It's been a few months since Shin's offer, a few months of blood and cuts and fortunately, some improvement. Sakura doesn't harbor pretensions about how quickly she learns, surrounded as she is by a crop of child genii, but Shin's pride always makes something quiet and calm ease into her nights.

Not only Shin, but Kaito has been training her. When she had expressed interest in medical techniques his eyes had gone sharp and gold and he had offered to teach her. So it was that she toiled her nights away underground, feeling the blades of Kaito's chakra and learning to form her own. That first time-when he made that first cut and she bit the inside of her mouth to distract herself from the pain-he had smiled a humorless smile and explained that it was the fastest way he knew to train her. The words seemed rehearsed and strange, almost as if a mantra passed down to him by another ninja.

When she drops down into Kaito's alcove, he tells her that Shin is out on a mission tonight. They will work more on the chakra blades first. Sakura and Inner groan in unison. They've always hated this part. Kaito takes a green blade to her arms, and when he's cut deep enough that blood wells out, he stops and asks Sakura to heal it.

Generating medical chakra comes easily enough to her, and she closes her eyes against the yellow flicker of underground lighting. Reaches down into the silence. In between the pain and the instinctual desire to live, she takes her chakra and directs it to the cuts. It feels cool and soothing, and Sakura weaves it like strands under her skin, in a pattern she's felt Kaito weave a little less than a hundred times before.

When she heals correctly, it feels right and true and the pain fades like she had never been cut. Her chakra would rush through and leave only a cold tingling behind. But when she heals wrong, she feels it immediately in the fire and stiffness of her skin. Those times are the worst. Those times, Kaito would have to cut away the scar tissue, painstakingly retracing the previous cuts, reopening the wound to heal it himself. His work always left her skin flawless, pale and perfect and cold.

With caution borne of experience, Sakura spins thin wisps of her chakra, winds them through the cut. With a pull, the cut closes. The feeling of rightness guides her as she sews together skin and muscle. When the last of the pain disappears, when she wipes away the blood to unblemished skin, a rush of relief nearly overwhelms her. Sakura shares a triumphant smile with her mentor.

Kaito says, "Ready to take over? I need a smoke break," just to watch her pale. "Good," he smirks, "don't get cocky and soon enough you'll be able to take over for real." And maybe he'd finally get more funding! Actually, now that he thought about it, taking Sakura on as an assistant would be nice.

Through this pain, Sakura learns to heal.

She goes to register for classes at the Konoha Hospital, because she needs an excuse for her sudden medical skill. The nurse at the front readily hands her the application, and the whole affair is over in a matter of minutes. She tests out of the beginner classes (as expected, Inner Sakura says and flips her hair), and her first class is uneventful. She learns cool jutsu, ones that let her sterilize wounds and clean hair and act as local anesthesia that Kaito had used but never gotten to teaching her.

The instructor had said that practice was important, so she spends the first half of her night practicing on the dumpster cats and feeding them. She doesn't dare to heal them yet, not with her skill level, but she runs hands through their fur and gives them pseudo-baths as they purr and wind around her ankles. Even the Sasuke-cats are warming up to her, letting her flick their ears before slipping away.

Sakura examines a tomato critically before placing it in her bag. The vendor is examining her equally critically, and she's trying not to sweat. She recognized this particular vendor. Mainly, her rotten produce that she had spent her earlier genin days dodging. Thankfully, the tomato lady doesn't recognize her and Sakura quickly pays and leaves.

Sakura likes to cook. It's one of the only corners of her life that makes sense. Cut the tomatoes, turn on the heat, measure the oil, etc etc. The aroma of cut vegetables fills the room.

She's so lost in thought she cuts into an extra tomato. Shoot! She was supposed to save that for tomorrow's salad.

But then.

Then.

If we can heal us, I bet we can heal this tomato, says Inner.

No way, thinks Sakura.

Oh yes, says Inner.

After a lot of arguing, Inner convinces her to give it a try. Sakura can't believe she is about to heal a tomato. Inner tells her, outside of Kaito, it's the only practice we're going to get.

Sakura pours her chakra into the tomato. It feels strange and watery and different. There is the stiffness of fiber and the smoothness of its skin and when Sakura tries to thread her chakra through it, the tomato provides no resistance and she thinks she put too much power into it. In short, the tomato explodes.

Sakura scowls. It's not a good feeling that talented as she is, she is so imprecise as to achieve the same results Naruto and Sasuke did on that tree walking exercise. She wipes up the tomato and gets started on dinner, pouting internally.

Ever since the explosion, Sakura has been secretly funneling funds into buying tomatoes. The Haruno family has seen a rise in tomato-themed food, from tomato soup to salad to salsa. And just like Naruto and Sasuke, she learned from the explosions, gentling her chakra until it melded into the tomato.

A curious side effect is an increased skill at sensing tomatoes. She can't sense in more than a five-meter radius, but when she goes to the market the tomatoes from various vendors pop up with their tiny tomato shaped chakra signatures. Each one feels different—whether it's ripe or heirloom or freshly harvested all change its signature. Sakura is dismayed to reach the conclusion that it is the tomato lady who offers the best tomatoes.

Well, it would be useful for later dodging, if Lee recovered and his shouts provoked the tomato vendor again.

No, Inner amended, not if he recovered.

When he recovered, agreed Sakura.

When Sakura finally mastered the tomato, Inner said, I bet we can heal the cabbage…

Sakura goes shopping for the second time that week.

.

A/N: im alive lmao

shin will probably appear next chapter

maybe sakura will get to a point when she can sense across fire country, sense all the tomatoes, and become a tomato chef