Chapter 1 - Setting the board

From as young an age as Sakura could remember, she was never alone - not even when there was no-one else around.

Her parents often left her to play in their small backyard by herself, for example when they had paperwork to go over for their small business. Most of the time the little pink-haired girl could be found playing quietly in the small sandbox, where she would painstakingly build a castle and stare at it with pride, only to overthrow it half a minute later - turning it back into flat sand so she could start all over again and try to build one that was even more beautiful.

Today she left the sandbox alone, her attention drawn instead to the flowers that were fully in bloom.

"These flowers are pink," she said with an air of certainty, watching the small, bright flowers on a plant that hung in a basket from the low wooden fence surrounding their yard. The girl carefully touched the petals and a broad smile spread across her face.

A moment later she was already turning away, skipping towards the sole tree in their garden. Her hand trailed over the bark until her eyes settled on an insect crawling steadily upwards along the trunk of the tree. She pointed at it. "Bee," she said out loud.

There was a sound not unlike a sigh. But it wasn't Sakura who had made the sound, and it wasn't the bee either, she was sure. Which means it must have come from the voice in her head.

She wasn't wrong, because it spoke up a moment later. "That would be a beetle," the voice informed her as quietly as a whisper on the wind.

The pink-haired girl leaned closer and narrowed her eyes. It was blue and bees were yellow. She also couldn't quite spot his wings. It could be a beetle, she supposed.

"You're a beetle," she informed the insect in turn with a decisive nod.

"I'm glad we've managed to establish as much, child," the voice commented, "We'll make a shinobi of you yet, I suppose."

She giggled. With her pink hair and civilian parents, she knew she was nothing like a ninja at all. Still, if the voice thought she'd make a good ninja, maybe it wasn't such as odd as she thought?

It was right about the beetle after all.

Her mother took her by the hand when they walked towards the busier streets filled with market stalls. A multitude of voices filled the air, sinking and rising up around her like the rhythm of a familiar song. The scent of yakitori sticks and other treats made her nose twitch with interest.

The hold on her hand was firm, though, and Sakura was tugged her towards a fish stall – the scent of which overpowered all others when they approached.

It was as they were moving to the next stall that the voice – that was usually so very quiet that she could only hear if she paid close attention - called out more loudly than she'd ever heard it. "Watch out!" it exclaimed, "Go left."

She reacted instinctively to the voice and tugged as hard as she could on her mother's hand, to the left.

"Sakura," her mother complained at her sudden action but went along with her.

There was, perhaps, a rush of wind to their right.

Nothing happened.

The little girl turned her head left and right and then, after a moment's thought, up as well. She couldn't see anything out of place.

"Well done, child," the voice told her, whisper-soft once more, "that could have been a rather unfortunate collision. Shinobi should pay better attention to civilians than that, even if they are only genin."

Her mother, however, was less approving. "Sakura, you can't just yank on my arm like that!" she scolded her, "If you want to take a look at something, you need to tell me."

"But the voice said we had to go left," she told her mother earnestly. "Because of the shinobi."

"What voice? I didn't hear anything. It was probably someone talking to somebody else." Her mother shook her head. "It doesn't matter, just don't do that again, alright?"

The girl nodded dutifully.

That was good enough for her mother and Sakura was dragged towards the next stop on their grocery list.

"You did fine, Sakura," the voice said – the tone of it so much calmer than her harried mother. "Your mother didn't see it, she's a civilian. But that genin would have run right in to you. You responded quickly and correctly. Good job."

She glanced at her mother, wondering what the woman would say about the voice so clearly disagreeing with her, but she didn't react.

It dawned on her then, that her mother couldn't hear the voice at all - not even when it was being louder than normal. The voice belonged only to Sakura.

If no-one else could hear the voice, she considered with a deep frown on her face, it was probably just in her head. Kind of like an inner her.

Without needing anyone to tell her, Sakura knew that talking to someone that no-one else could see or hear would make her weird. It would draw the bad kind of attention to her, something people could make fun of her for.

She didn't like being weird, but she did like the voice. Her inner voice was helpful and it was a part of her that had always been there. The idea of it not being there would have been so much weirder than anything else.

