"Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose."
-Lyndon B. Johnson
The broom handle digs uncomfortably into the arch of my left foot. I jump n the air and switch feet.
"First Mizukage?" Asks Ebisu-sensei.
"Byakuren."
"Second?"
"Gengetsu Hozuki."
"Fourth?"
"Yagura." I hopped up off the vertical broomstick straight up into the air and switched feet again.
"Weight of a kunai?"
"four-hundred grams."
"Kumogakure standard kunai weight?"
"three-hundred and fifty grams."
he gives me a rather serious look and adjusts his glasses. "You pass."
I hop off of the broomstick and tumble ungracefully to the ground with joy. A huge smile breaks out on my face. For the past thirty minutes, Ebisu-sensei made me balance on top of a vertical broomstick and answer questions from last year's Graduation Exam. Currently, there are only two and a half more weeks until the exam. I have been studying hard, but mostly focusing on my physical abilities. Last training session, we sparred. I forced Ebisu to use both of his feet with a vicious kick to the head that he had to jump away from to dodge. So, I'm improving. Better than Naruto, at least. I sparred with him a few times over the past few weeks. He's strong, but he obviously doesn't pay attention in class.
I beat him.
Not much of an accomplishment, but considering I've only been training for just under three months, it's huge for me. Now, technically I've been training for longer than that. Ebisu uses a special kind of training where he uses genjutsu to let me train mentally for a month, while only twelve hours have passed in real life. However, this can potentially cause brain damage, so it was a last resort. i am determined not to fall behind everyone else.
Ebisu levels a even glare at me.
"Okay. I'll teach you chakra control now, as per the agreement. But you got lucky on that, because I talked to Hokage-sama, and according to him he is allowing a special exam for you to make up for the limited time constraints we are under due to your amnesia so that you do not fall behind your peers. He is willing to forgo your lack of knowledge of two of the basic three academy jutsu if you achieve a perfect score on your written test and a ninety percent or higher on your weapons exam."
"Thank you, Ebisu-sensei!" I cheered.
"Of course. Now, sit down and assume meditation position one."
I sit down and fold my legs over each other, criss-crossed.
"Take a deep breath, and hold it for five seconds. Then, continue to do that until I say stop, wherapon you will hold your breath for as long as you can. You will feel slight pain. Nothing worse than I have given you, though. Don't worry too much."
He adjusts his glasses again.
"Okay, and... Stop."
I hold my breath and Ebisu places one hand on my forehead, and and another one above my heart. Suddenly, a bang across the room breaks his and my concentration.
"Right in here." The receptionist girl ushers in Choji through the sliding doors of the dojo.
"Hey!" Exclaims Choji. "Have they already unlocked your chakra?"
"Nope." I reply, and I close my eyes again and begin to meditate. I can feel Ebisu bristling with annoyance.
"Can I watch?" Asks Choji.
"Yep. Just stand over there, behind those targets. She has an unusually huge chakra for her age and size, so things might get thrown around a little. That's why you're supposed to unlock kid's chakra when they're babies..." Ebisu mutters.
Choji moves over behind the targets.
It's definitely good that I have a large chakra. Definitely. Probably my adult mind and my robust body playing into that, and as I grow and get stronger, it'll only get bigger.
I begin to meditate and Ebisu places his hands on my forehead and heart again. I hold my breath.
"Wow. It's so... stable. That's amazing." I hear Ebisu's voice.
"What? Is it over yet?" I ask. I open my eyes. Suddenly, I feel a... feeling spread from my heart, slowly up to my head, then down, through my legs, and up into my arms, spreading over each hand and foot. It feels like... Warmth. It feels like I'm filling up with slow, thick, heated chocolate from the inside out, swirling around my heart. I gasp audibly.
"Well? What does it feel like?" Ebisu asks.
"What do you mean? Don't you have chakra too?"
"Well, I've been living with it since I was two years old, so I don't really know what it feels like anymore."
"It feels... Amazing." I stutter out. "Like a part of my I've been missing is there again."
The chakra felt like a long-lost friend, filling me up with a pent-up, excited energy. Like I could walk on water, or run a thousand miles, or fly. It's just totally undescribable. I feel it the strongest over my heart, where the energy seems to swirl around in circles like a friendly hurricane. I try to focus the feeling out towards my arm, but it stays in it's current position. On the third try, the spiraling energy unfurls and falls toward my hand, complying in a friendly way. The chakra moved slowly, not beneath my skin, but in a way that felt like it was in another realm. The river of chakra flowing within me towards my hand began to deteriorate as I struggled to push it further. it seemed like stretching a rubber band- it wanted to go back towards my heart Really Really badly. my chakra began to have a nervous-feeling quality as I forced what little bit I could still control down my arm and into my index finger.
There, on my index finger, a small glow began to shine. A blue light. I watched in amazement and disapointment as my fingertip glowed a friendly blue, then flickered and went out. Yes, I said blue chakra. Not white chakra.
When I looked up, I saw that Choji and Ebisu, who looked like his eyes were going to pop out of his head through his glasses, were crowding around me, watching. The room was dead silent for a while, until I broke the silence.
"Did I do it?"
"Such... Such control! I've never seen anything like it! You must be incredibly chakra sensitive! That must explain why you feel the warmth of your chakra in such a strong manner!" Ebisu exclaims.
A large grin appears on my face. I did a thing. hooray me. I don't know how I did it, but... Whatever. The chakra returned calmly and began to swirl around my heart again. Now that I think about it, I could feel something different about Choji and Ebisu. Something that I only noticed subconsciously before. Choji had a warm and friendly air about him, and Ebisu had a strong and excitable quality to him, with a quirk of weirdness I still can't quite understand.
