The rest of the group had already arrived by the time Naruto and I had, but they hadn't begun training yet. They were all sequestered in the middle of the field. As we got closer, Sasuke broke off from conversation with Ten-Ten and walked over to me.

"We're switching partners around."

I raised my eyebrows. "Okay?"

He leaned back a little, frowning. "You're not going to argue?"

I shrugged. "As long as we're still working with Team Gai instead of each other. I miss training with you guys too, but that's the whole point of this."

He crossed his arms. "Fine. I'll train with Ten-Ten." I couldn't blame him for that one.

I nodded. "Alright, then I'll train with Lee and Naruto can train with Neji. Everybody else okay with that?"

Naruto made a loud noise of disgust. When I looked at him askance he quickly put his hands behind his head. "Sure! Sounds great." He smiled widely.

"… Right." I knew he didn't like Neji much, so I was a little surprised he would even attempt to pretend otherwise. I smiled back at him. I gave him a lot of flack, and he could be a little dramatic, but he was good with people when he needed to be.

"Sakura-san! I am looking forward to our training together today!" Lee gave me a massive grin and his signature thumbs up.

"Definitely!" I smiled back. He'd been a little overwhelming when I'd first met him, but as I got used to him, I'd come to enjoy his company. I was a little surprised he and Naruto didn't get along better; they were both such sun-shiny people. "What would you like to work on today?" I asked, following him toward one of the clearings.

He put his hand on his chin. "I would like to borrow your swords again if that is okay! But you are a wonderful, gentle lady, so you do not like using live weaponry in training with people." He frowned. "So I do not know how to involve you! Should I use sticks instead?"

I hummed. "The balance would be off for you, it wouldn't be good training." I found myself copying his gesture, putting my hand on my chin. "But I haven't been working on my jutsu for a while, and I've barely practised making illusionary clones. Using them would be ideal, but they aren't like Naruto's Shadow Clones. They're not solid so you wouldn't be able to hit them," I shrugged.

Lee beamed. "I believe this is a good starting place! You will be able to practise avoiding me with your clones! They are often used as a decoy, so I believe ninja would prefer they are never hit!"

I nodded. "And you could practise trying to hit a constantly moving target..." I frowned. Lee was fast. But then again, they were illusionary clones. Logically, there was no reason they had to be restricted by my own body's capabilities. I could make them move as fast as I wanted. The only reason not to do so would be if an enemy already had an idea of how I normally acted, but even then, it would be a good distraction technique to make my opponent think I'm better than they thought.

If Kakashi were around, I'd ask him if this was a typical usage. If it was, then there were probably loads of tips he'd have on hand for me. But he wasn't here.

Dammit, Kakashi. I'm starting to think Ten-Ten has a point about you.

I smiled at Lee. "Alright. Let's do this!" I took off my pack and handed him my swords, before walking several paces away to ready my clone. I whipped through the hand-seals and directed my chakra, ending with a call, "Clone!" It wasn't necessary to call out what you were doing with techniques, but it helped focus your energy if you had the opportunity.

A cloud of smoke emerged beside me and dissipated just as quickly.

… And sometimes, focusing your energy only helped so much. "Oof. Hang on, I'll try again." I was too distracted thinking about the different applications for clones in combat. I needed to focus.

Hand-seals, chakra, "Clone!" Fortunately, this time the smoke was in the shape of a person, and as it cleared-

"Shit."

"Sakura-san? Why make a different person for a clone?" Lee asked.

"Uh." I stared at the pink-cheeked blonde girl in front of me. It was a perfect clone of me… before I woke up here. It was weird enough to see a copy of myself, but after not seeing my real face in a mirror for months? The actual weirdest.

"Is she a relative?" Lee asked. "You are very similar!"

I raised my eyebrows at him. Other than the eye colour, I hadn't thought both versions of me looked similar.

Come to think of it… Huh.

"I'm just trying something out," I told him. "She's just… a character from a book I read."

"Incredible!" Lee exclaimed. "You have a very good imagination! Making up the appearance of a person must be difficult! I can see why you would make her look similar to you! She is very pretty as well!" He grinned widely at me.

Oh, Lee. You unintentionally smooth goof. He could be overwhelming and forward, but I had to appreciate his extravagant sincerity.

I smiled at him and ran through the seals again. In a moment, the clone was replaced with the pink-haired edition of myself. If nothing else, it would be much easier to imagine this version of me doing athletic feats.

"Well, let's get started."

It was the first time I'd spent more than a couple of seconds directing an illusionary clone. It felt a little like playing a video game, or perhaps like directing a dream. I had to envision the action the clone would take while directing intent through a chakra connection. And directing anything through chakra always felt strange.

