It's another normal winter day in Konohagakure no Sato, just like the day before.
At the house of the head of the Yamanaka clan in the backyard, there is an eight year old pink haired girl wearing a red and white dress and tight black shorts completely alone with her arms stretched as far away from her as possible looking extremely shocked at a large piece of paper with a circle drawn on it and two pots on top as well as some water spills, the right pot now containing almost a liter of pure H2O.
After a while, Sakura's shock fades replacing it with a huge amount of guilt.
'I'm a terrible person and an even worse best friend.'
She never even told Ino that she was planning to try an untested seal that could potentially explode in her very own backyard. In fact, just now she had told her that she needed to use the restroom. She can just imagine how much it would have hurt her friend to find out she had exploded in her backyard.
But there was something inside of herself that was telling her that this would work. Some nagging feeling that had always been there since her dream that night.
It will work.
It will not explode
This is the only way you know of to get stronger.
Every ninja has secrets, they all do it, you don't have to feel bad about it.
In addition, this was the only way she could think of to test it so that if it really did explode, she would quickly get medical attention. It's not like she could open up a random seal in the middle of the hospital and expect not to be captured and taken to T&I. She could not walk up to Ino or Iruka-sensei and say, "Hey, I plan to test an completely untested fuinjutsu seal that I saw in a dream, if it explodes please take me to the hospital before I die."
This was the only option that she could think of. Ino's dad is a powerful ninja, if her seal explodes he would definitely hear it and come racing over here, although Sakura is certain that he could not know what she was actually doing. He would definitely stop her before she tested the seal if he knew she could potentially explode both herself and his backyard. Assuming he even knew she was out here in the first place.
If he can sense her chakra, he would know that she was here, but she had been in Ino's backyard plenty of times before, there is no reason for him to suspect her of doing anything but smelling the flowers and assuming alchemy really does work off non chakra power sources then he would never find out either, now that the seal has worked and not exploded.
Sakura empties the pots into the flower bed, packs up her stuff, schools her expression, and goes back inside.
As she does she wonders how much she now owes Ino, what would be worth your best friend deciding to do something that might blow themselves up in your backyard without ever telling you. She has a lot to make up for, not that anyone else will ever know.
After all, every ninja has their own secrets.
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Alchemy.
Her dream technique.
Alchemy, the act of understanding the structure of matter, decomposing it, and then reconstructing it, works.
It actually works
Sakura sits in her room that night, thinking of the implications.
For a while she is stumped about why a technique from a dream of hers of all things actually works in reality. Before the dream, she had almost no information about fuinjutsu, the ninja technique that she is sure is either related to alchemy or actually is it but that it is used in a different way, especially since blowing up due to the smallest mistakes seems to be common between the two fields.
Not only that, but she had a dream that explained to her exactly what water is and exactly the energy required to move a liter of water from one pot to another. It boggles the mind, how did her brain come up with such data. And the data is correct, she double checked it after learning the physics involved.
However, in the grand scheme of things, it really does not matter. In addition, she is sure that other ninja have dreams and then create techniques from it, how else was any technique created, especially the ones in fuinjutsu, which blow up with the slightest mistake. It is impossible to work your way towards a solution in that field.
What really matters to her is that she can't actually use alchemy, not really anyway, she can only move one liter of water from one pot to another, and while this would actually be useful out in the field just for the drinking water, it does not actually help her be a ninja.
Even worse, she has no way to work off what she can currently do, moving water. Fuinjutsu, or alchemy she guesses, is really not kind to researchers. Right now she only understands water and not even all the way since she doesn't know how much energy it would require to snap the molecular bonds to make it hydrogen and oxygen and back again to create water.
Can she move water outside her current circle with the right energy equations? She does not know and she can't test it either, because if a mistake is made she could die.
Can she make a circle to move the water outside the circle instead? She does not know how to even make such a thing, and she can't try because again, explosions.
All of these problems, but she does have a single hint.
She remembers her dream mentioning that a rebound with wood will never kill the alchemist unless it is a really, really bad one. Therefore, the only way forward for her is to start trying to make her own transmutation circles, a thing that realize solely on metaphysics of all things to create, for transmuting wood. Something that is apparently ridiculously difficult to comprehend, especially due to wood's differing nature.
To make matters worse there is no book in the library which would be titled, "The exact molecular components of the most popular trees in Konoha." Likely, she will have to discover that for herself. Not exactly an easy thing to accomplish, since she has no laboratory dedicated to that, in fact, she is not even sure how it could be done.
The good news is that as far as she knows, even though it was only vaguely hinted at in the dream, trying alchemy with an incorrect understanding of the materials does not result in a rebound, but instead only a failure to work. So, she can just keep guessing, in an educated way, until something happens and the guarantied mistake in her circle would ruin the woodblock and not herself.
More good news is that a lot of things may be classified in Konoha, but chemistry and physics books are not one of them. And she is going to need a lot of information from those even with her guessing trick.
It is ok to aim randomly, if you only need one hit to succeed and are allowed infinite failures, but you at least need to know the right direction to throw in. That is something she learned without ever being taught due to trying to become more proficient at her ninja skills completely without direction.
At least now she has a direction to train towards, there is nothing worse than being directionless.