Boulders

Tuff

"So, Naruto is training with one of the Sanin, and Sauske is hogging Kakashi-sensei, and I really need to train too if I want to beat the pants off of my opponent!"

"Is this your way of telling me to beat you up like never before?" Toph asked, biting the top piece of meat off a skewer.

The two girls were walking through the marketplace. Toph was reveling in the fact that she had the apartment all to herself, and Sakura was trying to get Toph to teach her more.

Well. Kakashi had said something about leaving her with Hayate, but she'd neither heard nor felt a single cough from him.

"Well, yeah." Sakura slipped around a bystander as she tried to keep up. "You're the only person who can teach me Earthbending."

"How far are you with sensing the vibrations?" Toph took another bite.

"I actually was able to do it!" Sakura chirped. "In the forest, when we were getting attacked by Orochimaru, I was able to see in the dark, only with Earthbending, not a jutsu!"

"Hmm," Toph considered. "That does sound like what I'm doing."

Sakura nodded, swinging up on the balls of her feet. "I can sense vibrations now!"

She finished off her food. "Do it."

Sakura froze. "Um. Right. Well, you see..."

Toph tossed the stick into a bin and stretched. "Well, then. Let's get started."

▪▪▪

This was a bad idea.

Sakura was breathing hard as she lay on the floor. Toph-sensei had a very sadistic sense of teaching. Her lessons often included huge amounts of Earthbending speckled with precision practice. All of which was brutal.

Toph-sensei squatted down by her and rapped on her forehead with her knuckles. "How're you holding up?"

Sakura gave her the flattest look she could manage while lying on her back, sweating into the dirt.

Of course, Toph-sensei didn't see it.

"It seems like your limit is about three and a half hours of full on Earthbending, and the smallest thing you can move is anything the size of my head." Toph-sensei sat crosslegged. "How you managed with that mirror is beyond me."

Ugh. Why had she told Toph-sensei about the Chuunin Exams? Sakura clawed up to a sitting position besides her. "Is that bad?"

"Well, you're already trained in martial arts, and you can use your chakra to make up for deficits like experience and technique. You are able to almost match me in the amount you can lift by using chakra to enhance your strength. However, that doesn't help with the delicate stuff."

"Delicate stuff like what?" Sakura whined.

Toph-sensei reached up her billowing green sleeve and withdrew a small black bracelet Sakura had never seen before. She held it up, then began to morph its shape. "This looks like a harmless little trinket, right?"

Sakura couldn't help but nod. Even flowing from one shape to another, it only looked vaguely magical, not dangerous-

The floating black mass suddenly hardened into a scary looking knife.

Okay. That was cool. Sakura watched as it morphed into a kunai, then a dozen tiny senbon.

"This isn't ninja made. Anyone not you who checks it will see only the shape it's left in. There are no seals or hidden weapons, but it can kill easily."