Another chaper is here!
Enjoy!
The blood red moon that hung high above was an eye—a kaleidoscope endlessly spinning in place as crimson tears drizzled down over the grey and black landscape. Bodies, corpses, were strewn over the ground, Uchiha blood seeping from the vessels devoid of life and wastefully staining the earth and walls. The vivid scene of the massacre was once more put before Sasuke, leaving him to look on in horror from his childhood frame.
The nightmare again, he thought as his body moved on its own. Why? Why am I stuck dreaming of this again!?
Rarely did Sasuke have pleasant dreams anymore. Often he found himself in this nightmare, a prisoner in his own childhood body as it followed the same steps as it did before—hundreds of times after so many years. Sasuke waded through the corpses and felt the phantasmal emotions of horror and dread he did as a child, instead of the seething hatred that churned within him at present.
The same path unwounded as it always did, leading him to his home and the sight of his parents lying dead on the ground. There his brother stood over their corpses with his blade stained with their blood. The same words followed, 'why' and 'how', which Itachi responded to by locking their eyes and forcibly driving the memories of his clansmen being slaughtered into Sasuke's mind over and over, until he collapsed into a pool of his parents' blood.
Then he turned around and walked away. He was leaving him there when the rest were dead. Little Sasuke extend a hand forward as he witnessed his brother heading towards the exit.
The world of contrast and crimson vanished in a flash of blinding sunlight as his eyes opened to reality, leaving the nightmare behind. Sasuke found himself yelling as he woke, an arm extended upwards to the sky above. It was as if he was trying to stop it from falling and crashing down like his life that night.
"Damn it!" He balled his hand into a fist as he caught his breath and slammed the bottom of it into the grass next to him. Even in his dreams Itachi haunted him. "I'll kill you, Itachi. I swear it!"
The nightmare served its purpose in keeping the fires of hatred lit inside of him, fueling his determination to become stronger for the sake of avenging his fallen clan. Sasuke would kill Itachi with his own hands and, to do that, he couldn't afford to just lie around. Not when he could be training.
He sat up off the sheet that had been layered over the ground and ran through the trees until he came to the training spot where Kakashi had brought them to for his practice with the Chidori technique. It was the base of a small cliff where water trickled down into a basin of sorts below, useful for bathing and fishing for lunch. Kakashi was nowhere to be found, presumably having gone back to the village for one reason or another.
Sasuke paid it little mind as he stood at the tree line. It was a straight-shot to the rocky surface of the cliff, which was already pocked with previous attempts at using the technique. He got into position, activated his Sharingan, and held his left hand down at the wrist with his right as he began the process of creating the Chidori.
The chakra coils in his body thrummed as he took a portion of his base chakra and then converted it into Lightning Chakra, vibrating it intensely to generate the electrical energy. He sent it down the channels in his left arm and out of the tenketsu of his hand, watching with his activated eyes as the chakra gathered in his palm. It was too loose, too scattered, basically just a charged atmosphere that would annoy someone at best.
Tighter, he thought as he wove the chakra together while continuing to feed the lightning-aligned element into the compressed space between his fingers. It sparked to life in the palm of his hand, completing the transmutation into pure electricity. The constant chirping only grew in volume and brightness as he increased the density of it more and more. I've got it now!
He clenched his teeth as his hand trembled with lightning in its grasp. It was like a trapped grasshopper or cricket fighting to get free as he constrained the vibrations and power into a single mass. It took all his concentration to maintain it while he charged forward.
No sooner than he crossed the halfway point did he see chakra taking form and erupting from the ground in angled protrusions of solid earth meant to hinder and trip him up. He wove around them only for his concentration to waver for a moment. It cost him as the electricity unwove right when he slammed his hand into the face of the cliff, his fingers yielding as the tongues of electricity spread out over the surface. Sasuke held his hand tightly and bore with the pain as he glared up at the source from which the chakra originated.
Kakashi was there, at the top of the cliff. "You know you weren't supposed to practice without me here. That technique isn't something you should take lightly."
"I don't have time to waste by taking it slow," Sasuke shot back as he went to the starting position to try again. He had to get stronger as fast as he could, regardless of the method or shortcut. He had to if he was going to kill Itachi, avenge his clan, and stop the nightmares. The thought made his Curse Mark stir beneath the seal they placed on top of it.
Kakashi sighed before he jumped down and grabbed Sasuke's hand to look at it. "Let's at least salve and bandage it before you make another attempt. If you wreck your hand then it'll be impossible for you to master it in time."
[0-0-0]
Naruto was training as well. His eyes darted left and right as the white tiger freed of the confines of its mask circled him with speed that bordered on the limits of what he could track. He barely noticed the brief deviation as it turned and leapt for him, giving him just enough time to duck down and avoid it. He flung his kunai in retaliation at it, only for the sharpened point to find the turf instead of its body because the tiger moved.
