It had taken a great deal of self-control, but Itsu was able to hold off on experimenting with the Outsider's Mark. The Academy made quite a big deal of not experimenting with chakra without both excellent chakra control and proper observation. Itsu didn't care all that much about the proper observation, another of his father's teachings about only telling people what they need to know, but the medical diagrams of people who experimented and catastrophically failed made for a compelling argument.

Now that they had somewhat adequate chakra control, with Itsu managing to stick a leaf to his forehead almost every time, the warnings had toned down from the dangers of any chakra use to merely the dangers of attempting jutsus unsupervised. He was ahead of the curve, actually, able to somewhat consistently stick two leaves at once due to Shino's incessant attempts to force self-improvement down his throat.

With these dangers in mind, Itsu decided to wait until he had at least one jutsu down before playing with his mark. Thankfully, that day had finally come, or was coming soon enough. With the end of their first year in the academy, they had started some new general classes, namely basic taijutsu, basic genjutsu, stealth, and basic ninjutsu classes.

Taijutsu was difficult for him. He excelled in various aspects of the academy, but he had never had any serious physical training. Moreover, as he was of somewhat slim build and average height, there was often a non-negligible physical advantage held by his classmates. He was getting better, though slowly.

He was surprisingly capable at genjutsu identification, able to perceive the subtle shift in his chakra with strange ease, at least as far as his instructors could tell. In reality, he could honestly perceive the genjutsu with about the same accuracy as his classmates. It just so happened that whenever a genjutsu was placed on him, the mark on his hand reacted poorly to whatever foreign chakra was in his system. This resulted in a suddenly rather itchy left hand, his signal that he was under a genjutsu.

It was quite convenient, he thought.

Stealth was pretty great. Itsu and Shino, along with a small selection of clan children, had no issue. Itsu had managed to get nearly to the point of subconscious silent steps at this point, a few of the other movement skills taught by Shino resulted in the two of them being the most capable in the class.

Finally, ninjutsu. The class as a whole was at the point that beginner jutsu training had begun, though for now, it was mainly theory and hand signs. Depending on the level of chakra control, they were expected to be able to create a basic clone jutsu by the end of the year.

Strangely, it didn't seem to be a requirement to master it quite yet. Apparently, a boy who had started a few years before them was unable to perform the basic clone jutsu but had moved on to learning transformation and other jutsus regardless, their instructor once mentioned. He hadn't graduated yet, as he still hadn't mastered the clone technique, but he was still learning higher-year material.

Itsu's chakra control was pretty decent, as far as pre-genin chakra control can be. He hadn't taken to it like the clan children, for example, Sasuke was supposedly already able to use the Great Fireball Technique, but he wasn't incapable. He was just rather decent.

While Sasuke was a thoroughly irritating person to try and force communication with, Itsu couldn't deny he was significantly more capable than most at this point.

Speaking of people he had difficulty dealing with, Shikamaru seemed to have more interest in interacting with him, often purposefully partnering with him in Genjutsu training. Itsu didn't dislike Shikamaru, but it was awfully inconvenient to have a partner who really did not care to put in any extra effort. It was quite a shock after spending so much time with the secretly intense Shino.

It was one of these days, in a Genjustu class.

"You make quite a good genjutsu dummy," Shikamaru said, entirely serious. "It's quite nice to have someone able to quickly detect and dispel a genjutsu, it speeds up the practice a lot."

Now thoroughly annoyed with his very itchy hand, Itsu snarked, "Wish I could say the same about you." Itsu flared his chakra, a random bush disappearing from his view of the classroom.

Shikamaru wasn't as bad as Itsu implied, admittedly. Shikamaru's keen mind resulted in him being able to more quickly identify and dispel genjutsus than the vast majority of their classmates, and his basic illusions were surprisingly decent. However, the combination of a very itchy hand and Shikamaru's insistence to only practice enough to get the instructor to leave long enough for him to relax led to a very consistently poor experience in his genjutsu training.

Itsu's own illusions were slightly above par, Shikamaru allowing him to cast them until he felt it was "good enough" and then abruptly stopping. He couldn't even fit extra training in with Shino, as Shino felt that it was unreasonable to focus on more than chakra control training and stealth in the couple hours they still spent after the academy.

Itsu realized that Shino had managed to drill in the value of consistent training a little too much.

"I'm getting better," Shikamaru shrugged, uncaring of Itsu's verbal barb.

Itsu sighed, "You are. I just wish you spent a little more time on it."

"I wish for a lot of things myself. Unfortunately, we don't get what we wish for, most of the time. Maybe you'll get what you want in the future. I hope I do," Shikamaru replied, still utterly disinterested.

