It had been a few days and you were sitting in a tree watching team seven train. It was early afternoon, but you were having a hard time keeping your eyes open. You'd barely slept for the past few days. Part of it was because of the curse mark. It would pulse and sting quite often. But the main reason was the dreams. Every time you managed to fall asleep you would see either Usa's death, past or future, or a vision of Kakashi dying. You blinked your eyes open and looked over at Naruto and Sasuke who were arguing like usual. Sakura joined in and started yelling at Naruto too. You sighed and scooted forward on the branch you were on, intending to scold them and make them focus on what they were supposed to be doing.

"You three shush and focus!" They were now all shouting so loudly that they didn't hear you. Your mood took a dip from cranky to irritated. You hopped down from your branch and began walking over to the group, "I said shut it! Get back to training!" Once again your words were ignored. That when you heard Sakura say something quite unnecessary. "You know what Naruto, the only reason someone as useless as you could become a ninja is because of all of the sensei's being soft on you. You should just do us a favour and disappear!" No wonder Iruka had concerns about them going into the exams. How could Sakura say something so hurtful to one of her team mate's? Naruto had gone through so much in his short life. Things she could never hope to understand. And yet he always tried his best.

You mood took a plunge from irritated to damn near murderous. You came to a stop behind Sakura and allowed your murderous aura to come out a bit. She froze mid-insult and slowly turned her head to look at you. Both boys looked at you and backed away slightly. You put a smile on your face, but glared daggers at Sakura, "My, my Sakura. That's some big talk coming from you." You looked at the boys, "You two can go and practice some chakra control on that tree over there. I'm going to do some 'special' training with Sakura for a minute." The boys didn't move and glanced at Sakura, clearly worried about what you were going to do to her. "Off you two go...now." They jumped at your tone and finally did as you said. You turned your icy smile back towards Sakura, "Now then...We're going to go for a run Sakura. Keep up with me or else." You turned and began jogging towards a small path that cut through some trees. You kept your pace at the point that you knew Sakura would find almost impossible to keep for a long period.

You jogged for several minutes before glancing back. Sakura was falling behind, already appearing to be winded. "Keep up Sakura. Any ninja needs to have endurance to be even slightly useful to their team. Even a ninja that lacks some skills but has endurance is more useful to a team than a skilled ninja that has no endurance." Sakura flinched at your words and you knew you'd hit your mark. She tried to pick up her pace, but still continued to fall behind. "Sakuraaa, if you don't catch up I'll have to start giving you some incentive." You called to her in a sing-song tone. "Sensei...I'm going...as fast...as I can! Please...why are we...running so far?"

You turned and continued your jog backwards, "So that the boys can't hear what happens out hear." Her face paled. Were you being a bit evil towards her right now? Maybe. But she needed to learn the lesson you were trying to teach. Sasuke wasn't the only person on her team. She needed to remember that at all times and recognise Naruto's worth. In your mind Naruto was a much better teammate to Sakura than Sasuke was. You had no doubt that if Sasuke had to abandon her to pursue his goal's he would. Naruto wouldn't. Naruto would give his life to protect his friends. Sasuke...well honestly you wouldn't be overly surprised if Sasuke were to try to kill his friends one day, if someone gave him a reason to.

Sakura was still falling behind to you tossed a small paper bomb at Sakura and it stuck to her chest. You held up another piece of paper, "Sakura, surely you recognise this type of bomb. It's a proximity bomb. If your bomb gets too far away from this one it'll go off." Sakura's eyes widened and her pace picked up drastically. You turned back around and continued your pace. You knew the bomb was a fake, but Sakura didn't know that. It wasn't much farther to your destination.

