<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: palatino;">It was so stupid that the children had to use balls to practice with. Sure, Noboru had made it sound like his idea, but really, it was the Council, again. He'd determined, and the rest of the teachers of the other tallent-levels agreed that it was most likely so that the Council didn't have to worry about some untrained civilian kid accidentally hitting one of the children of the important clans. As if the instructors weren't trained shinobi who knew the proper way to teach weapon safety.<br/><br/>Whatever.<br/><br/>At least he wasn't the only one annoyed; he could tell that the students with training were frustrated too. No shinobi clan in their right mind started with throwing balls. If kids started with the real thing, they learned better. But at least with one day of this bullshit, he'd fulfilled the Council's request that they <em>start</em> with non-dangerous target practice. One day was a start, wasn't it?<br/><br/>Noboru sure thought so.<br/><br/>The kids, well some of them anyway, hadn't done too poorly during their run. The Aburame had done well, paced himself and stayed the same speed the whole way, as had the Hyuuga boy, though the girl clearly wished to run faster, she had stayed behind her brother. She was from the branch house, so she probably wasn't permitted to show up her sibling; that probably was a major factor in her attitude, actually. The Inuzuka had done well too: he'd been quite fast, and outpaced everyone, actually. He seemed to enjoy running. The Yuhara girl had done well too, maintaining her speed: she'd come in just before the rowdy Nara girl, and then walked an extra lap, while the Nara had plopped down in the grass with her friend. The third one of that little group was struggling to keep running, and kept dropping to a sloppy jog or a walk every so often, gasping for breath. He'd done well at first, actually, but by the sixth lap he seemed to have reached his limit. Most of the rest of them seemed to have too.<br/><br/>Still, making them run so long had killed a lot of time, and accomplished some good training lessons as well. Two birds with one stone, or so the saying went. It would also be interesting to see if the kids would be able to do well in target practice just after running for so long and being mostly out of breath and exhausted.<br/><br/>Again, he had the kids line up in front of the targets, and gave them each three yellow balls to throw at them. He wasn't even really watching them individually to see how they did this time, "Okay, brats! You each get three balls, when its your turn at the front, throw them at the target, then wait until everyone's done, I'll tell you you can go pick yours up, then go to the back of the line. Then, next in line get to go on my mark. Got it? Okay, go!" This would get them all trained up so none of them stupidly walked into the line of fire when they started with the kunai tomorrow. Not that they needed to know that, but he needed to see just who was going to be stupid enough that he'd have to keep an eye on them.<br/><br/>He let the target practice go for nearly an hour, secretly quite pleased with how bored most of the kids looked. The ones that had gotten in, most of them had pretty good hand-eye coordination, and there weren't too many misses. Then again, they were throwing balls, it wasn't too hard to hit a target with a spherical object. So, when he thought they just couldn't take it any more, he decided to move on to the last bit. They still had about two hours left, so that would be a good bit of time to start their Taijutsu training.<br/><br/>"Hey Brats! Come here in an orderly fashion and put the balls away" he stood near the container that he had pulled them out of, "Then, everyone over to the field. I'm gonna have you line up in a nice, orderly grid formation, with two meters between yourself and the next person on both your sides, in front of you, and behind you." Well, then he had to go and adjust them all, since a few of them seemed to have no idea how much space two meters were. How annoying. Once that was over, he moved so that he was in front of the kids.<br/><br/>"Okay, now you brats are gonna learn some simple Taijutsu katas. I'm gonna go through it slow, and you're gonna copy my movements. Then, we'll go through them again and again. Eventually, I'll have you doing them on your own, and I'll be correcting your form, got it?" he watched as almost all the kids nodded, now, instead of speaking up. It seemed like they were learning, that was a pretty good sign, all things considered. So once he went through the simple movements, and the group was following along on time all on their own, he went about to the kids who needed correcting, helping them hold the forms properly before moving on...<br/><br/>____ ___ __ _<br/><br/>Midori found herself frustrated. The running and the throwing of the balls went pretty well, actually. She'd figured it out at the testing, so it was pretty easy to hit the targets this time, since she remembered how she'd done it before. The problem was these new movements. Repeating over and over. And still, Teacher kept coming back to her and changing how she was holding herself. It was her feet. She always seemed to be standing wrong, and she'd correct, but then by the time Teacher came back around, she was doing it wrong again. And again. And again. Sunako had to be moved up to her shoulder again, because some of the movements were sort-of like slow kicks. The first time she did one, Sunako almost fell out. But she hung onto her shoulder pretty well, even with the movements.<br/><br/>How was she going to prove to Uncle Kanetaro and Miss Jinmi that she <em>could</em> graduate this academy if she couldn't even stand right?<br/><br/>But, eventually, it was over. Everything else went really good, except the last part. What had Teacher called it? Taijutsu katas? Maybe she'd have to practice them at Uncle's house to get better? She could do that. Teacher dismissed them, and most of the kids, she saw, just started wandering home, most of them were with their friends they seemed to hang out with. But, her lunch box was in the classroom still, so the hurried back into the building after Teacher, though he either didn't notice or didn't care. Maybe he knew that she was getting her lunch, since she had done it last time too.<br/><br/>Into the classroom, quickly to her seat to pull the box out from under it, and then back out. Though, she did turn to Teacher, bow, and say  "Thank you, Teacher." in farewell, before making her way back outside. Her legs were a little tired, but for the most part, she felt pretty good. And, except for the bit at the end, she'd thought that she had done pretty well too. And when she got back to her Uncle's house, she could practice some more, since she had at least figured out how she was supposed to hold her feet, even if she couldn't seem to keep them that way.<br/><br/>Quietly, Midori exited the building, looking around to see if anyone was still outside; it would let her know if she needed to avoid anyone on her way to Uncle Kanetaro's house...</span>