Sakura didn't know what the outcome of her impromptu sit down with Sarutobi-sama was, but she hoped she didn't have to do anything beyond that. Letting anyone look through her memories, especially those of her children and the ones she had not called upon in years about Kakashi, and Aburame Shino before him, was very difficult. It was one thing to bring up the relavent memories to her cause, but the Yamanaka man thought it prudent to peruse her more intimate memories, too.

Of course, Sakumo had been there to see it all as well.

Being that she would be staying with him for a few more days at least, that made things quite awkward. After all, the memories she had burried deep about Kakashi were now on the surface, floating around in her head as they walked to the Inuzaka compound to go pick up the six-year-old version.

"I don't want him like that," Sakura spoke after a few moments. "I don't want your son. I wanted the man I was with because he was my only safe option. Please, please understand..."

Sakumo's lips turned up in a small smirk, "I do understand, Sakura-san. It's partly why Kakashi's mother agreed to marry me. I was one of two safe options for her, and the other wasn't interested at all."

The two made their way to the enclosed yard where the puppies and children of the Inuzaka spent most of their non-school hours in good weather and found a large gathering of both around one adult. This person was not one of the Inuzaka, but someone Sakumo called Nikko. Sakumo told her to be quiet and watch carefully as the man, Nikko, laid a very limp puppy next to a yearling oak tree. Nikko placed a hand on each, left on the tree and right on the puppy. The tree began wilting under his blue chakra-covered left hand, and, as it died, the puppy suddenly started to whimper and move under his green chakra-covered right hand. The tree turned to ashes, and the puppy bounded up with extra energy she just needed to burn off right away.

"That is his special power," Sakumo told her somberly. "He can transfer life from one creature to another. Of course, the thing he drains must have more life left than the thing he brings back. The extra life force he does not transfer is used in the transfer process itself. That tree had more than enough life for the puppy, so he and the dog grew stronger. I don't really know how it works, but the thing he drains always ends up in dust."

"I thought only Chiyo-baa-sama could do something like that!" Sakura whispered in amazement.

"Chiyo?" Sakumo turned wary eyes on her.

"Chiyo of Sand. She is a medic-nin like Tsunade-sama."

Sakumo frowned and looked back to the young man being thanked by all the children. "I killed her son and his wife in battle."

Something about that statement struck her, like she was supposed to remember something directly related to it. Nothing came to mind right away, so she put it out of her mind. Good timing, too, because Nikko was approaching them, Kakashi at his side.

"Maa, Sakumo-san, your son is at it again," Nikko put a heavy hand on Kakashi's shoulder. "I say you need to find him a tutor to refine his elemental chakra use. He shocked that puppy enough to kill her."

Sakumo frowned at the boy in question. Said boy was looking away, hiding his red eyes as much as he could. It was obvious the child had been crying.

"Why did you do that, Kakashi?" Sakumo demanded, though not harshly like Nikko, Kakashi, or even Sakura expected.

"She ran over and bit me when I was practicing. I didn't do it on purpose." Kakashi replied, still looking away.

"It's true, Hatake-sama," another kid, a bit older than Kakashi, ran up. "I didn't like Kakashi doing that. Anybody that got too close would feel it, so I told her to go bark at him or something... I didn't think she would bite him!"

"Let me see the mark where she bit you," Sakumo demanded, still soft in tone.

"I healed that already," Nikko explained when Kakashi didn't move. "It was just a nip on his finger. My point is that he needs to learn when and where it is appropriate to practice these sorts of things. In the middle of other children is not good."

Sakumo huffed out a sigh, "Right. Straight home for you, Kakashi. I need some time to speak with Nikko-san. I want to see the living room dusted and swept when I get back. You're doing the dishes tonight, all of them, and an early bedtime. We'll discuss this more tomorrow."

"But, Dad, I-" Kakashi protested, but was cut off by a glare from Sakumo.

"I said go home, Kakashi!"

The boy hung his head and slouched off, "Yes, Dad."

The adults were quiet until the boy was out of ear-shot, all three of them watching him slouch off. That was a lighter punishment than Jin would have given Yoriko or Minato if it had been them. Then again, these were different times, and Sakumo loved Kakashi as his own. He really did. And Kakashi respected him differently than Sakura's children had Jin. It seemed Sakumo's disappointment was a lot of punishment on its own.

"So..." Nikko elbowed Sakumo in the ribs, "Who's this? New girl friend?"

Sakumo blushed a little, scratching at the back of his head. "No. She is a medic who spent a long time out in the middle of nowhere living with civvies. I was hoping you could help her brush up her skills?"

