Despite her sensei's usual trends, he has them up and out of bed by oh-eight-hundred hours. They had already gathered in Kakashi and Sakura's room to discuss the Zabuza encounter, so all of Team Seven was already up to date. Zabuza wasn't dead and would likely be recovered by the end of the week. The hunter-nin had been his accomplice. As Sakura saw it, there really was no sense in dawdling. Kakashi had already informed them the previous evening that they would begin training. Today, Tazuna will continue working on the bridge. As Tsunami makes breakfast, the old builder tells Sakura about the bridge team. He tells her that the team had sped up production in order to attend the burning rites. With that tidbit of information, Sakura expects Tazuna to be waiting with Tsunami at the house. They all sit down to eat.
After a quick breakfast, Kakashi sends Tazuna off with a kage bunshin for protection. Then he leads Sakura and her teammates into the towering redwood forests for training. They stop a-ways in, Kakashi hobbling past them towards the nearest tree. He turns slightly, adjusting his grip on the crutches Tsunami lent him. Sakura waits patiently a few feet from her sensei. She is a little uncomfortable wearing her favoured shinobi gear instead of her usual-but-now-ruined qi-pao top and shorts, but she is a kind of happy as well. She feels more like a shinobi with the get-up. Then again, she is still nervous wearing the set of male hakama pants and sleeveless turtleneck. She had brought the outfit as back-up for this mission, but then again, she always did that. It was the last gift she received from her father, after all.
"For today's training," Kakashi's voice knocks her from her stream of thoughts, "We'll be climbing trees." All of the functions in Sakura's brain grind to a halt. They're finally on a serious mission, and he wants to teach them how to climb trees? Sakura pondered her sensei's statement for a moment. Every Konoha kid knew how to do that practically from birth. Unless... Sakura's expression lifts. Meanwhile, Naruto and Sasuke have already balked in outrage, Naruto's mouth ranting at a mile a minute.
"Climbing trees," her blonde teammate squawks, flapping his arms around, "Sensei! We all know how to climb trees." Despite Sasuke's silence, the air he gives off is akin to Naruto's outburst. Sakura watches as her sensei brings his hand up, waving his pointer finger.
"Uhp, uhp, uhp," Kakashi interrupts Naruto's next complaint, "You didn't let me finish. We will be climbing trees---" And as her sensei says this he begins walking vertically up the tree. Even with his crutches, Kakashi just casually walks up the trunk of the tall redwood. "With our feet," the jōnin finishes. Sakura's echo radiates a quiet aura of awe, quite literally echoing Sakura's own feelings on the matter. So he wasn't a jōnin for no reason after all. As the boys are busy bombarding Kakashi with pleas to teach them, Sakura has been sidetracked by the sudden and plentiful ideas on how to do it herself.
Clearly she couldn't use too much chakra. She didn't have a lot to begin with, but her senses had told her there had only been a light application of chakra to her sensei's feet. Besides, if her sensei had used a chakra intensive jutsu on the first day since his coma, she would have hog-tied and grilled the jōnin. Sakura absentmindedly walked over to the tree in front of her. A hypothesis forming in her mind, she places her foot onto the bark and focuses her mind inwards. She follows her chakra pathways down to her feet. It flows slowly, like a lazy koi from Ayumi-baa-san's pond. A stray thought spreads the chakra evenly across the pads of her feet. A grin slips onto her face. A minute later and Sakura is sitting on one of the highest branches sprouting from her tree. She is satisfied with her accomplishment, but the burning day is today and that preoccupies most of her thoughts.
Sakura walks back down as Kakashi uses her success to goad the boys. She doesn't particularly approve of the method, but she can see that it works. Naruto and Sasuke have had some nonsensical rivalry since the Academy. Their sensei is only playing off of it to get them determined. Once the boys are off competing and blasting themselves off of trees, Kakashi turns to Sakura with an unreadable look on his face.
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Fanfiction"A hundred stones sink beneath the waves, imperfect and uneven kanji chipped into them by an unpracticed hand. The owners only recently buried as ash and dust beneath coarse dirt and sand. And Sakura, the one behind it all." A Different Wave: Book O...
