I am now 5 years old, and I've been keeping up my training this past year. My body went through the most change, I'm now much stronger, faster, and have much more stamina since I started. I regret not starting my physical training sooner, since I've noticed a big improvement in general on how I feel. I wake up less groggy, and ready to go, I don't need as much sleep, and some other smaller things. Some days though I need more sleep than before I started my training if I've been particularly hard on myself.
My chakra reserves have also increased alongside my physical capabilities. I live mostly inside the clan grounds so I don't get much time to talk to other shinobi besides the ones my dad has over as guests. Due to this, I have no way to tell how my chakra stacks up against other people. I'd say though they've increased by maybe a third? I also made progress on my chakra experiments. I still have no idea how to cast jutsu, since my parents refused to tell me until I started at the academy. So what I have worked on was what I initially discovered about a year and a half ago: reinforcing my body with chakra.
Progress was very slow for a while. I learned that controlling chakra was much easier than controlling mana. Chakra kind of had a mind of its own, so I had to do less of the minor details. I could just set it with an intention and forget. However compared with mana, I had to control every single little detail of the spell or it wouldn't go quite right. Maybe the fireball was too big and hit allies, or maybe it overshot/undershot the target. Chakra, while easier still had its own issues to deal with. For example I had to be crystal clear on what I wanted it to do, or I would get similar problems with mana. The main difference was that it was easier to perfectly imagine what I wanted my chakra to do, versus perfectly controlling every aspect of the spell to do what I wanted manually. Chakra was autonomous to some degree and mana was one hundred percent manual.
This meant that I had almost no issues controlling my large amount of chakra. Where my issues were coming from was being clear enough in my intentions. It was easy to tell my chakra to make my skin harder in my fist, but the more parts of my body I tried to reinforce, the harder it was to separate each intention for each part I wanted to reinforce. I also had to do a different kind of reinforcement for each part of my body since it wasn't one size fits all. As of right now I could only reinforce one of my limbs, or my chest. It also seemed that the more I wanted to make my body stronger, the more chakra it took. Made sense I suppose.
I've been trying to hide my training from my parents, since I wasn't supposed to have an edge over my other classmates. However my dad was Shikaku Nara, i considered him to be the smartest person in the village. I was probably biased though, he was my dad after all. I doubt I was successful in my attempts though, since I had no idea how to hide my chakra; although I knew it was possible. It was probably obvious I was doing something, since both my parents knew my chakra had stagnated a while ago and it was slowly but surely increasing.
It was one of my meditation sessions, trying to understand my chakra better when my parents called me to the living room.
"Kari!, please come down and talk with your father and I"
I wondered what it could have been about? Did they discover my training, and were finally calling me out on it?
As I came downstairs, I noticed Shikamaru was also there. So it wasn't something that was solely my fault then.
"Dear, some sit down next to your brother." My mother said to me, I tried to study her face for clues as to what was going on, but I got nothing.
"Your mother and I have something to talk to the both of you about" My dad said as I sat down.
"Is Shikamaru finally getting in trouble for being so lazy? I asked with a grin.
"Oh heavens no. He's just like your father, so if we were to punish Shikamaru, we'd have to punish him too" she said with a chuckle as she gave my dad a lecherous grin that I pretended not to notice. Fucking gross mom.
"What we wanted to talk to you about was about what you wanted to do in the future," Shikaku said with a slight blush on his face. Again I pretended not to notice. I don't think Shikamaru was even aware of the innuendo.
"I haven't really thought about it much, but why this chat all of a sudden?" I asked them.
"I don't want to do anything that would be a drag," Shikamaru said predictably.
"Did you two forget already that you are both almost 6 years old? The Academy starts in 6 months" Shikaku gave his kids an incredulous look.
I facepalmed. How could I forget? I guess I had been so absorbed in training that I lost track of how long it had been.
"I wanted to just send you both to the academy, since I know you'd both make fine shinobi, but your mother has insisted that I give you the choice whether or not you wanted to go for yourselves." Shikaku said, with a somewhat defeated tone. They must have gone back and forth on this for quite some time.
