"Punch through the board."
It was a simple request, really. And not one she thought she'd make of her newest apprentice anytime soon. Tsunade wasn't quite sure what she had expected when she'd taken the sad little pink haired girl under her wing, mostly out of pity really, but it definitely hadn't been talent.
In less than a year, the kid had mastered all basic healing techniques, the stuff you needed to work at the ambulance of the hospital and make a pretty decent living. Seeing how her teammates had left her and she was of no significance besides that, Tsunade had expected Sakura to just settle for that. But after discovering just how goddamn talented she was with healing, that just hadn't been an option anymore.
Oh no.
If her godforsaken teammates now took students again and taught them all kinds of fighting techniques, so could she. So what if she actually had a village to run and a hospital to reform. The kid was happy to help out with that as well. She was an investment, really. And so delightfully obedient. Obedient bordering on doormat though. But that could be fixed.
Ever since Sakura had started working at the hospital and attending surgeries and what not, Tsunade had seen her diligent handiwork on stitching together wounds of all sizes, a useful skill to have when you were out of chakra, watch the grossest procedures without flinching, stick her hands down every kind of possible and impossible body opening if required without hesitation, and cleaning up all kinds of body fluids and excrements after that with no complaint ever leaving her lips.
She was like the second coming of Shizune, really. With even better chakra control, which had made Tsunade hopeful that the kid would prove more apt to her own fighting style than Shizune had. Shizune was an excellent medic, and by far the most adept poison user in the village, but when it came to fighting, she was just not up to Tsunade's style.
She'd been hoping Sakura would be. Until the girl started squirming uncomfortably and flinching away from punching through a goddamn board. What the hell?
"Is something wrong?" Tsunade asked, growing impatient. "Just show me what you can do."
"Well, uh..." The kid was squirming and nervously averting her gaze.
"Come on, you're not scared of a wooden board, are you?" Tsunade laughed. "Seriously, I'm way scarier than that. The board won't hit back." And Sakura had held up during the intense dodging sessions they had just fine. She seemed to be more in her element in an ER, but still. The girl had seen her fair share of combat and came out alive where others hadn't, so... What was the matter with her and that goddamn board?
"I-it's not that..." Sakura finally stammered. "It's just... Well, uh. I... Can't do it."
"What?" Tsunade laughed incredulously. "Hey, I know you're not up to bench pressing anyone any time soon, but this isn't even about strength."
"Yes, it is mostly about momentum," the girl muttered in that distant tone she got when reciting technical stuff she learned by heart. "There still needs to be a certain amount of power behind the punch, and... I simply don't have that." She paused, growing more uncomfortable still. "Also, I'd just break my hand trying."
"Wait a minute, don't they do bone and muscle conditioning at the academy anymore?" Because if this was the first board the girl had ever been asked to punch through, Tsunade not only had to get behind what weird principles her late sensei had led this village under, manage the paper work and reform the hospital and medical care in general, no, she'd have to overhaul the education system as well. The fuck had Sarutobi done with this village.
"They, uh, they do," Sakura admitted. "It's just... Optional for girls."
"And you skipped it?" Tsunade had to ask to make sure. This was literally the most stupid thing you could do if you didn't want to end up as the more glorified whore version of a kunoichi. Who were kept as delicate as possible while still ensuring their survival. And while that was a completely valid career choice, and a lucrative one at that... The kid really wasn't cut out for bedding people and then slitting their throats. She might be able to pull off the visual part once she filled out a little more, and if she was willing and able to dye her hair in a less... Conspicuous color, but she was lacking the skill set, ambition, personality and opportunity to actually go through with that.
"I, uh... I didn't want my hands to get... Unattractive..." The girl muttered under her breath, clearly ashamed. Good. Then at least she'd noticed that that was about the worst possible reason to avoid anything ever. "I-It was a common thing, actually!" The kid started defending herself when the silence had gone on a little longer than was comfortable. "Most of the girls in my class did it, even Ino, though her father put a stop to that... So she just never tried very hard and got this hand balm, which she shared with me, and..."
"And has it occurred to you that Ino's father may have had just the tiniest of points in that?" Tsunade interrupted her. She'd already heard more Ino rants and stories than she cared for, and that topic tended to lead them straight to the S-word and that tended to make the girl even more depressed than she already was, and almost impossible to work with. She really needed to get some backbone beaten into her. Which was also why they were here.
"It's kind of dawning on me now," the kid mumbled. At least she had a witty tongue when cornered. Made her more fun to work with, really.
"Well then!" Tsunade clapped her hands cheerfully. "Guess we'll just have to make up for lost time with you before we get to the juicy stuff. Punch the board."