But Inner couldn't hear her without Sakura actually talking to her, even when she thought very hard at herself. So the girl was left whispering to Inner when no-one else could hear, or writing notes for her own eyes to read.

Inner talked back to her without issue, because no-one else could hear her, though to be fair, her voice started out as just a whisper which was very hard to hear unless she really paid attention to it. Over time, though the voice grew in volume and depth.

It was during her first year at the Academy that Sakura realised that voice was not in her head at all, but that it came from a cloudy shape floating next to her. The cloud was wispy and if she reached out and touched it, it didn't feel like anything at all.

That was where the voice came from, though, and now that she thought about it, the voice she had long since dubbed 'Inner' in her mind sounded nothing at all like her own - so perhaps it wasn't an 'inner self' at all.

The cloud had a deep voice, almost as deep as her father's. It was a smart voice too, thought, sometimes using words that even Sakura didn't know, and she knew a lot of difficult words. So while the cloud was not an inner her, it was still familiar and helpful, which is why Sakura didn't mind it tagging along with her – even if it probably didn't make her any less weird than having a voice in her head.

Days in the Academy went by quickly. She knew that most of her classmates didn't enjoy it even nearly as much as she did, especially the theoretical side of things. Kiba always cheered when it was time for sparring or kunai throwing and those were exactly the parts that Sakura didn't look forward to.

But when Iruka-sensei told them about chakra, taught them how to circulate it through their system and to focus it all in one area as to make a leaf stick to their forehead.

"It's an exercise aimed at improving one's focus more than anything," her voice informed her. He was always adding to their lessons, expanding on them and deepening her understanding. That was a good thing, because Sakura was sometimes frustrated that Iruka-sensei would stop his lectures just when it was getting interesting.

"One of the main chakra points lies on the forehead, where chakra can be expelled through with practice," the voice continued and Sakura fought hard to divide her attention between this lecture and the leaf sticking to her forehead. It was tougher than one would think, as both required some amount of concentration, but despite the leaf wobbling a little after the voice started talking, she managed to keep a grasp of it.

"The body has 361 tenketsu, but most shinobi learn only to actively use those in the hands and feet – those are the most important to develop for the use of jutsu or water walking. It is important to be aware of the others even if you cannot use them actively, as they influence the chakra flow of the body. There are some shinobi who can block these chakra points during battle, such as those from the Hyuuga clan."

She listened carefully, mentally filing away the questions she wanted to ask later, when she was without an audience. What was water walking, was that what it sounded like? And was there a way to reopen blocked tenketsu in battle?

For now her questions had to wait, but that was alright because she knew the voice would answer any question she asked of him – he'd never once refused her, not like her parents, who sometimes said it was an 'adult conversation' or her teachers who smiled and called her a bright girl and said she would learn everything she needed to know about this or that later, under the guidance of her jounin-sensei.

That left only the voice to ask, and thankfully he was nowhere near as tight-fisted with his knowledge, only impressing the importance of keeping certain information to herself or being careful with some of the exercises he taught her. Sure, sometimes the voice refused to teach her something, but it was always for a reason, such as needing to master another skill first before she could take it a step further.

Sakura could understand that, she wasn't stupid.

So when she got home and her voice told her that if she wanted to learn water walking, she needed to start with climbing trees using her chakra, she happily agreed.

One day, she looked up at her cloudy voice and found she wasn't looking at a cloud at all. It wasn't a sudden change, though, it was more that suddenly she realised that the change had happened.

It was as if, day by day, those wisps of clouds had condensed together into a shape roughly like that of a person. It had happened so slowly that she'd hardly realised it, except to note now - with some surprise - that at some point, the cloudy voice had become a tall, red-eyed man and only his translucence and oddly shaped white hair were anything at all like a cloud.

His name was Tobirama Senju, but she was allowed to call him Sen.

"It's a good a name as any, and perhaps since I am but a remnant of what I once was, it is only fitting," he said in that slow, pondering way he sometimes had – as if each word was a heavy stone that he had to carry to exactly the right spot and he then dropped it with a dull thud.

