Evolve
"Eating us alive, all these young bodies turn. Evolve on a word."
Turns out, Asuma's grand master plan to get out of the D-ranks quickly was a bust. For three weeks, we crammed in as many missions as possible, only to find more waiting for us the following day. We weeded gardens, tracked down lost pets, babysat, delivered mail, and more. Sometimes Sakumo-sensei came with us for the D-ranks. Other times, he left us to fend for ourselves.
All the meanwhile, we took every spare moment to squeeze in team training, and while Sensei's attendance on missions might have been spotty, he was religious about our training.
The first day of group training, immediately following our genin test and the radish weeding mission, went something like this:
"Alright, today we're going to work on finally making the three of you into decent ninja!" Sakumo-sensei greeted us amiably. He had a twinkle in his eye that immediately made me wary. Although, to tell the truth, I was rather excited to start group training with the White Fang.
"Hey, we're already pretty decent ninja," Asuma protested. Sensei smiled. I think he was making fun, pulling our legs just to egg out a reaction. Knowing Asuma, it was probably the perfect motivator to start off a new training regimine.
"Sure, for three kids that just graduated from the Academy," Sensei said, his tone matter-of-fact. "But there's a lot the Academy doesn't teach you. There's a lot of skills you'll have to learn before you impress anyone."
"Skills like what?" Shisui asked. He had his arms crossed and was staring at Sakumo-sensei with wide attentive eyes.
"Well, why don't you tell me. What basic things have you seen older shinobi do, that you think you'll need?" Sakumo-sensei turned the question around.
"Tree walking," I replied almost immediately. "And water walking. And some new jutsu... a lot of new jutsu actually. "
The Academy actually only taught you three E-rank jutsu in total - the transformation, replacement, and clone techniques. Literally everything else was left for either your jonin sensei to teach you, your family to teach you, or for you to learn on your own. I don't think I could name a single person who didn't have at least something else in their arsenal.
I was itching to try learning something new. Preferably a technique that was a bit more exciting than just the regular old same-old average ninja stuff.
Sensei nodded. "That's a good start. I'd also add some specialized taijutsu, the body flicker technique, and some survival skills to the list as well. New jutsu will be the last thing we tackle. It's important, but more ninja die in combat because they can't use body-flicker to dodge or because they can't water walk to fight on a river."
I saw his point, but I still felt a twinge of disappointment settle in my stomach. Asuma grumbled something under his breath as well. When I glanced over at Shisui however, he was nodding, very serious. Well, I refused to let Shisui the seven year old out-mature me during our first team training day, so I straitened my back and tried to be more attentive.
Tree-walking would be flashy enough a technique for the time being.
"Don't worry, it won't be as boring as it sounds. It's more than just learning some new skills. I also want you three to learn to apply them as well. We're going to be doing a lot of sparring over the next few weeks," he reassured us.
That made all of us perk up quite a bit. Isamu talked about sparring with his teammates sometimes, and it sounded awesome. We did 'spar' occasionally during taijutsu lessons at the Academy, but it wasn't quite the same. There wasn't much involved in the way of strategy because everyone was under the age of nine. Plus, all types of jutsu and weapons were always strictly off limits because of the gaps in skill between clan kids and civilians. Frankly, it had always felt a little bit like play-fighting.
Now that we had a jonin to supervise, we'd have to take off the kiddie-mits. Genin had to be ready for real fighting situations. We'd spar with each other accordingly.
Sakumo-sensei went on to explain that we'd start regular team sparring after we became mildly proficient at tree-walking. It certainly gave us plenty of incentive to try and barrel through the first of our genin lessons. We'd set up rules, he said, so that the spar would specifically target using our new skill during a combat situation. Then every time we learned something new, we'd change the rules to focus on incorporating the new thing.
For a team that spent a lot of time making up games to get through D-ranks, this sounded like a great challenge. In retrospect, maybe we shouldn't have gotten so ahead of ourselves. See all of this hinged on us taking the first step- tree-walking.
And let me tell you. Boy, was I bad at tree-walking.
After a brief explanation of the technique theory, Sensei lined us up in front of three trees, and set us loose. I took a moment to stare up at the tree trunk looming above me before I folded my hands into ram seal. Pushing chakra down towards my feet was a strange feeling. I took extra care to keep it tight and bound in my coils while I manipulated it. The potency of it sort of itched. Once I felt reasonably certain that I had enough coating my feet, I launched myself towards the tree.
I made it three steps up the trunk, probably just from shear momentum, before I heard a loud cracking noise and was thrown backwards.