"I'm sorry," Sakura sighed, downtrodden. "Uhm... Why don't you just teach me the chakra punching and I do that?"
"Because like the momentum punch, that needs groundwork," Tsunade explained slowly, because really, the kid should have figured that out herself. "I can't just have you release that much power when your bones and muscles can't handle the impact."
"Doesn't the chakra make up for that?" Geez, that kid was really scared of that board, wasn't she?
"To an extent," she admitted. "Just like technically, you don't need to know how to stitch up wounds. Chakra can do that for you. Why did you need to learn that anyways?"
"Because chakra can only take you so far," Sakura said through grit teeth, now eyeing the board apprehensively.
"Exactly. Now get to punching." Tsunade's grin widened. "You know what, regard this as a double-feature lesson. First you get your hands broken, and then you'll finally learn how to heal bones! I know you've been wanting to do that for ages."
"I'm... Going to be healing my own hands." The kid looked at her like she was the one who'd skipped out on basic conditioning for being pretty. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"I don't think letting people bail on basic conditioning is a good idea, either." Tsunade shrugged. "So we'll just have to work with what we have. Learning by doing. Now get to punching."
So for like an entire month, all the girl had to do was punch a board at close-range, and cause little fissures in her hand to make the bone heal back stronger, alternating between hands from day to day. Tsunade also showed her how to heal those fissures and tiny fractures herself, a rather rare technique amongst medic nins, since it took a lot of chakra and more time than closing up wounds. Now, most medic nins were actually educated for combat healing and only recruited once large-scale combat occurred on a regular basis (read: during wars. Everyone seemed to forget medics were useful during peacetimes. But not Tsunade, oh no.), so their major focus was always to get people back to battle asap. That usually resulted in broken bones either quickly getting casts applied by the not-chakra using apprentices and getting sent back out there, or to being discarded to a remote location in the healing tents and maybe getting some medical attention later on if a proper medic was to spare. People with cuts that bled all over the floor got priority since healing those was easier, took less chakra, and could be done more often.
In short, the limited supply of medics usually resulted in quantity of healing over quality. And if you were capable of quality healing, you usually had less to do and got more money for it, but that only mattered in peace time.
As a surprise to no one, the kid had proven to be very much a quality healer. What she had not proven to be was a quality puncher.
"So, any progress here?" Tsunade asked as she paid the girl a visit on the training facilities one afternoon. Sakura had been half-heartedly punching the board in irregular intervals until she arrived. Now the kid just glared at here.
"I'm getting very good at healing bone fissures," Sakura hissed. "And getting splinters out of my knuckles. That, too."
Tsunade looked at her apprentices' bruised and blistered hands and the blood stains on the board, and nodded with approval. What her student failed to mention was that she'd also gotten really good at eating with her left hand. Just like with punching, she was always eating with the less injured hand now. Smart of her.
"That is pretty remarkable," Tsunade offered as encouragement. "Most medics don't make it that far."
"I know!" The girl hissed again, like an angry cat about to strike. If only she did. "So why can't I do more of that instead of... This?" She gestured at the board dismissively.
"Do you want to be able to hold your own in a fight or not?" Tsunade hissed back. Maybe she finally had her far enough to grow that fucking back bone she needed so badly. Mouthing off was a good sign.
"I do!" Sakura was getting really loud now. The only thing bothering Tsunade about this were the tears glistening in her eyes. "That's my point, this is NOT HELPING! All it does is hurt me and keep me from learning anything useful that doesn't involve turning my hands into bloody mush! And unless the point of this lesson is to teach me how to successfully set and heal the bones in my hands, it is definitely not working!" She now tried blinking the tears away frantically. "I-if anything, it's probably DETRIMENTAL to that goal, since healing with broken hands is not the best idea to begin with!"
The girl had several good points there, just not the one Tsunade wanted her to reach. Probably because that sure as hell was not a logical one.
"Why are you so angry?" She asked her student, with just the slightest hint or a threatening edge in her voice. That unfortunately had the opposite effect; Sakura was not one to run headfirst into a confrontation to begin with. Getting this much out of her had been a true accomplishment, really.
"I-I'm sorry!" She gasped, frantically wiping her tears away and standing up straighter. "I was out of line, I shouldn't have..."
"Cut it," Tsunade told her bluntly. "Tell me what the fuck you're angry about."
"M-myself." The words shot out of her automatically. "If I hadn't been so... So... So s-stupid in the academy, we wouldn't have to do this at all, and..."
"True," Tsunade interrupted her. "But that's not the point here, is it?"