"Sen," she agreed, glad to have a name to call the voice. It made her feel less lonely, somehow, to have the voice turn out to be a person. And he was always with her, so it was sort of like having an invisible brother who taught her things, told her stories and sometimes, much like her parents, he pushed her to do things she didn't really feel like doing.

In the case of her parents that usually amounted to chores, like cleaning her room.

Sen, however, talked her into spending an extra hour after school practicing one of her least favourite subjects, taijutsu.

Sakura wasn't usually the type to complain, but the kata he taught her was difficult to get right and by the sixth attempt her arms were burning from the exertion. So when he criticised her high kick as being 'sloppy', the tired, sweaty girl crossed her arms and glared at person she could see standing in the empty space beside her.

"So I'm no good at taijutsu," she bit out, "everyone has their weaker subjects. I can make up for my lower marks in taijutsu with the written exams - which means all of this is pointless."

Her parents would have scolded her for being as unmannered as this, but Sen just stared back at her angry, heaving form for a long moment.

"Yes," he agreed a moment later, entirely placid in the face of her anger, "You would, most likely, manage to pass this year in such a way. Perhaps you will even manage to graduate the Academy altogether by simply compensating for a lack of taijutsu skills by excelling in another area."

She blinked, her anger falling away – because Sen was agreeing with her? Not that he never agreed with her, but he wouldn't have convinced her to do this if he didn't think it was something she needed to do. And part of Sakura was smart enough to know that while she didn't enjoy it, physical fighting skills were important, maybe even lifesaving for a shinobi. Not for the Academy, perhaps, but certainly out there in the field. Sen had told her plenty of stories of actual missions for her to know that sometimes pure strength was not enough, but at other times all of your smarts couldn't save you.

"So… I can stop?" she hesitantly checked, sure that there had to be a catch somewhere.

Sen nodded gravely, "Of course. This is your life to live and you are free to live it in a way you feel is best for you."

"Right," Sakura said but didn't move. She bit her lip, her face twisting into a frown while she stared back at him. Those red eyes seemed to be waiting, expectant and she just knew he would be disappointed if she gave up now.

Perhaps a part of herself would be disappointed too.

He didn't give an inch – his expression was a placid, blank slate, as unreadable as the bodiless voice he'd first manifested as. But then, she didn't need him to say anything, because she was fully able to fill in the blanks herself.

She could give up now, make it through the Academy, but that would not save her life and the lives of her clients or comrades later on. The unspoken truth filled the empty, expectant silence between them.

The tension in her body melted away and her face became smooth and still.

Without another word Sakura started up the kata again.

Sen didn't comment on it. They both merely continued on as they had been.

But this time when she performed the kata, there was something sharp and fierce to her punches and kicks. And afterwards, the bone-weary, shaking exhaustion was just as unpleasant, but she could stand to suffer it because it was earned.

Sakura didn't care how unladylike and sweaty she looked as she stumbled home, long after the planned hour had passed, because she could recognize a hint of satisfied pride in that familiar red gaze.

"You're getting better," her invisible teacher and friend said approvingly after their customary after school session. This time it had been kunai throwing, an exercise she'd never much liked because she hadn't been good in it. She still wasn't the best of their class, but she was better now that she had gained a little more strength in her arms. "I think that's enough exercise for today, though," he continued, "If you're up for it, I'd like to enlighten you further on the subject of seals – the overview your teacher gave on it was disappointingly brief."

"Seals?" Sakura repeated, "But Iruka-sensei said that it was enough to be able to recognize the most common ones and that we wouldn't be learning anything about them in the Academy."

Sen nodded, looking rather annoyed, "So he did. But I think it is a subject that will suit you. You enjoy theoretical knowledge and logic puzzles and your chakra reserves are small but from what exercises we've done so far, you appear to have a fine control over them."

She smiled, basking in what was a great compliment, coming from the perfectionist by her side.

He read the agreement in her face easily enough and nodded. "We can start just going over the basics in your room. All you'll need is ink and regular paper."

