Sakura's Training

Sakura left her home early in the morning and walked to the clearing outside Konoha. When she arrived, she realised that nobody had arrived yet, and sat down on a rock. After five minutes, she heard a yawn, and turned round. She saw the Fifth Hokage walking towards her, carrying a large bag over her shoulder. She told herself, “Tsunade-sama looks tired … and drunk” and to her teacher she said in a jolly tone, “Good morning.”. She heard the woman grumble and noticed she wasn’t in a good mood. She watched the young woman (who was actually 52 years old) take out several balls of different sizes and a baseball bat. “Ok, today I’m going to hit these balls with all my strength at you, and you have to punch them away. Got it? Good”, she heard the Sannin say quickly and thought “all her strength??? I’m dead”.

Sakura walked a few metres away from her teacher and faced her. She watched her hit a ball with the bat and gasped. She jumped to the ground, almost getting hit by the speeding ball. She saw Tsunade frown and laughed nervously, “sorry, I wasn’t prepared for that one” and was answered quickly, “ok, we’ll leave that. This time try to avoid them”. Sakura spent the whole afternoon jumping to the ground, and jumping up to avoid the balls which, she recalled later to her mother, were past 200 km an hour. She flopped to the ground, exhausted and sighed, “thank goodness, we’re done”. “done? You’ve still got to punch the balls away” she heard an angry hokage say, and almost fainted.