The training premise was simple. His opponents strikes would be debilitating if they connected, and he couldn't likely beat him in hand-to-hand. That meant mid-to-long range combat was preferable, but his opponent was also fast. If he could keep up with Byakko then he his opponent would be no trouble at all.
"Byakko, take it up a notch!" Karin yelled. She and Sakura were sitting in the shade beneath a tree, watching as he trained. Well, Karin watched him train while Sakura was doing something with a flower bud. "Try not to hurt him too bad!"
The tiger's speed instantly increased, or rather it stopped holding back as much. The claws on its feet upturned and dug wedges in the dirt as they moved. It took three breakneck hops to blindside him from behind with a body-check.
Naruto went flying forward. He was barely able to tuck his arms and legs in so he could roll when he touched down. Extending his legs to brake, they left a trail of pushed aside dirt while he reached into his kunai pouch to fling three of the tools at once.
There was a concussive-explosive tag on each one. The scrolls on their creation had been very useful to pick up from the Library. Granted, he only memorized the pattern of the sealing script rather than analyzing it on a deeper level in order to learn how to reconstruct it, but he was still new at it and pressed for time.
Regardless, Byakko darted between the explosions that went up as sprays of loose soil and grass to hit Naruto again. The jinchuuriki quickly brought his arms up to guard against the impending blow, only for the tiger abruptly dart to the right at an angle and once more to get behind him. Then it rammed into him from his blind-spot again.
Naruto righted himself mid-flight and made the cross-seal. Smoke erupted around him in the form of a dozen Shadow Clones. They charged for the white tiger, leaving the original behind, a kunai in each of their hands.
Byakko avoided them deftly and rammed into Naruto for a third time… only for him to go poof. The tiger kept moving as the others began to fling their shadowed-copied version of the concussive-explosive tagged kunai. Byakko remained uncertain of which was the original due to the fact that they all swapped positions with one another using a Substitution technique.
The basic technique was immensely useful for someone with the Multi-Shadow Clone technique—more so if all of them participated at the same time, making it a confusing game of tag. The constant shifting around on top of the clones being practically identical to every conventional sense meant that someone who specialized in hand-to-hand would struggle to tell which one was the real one. Especially while being mobbed from all sides.
Was it fair? No. But they were shinobi, not samurai. If they were in a fair fight they were doing something wrong to begin with. Besides, the purpose of the exam wasn't the number of techniques or showmanship, but the strategy and tactics used to deal with the opponent effectively.
For Naruto, that meant he could mob them thanks to his ridiculous amounts of chakra. Granted, they weren't durable considering Byakko managed to plow through them with every pass until he finally clobbered the real Naruto by chance. But they'd have other countermeasures to take advantage of that.
With the last of the chakra Karin had stuffed into it spent, Byakko flickered out of existence. Its mask fell onto the ground in front of Naruto. He rubbed the spot where Byakko had hit him last before picking up the mask and addressing it.
"Did you have to hit me so hard?"
"I told Byakko to take it easy on you," Karin said from where she was perched, knees drawn up to her chest and held by her hands. "It can hit hard enough to shatter every bone in your body once it builds up enough speed."
He winced at the thought and held the mask out as he approached the girls. "I want to try another one soon—the flying one."
"You still have to learn how to make yang chakra before your tutor will ask on your behalf since they want more proof you can use and command them," Karin said as she grabbed the mask. "Byakko didn't last five minutes and it took me days to charge it that much before going to bed."
Sakura deemed that to be an appropriate time to speak up. "I think I've got it down how to do it. Sit down and I'll try to explain it."
Naruto took a seat on the grass in front of them and crossed his arms as Sakura pulled out a number of potted flowers that had yet to blossom. She arranged them in rows while he asked, "What are the plants for?"
"Yang chakra governs life and vitality, meaning it can boost organic functions. Kiba and Chouji use it when they use their Clan's techniques, but Medics also use it to heal by directly influencing the cellular structure. That sort of training takes more time than we have."
"Okay, but that still doesn't explain what we're doing."
"Long story short, we're going to use the plants to help you refine your chakra into the yang element." She poured in a large amount of water into one of the potted plants. "You're going to make them bloom. The yang chakra will drastically speed the process up and make the plants grow if you do it properly."
"Just like the First Hokage did?" Naruto said. He actually paid attention in class when it came to what the Hokages were famous for, namely techniques, rather than the boring stuff. "Awesome!"
"No," Sakura said, completely serious. "The First Hokage had a Bloodline Limit to use Wood Style techniques. It was unique in the sense that it could bring plants and the like into existence anywhere and at anytime—that's both nature manipulation and nature transmutation of chakra. What you're doing is simply having the plant do what it normally does faster, bolstering the photosynthesis, transpiration, and respiration rate so they absorb the nutrients in the soil, the sunlight above, and the excess water. Things like manipulating the cell division, elongation, and that sort of the thing tends to require far more refinement and precision—quality control at an extremely high-level."