As promised, Sen gave her a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of sealing. For some people the lessons would have been boring, but Sakura actually liked knowing the theory behind any skill. So she paid close attention while he taught her about chakra flow and to recognize a large amount of common elements in seals and how they can be combined and what that would result in. She was also encouraged in practicing her handwriting and accuracy and he made her draw out specific seals on his spoken instructions, then made her analyse what they would do. Of course, the seals were harmless drawings – she had no access to the expensive chakra absorbent scrolls and the ink was not infused with any of her own chakra, but it was good practice.

Despite not showing her the effects of these seals in person, Sen discussed with her the variety of ways such seals could be used. And Sakura enjoyed these lessons – the seals themselves were like puzzles and the discussions on their use were creative and tactical exercises that suited her bright, inquisitive mind quite well.

Besides, the seal lessons were a nice break after the physical exercises he still silently expected her to practice after school.

Sakura didn't have many friends. Aside from Sen, there was really only Ino. The other girl had defended her from bullies once and had been kind to her ever since.

Ino was the complete opposite to Sakura: she was pretty and brave, and raised as the heir to a shinobi clan. The blond was not one to back down and could come across as loud or abrasive to some people but Ino was good at reading body language, so she never crossed the line into offending people – at least not unintentionally.

Sakura still wore the red ribbon the other girl had gifted her every day, and even Sen looked upon it approvingly. He wasn't necessarily fond of the other girl who he said could overshadow Sakura at times, but he had agreed with the words the girl had spoken when she'd provided this gift.

"Your friend is right," Sen had told her that evening, at home. "I will never understand childish bullies and this entire situation seems entirely insignificant to me. But I suppose that doesn't matter as this is not insignificant to you. So I'd suggest you follow young Ino's advice – wear that ribbon on your forehead with pride, for yourself and for the friend who believes in you."

She wore that ribbon that afternoon, while Ino dragged her along and gossiped to her about their classmates and shinobi and everything else the girl wanted to share. Sakura didn't have much to tell the other girl in turn, because aside from the instructors at school and her friend's parents she didn't know any shinobi. Well, perhaps Sen counted as a shinobi, but he wasn't exactly someone she could or would gossip about.

So Sakura just let the other girl's words wash over her and she revelled in being able to answer or laugh without being worried about people looking at her strangely for doing so when she was ostensibly by herself. Sen hovered a few paces behind them, seemingly satisfied to trail behind them like a shadow.

In between the bold anecdotes and gossip, Ino led them from one store to another, to try out make up, get sprayed by a flowery perfume and then onwards to one of the blonde's favourite stores to try on cute clothes.

Sakura dutifully changed into the dress her friend had trust upon her and hesitantly walked out of the fitting room.

"Oh, wait just a moment," her friend said and dashed out of the store while Sakura stared in the mirror, barely recognizing herself. The red dress was outspoken, too tight for her to be able to lift her leg into an upper kick, and it made her look entirely unlike herself. She looked like a pretty, civilian girl – like the Sakura she could have been, if she'd been... a different her.

Ino was back only a short moment later and finished her look by tucking a single pink cosmos flower under the red ribbon. "There," Ino proclaimed with a big, infectious smile, "you look beautiful."

Sakura happily smiled back at her friend.

When she walked home, wearing that new dress, Sen shook his head and muttered about the impracticality the piece of clothing. She wasn't offended, exactly, because she'd been pretty sure even in advance what Sen would have to say about it. But it looked pretty and Sakura wasn't just a shinobi, she was a girl too.

She could look pretty if she wanted to. When they came upon an empty street, she even proclaimed as much out loud. "I can look pretty if I want to," she informed Sen and any shinobi who might be lurking nearby.

Sen just stared at her and clearly didn't get the point. But, since he didn't say anything, Sakura shook her head and let it go. Ghost or not, he was a man after all.

Men didn't get things like that, or so Ino had assured her.

They were in the library, Sakura quietly leaving through yet another book, searching for one that provided a clear overview of human anatomy. Their guest speaker, Sato-sensei had been interesting but very short in the information she had shared. Sen had started up a lecture about the importance of medical support in their village and just how important it was for at least one member of a team to have a solid grounding in it. He didn't tell her anything about how it worked though.

She asked him later on, on the way home, "Can you teach me some medical skills?"