"Really?" the brunet looked down- Sakura just realized how very tall the man was- at her with sharp black eyes. "Who taught you in the first place?"

"My teacher is ah..." Sakura struggled for a moment to find a suitable lie. Then, she realized, she could just tell the damn truth. "She is deployed too often for us to catch up."

"Oh? But, I asked who."

"She trained along side Kato Dan," Sakumo said lowly, almost whispering the name.

"Oh..." Nikko's demenor fell. "I'm sorry. I guess, I understand why you chose to leave for a while."

"Well, I'm back now," Sakura looked back and forth at the men, trying to glean some information about this Dan guy.

Again, she felt like there was something she was missing, something she should definitely know. "I've gotten soft from living with civilians, and there's still a war going on. It's time I stepped back up, right?"

"But, who are you?" the tall man asked again. "If you trained with Kato-san, I think I would have heard your name before, or should recognize you..."

Sakumo laid a heavy hand on Sakura's shoulder. "This is Namikaze Sakura. You haven't heard of her, because she worked in ANBU most of her time. Hokage-sama and I were hoping you could help her get back to that ability again."

Nikko took a moment to consider. It seemed he'd caught on to some of the lies they were telling, even if they hadn't slipped up just yet. The man could see the hesitations as more than unwillingness to just come out with information. "Fine. How much is this paying?"

Sakura looked affronted. Sakumo just laughed. He explained, "Nikko does anything for the kids for free, but not for Hokage-sama. Nikko, this is more of a personal favor than an official mission. If you really are looking for some sort of payment, I'll order you some more senbon made from chakra-channeling metal. I know for a fact that you've lost all the others."

Nikko considered this for almost as long as he'd considered the hesitations Sakura had made earlier. "Deal. On one more condition."

"Which is?"

He looked at Sakura again. "If you cannot learn my life-transferrance technique within one week, the deal is off. Go see Senju Tsunade or one of her gang of medics instead."

Sakura's eyes widened. "Why would you want me to learn your personally developed technique?"

"You saying you don't want to?" he challenged. "I have to teach others how to do it. If Sandaime-sama refuses to put medics on every team we send out, I want to give our guys a different kind of chance. After a battle is finished, we could go and revive our comrads and keep our numbers from falling as much. As things stand, I'm not allowed outside the gates without a heavy guard. Do you know what that does? It makes me a bigger target! The more people I can teach this to quickly, the less I will be held back, and the more shinobi that can be saved, even after they have died."

Sakura understood his position quite well. They wanted to keep him here, keep him for the higher ups who didn't actually need his help just because of the many "what if" scenarios. "Fine. I'll do it."

One week was no joke. He really meant it. Sakura was given three hours to collect anything she wanted from Sakumo's (all she ended up with were a few sets of clothes) and then was made to return to the Inuzaka compound. Nikko locked himself and Sakura into his study and began reading off the basis of his technique from a scroll. He made her memorize it the first night.

The next morning saw a half hour breakfast, and then a trip to the local nursery where they picked up half a dozen yearling trees and many more smaller plants. Then they went straight to the local pet store while the flora was delivered to his home. He picked out some small fish (Sakura had a brief memory of Tsunade teaching her on much larger fish), a mouse, a kitten, an old ferret, and a large old dog that had been a rescue and still needed lots of physical rehabilitation.

Sakura felt a little sick at the idea of killing any of these animals. The only one she wouldn't feel too badly for would be the old dog. That one deserved to be put out of his misery. He was blind, incontinant, half deaf, and had bad hip displasia, not to mention a broken tail, mange, and missing teeth. The poor thing should have already been dead, but the store owner held out hope for the old mut.

"We're going to start with the fish, of course," Nikko told her. "I want to see what you remember from your original sensei. Surely you can take a suffocated fish and make it breathe again for a short time?"

"That training was a long, long time ago for me," Sakura admitted. "The last time I was really on the spot... My team mate's heart quit, and chakra wasn't working on him. I had to do a heart massage in the middle of combat."

Yeah, for all the dulled and faded memories, keeping Naruto's body viable through physical aid while riding Gaara's sand over a battlefield was not something that she had forgotten for a second. That was one of those crystal clear moments that would always stay with her as if it had just happened yesterday.

"Fuck..." Nikko petted the kitten he held a bit more gently. "It's been a long time since I had to go old school, myself. Anyway, just humor me. Let the fish suffocate, then bring it back. Do it five times in a row, and concentrate on the exact feeling of your energy flowing into the fish."

"They're tiny gold fish, Nikko-san," Sakura rolled her eyes. "I won't notice anything, probably."