Itsu threw an illusion of a bush directly in front of Shikamaru's face. Shikamaru just closed his eyes and ignored it. Lazy bastard.

Itsu sighed and joined Shikamaru in lazing around. There was no point in wasting time trying to practice on his own, so Itsu often found himself taking a nap with Shikamaru, despite his complaints about the other's work ethic.

Shikamaru gave the barest hint of a chuckle at this, causing Itsu to weakly turn an irritated eye to him. This was a fruitless attempt, as Shikamaru still had his eyes closed and had an illusory bush in front of his face, regardless.

Smug bastard.

Three whole months of theory. It was absurd. Water release uses the wolf seal, except where it doesn't, fire release uses the tiger seal, except where it doesn't. It's all a damn mess.

Shino, in response to one of Itsu's complaints, had thought it was an excuse to give a little extra time to force a bit of chakra control practice down the less capable student's throats. Apparently, a lot of the theory was pointless until you got to the point of attempting to craft or experiment with jutsus, and they never tested much on the details.

But finally, they were at the point of learning the basic clone technique. Iruka Umino, who was usually the instructor of the typical third and fourth-year students, showed up for the initial instruction.

"Hey, Shino, I never asked," Itsu whispered while Iruka lectured, "I know you do some fancy chakra exercises, but will this be your first jutsu?"

Shino nodded, "That's right. I know quite a few family techniques, but none of them are genuine jutsus."

"Huh, you'll have to show me some of those sometime. If you're willing, of course."

Shino didn't respond, so Itsu resumed listening to Iruka's lecture.

"The hand seals for the clone technique are ram, then snake, and then tiger. Channeling chakra in these formations, and allowing the technique to form through these motions before releasing with intent is the main method of using jutsus for now, and for most of your jutsus in the future, but I hope you keep in mind the feeling of this technique and learn to channel it more naturally.

"It takes a great deal of chakra control and familiarity with a technique to reduce the number of seals required to use the technique. For example, the second Hokage. You may recall from your history lessons that Tobirama Senju was quite a skilled user of water release. Most notably, he was able to use a ninjutsu that required forty-four hand seals, the Water Dragon Bullet Technique, with only a single hand seal.

"The reason the academy primarily focuses on only three simple techniques is for a simple reason: Familiarity. Jonin, and most chunin, have used these techniques to the point where often more than one seal is unneeded. These techniques are near ubiquitous in ninja work, and so we prepare our ninja to be as effective and efficient as possible with these techniques. With that said, let us begin. Please, form into groups of five, and..."

Itsu glanced at Shikamaru and Choji. Shikamaru casually nodded back at Itsu, motioned at Choji, and began to walk over to Itsu and Shino. The four of them stood together and began looking for a final member.

"Hey, Sasuke!" said a pink-haired girl, "You should totally join our group!"

"Yeah! It would be great to have you!" chorused a blond.

Sakura Haruno and Ino Yamanaka, respectively, had begun to try and interact with Sasuke significantly more often than they ever had, to the point it had started to become a common occurrence. They weren't the only girls who had started to, either, but they were certainly the loudest about it. It had gotten to the point where the two friends had started to occasionally have small arguments about who was a better fit for him.

The surly Uchiha boy did not seem to care for this fact.

"No, I've already decided on a group."

Ignoring the cries of disappointment from the fangirls, Sasuke began to walk toward his selected group.

"Troublesome," grumbled Shikamaru, not particularly thrilled as the boy stalked directly towards them.

"You will all slow me down the least," Sasuke stated as if he was a king commanding his subjects.

The strange proclamation had the four glancing between each other, caught off guard before Itsu found a response that could technically work.

"Uhh, alright."

The five began the exercise, attempting to form the clone. Or, most of them attempted to. Sasuke, having clearly done this before, formed a perfect clone with a quick flash of the three seals before sitting down.

"I can't leave till you all finish, so hurry up."

Shino was the first to successfully make a clone, though it was quite wispy and, well, distinctly a clone. Itsu wasn't having quite that easy of a time, though. He was able to coax the chakra through his hands quite easily, but the difficulty lay in guiding his chakra through the seals and releasing it, seeming to lose control of the jutsu somewhere between these steps.

Shikamaru figured out the clone technique a short time later, his clone noticeably more solid than Shino's wavering counterpart. The two successful members of the team stopped practicing their own soon after, turning to their less successful partners to assist them.

"I'm no Hyuga," Shino said, "so I can't see how your chakra forms. I can help guide you step by step, though. Could you describe how exactly you're trying to form and produce the clone?"

