Sakura groaned slightly, groggy from all the early morning training she had been undertaking recently. But she knew well what the risks were for agreeing to become Lady Tsunade's apprentice, though she hadn't counted losing beauty sleep being one of them. Not that it mattered lately, since Sasuke had abandoned the village Ino had been leaving her alone for the most part.
Three months it had been. Three months of torturous beatings from the Hokage. Three months of intense medical practices that pushed her chakra control to the limit. Three months since both her teammates, Naruto and Sasuke, had left to do their own training. Yet Sakura held on. She wasn't going to be left behind again, she wasn't going to be a burden or someone they had to protect. That was what she kept telling herself, but that didn't stop her resolve from falling short every early morning.
"Why do these lessons have to be so early...?" she mumbled to herself, already knowing full well the answer. Being the Hokage, Tsunade was extremely busy and had little time during the day to teach her.
This meant that any the only free spots in her schedule were often at the crack of dawn or in the late evening. If she didn't feel that she hadn't already learned a lot, Sakura would have assumed Lady Tsunade was using these lessons as a form of stress relief by beating on her pupil. Each day opened new doors to jutsu and skills Sakura would have never have thought possible.
Today was no different from any other training day, except for the fact that Lady Tsunade had called for Sakura to come out into one of the open training fields outside the village. Usually this meant what they were doing was going to be too dangerous to perform indoors, the thought of another brutal beating only added to Sakura's grouchy mood. Still, she pressed onto the assigned training field, finding Tsunade standing in its center looking no more excited about the morning than she did.
"Good morning, Sakura."
"Good morning, Lady Tsunade."
"I suppose you're wondering why I called you out into the training field today?"
"Combat training again?" she honestly guessed.
Tsunade grinned in response. "Not quite. Remember when I told you how the best defense is a good offense? How a medical ninja must never find herself injured else the entire team will suffer as a result?"
Sakura nodded, recalling the intense brawls that followed afterwards.
"Well, there will come a time when a medical ninja will find herself unable to withstand an attack no matter how powerful her offense is. In these situations, she is doomed to perish unless she can come up with an equally powerful defensive move that may save her."
That all seemed like basic logic to Sakura. "But Lady Tsunade, isn't that obvious? I mean, you should hit when you can and block what you can when fighting, right?"
"True...But what if someone were to come at you with a move designed to destroy you even if you blocked it? What if someone came at you with the Chidori or the Rasengan? Even a light hit from either of those techniques will permanently put you out of the fight if you are unable to dodge it."
"So...We're practicing dodging?"
"No, we're going to be practicing absorbing the hit."
Sakura winced in displeasure, thinking she knew full well what would happen next. Tsunade had to laugh at her student's reaction.
"No, no. Not in the manner you're thinking of. What I mean is we're going to be practicing a jutsu designed to dampen the power of your opponent's attacks so greatly that it will render the attack harmless."
"That still sounds painful..."
"Not one bit, here I want you to come at me after I initiate the jutsu."
Tsunade took a wide stance, making sure both of her feet were beyond shoulder length. She made three simple hands signs, Bird, Ox, and Dog, before Sakura felt a strange burst of chakra be released within her teacher.
"You may attack me with your strongest attack, don't hold back Sakura."
Sakura smirked, after being pushed around it was nice to finally have a chance to take a swing at Lady Tsunade even if she was her master and Hokage. Sakura prepared her fist, building up the chakra in the same manner Tsunade had taught her these past few months. Though she was no master at it yet, she could easily decimate boulders with the power that she had. There was no way Tsunade was going to get away injury-free after this.
With a fair amount of power built up, Sakura charged right at her master. She swung her arm back when she was in range and closed her eyes as she rocketed it forward and waited for it to connect with her teacher's stomach.
There was no hard hit that Sakura was expecting. Instead, her hand felt like it had punched into something soft before rebounding back, sending her flying a few feet behind herself. As she opened her eyes and the dust cleared, Sakura saw that Lady Tsunade was standing just where she had been before, unmoved and not hurt in the slightest.
"Wow, I'm impressed Sakura. That had a lot more power than I was expecting. Good thing I prepared myself to take the blow."
"H-How..How did you take that!?" Sakura asked.
"You didn't see it? Well, no matter. That's what today's lesson is for. You're going to learn how to do that today, or at least the basics. It might take you a whole month to get to that point. For now I want you to practice two things today, the hand signs I did and your breathing."
"My...breathing?"
"Must I repeat myself? This is a highly advanced jutsu with unorthodox requirements, with any luck you'll be able to at least practice it the whole night. Let's meet here again after lunch sometime, I have a brief break then."
Sakura was still confused but nodded, wiping the dust off from her blouse as Tsunade headed back to the Hokage office to start her day of paperwork. The young girl still couldn't figure out how Tsunade had managed to completely take that attack, she shouldn't have kept her eyes closed when she swung at her.
"...What does breathing have to do with it?" She questioned herself.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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