Time has a funny habit of flying by when you're distracted.
Despite how busy I was on a daily basis, what with all the training and the academy and spending time with Natsumi and working on my personal projects, or perhaps because of it, I was only snapped back to awareness when, after what felt like a regular day of training, Gai followed me and Natsumi back to Ichiraku Ramen.
They wished me happy birthday.
Six months since the massacre, six months since I remembered, six months since everything changed.
I admit, when the realization hit me and the memory of my previous birthday, with Kaa-san and Tou-san and even Itachi, came back, I cried.
Natsumi and Gai were there for me, and after a nice evening with Gai Natsumi and I went home and she slept in my bed, hugging me in just the right way to let me know it was more for my comfort than hers.
I made sure to pay her back tenfold when a few months later her birthday came. We spent most of the day relaxing, I made her favorite food, Gai dropped by, and we even went to the memorial stone so she could have a moment with Kushina.
It wasn't the first time, I took her there when she first learned about Kushina, and every now and then we go back so they can talk, but as it was the first time we did it on her birthday it felt special.
My training also progressed a lot.
My taijutsu and physical conditioning kept improving, and a mixture of seeing the results and being too proud to just accept being left behind had me keeping up with Natsumi and Gai's training exercises through sheer stubbornness.
It wasn't easy, the more time I spend with Gai the more I'm impressed and baffled that Lee, despite not having any of Natsumi's borderline unfair advantages or my sheer fear of the Void to motivate him, still managed to keep up with Gai.
But the results more than made up for it, even without chakra reinforcement I could make the fastest and strongest people from Before look bad, my technique improved so much that if this was Before I would be considered a master of hand-to-hand combat, and my reflexes are straight-up superhuman even without the Sharingan.
And I'm 9, it both amazes me that my 9-year-old body can even have this much power and leaves me in awe that despite being far stronger than I ever thought possible I'm still a weakling compared to older shinobi.
Leagues ahead of most of my age group, sure, but overall I'm barely an ant compared to a stronger than average chunin, much less the jonin and Kage.
My chakra control also kept improving at a rate that everyone told me was exceptional but to me, it still wasn't good enough.
Maybe it was perfectionism, maybe it was the sheer rush of life that I felt whenever I tapped into my chakra, but the idea of wasting even the smallest amounts of it bothered me.
Once I mastered tree walking it was easy to move on to water walking, mastering it took a bit longer but it was worth it. Then I moved on to more advanced chakra control exercises, thanks to Iruka-sensei of all people.
I might not have much of an opinion on the man, he's Konoha so I'm inclined to dislike him but honestly, he's so unimportant in the grand scheme of things that it feels like I waste of time to hold it against him, but he's a decent teacher and was more than happy to give me access to chunin-level chakra control exercises when I showed mastery of the genin-level tree and water walking exercises.
It helped that I told him what I was aiming for.
Medical Ninjutsu.
It is far too useful to pass up, poisons are something that I don't understand why more shinobi don't use, all those close dodges that people do to show off suddenly become a lot less cool and a lot more dangerous when a single nick is all it takes to have them puking out their internal organs.
The chakra scalpel technique is just stupidly deadly, sure it requires a lot of speed and precision to use in battle with any sort of effectiveness, but I'm already aiming for that anyway and being able to just ignore durability and shred someone from the inside out is insane.
I don't need to go into detail as to why healing is extremely useful in general, but I will point out that for someone like me, who fully intends to not only defect and thus lose easy access to trustworthy medics but also intends to pursue immortality, which will likely require at least some bodily modification that a medic would be useful to have around when performing, it is even more so.
And of course, super strength, because it doesn't matter if I'm focused on speed and accuracy in exchange for power when my chakra control allows me to bring far more power to bear than anyone who actively focused on it.
And the best part, my Sharingan does most of the heavy lifting for me in learning medical ninjutsu.
