Chapter 8
A couple more years had passed and the Konoha Orphan Three, as they liked to refer to themselves, were all like brothers and sister. Naruto and Sasuke had certainly had their moments of rivalry, of course, but they truly cared for eachother and shared everything they could with one another. They all ate every meal together and took turns sleeping at one of the apartments every night. None of them were ever alone. And now they were all three at the Ninja Academy, so they even practiced Ninjutsu and Taijutsu together on their roof after school.
After dinner one night, instead of their usual reading, they ended up discussing the Sharingan and what it could do as Sasuke couldn't wait to unlock the use of his.
"You mean to tell me that if I do a jutsu, you'd be able to see what I'm doing before I do it and stop me?" Shanan asked incredulously. For some reason, she thought that was unfair. And how could she ever counteract such a thing? It was interesting to her that there were just shinobi out there that were born more powerful than others. "Alright, that's it," she yelled. "I'm gonna come up with a way to keep my moves secret," she said determinedly.
The boys both laughed at her. Shanan liked to make silly and outlandish statements for a laugh.
The Uchiha clan had been one of the most gifted and powerful clans in, probably, the world. But of course, Sasuke was all too happy to help her try and stop him once he reached his full potential.
As Naruto still liked to complain about, all the girls in school did love Sasuke, but he had eyes for one girl and that was Shanan. She was the kindest person he knew, she was brave and she cared about him more than anyone else did. He also thought she was pretty. Her eyes just happened to be his favorite color of blue. He loved how her hair smelled like flowers. And she was always smiling. She lit up every room she entered, at least, he thought she did. How else could she have pulled him from the darkness so easily?
When his clan was murdered, he thought he could never be happy again. But it didn't take long for her to make him smile. And she was always trying to make the both of them laugh.
Naruto made Sasuke happy too, but he knew that if it weren't for Shanan, they probably wouldn't get along very well. She made them all a family. He had two goals in life. One was to avenge his clan and kill his brother. The other was to marry Shanan.
"Well, the only way you can really do that is by not making hand signals and you can't do ninjutsu without those." He hated to sound discouraging, but it was the truth.
She thought for a moment, "Well then... I guess I'll just have to teach myself how to do... no-handed... jutsu?"
Naruto wanted in on that. "Yes! And teach me too, will ya?!" He could hardly contain himself at the thought of being able to do something that even the best shinobi had never done.
"Once I figure it out I will," she laughed. Was this even possible? She had had to figure out how to do things on her own quite a bit since learning chakra control and about the different types. She knew her main chakra type was water. That had become glaringly obvious as soon as the lesson came up. And she had been made aware of the fact that when she got overwhelmed or over-emotional, her water type would completely take over her body. In fact, she learned that being able to turn herself completely into water was a very rare and powerful ability in Konoha.
She was still working on it, but she was training herself to turn just certain parts of herself into water and she had gotten much better at staying calm
She had also learned that she could turn other... things into water. But, she could make them tangible again if she wanted. She learned that one by accident, actually, when a cat jumped on her as she was running by and scared it. The poor thing became a small puddle and his owner nearly fainted. Instinctively, Shanan had reached down and tried to fix it, and he was solid once more.
Her secondary type she discovered a year or so ago, also by accident. Her and the boys had been sitting on the floor laughing about something silly Naruto was doing and out of nowhere lightning had engulfed her whole hand. Which quickly sent jolts of energy throughout her entire body as the two types negatively reacted to eachother. The boys tried to help, but she ordered them out of the apartment through clenched teeth. The rest of the night was a pretty scary blur as she worked to gain control of it. But she managed to do so and it hasn't happened since. However, she doesn't train that chakra type much, because it's a rare type and she doesn't know anybody that could teach her.
But her main focus now was on figuring out a way to counteract something as powerful as the Sharingan.
After a few months Shanan was sure she'd figured out the secret to no-handed jutsu. She tried the simplest jutsu she could think of. A water clone. She sat with her legs crossed and her eyes closed. "Envision your hands making the signals," she reminded herself. Not only that, but she knew she had to truly convince her mind that she was physically making the signals. It took weeks, but she finally managed at least a blob with hair.
The boys were impressed and it wasn't long before they were all practicing the technique. Every night for the last hour before bed, they all sat around quietly imagining themselves making hand signals. And Shanan's blobs of water took on more and more of a human shape each time and after a few more months you couldn't tell her and her no-handed jutsu clone apart.
They all stood there admiring Shanan's third perfect clone. "I can't believe you finally did it," Sasuke said to her. Although, he thought that if anyone could, it would be her. He truly believed that she could do anything. "We're gonna be the only ones that can do this, you know?" It made him feel like maybe they were some kind of new clan, they would be the masters of something nobody else would know.
"Should we keep it to ourselves?" Shanan wondered aloud. Part of her felt like the knowledge should be shared. But she also had to consider things tactically. She did come up with it as a way to counteract something she would never be able to do. So perhaps they should keep it to themselves.
"No way we're gonna share this with anyone! We worked hard to come up with something new. We own it," Naruto yelled! "Besides..." he lowered both his voice and his eyes, "nobody else would share it with us... nobody ever shares anything with us."
That was mostly true. The three of them had to fight for things most other kids were readily offered. That's why they kept to themselves as much as possible. They all had a few friends in school, but nobody would ever be as close to any of them than eachother.
Shanan often wondered how this would affect her when she graduated to Genin and joined a squad. She couldn't imagine being away on missions without the boys. She already knew she would need to teach them how to cook soon. But how would she sleep? She hadn't slept alone a day in her life. As far as she could remember, anyway.
"We won't share it," Shanan said thoughtfully.
The boys both agreed. This was theirs. And it was now one of the things that bonded them together as a family and they would all continue to work hard to really perfect it. Eventually it would become second nature to them.
They all considered their bond as a family to be among the strongest. It had to be, as they were all that they had. Naruto and Sasuke still fought sometimes, but if either of them invoked a "family meeting" then the other would usually stop and listen. It was something that Shanan had thought of when Sasuke was still new and it seemed to work for them and honestly, brought them closer together as brothers.
For awhile she didn't think they would ever be close. But eventually, they had their own private conversations and inside jokes that even she wasn't a part of. They were the same age, same gender and knew the same people in class and so had a different bond than she had with either of them.
They all shared a certain amount of heartbreak and seemed to be born in loneliness, but none of them had been lonely for some time. Shanan wasn't sure she even knew what that felt like.