My breath whistled through my teeth as I hit the ground. The imprint of my foot was smoking on the tree.
"This isn't going to come quickly is it?" I groaned, looking back up towards the forest canopy. It seemed farther away than it had a moment ago. Untouchable.
Sensei shot me an empathetic smile that wasn't surprised. Not even in the slightest. Then as if to exacerbate my point, Asuma flopped down to my right, not having summoned enough chakra to stick to the tree at all. Shisui, at least, made it ten steps up the trunk before being repelled backwards.
The three of us had a long day of training ahead of us.
It was the old demons coming back to haunt me again. I'd gotten around poor chakra control in the Academy by just using more. With tree walking, chakra control was mandatory. Every time I tried sticking my foot to the damn tree truck, I sent wooden splinters flying everywhere. After a week of training, I'd singed the bark off of several trees on our preferred training ground, and the imprint of my foot was scarred into several more.
Asuma and Shisui had much better luck. Shisui graduated to water walking after just a few days of practice. While Asuma wasn't quite the prodigy, he'd be moving on soon as well. Watching their progress, while I struggled, made everything much worse.
I started filling my free time with constant tunnel-vision style training to compensate. I'd go to the woods in the morning before missions, at night after dinner, and always on the weekends when we had time off.
After a little while, I managed to get myself halfway up the tree by shear force of will. If I kept things up like this, I'd probably be able to finish the tree-climbing challenge in another week or two. That seemed like a lifetime though, knowing that Shisui might be done with water-walking by then.
The sun was starting to set on a Saturday evening when I was starting to feel a long day of training start to take its toll on me. I'd covered a new tree with foot imprints today, and frankly my body wasn't looking much better off. I could feel a layer of salt encasing my skin from hours of sweating in the sun. My elbows were quite scratched up as well from a few of the tumbles I'd taken while falling backwards off the tree.
Biwako was probably going to scold me later for over exerting myself. The lecture wasn't going to be new for either of us.
"Natsuki-chan, it looks like you've made some progress today," a familiar voice cut through my groggy weariness.
"Sensei," I turned around surprised. I didn't realize he knew that I was out training. It was our day off after all. I figured he'd be somewhere spending the day with Kakashi.
"Do you mind if I walk you home?" Sakumo-sensei asked, dark eyes sweeping over me, probably taking notes of my heavy breathing and scratches.
"Yeah sure," I nodded slowly. It was an innocent enough request, but I could tell there was something he wanted to say to me. It was written all over his face.
We walked in silence for about five minutes before Sensei decided to start.
"I'd like to talk about your chakra," Sensei commented innocently. His tone was casual, like he was making a bland statement, even though we both knew it was anything but.
"What about it?"
"I believe it's unbalanced," Sakumo-sensei told me, hands in his pockets.
I frowned. The comment sounded suspiciously like a diagnosis. It made me nervous. I was so tired of feeling broken.
"So, um, what's that mean?" I asked.
"Have you ever heard of yin and yang chakra?" Sensei replied, answering a question with a question.
"Sure, isn't that like physical and spiritual energy," I nodded.
"Almost," he smiled. "Spiritual and physical energy are things that make up chakra, its what your body makes naturally. Yin and yang energy is actually a type of chakra. They're almost like nature alignments. Every person usually has a predisposition towards a specific ratio of yin to yang. Usually, that ratio is fairly equal."
"But mine's not?" I said, following his train of thought. The word unbalanced echoed in my mind.
"It seems to be predominantly yang affiliated," he nodded.
We walked in silence for a moment while that digested. Sensei had his hands in his pockets, and seemed content to let me take in the new information he was giving me. His presence was silent and held no judgement. Whatever way I wanted to react to this, he'd deal with it.
"That's why Tonbo was the only one to be able to sense anything when I was having trouble in the Academy. He must be able to tell the difference between yin and yang chakra... but things like the byakugan can't?" I muttered. Biwako and Jin-sensei had put me through so many tests when I was in the Academy. Nothing had ever come up. Not even when they'd called a Hyuga in to look directly into my chakra network.
From what he was saying though, it wasn't anything to do with my chakra network, or its connection to my brain. That's what they'd ultimately been looking for before - a physical inconsistency. The way Sensei was talking, it seemed that the very nature of my charka must be... unwieldy.
"Tonbo is the most powerful sensor that the village has seen in ages. He has the ability to sense things that even his teachers can't. They're trying to teach him how to control it, but they're starting to reach a point where Tonbo will need to start teaching himself. His teachers can't help him identify things that they haven't ever seen themselves. You're lucky he happened to be on Isamu Sarutobi's genin team. If he hadn't been, you might've never learned to cast justu," he said.