Want to master poisons? Just grab a book on the subject and read it with the Sharingan active, you'll never forget any of the information there, meaning you will know which poisons to use and how to prepare them. You'll still need to get the ingredients and practice enough to make them safely, but being able to skip most of the learning process is ridiculous.
I can copy the chakra scalpels if I have the chakra control to use them, I can copy most medical ninjutsu as my chakra control is already plenty good enough to do the two parts physical one part spiritual mix to create Yang Release chakra, albeit given how I have a lot less physical energy than I have spiritual energy it will tax me far more heavily than any other release.
Not to mention using Yang release will help my physical energy pool to grow, which in combination with the growth that comes from my training with Gai and just from aging will help it increase exponentially.
And of course, I can do the most time-consuming part of learning medical ninjutsu, learning the medical knowledge, in a fraction of the time others would need because, just like with poisons, all I need to do is speed-read the books with my Sharingan active and then take some time to go over the memories carefully to fully understand the information.
I won't be able to master it instantly, I'll need to practice enough to be able to effectively use the jutsu, to properly add them to my arsenal so I can switch to them without the hesitation that comes from using skills I haven't properly absorbed, and most of the progress in medical ninjutsu comes from experience so I can't use my eyes to cheat my way to mastery there, but the fact that despite already having so much on my plate I still can consider adding something that normally takes people a lifetime of dedication to master shows how much faster than others I'll be able to become proficient at it.
That doesn't mean I don't have too much on my plate, because I do, it is just that I got two amazing things that will let me handle all of that without getting overwhelmed.
First, a whole year after I awakened it and a lot later than I expected it to, my Sharingan finally matured to two tomoe. And as much as I want to curse that it only added more for me to do as I now needed to adapt to the extra visual prowess the increase in everything Sharingan-related more than made up for it.
Second, after being pulled to the side by Gai and told that taking on too much would only hinder my training I managed to convince him to teach me the one jutsu I was looking forward to the most a whole tomoe, and given how slowly my eyes are maturing probably another year at the least, early.
The Shadow Clone Jutsu.
He made me promise that I would only make one clone to start with, that I would only increase the number of clones with his express permission, that the clones could only do what he allowed me to have them do, and that I would take a day off without clones for every three days with them.
But still, I can't begin to explain just how much of a massive help it was, because even with only one clone that is only allowed to go to the academy for me that is still a whole 6 extra hours of my day suddenly free.
I admit I was running myself ragged with my training regiment and everything else on top of it. My fear of the Void would motivate me enough to prevent burning out but it wasn't healthy.
Natsumi also learned it, and she even was allowed to have twice as many clones as I do. On one hand, still having her as my training partner even during academy hours is nice, and given that I can only handle one clone thus far without leaving myself so drained that I can't effectively train it makes sense that she's allowed more.
On the other, even if her getting better only helps me as I get more skills to copy and the Akatsuki gets a more dangerous enemy, I'm still a little bit jealous that despite only taking on a fraction of what I'm taking on she gets twice as many hands on deck.
Speaking of Natsumi, she also improved a lot over the last year.
I'm better at technique, but she's got power to spare. I'm better at chakra control but she's got so much of it that she doesn't need the level of control I'm aiming for. I started learning medical ninjutsu while she's already gotten started on her elemental affinity.
While I can say that overall I'm still ahead of her, it is mostly due to a mixture of me being able to counter her strengths better than she can counter mine and her actually bothering to enjoy her training.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate training and I love chakra, but while she is getting stronger she's focusing far more on enjoying the process than I am. I don't blame her for wanting to have fun like this given how her life was before that night, but I have far too much to do and even more at stake to not optimize my training to the best of my abilities.
That isn't to say I'm not taking time off to relax, mostly on Gai's advice(read politely worded order), but also because if I'm going to live forever I should start enjoying life more. Eternity won't be enjoyable if I spend it solely on working on being more and more unkillable.
It is still preferable to the Void, but avoiding hell doesn't necessarily mean being in heaven.