Meanwhile, Shikamaru looked like he was putting in effort for the first time Itsu had ever seen. He was crouched down, hands in a strange formation, clearly intently trying to figure out how exactly to guide Choji through the process.

Shino's help was still slow-going. A quarter of an hour later, he was still walking Itsu through it.

"Alright, guide your chakra into the ram again, and keep it there."

Itsu let the energy within him flow into his clasped hands.

"Keep it there, and shift to snake."

The energy held in his hands warped as he shifted his hand position, before settling into a weave between the two seals.

"Then finally, Tiger."

The energy weaved itself again with his hands, forming a tight net of chakra, waiting to be unstrung.

"Now, picture forming an image of yourself into the world, and release that energy."

This time, something seemed to click. Whereas before he had found the energy unravel and return to his body, the formation seemed to snap off from him, similar to how he launched a piece of chakra at Shikimaru to enact a genjutsu.

This time, a clone formed.

It was of low quality, certainly, but it was Itsu's first successful jutsu. He was ecstatic, finally, he was able to use a jutsu. He was a damn ninja.

Shikamaru took a break from his attempts to teach Choji to idly comment, "You smile like a wolf, Itsu."

Itsu blinked, though his smile didn't die. He turned to his wavering clone, spying its matched expression.

Huh, he didn't know he smiled like that. The familiar stretching of his cheeks that came with his very enthusiastic smile seemed to project his teeth out as if his canines were bared to bite.

"Hah, got it!" came Choji's enthusiastic shout, shocking Itsu from his self-analysis.

Choji had managed to produce a clone of similar quality to Itsu's own, lightly shimmering and vaguely immaterial, but a clone nonetheless. Iruka broke off from one of the groups he was personally assisting to come to speak to the five.

"You've all managed to make a clone, then?" Iruka questioned rhetorically, sounding somewhat impressed as he inspected the clones. "That's quite something, you know? It isn't often that groups figure it out on the first day, let alone so quick."

The group couldn't help but feel a little proud, even Shikamaru's mouth twitched up a bit at the praise. Excepting Sasuke, of course, who simply gave a disinterested shrug.

"Well, then, off you go. You can stay and practice, if you want, or do it in your spare time. So long as you can consistently create a clone, you'll be fine. If you'll excuse me, I've got to go back to helping the rest of your classmates."

Itsu sat in his room at the orphanage, staring at his branded left hand. The evening dusk was falling into the night, and it was time to begin. He had run his chakra through his hands thousands of times in his chakra training exercises with no noticeable happenings, so he figured there was something more specific he had to do.

Guiding some of his chakra into his left hand, he let it simply flow through him like he usually did. Nothing happened, as per usual, so he changed the flow ever so slightly. Instead of directing it into his hand as a whole, he directed it specifically to the top of his left hand, where the concentric mark lay.

It glowed. The mark lit up as if it was a fire springing to life from a match to kerosene, glowing slowly as it shifted smoothly between shades of dark yellow and greens, all repeating again and again. And then, Itsu felt something.

Chakra was life energy, formed from the energies of the body and soul. It was natural and comfortable. It resided primarily in one's core, seeping out into the rest of the body from the heart, stomach, or some other bit of the torso.

This feeling was nothing like that. It was a cold, oily power that Itsu felt crawling from his hand, ensnaring his entire form. It was concentrated in the hand, certainly, but it wasn't nestled in the hand and spread through himself. Rather, it was as if his hand, his mark, was a reservoir, and by sacrificing some of his chakra he could exchange it for this strange energy to flow into his form, equally distributed throughout.

It felt strange, unnatural, hollow. Itsu knew that this was not something a normal person was ever supposed to have in them. He would have thought 'supposed to have in their chakra,' but there was a strangeness to the power. Rather than mingling with his natural energy, it seemed to wrap around it, like a coat, its oily existence seeming antithetical to the flowing chakra within him.

They had covered sensors in the academy, and Itsu couldn't help but wonder what this energy would look like to them. Or, how a Hyuga would see his chakra. He would have to make sure to empty himself of this stuff before going out next, just in case.

The Outsider had mentioned two things, a conversation he could still remember with almost crystal clarity. First, is the ability to disperse and reform.

He commanded the energy to shift him to the academy. Nothing happened.

Was there something he missed? Were hand seals, or something of that sort required? Did he just not have enough of the energy? Experimentation was required.