I swallowed. That would've sucked.
"Alright, so what now? How do we fix it so I can cast jutsu like a regular ninja?" I asked him.
"We can't," Sensei told me simply. "You can't change your yin to yang chakra ratio any more than you could change your chakra's nature alignment. You're going to have to learn how to function with your chakra as it is."
His words felt like a gut punch.
"That's it then? I'm just always going to be behind everybody? I won't be able to perform any good jutsu?" I demanded. My stomach felt like it was twisting into knots. Were these past years all for nothing? Was I doomed to always be just shy of good enough?
"No," he said, decisively without any hesitation. He looked me in the eye with complete and utter confidence. "Unbalanced doesn't mean that you can't perform jutsu, it just means that it'll be harder for you. I can't send you to another shinobi with yang dominant chakra because I don't know any others that exist. You'll have to learn what makes it tick by yourself. But with some practice, you should be able to do almost everything that your teammates can do."
"Almost," I quoted him.
He sighed.
"Yes, almost. Some jutsu rely on yin and yang chakra. Specifically genjutsu is yin affiliated, and medical ninjutsu is yang affiliated. Now, most people can't manipulate one or the other. We call it another form of kekei genkai when somebody actually can - like the Nara for example, and their shadow jutsu. When your average shinobi casts a genjutsu, the jutsu will only use the yin portion of their chakra, even if they can't separate it. The yang is mostly just along for the ride," he explained. "Since your chakra is naturally lacking yin energy, you'll probably never be able to cast a good genjutsu. Or even if you could, it probably won't be worth the chakra cost. There will be some advantages too. I think you'll be very good at breaking genjutsu, and if you can ever hone your chakra control in, your medical ninjutsu could be something to rival your cousin Tsunade."
Then he smiled.
"Different is never a bad thing for a ninja," he finished. "One day, you might figure out how to turn this disadvantage into a weapon."
I frowned, still feeling fairly disappointed about the whole thing. I was absolutely positive that this had something to do with the reincarnation nonsense. Although, I guess I was never going to be able to prove that one way or another. Something had gone wrong when I was born, and I'd forever be living with the consequences.
"Guess if anybody's going to help me figure it out, it's going to be Konoha's White Fang, huh Sensei?" I asked with a sigh.
He let off a good-humored laugh.
"Of course," he agreed.
Asuma, Shisui, and I rolled up to the mission desk on a Monday morning, another week or two after my talk with Sensei, without any particular enthusiasm. I was expecting some sort of courier mission - I'd taken a bet on it with Asuma. Based on the last few weeks of missions we'd taken, Mondays seemed to be heavy mailroom days for the village. Basically, I was trying to be clever to shirk some extra chores off onto him.
Hiruzen cleared his throat as he studied the three of us.
"Hm, it's probably about time the three of you took an opportunity to leave the village," he grumbled aloud, to all of our surprise.
Just like that, he had ever bit of our attention.
"You're giving us a real mission?" Asuma blurted out in disbelief.
Hiruzen gave him an unimpressed look that said: don't make me change my mind.
"Have you ever heard of Santaun?" Hiruzen asked.
We shook our heads.
"Hm. It's about a week's walk North from here. The village is on a fault line, and a lot of their buildings were destroyed in a recent earthquake," Hiruzen explained. "It's a C-rank mission. I expect you'll be gone for at least three weeks, maybe four. They'll provide for you during your stay."
"That's just like a D-rank but outside the village," Asuma frowned.
"I think that's the point of C-ranks," I commented.
Sakumo-sensei cleared his throat, giving the two of us a look.
"We'll make the village proud Hokage-sama," Shisui announced.
That actually made Hiruzen smile, but I could tell we were starting to wear out our welcome. I think deep down Hiruzen loved it when we actually acted like kids around him. That being said, this was a village-wide operation they were running out of the mission desk room. If we hung around too long, we'd be a disruption.
"Alright, thank you for your time Hokage-sama," Sakumo-sensei said. Then he led us out the door, putting a firm hand on Asuma's shoulder to keep him from protesting.
The minute we were outside, we let the excitement loose.
"This is going to be great," Shisui bubbled almost immediately. "I've never been outside the village before."
"Me neither," I realized after thinking for a moment. I figured my first life, where I was essentially born on another planet, didn't count.
"Guess it might be fun," Asuma grudged.
