Disclaimer: I own nothing but the general plot and OCs
Hey guys! Sorry about the wait, I've been ill, and I'm also on holiday with Grandparents and cousins at the mo. Plus my life is in a bit of a transition period so updates are less likely to be as regular as they were.
This was a bit of a pre chapter on Sonaru learning how to kick butt. I probably won't end up going into too great detail about learning how to physically fight, because my strengths lie in writing about human interaction and personal development. That said, expect it to at least feature quite strongly for the next section, so her abilities read as hard fought for, rather than appearing out of no where.
Also an early heads up, the section afterward is going to be a bit darker than what's come before, and may well boost that rating back up to M.
While I was ill I posted a fair few of my chapter 1s/2s for other stories that I'll be slowly working on over time so check those out if you want to. Some I like, some are a bit meh currently. I hope at some point or dedicate enough time to all of them to make them something worth reading.
This is unedited so beware.
Thank you so much for awesome reviews, as well as favs and follows! Let me know what works, or what doesn't work for you, as well as any prompts for scenes you'd like to see.
Chapter 27 - Worn To The Bones
There were really only a handful of situations that brought out serious levels of visible aggression in me. The first one was when I thought someone was trying to overtly control me based upon their personal (flawed) perception of the world - well meaning or not. An example of this that I saw to be one of the most common was interference in non abusive relationships from friends and family, based upon a personal idea of what someone's relationship is supposed to be.
The second reason was when I thought someone was treating me in a way I had no desire to be treated based upon prejudice. Honestly, I had little to say if someone was treating me differently due to prejudice, but it fit neatly into my own desires. In the reverse situation, however, I didn't grow angry per se, but vicious. Into this category fell clearly unwanted sexual advancements, or comments about the way I dressed, or any expectations that fell upon me due to factors that had little to do with who I was, and other people were not asked to conform to.
The third reason was in defence of my loved ones. Emotionally, physically, financially. If I thought someone was targeting my family to hurt them, I became the most aggressive side myself. My morals were happily thrown out the window, and any empathy I had for those who stood in my way or tried to hurt family disappeared. I did questionable things on their behalf, whether they would have wanted me to or not, and I was unapologetic about it.
The last reason I became aggressive was when I physically pushed my body during exercise. Not just any sort, but exercise that had an obvious purpose beyond getting fit. It was a different sort of aggression than during the other situations. It was also passion, and joy and more an aggression toward myself than anything else. I loved the ache, the burn, the pounding blood, the satisfaction of reaching a goal, the curiosity of just how much I could take, the feel of the wind buffeting my face and hair, the sensation of my muscles pulling and stretching, the increased control of exactly what my limbs could do, and the buzzing afterward in my body of the increased oxygen rushing through my blood. I loved throwing my body around, knowing I could trust it to do what I needed it to. I loved the bruises and the cuts, and the damages it took, I loved the tightening and bulking and toning that occurred over time.
If I thought we were going to start off reasonably light and ease me into the heavier stuff, I was completely wrong. Thankfully I had done my best to remove most expectations beyond 'this is going to be gruelling' from my thoughts. I had underestimated the amount of training DFB and Gai had snuck into my time with them already, to keep me flexible, to increase endurance, to build strength, to improve balance and speed, and likely various other things that bypassed me entirely.
Although DFB had more time than Gai to put toward my physical training, Gai was ultimately in charge of it. As someone who had had to work and scrape for every bit of skill he had, contrasting with DFB's far more instinctual talent, it became quickly apparent that Gai could break down the steps for me, whereas DFB hadn't ever worked with someone starting from scratch.
DFB reminded me of me, funnily enough, trying to explain a concept to someone that I found so easy and they just didn't seem to get. I had known since I was a young teenager that I didn't have a future in teaching, I was far too impatient, and I got frustrated easily when I perceived someone as being too slow. DFB at least, had far more patience than I did. It also helped that as soon as I had recognised our similarities toward teaching, I began asking the questions I needed, in order to puzzle out the answers myself.
Whereas Gai would hand everything I needed to me without requiring any prompting, with DFB I catered my learning style to the fact that he often didn't know what I would or wouldn't just automatically understand.
Training under both men was... completely exhausting, and yet completely thrilling. I loved learning from the two people I loved, such key parts of their lives. It was the most straining and tiring thing I had ever done, working six days a week from morning to evening, pushing and pushing and pushing myself all the time, to my limits.