I gave my mom a heartfelt look. I already knew what I wanted to do; I wanted to go to the academy, but I was still immensely grateful she was looking out for us. I wanted to be at least as strong as I was before. From the limited knowledge I had of this world, I knew it was dangerous. It may or may not be a detriment to me, but I had become attached to these four, and I would do everything in my power to keep them alive. Especially my brother; if anyone tried to harm him, they would feel exactly why I was one of the most feared mortal beings in Azeroth.
"Mom, I want to go to the academy. I want to be one of the strongest shinobi in the world" I said resolutely.
Mom nodded, and dad had a grin on his face and they both looked at shikamaru.
"I guess if Kari is going, I will also go. It's going to be so boring." he said with a sigh.
"That's excellent, I will begin the paperwork right away for your admission to the academy. The requirements are pretty simple. First, you must have a love for the village and have a desire to help preserve peace and prosperity. Second, you need a mind that will not yield, and be able to endure hard training and work. Lastly, a healthy body and mind will be required." our dad said to us. He couldn't stop grinning it seemed.
"To that end, I will show you some basic exercises to get your body in shape before your entrance. You are both already smarter than most kids your age, and you haven't shown any psychopathic tendencies, so I have no worries about your healthy mind." our dad continued as Shikamaru groaned at the idea of doing anything physical.
Thankfully I had already been doing them for quite some time, so I would have no issues. I wasn't going to rub it in Shika's face though, I was going to help him every step of the way like a good sister should. I never had a family besides my demons before now, so I was going to make up for it any way I could.
We started the exercises that day, much to the despair of Shikamaru. It was similar to what I was already doing, just more of them. A thousand punches, one hundred pushups, one hundred sit ups, one hundred pull ups, one hundred dips, and finally a fifteen mile run. That was the end goal by the time we entered the academy, and we would start off at one fifth those numbers, then gradually increase them until we could do the maximum amount easily. After the first dozen pushups, Shikamaru was sweating buckets, whereas I was just warming up. I slowed myself down to match his pace so he wouldn't feel left behind. It took us half the day to finish the exercises, but eventually we got it done. I tried my best to help Shikamaru, but there was only so much I could do.
After Shikamaru went to his room to pass the hell out for the rest of the day, I continued my chakra control practice. It wasn't the official way of doing it, but it was as close as I could get without help from our parents. I would practice speeding up, and slowing down my chakra within the rivers that they naturally flowed along. My body growth was faster than I expected it to be and I wondered if these exercises had anything to do with it. Then I would practice moving different amounts of chakra to all parts of my body without actually spending any. My end goal was being able to coat my whole body in chakra to enhance and reinforce it; something I couldn't do with mana, well not entirely anyway.
This routine continued for the next 6 months until the day finally came when we would enter the Konoha ninja academy. Thankfully Shikamaru got into the flow of the routine decently quickly. After the first month he was able to do the pushups and situps without looking like he was about to die. After the second month he could do the pullups, and dips. Third month he could do the 15 mile run. Fourth month he could do the punches. By the 6th month he could do everything while merely sweating a lot. Another 6 months and I think he could do the whole routine twice over without breaking a sweat.
Our parents walked us to the academy grounds and stopped outside the front gate.
"Good luck you two. I can't wait to see you become excellent ninja" our mother said.
"Kari, don't go breaking too many faces just because someone looked at you funny. Shikamaru, if she does, at least back her up and collect evidence to cover yourselves" Shikaku said with a smile.
"Hey! My temper isn't that bad, I'm just protective of my brother" I said defensively.
Both my parents just looked at me with smiles on their faces, neither agreeing with me or refuting my claim. Meanwhile Shikamaru was slightly blushing. In his childish mind, it should be the other way around. The brother protecting the sister. In all honesty Shikamaru didn't really need protecting, he was stronger now that we had done all that exercising, but I chose to ignore that fact.
"Well then off you two go" my mother said.
We waved them goodbye and headed inside the building. We walked to the front desk to ask for directions, and there was a kind looking elderly woman at the desk directing the students.
"Excuse me ma'am, but where should we go?" I asked her.