"Oh come on, it'll be an adventure," I poked at him. He swatted my hand, but his good mood was starting to show. Whatever cool-guy persona he wanted to front, the prospect of something new had to be refreshing for him.
Sakumo-sensei put his hands in his pocket and waited a moment for us to calm down.
"I'm going to give you three the morning to go pack," he told us. "Take everything you think you'll need for the month and meet me by the village gate."
"Any recommendations Sensei?" Shisui asked.
"Ah, don't forget extra medical gauze and wrappings," Sakumo-sensei smiled at us, looking suspiciously innocent. "You three are going to get a lesson in ninja travel this week."
With that, we split from our little group of four and went towards our respective houses. Asuma and I raced each other back home, taking to the rooftops instead of walking the streets. I ended up winning. After all my taijutsu training with Hiruzen, I could finally match Asuma in a shear speed contest almost every time. Although, he was never too far behind me.
To my surprise, when we walked into the house, Biwako was home. She was in the kitchen, cleaning up some dishes that we had left from breakfast. I cringed a little when I saw that she'd caught us slacking on our house duties. We'd both assumed that she'd be out at the hospital all day, and that there would be time later to cleanup later without her noticing.
"Oh, hey Mom," Asuma greeted, giving me a panicked look.
"Natsuki, Asuma," Biwako replied, turning around to give us the stink eye. "I hope you've come back from your genin duties early to finish your house chores."
Asuma visibly flinched.
"Of course, Biwako-san," I nodded, shuffling forward to take the plate from her. It would take Asuma and I ten minutes to finish cleaning the small mess we'd left behind that morning. Even if we had some packing to do, that was worth not getting a full scolding from Biwako.
"Um, guess what," Asuma said tentatively to Biwako, as he joined me near the sink with a drying towel. He was clearly trying to change the subject - a classic ninja distract-and-reroute technique. Luckily, Biwako seemed to be in a good enough mood still to play along.
"What?" she asked. Her calculated stare flickered towards her son.
"Dad gave us our first C-rank mission," he told her. "We're going to get to go out of the village for a few weeks."
To my surprise, that did actually earn her full attention. The displeased mother expression faded immediately, and was replaced by a frown.
Hm.
I wouldn't think that this would be that surprising to her. After all the D-ranks we had been taking, it was about time Hiruzen had upped the stakes a little. We weren't even the oldest of her children to take this step. Isamu went out of the village all the time with his team. Hell, he was a chunin now. Sometimes he was even in charge of the out-of-village escapades.
"Where are you going exactly?" she asked us.
"Santaun," I answered because Asuma might've forgotten our destination already. "Hiruzen-san picked the mission out for us. Said it was about a weeks walk North."
Her frown deepened.
"Is there something wrong with that?" I asked carefully. She didn't just looked surprised now. She seemed concerned.
A pregnant pause filled the air.
"You just make sure your team is careful on this mission, okay?" she said slowly. "Santaun is a small village, but its closer to the border than some people think is wise."
"It's just a clean up mission, Mom," Asuma said. "There was an earthquake, and they asked for our help rebuilding. We're not even going to get to fight anybody." He said it like that was a bad thing.
Biwako pursed her lips.
"Asuma Sarutobi, I want you to promise me that you are going to be careful while you are on this mission. Do you understand me? You should never let your guard down when you are close to other nations like that," she glared at him.
"Alright, alright, I promise," he grumbled, crossing his arms and shooting her a surly pout.
"Sakumo-sensei's coming with us," I told her. "I'm sure it'll be very safe Biwako-san."
She looked at me, and her eyes looked tired. Really tired. It was disquieting.
"A ninja can never be too careful," she said, repeating her point. "But you two have some packing to do, right? Hurry up. You don't want to make your team wait for you."
She shooed us up the stairs, and hovered while we packed. One nice thing about having ninja parents were that they had some experience traveling outside of the village on missions. Every now and then, Biwako put in her two cents about extra items we should bring. She also happened to have some extra medical equipment lying around that she thrust on us.
All in all, we left the house feeling very prepared for the supposedly menial C-rank that lay ahead.
After seeing Biwako's reaction to our assignment though, I wasn't terribly surprised later when things went wrong.
Arc Title and Chapter quote from song Evolve by Phoria
A/N
Surprise! Bet you weren't expecting an update from me only about a week after the last chapter. I actually just graduated from college last month though, and I've found myself with a lot of extra free time on my hands now. Hopefully the next chapter will be out within the next two weeks as well!
Thanks so much to everyone who left a review on the last chapter. Remember to leave another with your thoughts on this one!
Until Next Time,
Aule