"Some medical skills?" He repeated, sounding almost offended. "It's not a field to dabble in. You need a firm grounding before you can even think of aiding another person. Having a small amount of knowledge will likely cause more harm than good."

"But didn't you say that at least one member of a team should have at least a grounding medical aid?" Sakura pointed out, "How will I get that without learning? You have to start somewhere."

"And ideally, that starting point would take place under the guidance of a trained medical professional," Sen drily answered. "But I suppose we could gather some grounding knowledge on the theoretical side. Knowledge of the workings of the human body is useful in a variety of ways and something you can study on your own."

They made a detour to the library and Sakura had started her search for knowledge with good hopes that dwindled the longer she went on. "All of these books only provide the barest information," she complained, her whisper harsh due to her frustration. "There has to be a useful book in here somewhere, it's the library."

She scowled, took another pile of potentially disappointing books to her table and sat down to leaf through them.

"I suspect you won't find it in the Academy section of the library," Sen pointed out. "The genin or chuunin section would be far more likely."

She glanced at the other occupants of the library, seated at tables nearby. I'm not allowed in those sections, she wrote down on her notepad, despite the fact that he was already aware of that.

He snorted, "Knowledge is only dangerous to those unprepared for it and I'm right here to guide you away from anything potentially harmful. There's absolutely no reason to restrict yourself to the Academy student books if it will hold you back from learning."

Except for the fact that it's not allowed.

His eyes skimmed over the words she wrote down and he shrugged. "It will be good practice to get a book out of here unnoticed. It will help you in more ways than one."

We're not supposed to practice our ninja skills on allies, she wrote down, underlining the allies a few times to drive the point home.

"You're not acting against allies by borrowing a book, Sakura. If you put it back afterwards, what could possibly be the harm?"

Sakura huffed and left the library altogether. But that night, Sen told her a story as he always did before she went to sleep - long after her parents had stopped doing so - and it was about ninjas and loyalty to the village and about growing smart and strong.

And Sakura wasn't stupid, she knew that the moral of the story was that you had to grow strong to protect the people you loved and your home, even if that meant breaking a rule here or there.

Of course, she knew exactly why he told her that story and she wasn't entirely sure whether that was really right. But Sen could be convincing, and she was also kind of curious whether she could actually do it.

"Alright, I'll do it," she finally told him quietly on the way to school the next day. "But first you will need to help me write out a working storage seal. I won't be smuggling a book out under my clothes."

Sen nodded. "We will need some chakra infused paper, then."

After school, they skipped the physical training in favour of Sakura going shopping. She had saved up enough of her allowance to be able to pay for the chakra infused paper and the more expensive brush that would prevent the ink from dripping.

At home, in her room, she carefully followed Sen's instructions. Drawing out the seal wasn't all that hard, not after all the practice she'd done. Infusing the ink with chakra while she was drawing was more difficult, at first she was splitting her focus but after a few moments, she managed to slide her chakra flow into a natural part of her strokes. After the seal was done, she stared at it for a moment and then glanced up at Sen.

"It will work," he told her without a hint of doubt.

She held her breath while she tested it. Her eyes widening when her pillow disappeared into the piece of paper and reappeared with just a puff of smoke.

"I did it," she proclaimed with a grin. Sure it was just a simple seal, but it was one she had created herself and it worked.

"So you did. On to the rest of your plan?"

Her plan of sneaking a book from the shinobi library. Her breath caught and her heartbeat quickened, but she didn't lose her grin for a minute. Instead she dug a pink diary that she'd never really used and carefully removed the cover from the binding.

"On to the rest of the plan," Sakura agreed. "I'll just need a moment."

In the end it wasn't even difficult. Sakura just waited for a quietest moment in the library to approach the genin shelves with Sen as her lookout for anyone coming near. The books she took were sealed into a page painstakingly added to her pink diary with a careful application of chakra.

She smiled a shy, sweet smile at the librarian as she left.

Back home, in the safety of her bedroom, she unsealed the books she'd spirited away with a giggling kind of excitement.

After her first 'borrowing mission' went off without a problem, she worried a little less whenever her constant companion encouraged her to test her skills in small, harmless ways. Because he was right – these skills would be important while out in the field and she wasn't hurting anyone by testing them out, but she would be using them to help her comrades later.