A more modest attempt came to mind. He walked to his window and stared out at the trees, which were only dimly lit by the nearly-set sun. More specifically, his eyes latched onto 'the big tree.' The most notable tree in the area, noticeably taller than the rest.

He wanted to go there.

The oily energy shifted, nearly imperceptively, but it was still a jarring feeling. It seemed to coil up as if it were a snake prepared to strike. His hand glowed ever brighter.

Itsu reached out with his hand towards the tree, and the energy struck, wrenching itself from him. His hand involuntarily clenched as if to grab onto the escaping power, and then Itsu was in front of the large tree. There was no grand reveal, the only thing giving away that Itsu had not always been in front of the tree being the tiny, almost imperceptible flecks of black that dispersed into nothingness.

Itsu turned around and stared back at his closed window. It seemed that the key was eye contact, to see a location and to transport yourself there with nearly no trace.

He burnt through the vast majority of the mark's power released from a chunk of his chakra, so he fed a similar amount of energy into it again. The receding oily feeling returned, though this time it didn't feel quite so terrible.

No, this time the oily feeling felt like the sensation of power.

He reached out and blinked back into his room. There was one more thing the Outsider had mentioned: the ability to "see the world through a different perspective." He wasn't quite sure what that meant, but he drew upon more of the energy regardless.

That was one thing, he idly noted, the foreign energy was far more compliant than chakra. There was no initial control training required, no hand signs to form the energy. He just demanded it to do something, and it responded.

So he commanded it to change how he saw. The energy coiled up once again, but instead of lashing out, it seemed to shift within him. It wound itself upwards, nestling into his eyes.

Suddenly, Itsu realized something spectacular. He had a dojutsu. Chakra eyes.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting, perhaps some new colors, or better eyesight, or perhaps even something as strange as echolocation. Things found in animals that allowed them certain advantages.

One thing he had learned in his travels were that chakra eyes were supremely rare. It was often that when a stranger heard his father was from Konoha, they would ask if the Uchiha clan truly possessed the Sharingan, the Heavenly Eyes, or if the Hyuga clan truly had the All-Seeing Eyes. Konoha was one of the major villages for many reasons, and one of the primary reasons was its collection of distinctly rare eyes.

But, as he saw through the walls of the orphanage, seeing the glowing, yellow forms of the other children and matrons, he couldn't deny that he had a pair of special eyes of his own now. It was more than just seeing through walls, though. He could see where the people looked, their cone of direct and peripheral vision. He could even see the waves of noise made, shocking out from an individual whenever they dropped an object, took a step, or spoke.

He had lost the ability to see color, resigned to a world of shades of gray, with the exception of the glowing yellow of life. The trade-off seemed to have been seeing everything in the grayscale with perfect accuracy, unperturbed by lighting or obscurity. The darkness couldn't stop him from seeing a rat scurry in the basement, the outline of a key in a pocket, or the features of the boy four rooms away.

And then, the energy dispersed. The amount used was only able to keep them running for a minute or two. Still, it was quite an experience. It took the energy equivalent of an extreme day of chakra leaf training to blink twice, and activate his eyes for a couple of minutes, and he was left with about seven-tenths of his chakra reserves.

Then, an idea flashed into his mind. The reason they had focused on chakra control and not chakra reserves was mainly to prevent accidental mutilation of yourself, but there were a couple more reasons. While one's chakra reserves start and grow based on their birth, with some lucky enough to have massive pools and others relegated to small ponds, they could still grow with training.

Itsu knew that his chakra reserves were average for a civilian ninja child, which meant that when compared to clan ninjas he was at a disadvantage. The main method to train this, however, was to expend large amounts of chakra. Something that couldn't be effectively done with mere chakra exercises or the basic academy jutsu, and was often unsafe until you had a solid mastery of C-level ninjutsu at the least.

But he had just burned through thirty percent of his chakra in a matter of minutes, not the hours required for it to be done in leaf training.

He channeled a much larger portion of his chakra into his mark, which greedily devoured the life energy in exchange for more of its own. Void energy, Itsu couldn't help but think. It seemed only natural based on how the Outsider spoke of dispersing through the void.

This time, he activated his eyes and looked down into the main entrance of the orphanage, which lay many rooms and a floor down. With his eyes able to make a line of sight, he reached out with his void energy and pulled.

He warped through the walls and floor, as if he had blinked and found himself there, and was exactly where he intended, now bereft of most of his void energy, but down to about half of his chakra reserves. Blinking was a good name for the technique, he thought.

So, he called upon his mark once more. As waves of void energy coalesced within him, he smiled, cheeks stretching to bare his teeth. The hollow, oily substance submerging him felt amazing.