Theoretically realizing she had fire-natured chakra should have changed the game for Akane. Once she knew what to look for, it was only natural that she got to experimenting. She had some fire-bending dreams to live up to, after all..
The thing about chakra though, was that her body made it instinctively, and Akane clearly wasn't some genius who could change that, so it turned out she was very limited in the factors she was working with. Sure she knew that it was made up from physical and mental energies, but she didn't manage to make any real progress in changing the composition so all she could really work on was how she could get her chakra to affect things as it was.
It helped that it was winter and that her mother didn't question why Akane was so eager to feed the fire at home. It was a job Akane had long preferred because it left her close to the warmest thing in the room anyway.
Akane was working on making it hotter-and going by the bead of sweat that gathered on her upper lip, she was slowly succeeding.
It wasn't anywhere near blue flames quite yet-but she had to take it one step at a time. She could already do the clan's Katon jutsu-so if she were a man she'd be qualified to be a warrior. She'd caught up to Akios number of leaves just in time to learn together-but she'd beat him to it quite quickly. Akio had pretended not to sulk, but she could tell it bothered him.
She'd told him it was probably the difference in chakra natures, but it hadn't made her brother feel better. Mostly because neither of her brothers thought chakra nature was a real thing.
In their current era, jutsus were pretty much classified as clan and regional things. Once, the majority of the Ninja Clans in fire country had used fire related techniques, which was how it had earned the name. Uchihas, between the kick ass dojutsu, and a wider range of fire techniques available in clan, were just in the higher tier of them.
But there was apparently a clan of fire eaters known as Sanshoo, whose bloodline let them swallow fire and store it for later use that were the closest the things the Uchiha had to rivals in fire related techniques. Another runner up was the Nenryo, whose bloodline meant pretty much all their biological secretions like sweat or even pee worked as a perfect source of fuel for any fire.
The Uchiha, having had a presence in fire country since its very inception, were afforded a certain degree of fame and preference among the Nobles in the Fire Daimyo's court. That was actually what had originally led to their war with the Senju.
Senju, whose clan specialized in water and earth jutsu, were a natural counter to Uchiha fire techniques. Anyone who was worried an Uchiha was on their opponents side turned to hiring Senju, and the natural consequence of killing their respective contractors' 'enemies' had led to the current war. So many dead clan members couldn't be forgiven, no matter the reason, on either side.
Akane had no idea how many Uchiha still remembered what had led to the war. But education was left up to the parents of the child in question in the clan, so she didn't know if it was general knowledge or if it was just that no one cared anymore.
She hoped it would make a difference, making it part of her reasoning for supporting the future establishment of Konoha. She knew it was up to her generation to end the war, if nothing else. Hopefully with Madara having more than one brother around, they might just be able to join Konoha in good faith.
It was so weird to remember she technically had future knowledge about a world that was still so bizarre and foreign to her. But at least her brothers were always indulgent, complimenting her on her 'theories', and were probably willing to listen when she begged them to protect Madaras brothers in the future.
In the meantime she'd asked Naoya to keep an eye out in the field before any battle to see if he could spot the beginnings of any electric techniques, she theorized only the hand signs at the beginning of a jutsu marked its element-and not just because she had a point to prove. Being able to send electric currents down ninja wires would probably help both her brothers out, considering they felt the same when they'd been trying to help Akane find hers.
It wasn't like ninja techniques were thick on the ground.
Naoya was scrambling around trying to find someone they could sucker some genjutsu techniques from. He thought that might be where Akios strength lay, but if that failed Akane didn't see why he couldn't just come up with a few tricks of his own. A powerful technique was often the difference between a life and death for a warrior.
Once upon a time, before her mothers diagnosis, the teenage version of Samantha had shaken her head at all of those shinobi that over specialized in the Naruto series.
Teenaged Samantha did not know what she was talking about.
The sheer amount of man hours that went into shinobi training was ridiculous. So much blood sweat and tears went into just one technique, it was impressive to get any in a couple of days, let alone learning several in a couple of months instead of a couple of years. It had never been as obvious to Samantha that she had been watching the cream of the crop of the shinobi world as it was when she started trying to come up with techniques herself.
The great fireball was the only jutsu the clan taught anyone who wanted to learn. If you wanted more ninjutsu-you either had to be from a Lineage that had experienced shinobi and jutsu scrolls readily available-or a sharingan that could steal what you wanted from your enemies.
Provided the technique in question didn't require a bloodline limit of course. From what Akane understood these days the majority of techniques shinobi used were based on their bloodline, so Uchiha didn't have the reputation of jutsu thieves quite yet.
As Akane couldn't even get on the battlefield-she'd begged her brothers for some candles and tried to do some creatively named 'fire meditation'. It had taken her a month to make the candles match her breathing the way they did from that Zuko scene she vaguely remembered from Avatar, but she had no idea where to go from there.
The feelings of a katon jutsu and those of her various experiments were very different.
When she performed the great fireball, she felt like she was compressing the chakra in her body until it caught on fire and escaped past her throat. When she meditated with the candles, or pushed her chakra into fire to make it burn hotter, it felt like she was aligning the fire with herself-making it one with her intent. The fire she fed chakra into became hers, subject to her will. While the fire the jutsu created, while made by her chakra, was just fire. There had to be a way to meld both. To create fire from chakra infused with her intent.
