Chapter One - A Change of Pace
Twenty-three year old Haruno Sakura sat, fingers threaded through her soft pink hair, holding her aching head, wondering how the hell she had gotten herself into this.
"Sakura-sensei! Sakura-sensei!" the same high pitched squeal she had heard for the past two hours greeted her ears.
'Oh my Kami! I'm going to beat the holy Hell out of that kid if he doesn't shut up,' Inner Sakura screamed pulling her hair.
"Ugh, I'm definitely getting a drink tonight," Sakura muttered under her breath as Kioshi clung to her shapely thigh. Sakura had grown quite a bit in the years after becoming a jonin. She'd been rather upset to see Ino, Tenten, and even Hinata gradually develop, gaining the attentions of many teammates as well the any other village's visiting male population. Personally Sakura could care less which guy liked which girl or which girl dated which guy. Even the coolheaded and returned Uchiha no longer fascinated her. That just hurt too much so Sakura had forced herself to forgo that want and was simply grateful that her determination to earn Sasuke's love had resulted in her strength. Besides, love, it seemed, just wasn't for her, after all, hadn't Sasuke denied her time and time again. She just figured he couldn't love anymore, that perhaps Itachi had done more damage to him than was repairable. It pained Sakura to give up on Sasuke, but less so than to continue to try to make him reciprocate that love.
But, despite the lack and care of attention to her body, even Naruto had finally moved on to date the shy Hyuuga girl; she was overjoyed during her twentieth year when she began to notice physical changes in her figure. Her face finally narrowed a bit, her forehead no longer prominent, just as her chest and hips flared out, morphing her body, excluding the overly large breasts, into something akin to her mentor's, Tsunade.
Who was exactly to blame for the situation Sakura was in.
Damn her, damn her, damn her! Stupid Tsunade, "Oh Sakura, I need a favor. You know poor Kakashi's condition, right? It's not serious, really, bbbuuuutttt… there isn't anybody to fill in for him with his genin. So, I was wondering if you might do it, for your wonderful, beautiful, gracious sensei." Sakura fumed.
Little did she know, at least when she accepted, that Kakashi had theTakahashi Kioshi, the boy that obsessively wrote "I love Sakura" and "Sakura and Kioshi forever" all of his academy notebooks, as well as taped a picture of her in one of them. She still couldn't figure out how he'd gotten it, but she'd bet money on Naruto being the culprit.
"Sakura-sensei," the annoying kid shouted again, drawing Sakura from her musings."
"Let go, Kioshi," she said sternly, trying unsuccessfully to pry the boy from her leg.
"B-but, Sakura-sensei, I-I lo-love you!" he stuttered out, blushing madly.
Gah! Is this what I sounded like to Sasuke? I could see why he never said yes to going out with me if that's the case.
Somehow, Kioshi managed to wiggle his body around her leg until his face was pushed up against her thigh, just a bit too close for Sakura's comfort.
"KYA!" Sakura screeched, slamming her fist into the top of his head hard enough to dislodge him as well as leave a lump.
"Ouch!" He cried out, "What was that for?" The boy had no idea of the close proximity his face had been with such an intimate place for Sakura.
"You're supposed to be training!" she managed to get out, cheeks infused with pink.
"Yeah, but what do you want us to practice? Genjutsu? Taijutsu? Ninjutsu? Huh? Huh? What?" Noriko, the one female genin of the group, spoke, impatient to begin, especially with someone of Sakura's status teaching them. Not that Hatake Kakashi, the famous Copy Nin wasn't good enough but all he ever did was read that dirty orange book, the girl growled in her head.
"Alright, let's practice, um… Taijutsu!" Sakura decided, but cringed at the thought of Kioshi wanting to spar with her, so quickly added, "Boys pair up and Noriko and I will, too."
A loud groan and a soft defeated sigh escaped from Kioshi and Noriko, who now moved to stand beside their respective sparring partners.
"Oh, cheer up!" She barked, although she couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for Noriko; it was obvious she was smitten with Hisoka, the last member of the team.
Poor girl, Sakura thought, reminiscing on her own experiences. Already sweating from the intense heat beating down on her, Sakura set herself into a defensive stance and got ready for a long day.
Kakashi sat, slouched lazily in his bed, mask and forehead protector sloppily in place due to Tsunade's abrupt and slightly unwanted appearance. Really, he didn't care if she saw his face since she already had during many healing sessions, but at first he hadn't known who had barged through his front door; Naruto and Sakura still continuously tried to get his mask off.
Too tired to care, he left them in place as Tsunade walked towards him beginning to speak.
"How are you feeling? Like shit, I'd presume. I'm still researching; for the life of me I can't understand why your chakra won't replenish itself. Until then, you really do need to take it easy. That means don't even think about trying to show up –late- to train your students," at that comment, she snorted, knowing full well Hatake Kakashi rarely did anything physical with his genin. Still, he didn't need to waste the energy it would take to even get to their training spot.
"Besides, Sakura's taking over their training in your absence, that is, until you are back to normal."
Kakashi's one visible eye widened at that.
"What? It's not as if she isn't qualified, in fact she's on the same level as you now, perhaps," Tsunade paused, adding a wanted effect to her next words, "even better?"
A soft grunt-like laugh was his immediate reply. "It's not that I don't think she's capable, but now I just want to go see it with my own eyes," he chuckled. Oftentimes during training Kioshi had mentioned his great "love" for Sakura, even going so far as to say he was going to marry her. Sometimes, he even demanded Kakashi to ask his former student to come to one of their team meetings.
Clearly recalling the event he again, laughed aloud. Kioshi had "asked" his question and Kakashi, annoyed with the pesky student, had merely frowned. The boy, oddly, took the frown as something a little different than Kakashi's own meaning and shouted, "Oh, you're just jealous because you can't have her since she's my girlfriend!" Laughing madly, he'd dashed off to tell his teammates of his discovery while Kakashi sat, a startled expression plastered on under his mask and hitai-ate.
His mind simply spluttered, "W-wh-what?" Sure, he knew he'd noticed Sakura's sudden and rather amazing transformation into a woman, who the hell wouldn't, especially since the girl had managed to worm her way into his life despite his attempts to avoid her for the very reason that she was now a woman. But, still, he'd never imagined her being anything other than a student. Well, he had imagined, but he knew she had no such intentions towards him; how could she? He was thirty-six, nearly an old man by shinobi terms, while she was in her prime. And yet, she didn't show much interest in anybody, not the Uchiha, not any of the other men, not even women, nobody. What if…
"Kakashi!" Tsunade shouted for the fourth time. "Kami, is your brain affected as well as your chakra?"
Moving to the door, Tsunade turned around, "I'm serious, Hatake, don't strain your body. Physically you might feel fine one minute, but the next," she said, smacking one palm onto the other, "on the floor unconscious. Just rest!" And with that she left his room and himself to his suddenly overactive Sakura-inducing imagination.
Alright, so I decided to go ahead and put up the "first" chapter, it's rather short... man I hate what the width of these pages does to the length. It always seems so long on Word documents. Oh well, steady wins the race is the saying right? This chapters pretty slow but the story picks up shortly, and then slows down again, and then picks back up again... there has got to be SOME explaination to this story, alright. Oh, and writing summaries sucks! -bacatlover