I even rekindled a hobby.
-[TGaE]-
As I got home and looked at the item in my hands, I couldn't help but feel stupid.
It was an early evening like any other, I was walking home after training and decided to take a different path from my usual one, for the sake o changing my routine if nothing else.
I did not expect to find a store selling all kinds of older items but it wasn't anything too unusual, some people enjoy antiquities, and while it is not my thing I was kind of curious.
The shop was run by an old lady named Akio, she told me her family are merchants and that when she grew too old to travel she settled in Konoha and started selling odd items their company found in their travels.
There were a lot of things for sale, a tea set that supposedly belonged to the Earth Daimyo, a painting of the view of Lightning's tallest mountain, and even a miniature of the massive ships the shinobi clans in Water used to employ before the formation of the hidden villages.
But what drew my attention was an instrument, that according to her came from a land to the west of Wind, an isolated and war-torn land that had very little interaction with the Elemental Nations. She told me that she bought it from a refugee from that land years ago, that she had never gone there, and given that she never heard of it from anyone else she assumed the man was lying, but that he had clearly fallen on hard times and she was interested enough on the instrument that she bought it anyway.
It drew my attention because I knew what it was.
An acoustic guitar.
Before the Void, I remember I used to enjoy music a lot, and while I was far from a master at it I used to play an acoustic guitar I gained from my uncle as a birthday gift.
I never expected to find something like it here, while I never looked too deeply into music I expected that most of the instruments here would be similar to the eastern instruments from Before.
I ended up buying it, mostly because I let the nostalgia carry me away, but now I can't help but feel stupid. I have way too much on my plate, when Gai told me to find a hobby I planned to either ignore it, which in hindsight might not have been the best idea, or experiment with my energies and train Ninshu while calling it meditation.
But what the hell, I already bought the damned thing and it will keep bugging me until I at least try to play one of my old songs, so might as well get it over with.
I sit on the stairs leading to my home's training ground, the moon is full and shines bright in the sky, bringing with it a sense of peace that feels fitting.
I touch the cords and my body moves on its own, emotions long buried and forgotten come in waves as I play.
A warm breeze passes by, the trees shaking gently as I play. At some point I started singing, letting my feelings flow through me as I recite long-forgotten lyrics like I never stopped listening to them, words in a language that this world never knew come to me as easily as breathing.
In a moment of silence, as I stop to breathe, another wave of feelings washes over me, feelings of who I was Before, Indra's feelings, Sasuke's feelings, but most of all my feelings, the feelings of this person I became when everything changed.
I don't resist them, I let them flow through me and into the song.
I play, the cords producing notes that say more than I ever could, the way I feel lighter, my soul feels freer, with each note and each verse, is indescribable.
I don't even know which song I'm playing, I just let it all out as I play, letting my emotions guide my hands and my voice.
I just let go, of the stress, the anger, the fear, the expectations, the ambition.
Of everything.
When I come back to myself, feeling more relaxed than I had in a long time, it is to the sound of clapping.
I snap to the sound, my heart jumping to my throat for a moment before I see it is Natsumi, her blue eyes shining with emotion.
"That was beautiful." She says. "I didn't know you played music."
I let out a laugh.
"I...I haven't played in a long time."
She smiles.
"You should play it more often."
I raise an eyebrow.
She pouts at me.
"I'm not blind, Sasuke." She says. "I could see how you were burning yourself out, I even asked Gai-sensei to help, you needed this."
She's the reason Gai told me to get a hobby? I guess I underestimated her.
Clearly, my poker face is nowhere near as good as I thought it was, because she sees right through me and rolls her eyes.
"Contrary to what you might believe, I am capable of doing more than just following you around."
That is something I had considered, I don't know if it is due to gratitude for befriending her, fear that I'll just drop her, or maybe just who she is as a person, but she always struck me as more of a follower than a leader. She's far from a fangirl who will do anything to please me and she has plenty of individuality, but when it comes to our friendship she is comfortable with letting me take the lead more often than not.