"Follow me." Ebisu said, adjusting his glasses once more. "Let's go do some control exercises. Normally we wouldn't do this for months or years after one's chakra is awakened, but the extraordinary stability of your chakra may allow you to begin much sooner. Choji, will you accompany us outside?"
Choji and I followed Ebisu-sensei down the hallway outside the dojo and to the left, walking down a long hallway that paralleled the dojo until we exited the back door into a small, city garden, walled off by a tall wooden fence. Ebisu grabbed a senbon and tossed one to me. I skillfully caught it between my thumb and my index finger. He handed Choji a kunai. We sat down on a few boulders that were strewn across the garden.
"The object of this lesson," said Ebisu formally, is to attach the object I have given you to the back of your palm by using your chakra. To do this, simply create a rotating circle of chakra, half inside of your hand, half outside. The spinning force of your chakra re-entering your hand will cause it to 'stick' to your hand, like so."
Ebisu held up his hand and showed that the senbon was securely pinned to the back of his hand. I always wondered how chakra, in some cases, seemed to be 'sticky', and in some cases not. The answer is actually quite simple- eject chakra from a part of your body, and then draw it back into the area you want the item to stick to. The energy, because it is not fully physical, flows through the object into your hand, pinning the object to your hand. Very easy in concept. Not in application. I held out my hand and placed the senbon on the back of my hand. It slid off. I spent a few minutes searching for it in the grass, and put it back onto my hand.
Drawing chakra into my palm is hard enough, but it seemed to be getting slightly easier every time I do it. However, after I move it to my palm is the real hard part. Streaming it out of my hand in a concentrated loop and pulling it back in through the object was even more difficult, let alone concentrating enough chakra to get it to have enough physical-ness to be able to use it to pull the senon back in. Too much chakra in the rotating loop would cause the loop to spin faster and smash the senbon into my hand, very painfully. Too little and the chakra would not be physical enough to hold the throwing needle onto my hand.
"Oh- Oh! YES! I Got It!" I stood up and held my arms up in the air like an American football ref confirming a touchdown. Finally, after two hours, I had success. The senbon stuck to my hand, even though my arms were up in the air.
"You got it?" Asks Choji.
"Yep!"
"Nice! try making a kunai stand up on end on the tip of your finger, like I'm doing."
"You mean, like you're trying to do." I corrected.
"Well... Yeah."
Ebisu left a while ago to teach another student, after showing off how he could make the senbon float above his hand and flip, and do tons of tricks.
"You wanna go home?" I ask Choji.
"Sure... I give up. This is stupid."
I shrug. "You'll get it eventually."
I grab my training supplies and Choji picks up his school backpack and we head out of the dojo. (Choji was skipping school, by the way.)
"I'm hungry." Choji announces, after we leave the dojo.
"Same here, but we have some stuff at home. I went to the market yesterday." I assert.
"Your cooking is great and all, but can't we eat out for lunch?"
I look over at him and smile. "As long as I get to pick the restaurant. And thanks for your attempt to be nice."
"Sure. Your pick."
"Mmmm... Let's go to Ichiraku ramen and see if Naruto is there."
Naruto wasn't at Ichiraku, but we ordered ramen anyway. My favorite is pork ramen, in case you were wondering. (I happen to be allergic to beef so I ask Teuchi to substitute pork instead.) In honor of my numerous visits to Ichiraku's, Teuchi added pork ramen to the menu. What a fantastic guy.
The door creaked open, and Choza silently closed it behind him downstairs. For the past few hours, I have been laying in bed, trying to move the chakra around in my body. I reached out to him with my new sensing abilities. It's not like I couldn't sense things before, but now that I actually know what chakra feels like, it's much easier to look for it and feel it in other people. There are thin traces of it in the air from used jutsu that hang around Konoha like little tiny clouds of mist. Occasionally, as I'm walking around, I feel a sudden and short warm pocket of air. That's concentrated chakra. I think. but I'm developing theories about chakra. Is chakra a living thing, and you have to use handsigns to communicate to it so it can do your bidding? Do all of us actually have two bodies, one made of chakra and one normal? Or is chakra a separate, intelligent person, living inside us? Are all chakras connected in a way we can't see? How does moving chakra through your body actually work? Why does chakra like to concentrate in certain areas?
I pick up my practice senbon from my nightstand and try to attach it to my index finger again, drawing chakra out into a loop and through it, pulling it back in. I've gotten a little better at manipulating chakra. I figured out that by keeping the chakra loop closer to my skin, I won't lose as much to the Dissipation Effect, which states that chakra dissipates if it isn't in a chakra circuit. But the chakra is so thin you can't actually see it, because senbon don't weigh much so I don't need a large amount. I reach onto my bedside desk again and grasp a thin book. I try to attach it with a chakra loop to my finger. On the third try, it sticks.
My bedroom door opens, and Choza walks in.
"Hey." He greets me.
"Hey." I reply
"So, you had your chakra unlocked today?"
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry I missed it." He sits down on my bed and I adjust my position to a more comfortable one. He brushes a strand of hair out of my face.
"Ebisu says that your chakra is extremely stable for your age."
"Yeah." Probably has to do with my adult brain.
"Can you feel it yet?"
I hold up my hands and cup them, screwing my face in concentration. A small, blue light begins to softly glow in my palms, almost invisible.