Haruno

Training Ensues

After one day of training, and a brief assessment, Shiro had seen that Sakura was creepily clever to the point of being almost prodigious; had a relatively small chakra reserve though he had no idea to what extent; had almost no physical ability; and had a dangerous interest in weapons. All in all, she seemed just about average.

After their first two weeks of training and further inspection, Shiro could surmise that in all physical matters of training (which was coincidentally most of their training) Sakura proved to be a cut above abysmal. Her early morning laps around the training grounds were slow and he found that she couldn't properly pace herself without regular intervention.

"On to endurance training, then." Shiro had said, walking to two wooden stumps on the edge of the training field that had faded targets painted onto it. "I want five laps around the field. However long it takes - I want it done. No lunch until you do." Shiro took a brief glance around estimating the circumference and guessed it would take a child of Sakura's age and size about 40 minutes to do, give or take which he would eventually want to cut in half by the end of this year. This would give him time to write out a to-do list for today, read a book and lounge in the blissful shade of the canopies. "Call my name, or throw a rock at me when you're done, yeah?" At that, Sakura bolted.

It was only ten minutes later, whilst Shiro was reading his book ('The Tale Of The Utterly Gutsy Shinobi' if you absolutely must know) when he saw Sakura collapse at the edge of the field. That was when he knew she would be virtually hopeless. She could learn taijutsu punches and kicks well enough but had trouble putting enough power behind them due to her lack of muscle mass. Whether that was due to her civilian heritage, general incompetence or lack of effort, Shiro couldn't tell but he knew he would have to work with what he was given. However, he still had high hopes for this kid.

This kid's memorisation skills and overall intelligence was off the charts. Once, in the library at lunch, Shiro had given her a scroll on the legendary sannin and, upon questioning, Sakura had relayed the information word for word much to his amazement. Shiro could bring up any obscure aspect of Konohagakure's history or technicalities of chakra manipulation and Sakura would either offer up insightful comments or already know about the subject... Shiro put that down to the excessive time spent at the library.

Proving himself right on the disturbing interest in weapons, he had presented Sakura with an array of shuriken one afternoon and she had grabbed one immediately. Then, she had proceeded to rant and rave about their uses and how to use one as if she was his sensei. Then, she had the audacity to run off with them and start aiming them at a wooden stump - none of them hitting of course, but enthusiastically nonetheless.

Furthermore, Sakura had almost instantly demonstrated a penchant for chakra control.

"So, Sakura-chan, what do you say we start with the basics of chakra control?" Sakura had beamed at this and bounced on the balls of her small feet.

"I've heard of that, Shiro-sensei. It's the, uhh... combination of our physical and spiw...spiritual energy, right?" Sakura exclaimed with her hand scratching the back of her head.

"Correct. Do you know how we expand our chakra?"