"In other words, you're going to try to attune your base chakra into yang and dump it into the plants. Because they have a basic growth cycle, the chakra will simply kick it into overdrive." Karin summarized. "You don't need to try and specify what part of it you're manipulating or regulate it because you're going for quantity over the quality. When you do the same thing on the masks, their seals will handle the creation and animation of their bodies."
Naruto snapped his fingers. "Oooohhh, okay. I got it."
"These plants in particular are receptive to chakra, so you should be able to see results quickly." Sakura placed her hand over the pot that she prepared and closed her eyes to concentrate. Her hand glowed slightly and the resulting energy seeped down into the plant. The petals seemed to tremble a little and the excess water began to shrink until the flower bloomed.
"It really worked," Naruto noted. "Good job, Sakura-chan."
"I've been practicing on my own for awhile using one of the books I picked up," Sakura huffed as she finished, rubbing sweat off her forehead. "The thing to take note of is that you're literally taking from your body's physical energy in order to make it—taking it from your cells while trying to keep as much spiritual energy out of it as you can without having so little that it won't form chakra at all."
"I've got plenty of that," Naruto said. True enough, he was a bundle of energy and youth. He extended his hand as Sakura poured water into another potted plant. "Let's do this!"
[0-0-0]
"In hindsight, we should have done that before Byakko ran him ragged," Karin said to Sakura as she walked down the produce aisle. They had just finished dropping Naruto back off in his home, leaving him passed out on the bed from physical exhaustion. Now they were at one of the local stores to pick up some groceries for dinner and Karin needed someone to help with the bags.
"The result probably would have been the same." Sakura crossed her arms in thought. "Though, to be honest, he was getting it faster than I expected."
"He is an Uzumaki," Karin claimed. The fact that her Mind's Eye basically helped her judge just how close he got to the minimal level of purity, based on what she felt from Sakura, didn't hurt either. Because of that she was able to help him better, but some of that was due to his natural talent.
"Do you think this will be enough in the end?" Sakura asked. "Just making him faster and working on his Substitution with his clones?"
"For his first opponent, it will do the trick." Karin picked up some tomatoes and placed them in the shopping basket. "Because the clones are constructs of his chakra they can be substituted without complication and quickly. It'll be ideal if his opponent gets overwhelmed, but that's only taking into account the fact that his opponent is a close-range specialist."
"But if he does land enough hits then Naruto's done," Sakura pointed out. "And then, even if he wins, he'll have to go against his teammate or that guy who hurt Lee. That won't work against either of them."
Karin shrugged. "If he somehow does manage to get the real Naruto, I do have a counter-measure in mind. You'll have to get the components for it since it might look funny if I do, but it'll work. As for the others, I don't know enough about them. If he has access to the masked beasts then he'll be likely to manage it, but giving up is also an option—"
"Fancy seeing you here," said a voice from behind them. Karin instantly locked up as the blood in her body turned to ice. It was Kabuto.
"Oh. You're from the forest," Sakura said. "Sorry about your teammates losing in the Preliminaries."
"It's fine. The fact yours made it to the Finals on your first time is amazing."
He was making small talk with Sakura, paying Karin no mind. But she couldn't help but wonder what were the chances it was coincidental they were meeting here. Was he keeping tabs on her, showing himself to remind her of her mission? Of what failure would entail?
Karin trembled in place when he finally turned to her and extended a hand for her to shake. "I don't think we've had the luxury of meeting yet. I'm Kabuto Yakushi."
"K-Karin Uzumaki," she said as she took his hand gingerly. She'd seen what he could do with them to an enemy. She did her best not to pull away from his grasp. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
"That's Naruto's last name if I remember right." His acting skills were flawless, even as she felt her skin prickle beneath his fingers. Or was it her imagination? "You're related?"
"Yes. I'm a distant relative. I'm helping him prepare for the Finals."
"That's great, but are you okay?" he asked. "You look a little… pale."
"I'm fine," Karin lied. "Just… just a little tired. I just need some rest, and I'll be fine."
"You should take better care of yourself." He released her hand. "After all, you wouldn't want to come down with something when the Finals are starting soon enough. It'd be a shame to miss your relative's first shot at becoming a Chuunin. Depending on how he does, it may be an once-in-a-lifetime performance."
She nodded quietly but said nothing.
"Tell your teammates I said good luck," Kabuto said, waving to Sakura. Then he was gone.
Sakura looked back to Karin and asked, "Are you coming down with something?"
Karin shook her head. "Let's just get what we need and go. Once I'm done with dinner for Naruto, I'll go back to the Inn and sleep it off."
The rest of the shopping trip was done in silence….