One day, Sakura used one of Naruto's loud, overblown pranks as a distraction to use a seal to copy a piece of paper on Iruka-sensei's desk.

Back at home, she practiced her calligraphy to match that of her teacher, another important ninja skill that Sen wanted her to practice, and later on used another one of Naruto's unwitting distractions to snatch another document from Iruka-sensei's desk.

It concerned the group assignments for a survival exercise. She looked down at it for a moment and, at Sen's urging, made a clean copy in Iruka-sensei's writing, changing the names in their groups around - not because she actually wanted to be in a specific group or wanted to win but because it was good practice, or at least Sen told her it was.

He also made sure to caution her not to go too far and not to get overconfident. "Your sensei will know someone changed it," he told her, "but I suspect he will humour you and keep a look out for whoever seems too satisfied with themselves. Act as you normally would and don't try anything else anytime soon, he will be keeping an eye out for someone messing with his papers again."

Sakura nodded. She purposely hadn't put herself on Ino's team, even if she found the louder girl's presence reassuring most of the time. Instead she had paired her friend with Sasuke and Chouji and herself with Shino and Shikamaru. Kiba was with Naruto and Hinata. She'd left the other teams as they were, without meddling with them.

Just as Sen suspected, her sensei humoured the prankster, though his sharp eyes slid between her and her unsuspecting classmates. She shyly walked up to her teammates for this exercise. They were both calm, quiet and smart, so even though Shino was odd and Shikamaru was lazy there were definitely worse people to spend three days stuck in the forest with.

Sakura always had an emergency pack with clothing, kunai, food and tea as well as two sleeping bags in a seal in her diary, just as she had several other items sealed in storage seals on other pages.

So that evening, after Shino had set up a fire, Sakura unsealed her supplies, prepared food and tea and offered the boys the second sleeping bag to zip open and share.

Shino shook his head, passing the bag on to the thinner boy. "I do not require it. Why? Because my jacket and my bugs will be enough to keep me warm in these temperatures."

Shikamaru accepted the sleeping bag thankfully, but frowned down at it for a long moment. "Sakura," the Nara asked, glancing between the sleeping bag and the bag with other supplies she'd taken from that seal. "Do you always have this with you?"

"My diary?" she checked, looking down at the book in her hands. It was a soft shade of pink with a Sakura tree on the cover in full bloom. It was a beautiful book, but she had never used it for its intended purpose. Sakura had always had Sen to tell about her day and had used notepads to communicate with him when she couldn't talk to him, or to jolt down her thoughts when she needed to consider something.

After realising how useful it was to have unobtrusive storage seals with her, however, she'd started carrying this book around instead.

"Yes," Sakura continued without waiting for confirmation. "I like having a book at hand to write in and it seemed like the logical place to add in some storage seals. They're very handy, so I almost always have it with me."

"We haven't covered any actual seals in class yet, and you're not from a shinobi family," Shino pointed out.

"Well no, but storage seals aren't all that difficult. You just need to copy the diagram exactly, allowing a few minor changes depending on the shape of the scroll or paper you will be writing it on and infuse it with the right amount of chakra," the girl explained. "It's easier with chakra infused paper and special sealing ink, though it can be done with just regular supplies."

"Could you teach us?" Shikamaru asked and Sakura blinked at that unexpected request but then gave a small shrug. They didn't exactly have anything better to do after all, and extra practice was always a good thing.

"Ok," she agreed and unsealed her sealing supplies from a different storage seal in her diary. It consisted of sheets of special paper that absorbed the chakra better than regular paper, special ink and a book on seals from the library. Her more secret seals, the ones that Sen had taught her that were not as easily explained were painstakingly sealed into a patch in the inside of her vest.

"Alright, so we should start with just practicing the basic seal itself without using special ink or chakra, to get the shapes of its components exactly right. Once you can get that down we can move on to matching seal to the material of choice and only afterwards can we practice infusing the ink with chakra while writing the seal. That part is a bit more tricky, but you can both do the leaf exercise right?" she double-checked.

Shino nodded. Shikamaru ignored the question and drew the book towards himself. "This is a library book?" he observed.