"Ahh, you must be from the Nara clan, correct?" she asked
We both just nodded.
"Very good, go down that hall, up the stairs and it's the first door on your right." she told us with a smile.
"Thank you!" we said in unison.
'Those kids are going to be some good ninjas, especially the girl. What a scary amount of chakra. I'd almost mistake her for an Uzumaki' the woman thought to herself as the two kids walked away to the classroom.
Following the lady's directions, we found our classroom pretty easily. Class 1-A was nearly empty when we got there. I didn't recognise any of the students from their particular clan features. Naturally Shikamaru picked a spot at the back of the room; I wanted to sit at the front to get a better view and learn as much as possible. However, I wasn't going to abandon Shikamaru as soon as we got here. Knowing him he'd probably fail from laziness. Not that he couldn't ace everything thrown at him, he just had no motivation. So naturally I sat right next to him, and kicked my feet up on the desk so no one would sit next to us.
As the class started to fill up I noticed something; we were all kids from well known clans. As it turned out I had been pretty reclusive so far in my time in this world, mainly keeping to myself and trying to learn everything I could. I didn't know anyone by their faces, but rather by their clan's famous characteristics. I noticed an Uchiha kid with a sulky face sitting by the window with hair that looked strangely like the rear end of a duck. I don't know if she was from a clan, but a girl with pink hair was among the people fawning over the Duck Butt kid. Another one was a girl obviously from the Yamanaka clan, again i didn't know her face but the blonde hair and eyes gave it away.
I saw Choji walk in and waved him over to sit with us. I may not have been best friends with him like Shikamaru, but I liked the kid, and we got along well enough. He was nice to my brother which was the most important.
"Hey Choji, how's it goin?" I asked him as he sat down.
"Not bad Kari, how about you?" he said, sitting down while munching on a bag of chips.
I noticed Shikamaru hadn't woken up from his nap yet so I poked him to greet his friend.
"I'm bored already. Our parents made us get here early so we've just been sitting here. Hey Shika, wake up you jerk, say hello to Choji." I said while poking him harder. Choji snickered at my nickname for him.
He blearily opened one eye and glared at me for waking him before he processed what I had said.
"Damn you leave me alone. Oh hey Choji when did you get here?" he said perking up at the sight of his buddy.
"Like, 5 minutes ago. Kari offered me a seat." Choji said while still eating his chips.
'Did he have an endless supply he could just pull out of his ass?' I wondered. I also noticed the grateful look Shikamaru sent my way. I had heard Choji had been bullied for his weight, so it made sense Shikamaru would want to be near his friend. Though honestly I had completely forgotten about that when I invited him over; I just didn't want a rando kid to come sit next to us.
Not long after we settled down, another kid came through the door. A Hyuga girl by the looks of it. Wow she looked like a beaten down dog. I felt bad for her, and I kind of wanted to befriend her. Underneath the shy exterior, I could see her kind eyes looking at the other kids in the room, deciding where to sit. She ended up sitting right in front of us, so I'd have the chance later to see what she was really like.
Another kid came in with sunglasses and a high collar. The other kids seemed to get out of his way. That was odd. What did they know that I didn't? If I remembered right he should have been an Aburame Clan, and I recalled they worked with, and tamed bugs as their clan specialty. Was that why the kids were avoiding him? What were a couple bugs? Kids were dumb. I knew not to judge the quiet kid by his exterior. After all I was a recluse too and as far as I knew there was nothing wrong with me. Why would that kid be any different? I decided that us reclusive people had to stick together, and if I got the chance I'd try to be friends with him.
The last kid to come in was one of the Inuzuka clan, obvious by the cute little pup on his head. He seemed to be quite the talker, aggressively getting in everyone's face trying to assert dominance. I didn't like him at first glance, but again I couldn't judge him just by first impressions. He ended up sitting next to the Hyuga girl in front of us. Well I thought that was the last kid, turns out there was one more; a spiky blonde haired kid with blue eyes and whisker marks. As soon as he got into the room he shouted at the top of his lungs:
"My name is Naruto Uzumaki, and I'm going to be Hokage one day, Believe it!" he yelled proudly.