Akane spun in place while she thought.
All fire jutsu she remembered from the series came from the user's mouth. All fire she'd successfully infused had already existed, had fuel readily available, and only needed to be influenced to do what she wanted. Her life would probably be so much easier if she could get her hands on a zippo lighter. But those didn't even exist in her current world she didn't think-so she would have to be her own. Akane stopped spinning-she needed to master the great fireball down to either a complete lack of hand signs or a single one.
The first step to her dream of badassery had been taken. She had access to chakra. The second step had been to make fire, she had a jutsu that did that. The third had been to influence fire, she was well on her way-experiments had proven largely successful. The current, fourth step was to become a one woman zippo lighter. She had to be able to produce a sustained flame instead of just spitting out a large fireball, the fifth step would be to manipulate it with chakra as she created it.
Hopefully complete mastery of the Kanton was a good step in that a deep breath and apologizing to her tongue in advance-Akane got to work.
She didn't have anywhere as much free time now that Akemi's wedding was over. Her only hope was that Akemi got pregnant, which would completely distract her mother. As weird as wishing pregnancy on a sixteen year old was, she only had a couple of months left before she turned seven and her mother apprenticed her to the main house's nanny.
She had no idea what handle her mother had on whoever was in charge of employment at the main house but it must have been something amazing, because that was two daughters she'd gotten past the 'Lineage threshold' most families in a similar position in the clan could only dream about. Her mother in this life was very impressive when she thought about it, but mostly she tried not to.
Thinking about her mothers relationship with her sons made her sad. Especially with how ardently she loved her daughters. As stern as she presented herself to be, Akane knew she only managed to sneak away to train so often because her mother indulged her. It wasn't exactly a secret that she was often seen in the training grounds, and she understood her mother well enough to know that while she had a perfectly respectable front, she also had all the latest gossip.
It had been how she had managed to swoop in and suggest her beautiful daughter of marriageable age as a caretaker for Ryota, the son of one of the aunts of the Susano lineage's head. Assuming, due to her mothers swift approach and social station, that tales of her son's crippling injury had already made the rounds in the clan, the woman was distraught enough to be talked into the marriage.
By the time the older woman realized the extent of her son's injury was still mostly under wraps, Akemi had already been married in, and tales of how Ryota had fallen for her at first sight was all the clan's biggest gossips were peddling.
It didn't make her family popular among the Susano, but the marriage was done and Ryota was honorable enough to take his role as a husband seriously. It probably helped that Akemi was a wonderful homemaker across the board and solely lacked the pedigree her in-laws would prefer.
She had looked beautiful at the wedding, a gorgeous young bride. Genuinely happy in a way that Akane could never recall seeing her dutiful older sister look before. That morning, as Akane carefully combed her hair in preparation for her mother to style it, Akemi confessed to looking forward to starting a family of her own.
"I've always wanted to be a mother," Akemi had whispered, like it was some embarrassing secret.
It turned out the biggest ambition Akemi quietly held for herself was to have children of her own. It was a very bittersweet thought, considering the lives those children would be living, but Akane was looking forward to being an aunt anyway.
Just like she was willing to love her brothers fiercely. You couldn't live in fear, missing out on everything that made living worth it. Whatever wounds her heart suffered for her choices, she'd wear them proudly. Like she did with the ones Junto had left. Proof to the world and herself that she had loved them as best she could.
Her nephews would have a much better chance at survival than her brothers ever had. Her mother had made sure of that. Marrying Akemi into a Lineage, especially the clans second strongest meant they'd be getting the training that was the reason all the Elders in the clan council lived past middle age. Not every Lineage shinobi made it, of course. But no one was blind to the fact that only Lineage shinobi lived long enough to qualify for the elder council.
And her mother made sure her grandchildren had the best shot in the clan she could get her hands on. Watching the whole thing go down reminded her that her mother was a badass Uchiha in her own right, shinobi training or no. Finagling such an advantageous marriage for a family from the Clan equivalent of the rough side of the tracks? Iconic.
The flurry of visitors after the wedding of women from a similar status in the clan still hadn't stopped. Not that her mother was dumb enough to brag or anything-but she was definitely being watched.
Akane had gotten good at dodging aunties that wanted her to bring bribes to her mother. It was good shinobi training if nothing else-her parkour skills had leveled up out of sheer desperation to evade the women obsessed with getting on her mothers good side to elevate their daughters chances of marrying into a Lineage.
A weird consequence was that now more low level daughters in the clan were seen in the training grounds. Akane thought the other mothers were assuming that Akanes own mom was making her train in the hopes of being more appealing as a wife to a warrior and wanted their daughters to pull the same trick.
Akane knew they were wrong-but if her mother could truly be convinced that training would improve her marriage prospects, Akane would take it. The more time she had to train, the happier she would be. She wouldn't just wake up one day as the fire bender she aspired to be. Akane had to pay the same blood sweat and tears everyone else did, especially for such a banging technique.
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So I'm trying to avoid the genius/Mary-Sue SI trope, if you guys have any advice on that front, that would be lovely. Next chapter should be from Akios perspective, he's very different from Naoya. Or at least Im trying to write him that way, lol.