"I-I'm sorry?" The girl still wasn't getting.
"Oh, please!" Tsunade made a wide gesture and now put an ironic edge into her voice. If the girl didn't react to being pushed around and yelled at, maybe she'd at least react to being made fun off. "That's what you'd like to be feeling, isn't it? Because self-hate comes so easily to you. But tell you what, I'm not buying this shit anymore. I know your type. In your entitled little brain, you've got it all put together how this is actually my fault. I can see it in your eyes. You're a smart kid, you'll find a logical way to blame this on me. So go ahead. Enlighten me."
"I'd never!" Sakura gasped, trying a little hard to look horrified. Tsunade raised her eyebrows mockingly. "Okay, you know what, fine!" The girl now had tears streaming down her face steadily and didn't seem to mind anymore as she stomped her foot into the ground (Not literally. Yet. But they were getting there.) and whirled towards her teacher.
"You know what, you're right. I told you I couldn't do this! And you should know that I'll never be able to, I'm just not built for strength! And now, don't give me any of the 'Well neither am I, now deal' crap, okay? Because I know you're not, but that's what you use chakra for! Something you have refused to teach me! Instead you insist that I break and rebreak my fists over and over again! What is that going to accomplish? If it's still about hardening my bones, as you say it is, well, they're not going to get much harder any time soon!"
Tsunade waited for a while, looking at her with mild amusement, waiting to see if she would flinch away and apologize again. And for a moment, Sakura seemed to be about to do just that, before she swallowed hard, and worked to keep up the glare. She was still shaking and tears were still streaming down her face, but hey. A little backbone was better than none at all.
"Tell you what," Tsunade then said, working to keep her voice neutral if slightly disappointed. "I'll make you a deal. We'll forget about this whole punching business and I'll only teach you the more advanced medical stuff in the future."
The girl gasped in horror.
"B-but that's not what I -," she started, but Tsunade silenced her with a dismissive wave.
"That's the only way you're gonna get rid of that punching board," she explained. "You either work with my training methods, or you don't. Apparently, you don't. So we'll drop the combat training and turn you into a fully devoted healing unit. Is that what you want?"
"No!" The kid immediately protested. "I want to fight, I do, really, I just -"
"Then prove it," Tsunade cut her off again. "Step away from the board and punch through it. If you can do that, I'll continue training you in combat. If not, healing unit it is. So what's it gonna be?"
"L-look, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, okay?" The girl was now pleading. Ugh, one step forwards, two steps back. "I'll continue breaking my hands, if that's what it takes, and I really do want to continue combat training, so please don't stop just because I can't - "
"And that's the fucking problem," Tsunade snapped at her. "You give up before you even try. Now either punch through that board and show me why I bothered with you in the first place, or forget about it!" When the kid still looked unsure, she rolled her eyes. "Geez, no wonder nobody ever bothered to teach you before."
That made the kid freeze up in front of her, and her pleading dissolved into nothing but a blank stare.
"So that's how it's gonna be," she then muttered in resignation. "I see." Sakura turned towards the board again and looked at it hesitantly.
"You get this one shot, and I suggest you give it your all." Not dropping the cold demeanor was really hard now that the kid had begun to crack in a way Tsunade was not prepared to deal with. She could do angry outbursts and mass destruction, but utter resignation? Not so much. "Use your better hand, if you will. Or you know what, don't even try at all, see if I care."
The tears were back when the girl stared at her, now definitely hurt, and something in Tsunade really wanted to just call this off, since if there was anything the kid didn't need, it was more pain in her life. But her more logical part prevailed, because if she backed out now, the girl would never, ever learn her lesson here, and they really would have been wasting their time with even trying. So she remained stoic and disappointed.
It took Sakura about a minute to finally come to terms with the situation and brace herself. Then, with a last look of hurt, she turned away from her master again, wiping away her tears and looking at the board in a more critical fashion, probably calculating where it would be weakest and what angle would be the best to hit it at. Okay. That was still too much thinking, but better than giving up.
Then, with a cry way too shrill to be mistaken for a proper battle scream, she gathered all the momentum she could, and of course hit right through the board and shattering it.
Her look when she realized this was hysterical.
"Feel better now?" Tsunade asked, suppressing a smirk. Sakura was just standing there, staring at the remains of the board that had tortured her for so long, still unable to grasp that, yay, she now had the proper punching abilities of an academy student.
"I... uh..." Sakura was apparently unable to articulate an actual answer.
"Personally, I find destroying stuff is the best kind of venting," Tsunade went on. "So the next time you get frustrated, just do that instead of bottling stuff up, got it?"