"The point is to notice. You have to know exactly how much energy it takes out of you for just this one small thing. It really is about how little you need."

"Sakumo said you needed a lot-"

"Forget whatever Sakumo said about it," Nikko waved her off. "I like to decentigrate the trees for fun and to add a bit of mysticism for any onlookers. The whole ashes thing is just a show."

Sakura let the smirk creep up over her features as she selected the smallest fish from the tank Nikko had deposited them into earlier.

"I take it you trained on salmon or bass or something like that?"

"Bass."

"Well, for your information, if you try to give that baby fish the effort you put into the bass, you'll make it explode."

"Then why the hell am I training on something so small?" Sakura nearly shouted.

"Only activate what you need to," Nikko explained. "One organ at a time. This is about control, nothing less. You have to be perfect and methodical. Where would you start?"

Sakura watched the little fish as it slowly stopped flopping around, calculating how much longer it had before brain death. "The heart."

"And then?"

"Lungs."

"And?"

"Brain."

"You forgot something important."

"What? What could be more important than those three when restarting a body?"

"The blood vessels themselves, of course." he shrugged. "If they are at all degraded or damaged or blocked, the lungs and heart cannot adequately get blood and oxygen to the brain or the rest of the body, correct? When dealing with the dead, the truely dead, not the fresh body, it's even harder to get everything right. You have to pick and choose what to open, to close, or to leave alone for the time being before you even start the heart.

"So, we're just going to leave that little fish right there on the table until after dinner."

"But we only just had breakfast two hours ago!" Sakura cried.

"I know," Nikko smiled. "I'd say it's time for a jog, and then a shower, followed by lunch."

"What happens after lunch?" she eyed him suspiciously.

"A nap."

"And after that?"

"You'll see."

She wasn't sure she liked that comment. Either way, Nikko was already by the door, putting on a pair of running shoes. Of course, Sakura had no such footwear at the moment. Nikko admonished her for being a terrible kunoichi for not having such items at the moment. He dragged her through the compound until they found one of his cousins that was at home, had running shoes in her size, and was willing to give them up. That took nearly an hour all on its own, and Sakura was already starting to get hungry.

That didn't matter, though, Nikko just considered that a warm up, then back handed her slightly overweight middle.

"Come on. You're not going to fit into any team like that. Not unless you're secretly descended from the Akimichi."
Sakura glared at him, and he took off at a fast walk, slowly increasing his speed until he was running just ahead of her. He kept his breathing easy, but Sakura was running herself into the ground keeping up with him. Sure, height played a role in this, but she realized just how out of shape she really had become now. There had been a time when a man like Nikko would have been hard pressed to keep up with her at a dead run. Not today.

After their run, well, jog by Nikko's standards, Sakura greedily ate the simple lunch of chicken and rice Nikko's friend provided. She ended up falling asleep the instant they walked back into Nikko's house and she. He had to shake her awake and remind her where the guest futon was. She woke up later to find he had already showered and was taking his own nap in a favored reading chair. He had left her a note telling her to just shower whenever she was ready, where the toiletries were kept, and to be ready for some company.

She had about thirty minutes before the time he indicated would arrive. Frustrated that she wouldn't have time to enjoy a good bath, Sakura flew through her shower and put on a fresh set of clothes. She was still drying her hair when she re-entered the den to find Nikko conversing with a thin man of average height, ink-black hair, and paper white skin.

"Ah, Sakura-san," Nikko gestured for her to come join them. "I was expecting Tsunade-san to be here too, but she is busy. Orochimaru-san did make it, though."

Sakura's feet were firmly planted. She didn't remember much about the man himself, but she did have distinct memories about certain events in her past when he had taken center stage... like killing Sandaime-sama.

Orochimaru regarded her similarly. He was making some sort of decision, but she couldn't tell what about. He certainly wasn't hiding the raw intensity of his chakra at the moment, and Sakura wasn't sure if she should be showing off, too, or keeping right where she was. In general, she suppressed her chakra output around others who could sense it. Then again, she was used to pretending to be a civilian. A brief surge of confidence and curiosity swept over her, and she flared out one good burst, purposefully making it close to what Orochimaru was giving off, but not quite as much. She wanted him to underestimate her, but not too badly.

The pale man smiled, finally stepping forward to greet her properly. "Namikaze-san, I hear your nephew is quite the shinobi. At least Jiraiya says so. Clearly he got his talents from your side of the family."

"Thank you," Sakura forced herself to sound polite and gracious. "Why is it that one of the Sannin is here?"

