Sakura sat back against one of the tables, legs crossed and drink at her lips. TenTen was next to her, twirling a pair of chopsticks through her fingers.
They'd both figured out the "twist" to the test of climbing up the post almost immediately, and they were fairly certain that Sasuke and Lee had too. Well, Sasuke had. Lee might have just taken it at face value as a result of forgetting that most people weren't on his level, physically, but he'd definitely figured it out by now.
It came with being a ninja. Looking underneath the underneath and all that. With all the double-meaning tests that they'd all taken under their various teachers, a trick this simple was child's play.
They wouldn't have even needed chakra! Granted, just walking up would have been easier, but it wasn't necessary.
"How long do you think it'll take them?" Sakura muttered.
TenTen shrugged. "Three weeks?"
"Mm." Sakura twisted some of her hair around a finger. "How heavy do you think those weights are?"
"Maybe forty pounds each, at most." TenTen smirked, flipping the senbon faster, occasionally tossing them into the air. "And even that's probably an overestimation."
"Probably." Sakura took a sip of her drink. "What do you think Lee's going to do to motivate them?"
"Not Sasuke?"
"Not Sasuke."
"Jump." TenTen laughed, glancing across the field at the two ninja boys. "He'll grab those weights and jump to the top, then give them a long, long lecture about youth."
"Yeah, I can see that."
They continued to sit there, musing, as they waited for still more of the men to try.
"This is pathetic."
"Yep."
Sakura swilled the drink around the bottom of her glass, thinking it over. "Think I should take care of part of the motivation?"
TenTen snorted. "Go right ahead."
Sakura grinned and set her cup down, standing up and stretching, as well as glaring at any man that decided to look at her, by their standards, scantily clad form. Without hesitation, she began striding across the field, walking straight up to Shang, one of the only people here so far that could plausibly take out even an Academy student, maybe even a genin.
She grabbed both weights with one hand, yanking them out of his grasp.
Oh, these were light.
Sakura looked around at the trainees, eyes narrowed. Some of them had already felt how heavy the weights were. Most had not.
She tossed them into the air, maybe ten feet above her head, and caught them effortlessly.
Faces paled.
"Lee, catch." She threw them over at him, noting that he had caught them just as easily as she had.
"Show these pansies how it's done."