It was only a few days in, with Gai booming over me, as I heaved a bag filled with small rocks on my back, and jogged up an incline, that I realised just how different this body was compared to my last one. It was like it had been designed to move. It just kept going and going and going long past what I was sure a physical two year old body should be able to take. It recovered faster, and gained strength faster, and muscle memory set in faster, and calluses built faster.
It just performed better in every way. I had simultaneously never appreciated the body I had been landed in more, and never felt more alienated from it. It was so different from my original body, and there was no way I could even begin to convince myself otherwise, as I improved at a terrifying rate.
I ran up and down stairs, I heaved weighted objects on my back, or dragged behind me, I did pull ups, and push ups, and sit ups, and jumps, I crawled on my hands and knees, and up walls without rope. I heaved my body into balanced and muscle straining positions and held it there for aching minutes. I sprinted over greater and greater distances, and learned to throw and catch with greater accuracy and speed and with less warning to improve reflexes. I was taught how to fall safely from different heights, angles and speeds.
Even during breaks, I was given pieces of string to create shapes and patterns with between my fingers, or had games of shogi and go, or at my own suggestion learnt how to first use chopsticks and then increasingly fiddly or heavy tasks with my toes and feet.
My morale undoubtedly took a battering over the first few weeks. It wasn't just physical exhaustion- the fact that my body and limbs wouldn't stop trembling and aching, the fact that I was bruised in all the most sensitive places and couldn't sleep or even eat comfortably, the inability to move without limping despite being asked to run in that state, the disconnect I felt in my jelly limbs right down to my bones, the feeling of nausea and hunger that made meal times so difficult. Those were all incredibly challenging to deal with, of course, but what got to me the most was the knock on effects it all had on my mentality.
I was emotionally exhausted, mentally wrung out, all the more from knowing that this was not a temporary thing. I signed up to this as a way of life. This was never going to end. It's one thing knowing you're pushing your body to limits, and another knowing you'll have to do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day and almost every day after that. I couldn't sleep right, I was groggy, I was over emotional from not knowing if I was hungry or sick, I was in pain all the time that I knew wasn't going away. My days were dogged by two people I wanted to impress and have the approval of, making the pressure to get up and keep going all the more prevalent.
Although I was helped by the fact that I hadn't started from a point of unfitness, but had been at a very healthy state, working to move my body from 'healthy' to 'deadly', rather than from 'sloth' which was what would have been the case had I been inside my original body. Nevertheless, it wasn't easy. I was basically in a gruelling boot camp- a permanent one.
I couldn't put into words how much I appreciated and loved Gai and DFB for doing this for me, for honouring me with their time and their dedication to whip me into something that could protect myself. But also at times I felt like I fucking hated them, when I had barely caught my breath, and my chest burned, and my muscles wouldn't move, and everything hurt so much, but they stood over me anyway telling me to get up and keep moving.
The only thing that kept me going at times, when I just wanted to flop to the floor and tell them both to fuck right off, was the aggression- when DFB looked at me and expected me to give up, or Gai cheerfully grinned at me like I wasn't in agony, when they thought I couldn't take it any more mentally and let me know in subtle or not so subtle ways that that was what they thought, or when they thought I should be able to take more and more and more like what I was already doing wasn't fucking miraculous for a physical two year old, in those moments all I had to keep me going was what my Mother had called my 'fuck you'.
It was a 'fuck you' anger that dominated my thoughts and pushed me past that wall each time, a raging 'fuck you for underestimating me like I'm less than I am' a 'fuck you for withholding your praise for what I'm doing, I'll show you something you can't possibly dismiss' a 'fuck this world that will only ever look at my small body and face and think I'm cute' a 'fuck this limited body, I'll make it do as I want it to'.
I raged, when there was nothing left, to get me back up and moving, until it petered off into something more peaceful, where the pain was numbed, and my body just kept going despite my inability to feel it any more, where my breath scraping itself out my raw lungs, dry throat, and frothy mouth rang in my ears, but also felt like something separate from me entirely.