After another few minutes you slowed to a stop at the edge of a pond. Sakura came up beside you and collapsed. She was well out of breath and a sheen of sweat was on her forehead. You crouched down beside her and pulled the fake paper bomb off of her before straightening up and walking to the edge of the pond. You stared down at the water, "Sakura, come here when please." Sakura slowly pushed herself to her feet and made her way over to you still panting. "I'm sorry that I was so harsh with you, but do you understand why I did this?" She nodded, "It's cause I called Naruto useless." You nodded and rested your hand on her shoulder, "You need to remember, Naruto is also your teammate. And sometimes, not often, but sometimes he is right. He may not always think before he acts, and sometimes he causes more problems than he fixes, but he always tries. It's once a person stops trying that they become useless. Having a person on your team that has given up is far more dangerous than having someone that's a bit reckless." You turned your head to look down at her, "Always remember this Sakura, you can depend on Naruto. He'd never allow harm to come to you. He'd be willing to literally give his life for his team. That is something very rare, and very precious. Most people don't learn that until after they've lost a teammate or two. I didn't learn it until it was almost too late. I learnt it the hard way, back when I was a chuunin in a different village." You sank to the ground and Sakura sat beside you. "You see I was kinda like you, with my skills, and my brother was kinda like Naruto. I used to tease him lots cause nothing came naturally to him. But one day we were out on what we thought was a c-rank mission. It was our team's last mission before the chuunin exams were to happen. We were in the land of ice and the mission was to bring back a criminal so that they could face their proper punishment. "

"What we didn't know was that this criminal had been acting on behalf of a really strong group of shinobi...the Akatsuki. Well we tracked him to this hideout, which a couple members of the Akatsuki were residing in. The power level of those people...it could strike fear into the bravest shinobi. My sensei knew who they were and knew that our team was outranked, so she told us to run while she held them off. And we did it. We ran and left her to face them, alone. My brother was strongly opposed, but we dragged him along anyways."

"It wasn't long before one of their members caught up to us. We could still hear the sounds of our sensei fighting the members that she could, so we knew she wouldn't be able to come and save us." You sighed and looked up at the sky, "We didn't stand a chance, but my brother kept shouting that we had to try, and he kept fighting. Seeing him fight so hard made me fight too. Trying over and over to create an opening for us to get away through. The other boy on the team, Tomoya,...he could see that we didn't stand a chance... do you know what he did, in spite of my brother and I fighting so hard, protecting him and each other, risking our lives for the team? He asked the member of the Akatsuki if he would be allowed to live if he killed us."

You stopped talking for a moment and took a breath. This wasn't a part of your life you talked about much. It had taken years of knowing Kakashi before you even told him about this mission. You felt Sakura place her hand on your forearm. You placed your hand over hers and continued talking. "The member acted like he agreed and Tomoya turned his kunai on us. While his back was to the Akatsuki member...they killed him. Took his head off with one swing."

"That was when my sensei managed to catch up. She was badly injured but was still able to fight off our enemy. She carried Tomoya's body to a small cave not too far away. Her injuries ended up costing her her life too. My brother and I were in such shock that we didn't leave that cave for several days. When we finally found the strength to move we went about trying to bury their bodies then made our way back to our village, mission failed and two dead team members."

You looked up at the sky and sighed. That had been Usa's and your last mission in your home village. After that you had found out about Koga cheating on you and you had had enough of that village and the lack of moral's that too many people had there and had made an official request to move to Konoha and Usa had followed you. That same lack of morals was likely the reason that Orochimaru had been able to take such a strong hold of that village.

You looked back down at Sakura who was sniffing a bit and you could see the tears in her eyes. You placed your hand on her head, "The point I'm trying to make is that no one who tries is useless. My brother kept trying and he kept me alive, while my much more skilled teammate gave up and nearly tried to kill us. Value your teammates based on their intentions, not just their skills, ok? Especially Naruto. All he's ever had in his life is his dream, yet he'd still give everything for his team." Sakura nodded and sniffled again. You pushed to your feet. "And on a side note...Sasuke might actually notice you more if you show that you can think for yourself. Don't just agree with him with whatever he says. Strong guys like him generally like girl's that have a bit of a backbone." Sakura rubbed her eyes and nodded.

You held your hand out to her, "Shall we head back?" Sakura pushed herself to her legs, but you could tell she was still shaky from the run here so you crouched in front of her. "Climb on. Since you listened well I'll carry you back." You felt Sakura's arms wind around your shoulder and you wrapped your arms around her legs and lifted her up to give her a piggy back ride back to the training grounds. You walked at a quick pace, knowing that the boys were probably starting to fight with each other again by now. "Sakura, I'd like to ask that you don't tell anyone about what I told you of my past. My past isn't a very happy one and I would prefer to not have people look at me with pity." Sakura nodded against your shoulder, "I won't tell anyone sensei."

You smiled, glad that with all the crap you were dealing with at the moment, you could still do some good.