossible for me."

"Good," she said dryly. "If you've already given up, you should find it much easier to stop trying so hard."

I sighed. Okay, right. I deserved that one.

Her smile faded. "What worries me more is this little trick you mentioned, about directing chakra to your muscles." She rose from her seat again. "Could you please show me so I may sense it?"

She lay a hand on my arm as I demonstrated, directing chakra into the muscle groups and flexing my arm.

"Hmm," she hummed. "I was worried you were exhausting your chakra supply, but you're very efficient."

I shrugged. Normally I'd be pleased with the praise, but: "I'm just directing the chakra where it naturally wants to go anyway."

"So not increasing your strength directly," she murmured.

"But giving my muscles more energy to work with," I finished. "I think it's been helping with lactic acid buildup as well, but that took longer."

Tsunade crossed her arms and studied me seriously. Her eyes seemed to pierce through me, her mouth set in a firm line. I squirmed in my seat. Had I said something wrong?

"I think," she said lightly. "That for your next visit, I'd like you to meet me at Training Ground 12."