"Yes. Uh, you won't tell anyone right?" Sakura asked a little nervously, because it was clearly stamped as belonging in the chuunin section.

"You don't have any shinobi family to ask for help," Shino said. "It stands to reason that you would seek out other sources of information. I can see no harm in it."

"We won't tell," Shikamaru agreed.

She let out a breath and smiled at them.

The tree of them practiced, after explaining the basics she let them practice the writing of it first of all, the chakra would come later. Sakura used that time to get a few more storage seals written on scrolls herself – they could always come in handy. She wrote them out carefully, taking her time because it was more difficult outside by the light of a fire, though they used some of her study books as sturdy underlayers.

Aside from some pointers here and there, Sen was mostly quiet to prevent her from calling out to thin air in the presence of her classmates. But he was there, which was especially comforting outside in the dark forest.

All in all, it was a nice enough, peaceful way to spend her evening.

The next day they set out again, following the map Iruka-sensei had provided them with.

For all that Shikamaru looked lazy, he was good at drawing up plans. The deep cliff and rushing stream beneath that they needed to cross was considered carefully. "Do you have a rope, Sakura?" he asked her after a moment's thought.

She nodded and took her diary from her schoolbag, finding the correct storage seal easily enough. A careful application of chakra later brought forth the sturdy, coiled length of rope.

The Nara looked at the rope and nodded, a slow smile settling on his face. "Good," he said. "Do you think your bugs can carry that rope across and around that tree trunk, Shino? The smaller one right in front of us."

Without bothering to answer, the Aburame lifted an arm and his bugs were called forward, their small dark bodies filling the air with an uncanny buzzing sound.

It didn't take long for the tree to be pulled down entirely and set firmly into place. The rope was then tied to a tree on their end, carried around the trunk of a more mature tree next to where the younger tree had stood and secured back around the tree, leaving them with a railing to hold as well.

"I'll go first," Sakura offered. At the raised eyebrow she received from Shikamaru and the silent stare from Shino she added quite firmly. "I'm the lightest."

Aside from being the lightest, she had also learned how to stick to trees with chakra and even how to water walk, so the risk of her falling was less and if she did fall she had more chance of being able to pull herself out of the water. Having someone on the other side would make it easier to act if something went wrong.

"Alright," Shikamaru said.

She nodded back at him determinedly before she took hold of the rope. It was high up, which made the crossing nerve-wrecking, but as long as she didn't look down, didn't look back but kept her eyes focussed on Sen, who had drifted across ahead of her, she could do it without faltering.

"Well done," the ghost said when she was firmly on the other side, and then looked back across the chasm towards her classmates. "That Nara will make a fine teamleader one day."

"Hmmhm," she quietly agreed and turned her focus to Shino, who was starting his way across, surrounded by a buzzing cloud. He made it to her side safely, as did Shikamaru a moment later.

For a moment the trio looked back across and the progress they'd made.

"Right," the Nara said, having stepped up as lead, just as Sen had pointed out. "What's next?"

Sakura took out the map. "We need to keep heading in a south-westerly direction until we get to a river." She turned unerringly in the right direction thanks to her skills in reading maps. The two boys followed her, not a word of doubt about her heading and she felt herself begin to smile.

It took them two more days to get back to the Academy and they were not the first ones to make it.

But whereas Kiba had a red, angry looking patch of skin on his arm that the boy couldn't stop scratching, Naruto was sopping wet, Hinata looked miserable, Chouji looked as if he was starving, Sasuke had a few rips in his shirt and was glaring at anyone who looked at him and Ino's hair was wilder than Sakura had ever seen it, knotted and filled with twigs and leaves, the three of them were none-the-worse for wear.

So while a bedraggled Ino still managed to enthuse about how cool Sasuke was, and Naruto and Kiba bickered over whatever situations they'd gotten themselves into, Sakura, Shino and Shikamaru just stood quietly satisfied with themselves and with the making of new friends.

A.N. It's been literally years since I posted a new story, wow how time flies. I have been writing snatches now and again but just about all of it is half-written ideas more than anything. But I want to get back into gear again and hoped that at least shaping up this one story and getting it out there will help.