When the day was over, and I collapsed into a sweaty pile- Gai having gone home after effusive praise to my dedication and hard work- DFB would scrape me off the ground with quiet reassurances that I had done well, and take me home. There, he would feed me because I couldn't move my fingers without shaking to pick up the chopsticks myself, afterward I would strip down and he would carefully examine me to make sure I didn't damage myself too badly. Once he had confirmed my well-being, he would wash my limp form, and soak me in a bath, during which DFB massaged the worst of the aches with sure experienced hands. Lying half unconscious, each night I was semi aware of the herb smelling creams and ointments that were heated and rubbed into my muscles after I was dry, during which I would fall asleep, often in the midst of sleepy murmured conversation that I could barely remember the next morning, when he woke me up to restart all over again.
During more than one morning, or night, during those first sleep deprived, pain filled weeks, my emotional state had me in short bouts of overwhelmed tears. At first DFB wanted to scale everything back, so that I wasn't being pushed so far, but after a tearful conversation- in which I was assured that my body would adapt reasonably soon to eat and sleep properly- I assured him in turn that the tears would pass and I would also mentally adapt. He learnt to just quietly hold me close for a short while, giving my back a rub, and encourage me to continue on despite the exhausted sobs.
The days mostly blurred together at first, only Gai and DFB holding my schedule and life together, as I got lost in a fugue of barely making it. Although they did throw a few mental exercises in here or there, my performances in them dived drastically thanks to fatigue. I gained a new appreciation all over again, at a shinobi's ability to think so calculatingly and be so physically superior at the same time.
No wonder these people dedicated their entire lives to it- considering there was simply no time to do anything else of significance- if to get to even basic competence, it took so much energy and effort. I almost understood why Gai was considered something of a monster for his sheer insane levels of fitness. If it took so much effort and time and dedication to become good, how the hell did he become the best? How the hell did DFB? It made me think that perhaps the best shinobi were not feared so much for their capability, but for the fact that most shinobi simply couldn't fathom how they had gotten there- so much better than everyone else when everyone was working so goddam hard already.
It wasn't until the first week had gone by, that I even had the time to breathe and have a look at the actual exercises I was doing. It was then that I came the embarrassingly overdue realisation that I wasn't being taught how to fight by either of them yet. I left it for another few days, before eventually I couldn't withhold my tired curiosity anymore and asked DFB after dinner why this was so.
As I half lay against him, sat by the table, he absentmindedly rubbed my joints and muscles and he explained to me just what it was he and Gai were doing.
"The Hatake have never been a large clan, but the reason why we have been given such respect is that although our numbers have always been small, each and every shinobi from our clan has achieved a level of notoriety and excellence. Part of this has undoubtedly been due to good genes, but not all. The shinobi clans have their own shinobi techniques that they pass down the generations, often including katas and fighting styles. These katas and fighting styles... in some ways they hold the knowledge and history of an individual clan. They are filled with wisdom and in order to truly understand the style, one must understand that knowledge within it.
"Whilst the Hatake clan is the same, and I will be teaching you this, it's also different. With our small numbers, each Hatake child was able to have their parents cater their training uniquely to them. I will be teaching you the clan way of fighting. You know I'm called the Copy Nin, for my use of sharingan to copy jutsus, but what you probably don't know is that part of the reason I'm so good at applying what I copy to my fighting style is that it is was already the Hatake way."
I was riveted as he spoke softly, with a slightly melancholy tone. I often forgot that although I was still Sona Indrani Ray, I was also Hatake Subaru. With emphasis on the Hatake. DFB's history was my history. His ancestors were my ancestors. His clan was my clan. It was a struggle for me to wrap my head around, when much of the time I felt like I was only linked to the Hatake clan because DFB carried that name, and claimed me as family. It generally didn't click that I was a Hatake in my own right. I belonged as part of a clan, with a past, and a reputation, and teachings. I was part of something beyond my little family of three.
Listening to DFB as he talked of passing on the Hatake shinobi teachings to me, as my birth right, was eye opening.
"The Hatake fighting style doesn't work so well by itself. It was designed to incorporate other fighting styles into it, in order to cater to each individual Hatake's physical strengths and weaknesses. Cunning, the ability to evolve and adapt the way we fight using what both our enemies and our allies use, to be flexible and changeable in our techniques. To fight like a Hatake requires a level of tactical thinking and intelligent fighting that I intend to teach you from day one. I have no doubt you are capable of this, but not as you are.
"My training by my own dad was very intense when I was young. After my mum died, it was one of the few things we had together. He was a single dad and he didn't know how to relate to me other than through the clan teachings- as a shinobi. He loved me very much, but he had relied on my mum to do the day to day parenting. As a result, all he did when we spent time with each other, was teach me the clan techniques. I was naturally gifted anyway, and as a result, I learned fast.