And to think, people like Sensei can probably pull this off without even looking at it… I could kind of understand why, since there was something like a ghost of feeling through the chakra connection. I could tell where the illusion was, but I couldn't see through its eyes. Maybe that was why ninja typically preferred using a transformation technique on themselves, even if it's riskier.

I put my hands back into the final seal for the technique to help with my focus. I was trying to make my clone outrun Lee across the field, but the motions the clone made were jerky and unrealistic. It was difficult to envision what it should look like.

Lee closed in on the clone and swiped out with the Dao; in a panic, I launched her underground. Lee's sword plunged toward her, but the sudden change threw him off-balance and he half-cut the earth and tripped onto the ground.

"Oh! Sorry, Lee!"

He pulled the dao out of the ground and spun around to give a cheery wave. I jogged over to him.

"Hey, sorry. You alright? I didn't mean to throw you off that much."

He gave a thumbs-up. "I am fine! It is good to be prepared for the unexpected in a battle! I will need to be more careful!"

It wasn't long before Gai-sensei called a halt to gather the team for their mission. Following the pattern of the previous two days, this time it was Ten-Ten's turn to lead.

I smiled a little sadly after them as they walked off; it was getting harder to be left out of missions like this.

The remaining boys and I gathered together in the middle of the field. Neji crossed his arms. "I saw you were training with illusionary clones." He frowned. "Have you injured yourself again, Sakura-san?"

I flushed. "No, I just- you know I don't like training with live weaponry. And I don't have a lot of training in jutsu so… I just wanted to see how far I could push the limits of the clones." Unconsciously, I began twisting my hands together. "I thought it would be good if I could make them faster than me, but..."

Neji shook his head. "I saw. It was not a convincing illusion. Practice with the standard method before attempting to perfect the technique."

"I think you still did an excellent job, Sakura-san! If you continue practising, you will become a genius of illusionary clones!" Lee beamed. I smiled back weakly.

Neji threw him a glance. "Lee. You need to practice with a real target if you want to learn to use weaponry. You'll train with me while Sakura-san works on her clone technique."

Lee began exclaiming as I nodded slowly. Neji could be very brusque, but in this instance, he was completely right. I was lucky enough to pick up on a lot of techniques quickly, or if I was being honest with myself, too used to picking up on new things quickly. If I kept trying to rush through something I lacked skill in, all I had to gain were poor habits.

Reconciled, I left the boys to their spar and walked to the edge of the field to work with my clones. I began with one; I had her walk normally around the field, then jogging, then running. I practised having her sit, lay down, feign sleep, and make hand-seals.

On a whim, I tried having her pull a kunai from her pouch, and had a moment of pause when it worked. After careful consideration, I had her try another weapon. Aha.

She unsheathed an entire Dao from a pocket.

Then an explosive tag (of which I had none as they were expensive), and, feeling sillier as I went on: a stick of dynamite, a dictionary, a high-heeled shoe…

I started giggling helplessly. Oh man, what kind of nonsense can I do with this? My mind whirled. Could I make animals, then? It was normal usage to create mirages of different people, so why not? Could I make illusions of simple objects? Could I feign explosions? Waterfalls? How big could I make them? How small? Could I feign a line of text on a sheet of paper?

And what about the Transformation Technique? That completely changed your shape, right? Could I just bring items into existence whenever I wanted? Would they hold the correct physical properties? Could I just spawn in weapons whenever I needed them?

My excitement was cut short by a howl.

The illusion vanished in a blink as I whipped my head around toward the source. It had been one of the boys.

"Lee!"

I ran in an all-out sprint back to the centre of the field, where Neji was kneeling over Lee and-

[Red blood]

Lee was lying on the ground, one of his legs gushing red.

Neji's face was a white mask as I approached, his hands clamped tightly over the red, the veins in his temples bulging as he looked for something in the distance.

I found myself kneeling next to Lee, who was half-propped on one of his elbows staring blankly at the long, deep tear in his calf.

[Red blood]

"You'll be fine. Neji, do you see anyone nearby?" I heard my voice as though from a distance, my hands strangely steady as they untied the band from around my waist.

Neji's head rotated slightly from side-to-side. "No."

"Okay." I removed the metal Konoha plate from my headband, shoving it absently in a pocket. "Lee, I'm making a tourniquet. It's going to be uncomfortable, but it will slow down the bleeding, okay?"

He nodded blankly as I wrapped the cloth above his knee, pulling it tightly before fixing it in a knot.

Neji's eyes were now fixed on the wound. "It's… slowing now."

A corner of my mind started screaming at me for not getting the med-kit before I went to training today. I ignored it, pulling out a kunai and cutting at my tights. After a fumbling moment, I managed to extract a strip of material.

