10 Training Sakura

"Okay, the first mission is to capture a runaway cat," said Iruka as he read from a report card. "It's called Tora and has a ribbon on it's left ear."

"That damn cat?" hissed Naruto angrily.

"You know of the cat?" asked Iruka in surprise.

"Yeah, that blasted cat used to harass me all the time," said Naruto folding his arms. "By the way, is there some kind of an extra reward for retrieving it faster?"

"Aside from becoming the new record holder, no," said the Hokage.

"Well, anyway," said Naruto, shrugging as he walked to the centre of the room. Naruto took a scroll from his pouch and infused his chakra on his right hand before slamming it on the seal of the scroll. He called out, "Summoning Jursu!"

With a puff of smoke, a brown cat with a ribbon tied to its left ear appeared on top of the scroll. Naruto quickly the confused cat before it can know where it was.

"Mission accomplished, gramps," said Naruto with a smirk.

"How?" squealed Sakura, pointing at the cat Naruto was holding.

"This cat was pestering me about 2 years ago so I placed a summoning seal on it so I could summon it whenever I wanted something to torture," said Naruto with a blank look on his face, sending chills down Sakura's spine.

"Note to self, Naruto is a psycho, don't miss with him," thought Sakura. Even Sasuke was looking at Naruto with a weird look on his face.

"Well, that finishes that mission," said Iruka as he smiled awkwardly. "Next we have babysitting, helping peddlers moving their wares, weeding out a garden and farming a field."

"Let's take the last three," said Naruto quickly.

"Are you sure, Naruto?" asked Kakashi with a worried look.

"Of course, I have a plan," said Naruto, smiling brightly.

"Each of you must be present for each mission," said the Hokage in a commanding tone.

"Relax gramps, you already said," said Naruto. "Just assign us the last three missions and we will have it finished by the end of the day."

Having been assigned with the three missions, Team 7 moved quickly and by noon they had already weeded out the garden as well as helping out the peddlers. They had a quick lunch at Ichiraku's and made their way to the farm where they were given three hoes to farm the field.

"Guys, I've thought of a brilliant way to finish the mission as well as train our chakra control at the same time," said Naruto excitedly.

"Oh? What that?" asked Sasuke curiously.

"We cover our hands with our chakra and plough the field with it," said Naruto.

"That's ...," started Sasuke before falling into deep thought.

"... stupid," finished Sakura, looking at Naruto angrily.

"My apologies, oh great Lady Sakura," said Naruto in an exaggerated sarcasm. "I was not aware of your great and amazing abilities that are beyond our comprehension. All of us mortals are humbly awaiting for a great diety like yourself to lower your prowess to our puny level so we can be accepted for the lowly C-Rank mission!"

Upon listening to Naruto, Sasuke started having a giggling fit that he was trying his hardest to stiffle down. Kakashi was looking away, pretending he didn't hear anything despite his silent laughter. Sakura on the other hand had gone red from pure embarrassment.

"Come on, you two," said Naruto impatiently. "We need to do this to get stronger."

"Here, I'll join you three," said Kakashi, putting away his book. "I want to see how much effect this type of training will have."

Thus Team 7 started this unusal way of completing their farming mission. Naruto had created 5 clones to help speed things up.

{Imagine the farming training Master Roshi made Goku and Krillin do in Dragon Ball.}

"This method is actually quite effective," thought Kakashi as he continued to plough the field with his chakra infused hands. "My legs, back, shoulders and arms are all getting a workout. How did Naruto come up with this method? This is ingenious."

Not long after, Sakura was the first to get worn out as she had the least amount of chakra. Seeing that his teammates had run out of chakra before so quickly, Naruto could do nothing but sigh and continue on. He shifted his focus back to completing his mission.

Later that evening, Team 7 were sitting at Ichiraku's enjoying their ramen.

"You like ramen way too much, Naruto," said Kakashi.

"Ramen is the food made for kings, Kakashi-sensei," said Naruto.

"But today's mission was really good for training," said Kakashi in approval. "It helps to build your muscles, improve your chakra control as well as enhancing your stamina."

"Though I got knocked out so quickly," said Sakura sadly.

"It's alright, you've only just started your journey," said Kakashi encouragingly. "You have plenty of time to improve."

"That's right," said Naruto. "Quickly finish your ramen and I'll show you another good chakra control exercise."

"But we spent the whole day doing missions," whined Sakura. "And the farming mission we just did took everything out of me."

"Don't worry, this training is much easier that what we just did," said Naruto with a smile.

"What's this traininget training you're talking about?" asked Kakashi, curiously.

"Water walking exercise," replied Naruto.

"It's that is a lot easier than the farming training we just did," said Kakashi, nodding his head. "Work hard, Sakura. We just might be ready for the C-Rank mission sooner."

--- By A Lakeside ---

"Sakura, this chakra control training is called Water Surface Walking Exercise," explained Naruto. "What you need to do is emit a constant stream of chakra from the bottom of your feet. You simply need to create a repellent force to walk across the water surface. This is more difficult than Tree Climbing since the amount of chakra you need to supply constantly changes."

"It sounds very complicated," said Sakura.

