Boulders

Chert

Sakura was hot.

Not in the figurative way, though she rated herself fairly highly on the good looks chart.

No, she was hot in the sweaty, gasping, we're-being-boiled-alive way.

The sun beamed down upon her, sweat trickled from every limb, and it was almost hard to breathe, as each shallow breath only brought in hot air that further scorched her throat.

The haircut helped, though.

She had cut all of her hair last night in a last ditch effort to get Ino back. Somehow it had worked, and she and Ino and Toph-sensei had spent the rest of that evening talking. (She had no idea what had happened to the other Yamanaka girls)

She stood barefoot in the dirt, watching Kakashi-sensei and Toph-sensei play shogi. The boys were-

Well, she had no idea what the boys were doing, only that it involved lots of grunting and yelling and movement.

Though how they could move in this heat was beyond her.

She met Sauske's eyes and turned back to her practice with a sniff and diva hair toss, the short strands brushing her cheek and neck.

Practice your control, Toph-sensei had said. Work on feeling the earth, not just tossing huge chunks of it around. Precision is necessary.

Which meant she had been assigned an odd task. Move a single leaf over to herself from three feet away, across the dirt, without destroying it.

Had she been anyone else she would have lost count, but she focused hard on her 74th leaf, trying to be gentle and precise.

The leaf rippled towards her, then split down the middle as it gave way to the rolling rocks.

Screw precision!

She let herself feel rage and hatred for all of ten seconds before she moved to place her 75th leaf down where the others had been.

Sakura burrowed her toes a little more into the ground, feeling the damp fabric of her blindfold resettle and restick around her neck as she moved. She reached out with her Earthbending and tried to bring the stupid leaf over to her using a repeating series of tiny pillars this time.

The leaf was shredded before it even got halfway to her.

Sakura groaned, shifted her stance, then tried again.

▪▪▪

Toph had taken to strolling around the village every evening, sometimes with Kakashi, other times, like now, without.

People pushed and shoved and talked noisily, but that was fine. Toph squeezed through them until she found herself in a relatively empty street. She headed down it.

"M-m-miss Toph!"

Stupid ninjas with their tree walkiness. Or, in this case, rooftops. It was impossible to sense them coming!

Luckily, though, she was able to match the name to the voice.

"Hey Sunshine. What are you doing here?" Toph tilted her head, a more subtle gesture that she had picked up by monitoring Suki.

(That had been a weird week.)

"I live here," the ninja landed heavily besides her.

"Here?" Toph made a sweeping gesture. "In the street?"

He was flustered. Toph felt his heart rate speeding up and grinned. "Well, no. In that building over there. Do you- maybe... want to come over?"

"Sure. Lead the way." Why in the world was he so panicky? It wasn't like he'd asked her to teach him Earthbending so that he could defeat the Fire Lord or anything.