There was a horse in Konohagakure.
A horse.
That just... didn't happen.
The only reason Sakura could even recognize a horse was because a few of the Akimichi lands that were outside the walls had some for plowing purposes.
Horses. Were. Not. Allowed. Inside. Konoha.
Ever.
And now there was a horse on their training ground.
It was as if reality had turned on its head.
Sakura had a feeling that she shouldn't be taking this that badly, but it could not be emphasized enough: no hoofed animal was ever allowed inside Konohagakure, with the singular exception of the Nara deer, an exception which had been there since the founding of the city.
The exception did not allow for horses.
And yet there was one.
It was right in front of them.
"This," Sensei Mitokado announced as he stepped out from the construct, "is a horse. You will be expected to know how to ride one before spring. We will begin now."
You could ride them?
Wait, no, samurai rode horses.
Still...
Horses were living things. Why would you... well, why would you force them to just carry yourself around if you were fully capable of walking?
"How many of you have seen a horse before?"
Sakura and Juro raised their hands. Shin did not. He seemed... daunted, Sakura supposed, by the sheer size of the animal.
"How many of you have ridden one, even bareback, before?"
Bareback?
Horses, Sensei Mitokado explained, were used by the cavalry divisions amongst the samurai; it was they who tended, on the whole, to be the most deadly when facing off against shinobi, especially because they had an entire archery division within the cavalry.
Horse riding was therefore a sign of being a great warrior, and while they would likely only ever mount a horse while riding in or out of the Capital, it was nonetheless important to show their strength in their ability to ride.
Sakura, being female, would never have been a samurai in the first place, but the shinobi did not care and that translated to the importance of showing that she, too, was a great warrior.
Which meant that instead of simply two, all three genin spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon falling off the apparently completely docile animal.
Over and over again they trotted around the structure, trying to avoid the stares of adults and children alike as they did their best to stay seated on the saddle or, even worse, were put in charge of cleaning up after the horse and saving the results as fertilizer for Mitokado lands.
The entire experience was...
Sakura was very happy shinobi did not ride horses.
As the sun finally sank down to the last quarter of sky, they were allowed to finish, and Sensei Mitokado allowed them a break as he walked the horse out of the village to spend the night in a neighboring stable.
Unfortunately, they were still not allowed to go home.
"It is time," the man said, "for sleep deprivation training."
Joy.
"Already?" Juro asked, whining as he sat up in surprise. He was the most tired of all of them—his family training had only ended two days before, and the main reason his was so much later than the Nara or Yamanaka was because it was thought to be too dangerous to do when too young.
He was also half his normal weight, and had warned them it would take some time to get up to a mass that was healthy and allowed him to fully act as an offensive member of the team as well as their medic.
"Yes," Sensei said. "No point in delaying it."
"So what are we going to do for the night?" Sakura asked. She was... less put out, she supposed. Sleep deprivation torture was part of Yamanaka family training, so she already had a good idea of what to expect.
"Drills," Sensei replied. "Not physical ones—you are clearly not going to be at your best—but we will begin with mental ones and slowly shift to stretches and simple exercises as you begin to lag. Then... well, let's not get ahead of ourselves, though I will say those little analyses I had you fill out will become quite important."
The man's inscrutable face broke into a smile, and he stared down at them as Juro whimpered and Shin groaned.
.
In total they lasted about two full days. The end was... not pretty, but technically they were all still awake. Juro passed out first, which wasn't surprising, and Shin second. Sakura had simply been told she could sleep after the boys fell, and saw no point in admitting she wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway.
The next weeks were filled with similarly daunting tasks. Now that they were finally out of the Academy, the pace of education seemed to have picked up to a near unbelievable rate; by the time they were chuunin they would be expected to actually be useful as individuals, and in half a year most of the rest of their time would be stripped away for public service, so currently the most important thing was to cram as much information and knowledge as possible into their heads and bodies as quickly as possible and ignore actual utility until later.
In other words, they were averaging four D-ranks a week, all crammed in the weekends, their theoretical 'free time.'
"It's free after you're done," Sensei said. "Until then you still have work to do."
The rest of the week was dedicated to more novel pursuits.
Whenever they weren't learning to ride a horse in one of the, as it turns out, numerous ways they would be expected to know, they were instead being through put short rotas with the Guards, Tracking, and other branches of the military. When they weren't doing that, they were being shoved into lakes to learn how to swim, or on small skiffs to learn how they move with the wind and water (that had been a several day trip, actually, to get to a lake large enough to bother with.) Otherwise they might be learning how to walk vertically, walk at angles, walk upside down. Maybe if they were doing well enough with that, or their chakra was too low to continue anyway, they might work on marches and other versions of shinobi conduct instead.
Some days they spent working through the simplest of the immunities to develop, or learning how to work with various pieces of equipment they might later have to use. Other times they were set against obstacle courses to learn how to work as a team and, more than that, to work as their team. There were minor bits of torture training as well, but nowhere near as bad as Sakura had already gone through; much of it was even described, rather than forced upon them physically.
Whenever they were too tired, too exhausted for any kind of chakra training, or physical training, or even mental exercises, then Sensei reverted to memorization.
In other words, law.
Every law.
Since the founding of Konoha.
It would get worse, too, he warned: as the deadline for the Capital neared they would be expected to know more, to know who was in the Capital, how to do their job, what their goals were...
