"Ow! Ow, sensei!" Sakura shrieked, trying to pull away from her teacher. The normally laid-back Kakashi only narrowed his eyes and tightened his grip on his student's arm, bringing an impromptu switch (a long, thin branch found at the forest floor) down against the back of her legs and bottom even harder. Eventually Sakura gave up and just stood still sobbing in the forest while Kakashi switched her. His anger was more than evident in the force of his blows, so he didn't speak, but when he finally stopped he made sure to scoop her into his arms before she sank to the ground.

Picking the twelve-year-old girl up like a small child, Kakashi walked over to a tree stump and sat down with Sakura bawling on his lap. She was too hysterical to talk to at the moment, so while he waited for her to calm down, Kakashi thought back to how they had ended up like this in the first place.

Team 7 had taken a mission of guarding a caravan for a few days. Before reaching the destination, they were attacked (as predicted) by bandits. Fighting them off wasn't particularly difficult, but their leader was a mammoth of a man that Kakashi preferred to deal with himself.

"Sakura, leave him!" he'd yelled when he saw his female student rushing toward the man. Sakura had turned her head to look at him, so he knew she'd heard him, and he focused his attention back to his current opponent. It was right when he'd dispatched him that he heard a yell from Naruto.

"Sakura!" The panic in Naruto's voice made Kakashi whirl around, and what he saw nearly stopped his heart. Several meters away lay Sakura, pinned to the ground by the huge bandit. Just one of his hands was enough to clamp so tightly around her throat that she couldn't escape no matter how hard she struggled. The image froze in his head like a horrible photograph, but only for a second – before he was even aware of it, he was tearing down the field so quickly that his surroundings passed by in an undistinguishable blur. Kakashi hardly even remembered taking out the man. It wasn't until Sakura was safe and trying to get her breath back while Naruto and Sasuke helped her sit up that he even noticed the carnage.

When the escort was over and Team 7 was on their way back to Konoha, Kakashi mulled the event over in his head. After the overwhelming relief had died down in his mind, it became replaced with anger at Sakura. She had purposefully disobeyed his orders and put herself in unnecessary danger – worse yet, this wasn't the first time she had done it. Over the past few weeks, there had been several occasions where she had rather un-strategically thrown herself into the path of an enemy or attempted something she knew she wouldn't be able to handle. Warning, scolding, and yelling hadn't worked - so while Kakashi told Naruto and Sasuke to set up camp for the night, he grabbed Sakura by the hand and pulled her into the forest, determined to finally get his point across.

Now, Kakashi sighed and absentmindedly rested his chin on Sakura's pink head. Her sobs had quieted to sniffles and the occasional whimper, so Kakashi gently took her shoulders and held her away so they could make eye contact.

"Sakura," he said sternly, "You should know by now about taking proper caution in battle." Sakura hiccupped and wiped her eyes.

"But, sensei," she protested. "I just wanted… I just wanted…" Kakashi sighed again.

"To prove you're just as capable as the rest of us boys, right?" he finished. Sakura looked down and plucked at the front of his vest in response.

"Sakura, I appreciate that you're working harder, but you still need to recognize your limits. Everyone has them, especially as genin. Even Sasuke, even Naruto, even me."

"But, I want to be useful," Sakura whispered to his chest. Kakashi gently lifted her head.

"You are useful," he informed her. "But not if you're dead. You have natural talent that even Sasuke with his sharingan and Naruto with his energy don't have. Work on growing and enhancing those skills. And if you really want to focus on your physical strength…" He lightly rapped the top of her head with his knuckles. "Practice on me first, not on an enemy four times your size." Kakashi gave Sakura the best puppy-dog look he could, making her giggle despite the circumstances.

Oh, Sakura, Kakashi thought as they headed back to rejoin the rest of the team. You have no idea what it would do to this family if you died. His eye widened when he realized what he had just thought. Team, he sternly reminded himself. Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke were his students – not his surrogate children.

Arriving back at the camp revealed Naruto and Sasuke sitting rather quietly around the campfire, and they eyed Sakura with mixed looks of sympathy and disapproval. Judging from the stiffness in her step and her red and puffy eyes (and the fact that Kakashi hadn't gone far enough that Sakura's cries hadn't gone completely unheard), it was pretty obvious what had happened. The two boys could both empathize with her, having been on the receiving end of their teacher's discipline themselves. But they, too, were frustrated with their teammate's reckless actions, and so the looks they sent her weren't exactly comforting.

Naruto opened his mouth to say something, but Kakashi spoke first.

"I'll keep watch tonight," he informed his students. "You guys get some rest." He paused. "Sakura's had a long day. I trust you boys won't bother her." The subtle command was clear. Sakura had her punishment already – any further harping on her would not be tolerated.

So Naruto and Sasuke just nodded reluctantly, and the three genin rolled out their sleeping bags and settled in to sleep while Kakashi disappeared into the trees for his watch. It didn't take long for his students to fall asleep, and he enjoyed about an hour of quiet to peacefully read – until he had to look up from his book when he heard a shuffling noise from below, followed soon by hushed voices.

"Hey!" came Naruto's hissed attempt at a whisper. "What are you going over to Sakura for?"

"Quiet, moron! It's cold and she's shivering! I'm just trying to keep her warm so she doesn't get sick!"

"What! I'm coming over, too!"

"Not so close, her legs might still hurt!" A feminine voice piped up tiredly.

"Guys, what's going on?" It took several more minutes of grumbling and rearranging for silence to fill the camp again. Looking down at his students made Kakashi smile under his mask when he saw them fast asleep again, snuggled up with each other almost like puppies. Just teammates? He snorted. No, he mused as he returned to his book, they were definitely a family.