I had worried that I'd made her so dependant on me that she would have no agency of her own, and I'm glad I was wrong.
"I never said you couldn't." I say. "Anyway, I'll go make dinner, is there anything you want?"
She gives me the stink eye but gives in at the thought of my cooking.
As I go inside I can't help but smile, maybe buying that guitar wasn't so stupid after all.
-[TGaE]-
Training to open the gates was hell.
It comes in three parts, the first being improving your physical conditioning and especially stamina enough that you could actually open the gate without breaking your body faster than anyone short of Tsunade could fix it or exhausting yourself to death.
That part was a pain but given that it not only is a requirement for something as powerful as the gates but also the more stamina, and thus physical energy, I have the more chakra I'll have access to and the more clones I'll be able to make it was worth it.
The second part was opening the gate itself. The act of opening the gate is relatively easy, I just needed to know precisely which tenketsu it was and have enough chakra control to delicately open it. Anyone with mastery over tree and water walking had more than enough control to do it.
The difficulty came from being able to both do it quickly enough to make it viable in battle, my first attempt needed five minutes of full focus to find the specific tenketsu and slowly open it, and being able to shut it.
Trying to forcibly deactivate a gate is like trying to stop a waterfall by cupping your hands, your chakra fights you every step of the way and while it lessens and eventually stops with mastery over it closing it for the first few dozen times is very painful.
The third part was getting used to having the gate active. This part was undoubtedly the worst, opening even the first gate feeling like taking a shot of raw lightning directly to the brain and body. I feel like I have way too much energy and my body all but demands I move, act, fight, and burn off as much of the seemingly endless energy as I can.
Which, given how opening even just the first gate shoots my chakra control to hell, is basically what I do whenever I try to use even basic jutsu with it active. Gai-sensei says that reacquiring my chakra control with the gates open takes a lot less work than developing it to its current level but given how much work it took to get it to where I am losing it bothers me a lot.
And when the gate closes I'm hit with such a wave of exhaustion that when I first opened it I outright blacked out when it closed.
But the hardest part is getting used to moving and fighting with it actively, it is a balancing act between feeling invincible and knowing how far I can push my limits before I start damaging my body. It is similar to how my sense of balance used to degrade when I henged into a form much taller than my current body, albeit exponentially worse.
I'm much stronger than I'm used to, much faster too, and given how, despite how it might feel, my energy isn't actually endless, I can run out of chakra much easier. Though that last part is mitigated massively by the fact that opening the gates gives me access to so much physical energy that it is almost more than my spiritual energy reserves.
In short, I have to learn to quickly open the gate, I have to adapt to the power increase so it doesn't just make me lose out in technique while keeping in mind that despite what my body tells me I still have limits and can't push it past a certain point too much, I have to be able to shut a tenketsu overflowing with chakra while my chakra control is shit, and then I have to be able to power through the exhaustion because more often than not I won't be able to just take a nap after using it.
It is a lot of work, that's for sure, and I'm even happier that Gai-sensei taught me the shadow clone jutsu now because if he didn't I'd have to either give up on an extremely useful power-up in the form of the gates until I learned it or I'd have to give up on almost everything else I'm working on, because fear of the Void can only let me push past so much exhaustion before my body just stops doing what I tell it to.
As it stands, I have my clone going to the academy for me and using the time to train the gates when Gai-sensei is in the village or Ninshu when he's not, and with Gai-sensei allowing me a second clone to study medical knowledge and other things I even managed some free time to practice with my guitar.
Things are progressing nicely and I even managed to pull some strings so that when I finish reading up on the required material I'll be allowed to learn under a medical ninja in the hospital, something that is normally only allowed to genin and above.
I can't say it has been easy, and it will only get harder from now on, but I'm making progress toward my goals. Not as much as I'd like, but I guess that if I'm going to be immortal I'll have to learn to be more patient.