For now the kinesthetic education was more important, but later the words would be just as significant, just as vital for Sakura, Shin, and Juro to know.
And even when they were so exhausted that they had no hope of parroting back the pages-long laws that some idiots had thought up, Sensei still wasn't done: "Art is an important part of Capital life, and you must be able to recognize and describe every popular style on sight. Juro, punch Shin; I believe he's fallen asleep. Stop with the groaning, Shin, or else we will go back to law."
Sakura didn't remember Ren's genin years. She only barely remembered Sayuri's, and then mostly because it took so long for her to bother moving on. Aoi hadn't really had any years, and neither had the twins. Kamui hadn't gone shinobi, but she remembered Kaede's genin years well enough; he'd died during them. Ayame and Fujio were both barely dipping into theirs, barely in front of her in terms of their education.
None, she thought, had had nearly as tough a beginning to genin life as she.
Then she shook the thought off.
It was true that they were moving fast, but then they had to be: soon, not soon to her but soon to the adults who had lived much longer, soon they would be miles away with the Daimyo looking over their shoulders, and they had to be perfect, perfect, perfect, or as near as they could be.
And that didn't even mention that they had to be fully-fledged members of the Konoha armed force.
(They had not touched on taijutsu, not even for a practice spar or two: Sensei made it clear that that was a domain strictly for the family, as with kekkei genkai. Still, Sakura had not expected for it to be so ignored. She was glad, really; it gave her body time to catch up. Nonetheless, it was that, more than anything else, that made it clear they would not be expected to run a single out-of-village mission before the Spring Session. Even genin teams full of Uchiha and Hyuuga—full of students far more restricted in their taijutsu techniques than Ino-Shika-Cho—learned at least something of combat beyond their families' instructions.
Chinmoku didn't.)
Summer bled into fall.
Sakura began to breathe again, felt less pressed by the pressure of all they needed to know as she got used to the burden.
Fujio's birthday passed, and several others began to near.
She ran into Aiko Utatane on one of her rare completely-free-days, and they spent the time eating and talking and shopping, reveling in talking with someone their gender—someone their age—someone else.
As with the rush of family birthdays that happened in May, October had a similar issue: Aoi's and the twins' and their father' were all within a week of each other, and while none were home to celebrate, everyone put aside a wrapped gift to give each of them the next time they came back, as they always did.
She finally ran into Yasuo, too: his genin team seemed to be the opposite of hers, constantly outside the walls, constantly on missions. He loved every minute.
The weather, for whatever reason, did not develop much of a bite until November, and it was only then that she managed to run into Bokuso when neither had to rush off before even a mere conversation could be had.
The chinmoku had been together when they'd run into the Aburame, so Juro had wasted no time in guiding them to the nearest Akimichi restaurant.
"So, how do you like your team?" Shin asked around a mouthful of meat. The chinmoku had already described their Sensei, and done their compulsory ranting over their levels of exhaustion, so now it was Bokuso's turn.
"Fine," Bokuso said. Then, realizing that that was not enough, "noisy."
His genin team was composed of Sarutobi Eiji and Inuzuka Kegawa, his Sensei an Uchiha no one had recognized.
Sakura... well, neither the Uchiha nor Sarutobi were really known for being composed, and, if anything, the Inuzuka were known for the exact opposite.
"That bad?" She asked.
Bokuso winced. "They are not... intentionally so."
"That bad," She said again, dropping the question entirely.
"Is your Sensei at least trying to deal with it?" Shin asked.
"He is… as irked, I believe, as I am, but he seems to think the issue will go away on its own."
"The issue?"
At this, Bokuso looked outright surprised, though his countenance quickly recomposed itself. "The current situation: Inuzuka are choosing a new leader as we speak."
Oh.
OH.
Oh.
That was... Sakura was very, very happy that there were no Inuzuka on her genin team.
The Inuzuka method of succession was a messy process. It wasn't even remotely hereditary, for one: while there were branches of Inuzuka any could easily contain the next leader. Then there was the issue that succession wasn't done by death, or by meeting a certain age, or anything like that.
Any time three Inuzuka each thought they would be better than the current leader, then they proclaimed this within their compound, and the process began.
The actual specifics Sakura simply didn't know. The current Inuzuka leader had been in power for over a decade, since 22K, and the last challenge had happened when Sakura was two.
That said, a combination of rumors, mentions, outright explanations, and other methods had given Sakura at least some information about the Inuzuka:
They were matriarchal.
Their challenges were nearly tournament-like in the way they worked, and kept going on until the winner had won at least double the number of fights they lost against each other challenger (and the current leader.)
There was no time limit.
During the challenge, not only were Inuzuka more aggressive to outsiders, wary of those that might take advantage of their headless-ness, they were also aggressive amongst themselves, torn by loyalties to one challenger or another.
They were even more restless, as well: nights were spent watching hours-long fights instead of roughhousing themselves, and mornings were spent running around trying to figure out how to keep on when no single person could act as a leader until the challenge was over.
Inuzuka were emotional at the best of times, temperamental and unpredictable and wild.
When that was disturbed by something as major as the pack literally tearing itself apart to form anew?
Juro, from his seat next to the Aburame, patted his shoulder comfortingly.
"Look at the bright side:" Shin said, "this could go on for years."
Bokuso glared at him.