"Judging from how quickly you mastered Tree Climbing, I doubt it'll take you too long to master Water Surface Walking," said Naruto.

"Okay, let me try," said Sakura, concentrating.

She fused chakra to her feet and slowly took a step on the lakewater. After taking a few successful wobbly steps, she turned around excitedly exclaimed; "I did i-!"

Without finishing her sentence, Sakura fell onto the lake with a loud splash.

"Sigh ... she got excited too quickly ...," muttered Naruto, helping Sakura out of the lake.

"I'm all wet," cried Sakura, looking dejected.

"You started off well, but you lost concentration," said Naruto. "Try again. As you continue to expel chakra from your feet, make sure you match it to your body weight."

"Let me go and change into dry clothes before I continue," said Sakura.

"That'll just waste time," said Naruto, frowning. "Ding you want Sasuke to start paying attention to you?"

"Of course, I do," said Sakura with starry eyes.

"Then hurry and finish your training," said Naruto in a strict tone.

"Right on!" exclaimed Sakura with a determined look, completely forgetting about her wet clothes.

"That was too easy," thought Naruto. "I guess I'll just continue my training too."

Time slowly tricked away as seconds turned into minutes and minutes turned into hours. When the sky started getting dark, Naruto sent a reluctant Sakura home. Naruto had to literally force her to go and rest.

"The dedication of a fan-girl is something else," thought Naruto as he went home.

The next morning, Team 7 finished their required amount of D-Rank missions for the week and they had the remainder of that day including the following day where they could focus on completing their chakra control training.

Naruto was truly amazed at Sakura's chakra control ability. She was almost as good as Hinata at chakra control. Sakura managed to quickly master water surface walking only on her second day of practice.

"You have a very high level of mastery in chakra control," said Naruto, amazed. "It took almost a week to master water surface walking."

"Tehe ... I was always good at chakra control," said Sakura with a smile.

"Here, take this piece of paper and run your chakra through it," said Naruto, handing Sakura a piece of paper.

"What is this paper for?" asked Sakura in confusion.

"It's called Chakra Paper," replied Naruto. "It's made of a special tree that tests your chakra element affinity. Run your chakra through it."

As Sakura run her chakra through the piece of paper, one side became damp and the other side turned into dirt and crumbled away.

"What happened?" asked Sakura in panick.

"Don't worry, it's meant to do that," replied Naruto. "Congratulations. You have high affinities for water and earth elements."

"What does that mean?" asked Sakura.

"It means you have the highest affinitied for water and earth style jutsus which can be use both defensively and offensively better than wind, lightning, and fire style jutsus," said Naruto, smiling. "It's good. From now on, I'll teach you ninjutsus as well as train you in taijutsus."

"Say, Naruto, how do you know so much about all this?" asked Sakura curiously. "When we were in the academy, you never stood out and everyone was ignoring you."

"Everyone has their secrets, Sakura," said Naruto with a sad smile. "It's best if you let me keep mine. I know jutsus for both Water Style and Earth Style and we'll start with the lower ranked jutsus. I'll also teach you in my taijutsu style. Once your chakra reserves increase, I'll teach you the Shadow Clone Jutsu to help increase your training speed."

"How is the Shadow Clone Jutsu going to help increase my training speed?" asked Sakura, tilting her head.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu creates a real physical body and whatever experience it gains gets transferred back to the original," explained Naruto. "And before you ask, no I'm not going to teach it to you right now because you don't have enough chakra. The Shadow Clone Jutsu is a B-Rank Jutsu. But you don't need to worry, with my training plan, it won't take long before you have enough chakra to pull it off."

"Alright let's get started then," said Sakura.

Naruto created a Shadow Clone and left it to train Sakura while he himself went on to train his Sand Grain Partition Exercise and to learn his father's self-created A-Rank Jutsu. The only problem he was facing was the difficulty of the training. Every day, he was adding one extra clone in both of his trainings. Although the training was difficult, it was proving to be very useful as his chakra control was improving at a steady pace which in turn helping him learn jutsus better and easier.

--- Mission Room ---

A week later, Tean 7 was standing in front of the Hokage once again to be assigned to a new mission.

"Lord Hokage, my team are more than ready for a C-Rank mission now," said Kakashi proudly.

"Is that so?" said the Hokage, narrowing his eyes as he stared at Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura.

"That's right old man," said Naruto smiling brightly. "Sakura has been working very hard. She's now around the level of mid-Genin. Doing a few C-Rank missions will definitely push her to become even stronger."

"Very well," said the Hokage with a smile. "I'll give you a C-Rank mission. It's a protection mission. Tazuna, will you come in here?"

A grey haired man walked through a door from the side. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt, pants and had a pait of sandals. He had a pointed hat on his head with a towel on his shoulders.

"What's this?" said the man in a gruff voice. "They're all a bunch of super brats. Especially the blondie. Are you really a ninja?"

"Careful, old man," warned Naruto. "Continue talking shit like that and I might accidentally cripple you."

"Naruto, that's enough," said the Hokage. "He's the man you're supposed to be protecting."

"That's right, I'm the super expert bridge builder, Tazuna," said Tazuna. "You're supposed to provide me with super protection until I get back to my country and complete the bridge."