"Nikko-san is helping me with some research," Orochimaru answered carefully. "I was coming to look over a breakthrough he told me about a cuple weeks ago concerning the genetic mutations almost one third of his revived patients seem to exhibit. Has he told you about them?"

Sakura turned wary eyes back at Nikko. "No, he hasn't."

"Oh, tell her!"

Nikko shook his head. "Nope. You discovered the occurrance first. You tell her. Or, better yet, show her."

The men bantered back and forth a bit until Sakura insisted on someone telling her (definitely not taking her somewhere else to be shown) what the hell they were talking about.
It seemed that in cases where the revive-ee received life force from a plant they were alergic to, their alergies disappeared completely. Others who had no allergies ended up taking on certain physical traits. One young woman nearly miscarried her baby, but Nikko saved the child while still in the womb. When the girl was born, her mother remarked that she had eyes the same color as the flower Nikko used to save her. One of the birds he had saved ended up growning claws made of bark. It was things like that that had piqued Orochimaru's interest. Of course, all of the revived ended up with these side effects for about a year before returning to normal. The baby's eys faded to a hazel color, and the bird's claws were hardened kerotine again.

"I see... Orochimaru-san said you had a breakthrough?" Sakura questioned.

"Yes," Nikko commented quickly. "You see, Orochimaru and I got curious to see if we could get the effects to last or at least come and go at the will of the affected person. It seems it is possible, but only in members of one family... the Senju. The more closely related they are to the Shodaime Hokage, the longer they can hold the effect."

"How many of the Senju do you have as subjects?"

"About fifteen that showed effects," Nikko responded.

"How did you get so many?" Sakura demanded, somewhere between impressed and outraged.

"Oh, that's right, you don't know yet," Nikko shook his head. "I mostly serve the Senju, Sarutobi, and Uchiha clans with my techniques. I asked for vollunteers. None of them had to die, though some did die and ended up with the side effects.

"You see, Orochimaru-san figured out a way to give a patient the side effects without using the full technique."

"Ah. But why would you want to do that?"

"Why, for the pure science of it, Sakura-san," Orochimaru smiled at her. "This in of itself can lead to good things for Konoha. We just don't know what, yet."

The rest of the week was filled with dedicated training. Thankfully, Orochimaru stayed away, understanding the importance of the agreement between the two and the focus needed to complete the task.

Sakura's first three fish exploded just as Nikko warned. She had a lot of fine tuning to do.

The fourth fish made it for several seconds. The fifth made it minutes and was returned to the tank.

Next was the mouse.

Nikko fed it poison, then proceeded to cut it open here and there. It was at this stage when he brought out the flowering potted plants and taught Sakura to drain the life force of the plant. That was the whole point of the scroll he'd had her memorize.

Absorbing it was only part of the trick, though. While she absorbed it, she had to keep its energy separate from her own. Then she had to transfer the plant's energy to the mouse directly.

Her first attempt ended up with the rodent growning roots.

Three days later, she successfully used the energy of a plant to kick start the life force of a mouse, then switched her efforts into clearing the poison from its system and healing the slices along its body.

The next two days, Nikko spent teaching her how to tranform the plant energy into raw healing chakra so that she could then revive, cleanse, and heal a body all in one step.

She failed on the last day.

Nikko showed her the now rotted corpse of the old rescue dog which he had hidden from her the day they got it. He refused to feed the animal and let it starve to death.

This was her test. The dog's condition was poor to begin with, and now it had been four days since it finally died, its weak body not being able to go as long as a healthy one without nourishment.

Sakura used one of the yearling trees and did the very same procedure as she had been quickly mastering over the previous week. The heart healed, as did the lungs, and some of the digestive tract, and then the liver... and then it all shut down again.

"Tell me what you did wrong, Sakura," Nikko requested, standing above her.

"Maybe... we need a bigger tree?" she suggested.

"I thought that at first, too," Nikko sat down beside her. "But the truth is, once something has been dead for more than three days, you need to sacrifice one of its own kind to revive it."

"You didn't have to starve the dog to teach me this," Sakura hissed. "You could have just told me."

"No, because you do need to go through with this."

"How? You want me to kill a healthy dog to save this one?" she demanded.

"No. I want you to put down a problem dog to give this one a new lease on life." he explained. "You see, there are always those dogs who, for no known reason, are just mean dogs. They attack anyone and anything they can. There are currently three dogs like that locked away here. One of the things I learned to do was to take the life of a human, an enemy combatant, and carry their life force to my fallen comrades. I want you to do this with the dogs. Once you prove that you can do this, you pass."