"Neji. Hands."

He moved his hands out of the way, helping to hold down the material as I wrapped it around the gash.

"I have bandages on my hands," Lee said absently. "You can use them. You didn't have to break your clothes," he mumbled.

I shook my head. "Your bandages have too much dirt on them. And my tights have elastic. It'll help." I pursed my lips together. "The hospital is pretty far from here, especially if we're carrying you, but I don't think we have a choice. I haven't learned how-"

I stopped. I'd been about to say, 'I haven't learned how to heal yet', but… Haven't I? My problem hadn't been making healing energy, it had been getting rid of it and producing regular chakra. I hadn't actually tried to make pure healing chakra yet.

Wordlessly, I raised a hand. Tsunade said it was the pure intent to fix…

A bright, green glow radiated out from my palm. It began bluer, like the green of the sea, before blazing brightly into emerald.

Even as the colour transitioned further, I grabbed my kunai back up and nicked a small cut against my calf.

"Sakura?"

I pressed the flat edge of the kunai over the cut, as I had envisioned doing so long ago. Pressing my palm over cool metal, I carefully, gently let the chakra seep through.

Oh.

I tossed the kunai aside, tugging the metal plate from my pocket, and placed it over Lee's leg where the blood was seeping out from the fabric. I placed both palms over, took a deep breath, and let distraction fall away to focus.

And it had been obvious. It was like rubbing sleep out of my eyes, like finding the solution to a puzzlehad been directly in front of me all along.

It was like realising you had been trying to heal with knives and trying to hurt with bandages.

This chakra had a purpose. It already knew where to go. It was exactly like the chakra I had been directing to my muscles for weeks. I had been spending all this time clumsily mixing chakra that was trying to exert force with chakra that was trying to join a tide.

No wonder I had been struggling.

I didn't have to push with the chakra at all. I just let it build in my hands and allowed it to trickle out as it saw fit. I doubted I'd needed the metal plate to limit it.

I could feel it as it flowed into his system, such a tiny amount at a time; coaxing cells here and there, exerting the smallest amount of pressure to convince loose ends to join. Not a push into the system, so much as an ebb and flow. It was helping gather platelets from further in the body to the correct location. I could feel that his chakra already knew on some level how the body was supposed to be. Like it just needed a reminder, a little extra help getting the message around.

It was unlike anything in my world. It was entrancing. Absorbing. A combination of perfect stillness and constant focus.

I felt, as though from a great distance, a strange note of difference in chakra flow. But it wasn't from my hands or the wound; it was from somewhere else. I kept my focus.

Steadily, that far-away feeling grew stronger. It was oddly familiar. Like static.

"Sakura." I heard the voice as though at a great distance. "That's enough, Sakura. You need to stop."

"Hmm?" I hummed. My voice felt strange, as though I had forgotten I'd had my own body.

"Sakura. Stop. That's enough."

The buzzing, static feeling intensified. I might not have been able to switch my focus, if not for how strangely reassuring that feeling was, how familiar…

"Sensei?" I mumbled. Blinking, I began to focus on the scene in front of me. I had been healing, and Lee was…

"Sakura. You need to stop. Now."

"It's not done," I heard myself say. And it wasn't, there was just a little more to go...

"Stop."

I both heard and felt the command through the buzzing feeling- Sensei's chakra- and it was so earnest, I complied almost unconsciously. I let the light fade from my palms, so light now it was nearly golden. I blinked slowly, reality coming back into focus. Lee was sitting upright, staring at me with wide eyes. Sensei was sitting on my other side, one palm resting gently on my back.

I pulled my hands away from the wound. Neji had already removed the tourniquet. I unravelled the makeshift bandage from Lee's leg.

Apart from the dried blood on his skin, it was completely healed.

"Huh." I looked up at Kakashi. "Sensei, you're late."

He hung his head and huffed out a sigh. He also began wavering back and forth. And so did the ground. And the sky. And the air?

"Sensei, I don't feel great," I said. Stiffly, I rose a hand to rub at my forehead. It was wet. "Huh?" I brought a bloody hand back in front of my eyes.

"I don't imagine you do," Sensei said. "Come on, I'll take you to the hospital."

I was startled by the sharp pang of annoyance I felt. Almost resentment. This was just Sensei trying to help, after all. Even if it was completely unnecessary. "Relax, I've got this."

I let the chakra pulse into my hand again.

Huh. Definitely looking more gold than green. Weird.

And without bothering to grab a piece of metal, I placed my palm over my forehead-

"Sakura!"

-And let the chakra seep through.

That's when everything froze and fell apart.