Soon enough, I will have my revenge, and eternity will be mine.
"Gai-sensei, Sasuke is broding again." Natsumi calls out.
"I am not." I snap, I don't brood, at most I silently contemplate.
"Sasuke-san, brooding is most unyouthful!" Gai-sensei says. "Come, join us in a light dozen laps around the village."
He gives me a thumbs-up, teeth shining as his other hand holds a dark blue spandex suit.
"Just a dozen?" Natsumi asks with a smirk, wearing her own orange spandex suit. "I can handle 30!"
"Such youth!" Gai beams.
That is, if these two don't kill me first.
-[TGaE]-
You know, when I decided to use a combination of Sharingan granted perfect memory and shadow clone memory transfer to read up on what usually takes years for a regular medical ninja in a few months, there was something I hadn't considered.
It is incredibly boring.
Remembering something and understanding it are two different things, so even with my cheat codes I still have to spend some time going over the information before I can say I properly learned it. And you have no idea how easy it is to lose focus and let my mind wander when going over dry technical medical textbooks.
Physical training and sparring are activities that require active input, even when it is just one of my clones demolishing Kiba in academy spars for the fiftieth time there is at least some level of focus required.
It is the same for chakra-based training, especially because even now I still feel a sense of wonder over chakra someone whose perspective is rooted exclusively in this world never could have.
But just going over dusty books? When I could be doing a million other more interesting and immediately productive things? Not my idea of fun.
If I'm being honest, it is just the facts that being able to heal myself will become an invaluable skill when I defect and that there are a lot of skills and techniques that fall under medical ninjutsu that will be extremely useful for me, nevermind the chakra control exercises that are normally reserved for medic-nin, that prevented me from just scrapping the medical ninjutsu idea and using the time to either train one of my other skills more, or to finally get started with kenjutsu or lightning release.
Did I ever mention that I'm really glad that Gai-sensei's training is all but perfect for giving me access to extra chakra? Because I really wish I had Natsumi's endless reserves of it right about now.
But at least it is over, I'll still have to do some studying but now I'll mostly focus on picking practical medic skills so it should spice things up a little bit.
I walk through the front door of one of Konoha's hospitals, for a moment I wonder if it is a coincidence that it is the same hospital I awoke in after the massacre.
Then I ignore the thought and walk up to the receptionist.
"Excuse me." I say. "I'm Sasuke Uchiha, I was told my instruction would start today."
The woman, a brown-haired older lady with dark eyes that contrast with her white outfit, smiles kindly at me.
"Of course, Uchiha-san." I don't miss the pitty in her voice, even over a year later some people still look at me like I'm some glass doll. "Follow that corridor, your sensei is waiting for you and the third door to the left."
"Thank you." I say.
I follow her directions and soon come upon a white door, I take a moment to quickly review the information, planning to make a good impression on my sensei and skip the "he's just a kid, I should try to keep him away from the worse cases" phase.
Then I walk in.
"Welcome, Uchiha-san." He smiles at me, the way the light reflects off his glasses and prevents me from seeing his eyes makes me even more nervous. "My name is Kabuto Yakushi, but you may call me Kabuto-sensei."
Well, fuck.
-[TGaE]-
This chapter was on the shorter side but I felt this was the best time to stop.
As you saw, I decided to move the story along. In part, because I ran out of ideas for fluff, and spending entire chapters on just training is boring, in part because I wrote enough fluff already and most of the ideas I still have require the story to be past the "Academy Era".
I will write one more chapter in this era that will cover an important change that will affect the story going forward, but after that, we will jump straight into the "Genin Era".
The next chapter will be another interlude, showing a few things that are happening in the background that Sasuke isn't aware of. I'd like to write another big chapter, but I'm doing exams at my college for the next few weeks and work isn't helping so I'm kind of short on time.
Anyway, reviews are appreciated, and see you next time.