"What he was... unable to give me in time, I learnt from the Hatake archives as best I could, once I became a Jōnin. I can't say with certainty that I can reproduce an authentic Hatake shinobi training, but I have enough to go off of, that I can give you something similar.
"Your training is intended to be even more intense than mine was. In order to learn the clan techniques as early as possible, you need to be able to think at the same time as you fight. Your body needs to know what to do under any given situation, leaving your head free to work separately. The Hatake are often lauded as geniuses, because academy students and Genin are taught to understand exactly how their katas apply in real scenarios- how one move manoeuvres their opponent, the exact damage it does, and which action to take next- you'll be taught that far earlier, to the point that you don't need to give it a moment's thought. This will allow you to turn your mind to on the spot tactics. Thinking in high pressure scenarios. The extent that the Hatake clan succeeded at this was what allowed our shinobi such a strong reputation.
"With the plan to step up your training, you need to be physically and mentally capable of high intensity exercise with a clear mind. You're not currently at that point, and so Gai and I are getting you up to scratch. We're trying to get you to a mental state as fast as possible, that most shinobi in training today are slowly introduced to over a period of years. I would predict, at your current rate, that this will only take a month or two."
The glimpse I received into this idea of the Hatake being almost intellectual fighters, and yet not being like Naras at all, fascinated me. It also appealed greatly to me. I was a thinker, a plotter and planner, undoubtedly. That I was being taught to fight so that I could do so on the fly would have excited me if I had any spare energy to be excited.
DFB wasn't wrong about my mental capabilities though. It was barely noticeable at first, when I couldn't keep track of the days and was suffused in a constant tiring ache on multiple levels- to the point that my very mind felt like it might fall out of my head at any given minute. But eventually I actually had the energy to put some effort into the conversations with DFB and Gai in between exercise. It wasn't much initially, but it was like I had broken through a barrier after a few weeks, and even as the distances grew longer that I had to run, the heights higher to climb, the weights heavier to lift, and the stretches seemingly more impossible, my ability to catch my breath and think afterward got better and quicker.
My muscles still ached, and I was still physically drained, but I could sleep through that with greater ease, and my body seemed to have adjusted to the change in pace, allowing my hunger to come and go when it was appropriate. During games of Go and shogi, I could actually take the time to come up with something approaching tactics. As my mental faculties returned, so did short reading and writing lessons in English for DFB and Gai, as well as speaking lessons for Gai- which mostly consisted of DFB and I speaking solely in English as Gai learned and practiced.
My mental recovery from the extreme exercise got shorter and shorter in what felt like far too great a length of time, as well no time at all. This ability to grasp a clear mind began to creep into the exercise itself without my realising, until suddenly I found myself light heartedly teasing both DFB and Gai the moment I got my breath back, and hampered almost entirely by my physical tiredness, rather than mental exhaustion.
It was just shy of a week after the first month had passed, during which I had watched, nearly disturbed, as my body just got better and better at being pushed to the limits- which just kept getting shoved further- with no sign of slowing down or stopping, that DFB and Gai explained to me that I was finally ready to learn how to fight.
By that point, I had some basic understanding that they weren't just talking about fighting when they said that to me. They thought I was ready to learn how to wield weapons, and martial arts, how to fight with my mind at the same time as my body, how to take someone apart with my eyes far before I had done so with my fists, how to survive in the wild, how to go undetected, how to steal and lie and deceive, what the rules were and how to break them. That and so much more. Apparently, I was ready to learn how to be a shinobi.
I hope that mental clarity fighting thing made sense. It did in my head. Not sure how it translated. Also, again, I am not knowledgeable about fighting or the experience of learning/teaching it, so I'm mostly making this shit up, apologies if it's entirely inaccurate and has zero basis in reality.
BTW for those who may think that time period of learning clear mindedness in about a month is unrealistic compared to the years the others take, remember, Kakashi specifies that theyre taught slowly, and as part of a class, which will inevitably stretch shit out considerably. Plus she is a Hatake, there's a level of just physically nailing it quickly I'm going to allow her.
Anywho, next chap or the one after she's going to be introduced to some of Kakashis more trusted shinobi buddies. Who should it be first? Genma? Tenzo?