Sakura groaned to herself as the technique failed yet again. The jutsu wasn't very useful in a fight, since it's only use was to throw a heavily condensed amount of lightning chakra, but Danzo-sensei said to learn it, so she obeyed.
"Maybe he gave me the wrong seals on purpose to waste my time" she thought to herself. It was a dumb thought, and yet it held: it is way easier to blame others than to accept yourself as the problem. "He probably did this because I've gone so far with my mind abilities," she grumbled to herself.
That was her most recent fantasy: being so good at her mind-related abilities, that Danzo himself feared her. It wasn't true of course; at the end of every lesson Danzo made sure to remind her how far behind she was, so that she wouldn't get cocky, and yet some part of her brain desperately kept thinking that. As she got better at using her ability.
She'd like to say that this was all because of her hard work, but using this different type of chakra was easy, instinctive even.
Her hand to hand combat skills were still pathetic (although Kakashi was making sure she got better) and her reserves out right refused to grow. Both of her teachers said that it was due to her age and genetics, and that training could only do so much, but it was seriously annoying. By the way they talked about it, it's 'easier' to go back in time and seal the kyuubi in her baby form, rather than grow kage-level reserves from nowhere.
She wouldn't give in so easily though: chakra was everything for a ninja, especially for kunochi: unlike their male counter parts, they didn't get naturally large reserves, and nature didn't give them any special benefit to their situation. It's as almost as if chakra hadn't been created alongside humans via evolution, and instead, had been given to them by someone.
"Huh, now I sound like a conspiracy theorist" she thought to herself. "Then again, isn't that what the church of the holy sage of the six paths says? That he gave everybody chakra and it became a genetic thing?" It was ridiculous of course: a single human cannot contain enough chakra for the entire population, and couldn't survive losing such a huge quantity. That was common knowledge. Having zero chakra isn't what kills a human, it's losing such a huge amount out of nowhere that hurts. Kind of like doing nothing for a week, than running for 2 days straight. An average ninja could definitely pull that off, if he trained a lot and found himself ready. A civilian, on the other hand, could never do something like that, and while she wasn't a medic, she could defiantly say that that civilian would die.
As the technique failed again, she decided to take a break and clear her head. Maybe a bit of rest is all she needed? It was lunch time anyway.
She got up and walked out of the training ground, heading straight to the 'Shiba shop'. A grocery store with prices that she could afford.
It took her a few minutes to arrive, and in the mean time she didn't meet anyone to tag along to eat lunch with, so she quickly went to the 'sandwich place' as she called it: a small part of the shiba shop where she could find pre-prepared food to make a sandwich out of, and not worry so much about whether or not she had enough money.
She decided to have tuna today, and with a quick wave to the man behind the counter, a civilian Inuzuka by the looks of it, she left the shop and headed to a nearby bench to eat.
The man made her think about what her life would be like if she quit the system and became a civilian. Her parents would certainly agree, as would the part of her that continually screamed that she wasn't good enough, but she couldn't give up. She owed the others that much.
Instead, she decided to think about her training. She couldn't get the jutsu done. Why?
She had excellent control, something that wasn't hard to achieve with her low reserves, plus the union of Danzo's and Kakashi's training regime. Why couldn't she get a basic jutsu out of the way?
"There is no such thing as mystery" Danzo's words seem to echo in her mind, "just lack of information."
Right. Information. So she either lacked information or had wrong information. "Or you're just not good enough" the anxiety within her whispered.
She banished those thoughts. It was a 1/3 chance. If it was true she'd deal with it, but if it wasn't, then she'd be just wasting time. Now, back to the jutsu.
What did she believe, based on the information she had?
"That I can't get a supposedly easy jutsu down" she thought with a frown. "So either it isn't easy (wrong information) or I don't have all/the right hand seals (lack of information). The jutsu only requires a few hand seals, so I can't be tough..." unless the technique required more hand seals.
She thought about that hypothesis with curiosity: hand seals are required to manipulate chakra, because manipulating the energy wasn't easy, nor natural. The only exception was dark chakra. An experienced shinobi however, could make it feel natural, simply by repetition. Shinobi still get a 'feel' when doing the jutsu though, so the act of using wrong hand seals would have gone noticed, for it would feel wrong. "Maybe I don't have all the seals then?" While that could be a possibility, it still didn't make sense: Danzo was programmatic first and foremost in his training regime. If he gave you a task, he wanted you to grow in completing the task, that's simply how he operated, therefore it would be strange to giver her the task of finding out the real hand seals in a jutsu, because he hadn't trained her at all in seal theory, let alone hand seal theory, which also requires heavy anatomical knowledge in the addition of seal theory.
So she had the right tools, yet still couldn't get the wanted results. She opened her pouch and retrieved her scroll again. There she read the seals necessary and the product of the jutsu:
The user will create a ball, seemingly put of lightning. It will be red in colour.
"That's it. Nothing else." She thought desperingly. She didn't know what she expected : she had already read the scroll after all. "Ok, riddle: I have all the tools, I know how to use the tools, and yet I can't achieve what I want. Why is that?"
She blinked. When you put it that way it seemed obvious: you're not using the right tools, obviously.
Suddenly her eyes widened in realization. "Idiot!" She thought, face palming, the last of her sandwich falling on the ground. "I've been using the wrong chakra all along!" It hadn't been a test! Danzo had simply overestimated her common sense.
She did the hand seals, this time using her 'other chakra'. The results where instantaneous: as she held out her hand, a bright red ball of something that looked a lot like red lightning appeared in her palm, without making a sound.
She did it! Forgetting her earlier tiredness and hunger, she raced back to Danzo to show the results.
"Took you long enough," he said with a sigh. "While I expected you to use the wrong chakra at first, I also thought that you would realise what you were doing was wrong, way faster than you actually did. At least you did it before the day ended."
"Sorry sensei, I didn't think about it because dark chakra seems so...natural? It would have never occurred to me to use hand seals."
"Dark chakra is only easy if you are using your naturally affinity. Everything else is almost impossible without seals."
She nodded. It made sense.
"Anyway, that exercise was just a test to understand the weird chakra better, you can go back to your regular exercises now."
"Yes sensei. What did the test say?"
It turns out that dark chakra was called as such, not because it was dark or anything, but because dark equals mystery, and the chakra was very mysterious.
Normal chakra for one, had a tendency to 'connect' itself into a certain type of matter, that being either solid, liquid, gas or plasma (Earth, water, wind, fire and lightning). That's what 'having an elemental affinity' means. It also had a tendency to turn into something that is easily imaginable to the user, but it wasn't a huge rule. People with water affinities for example, could easily control oil. It's just that water is usually more useful in any situation.
Dark chakra, on the other hand, is connected to things at random. Or at least on the surface: everyone was sure that there was a hidden rule that would make everything make sense, it was just hard to figure out. But anyway, for now nobody knew the underline rule. She, Baku and Danzo were psychics for example, while Kakashi seemed to have some sort of space/time affinity. Other humans that have activated the ability seemed to be able to do all sorts of things, like destroying matter, inhuman regeneration, and even impossible things like seeing the future. It was just insane.
Not to mention the activation of said chakra.
While normal chakra was present in every living being and was beneficial to use in every circumstance, just activating the dark chakra would kill most people. There was a higher survival rate for clans than civilians, but that could be attributed to a strong body.
Sakura, thankfully, had survived. Then again it was hard to say how much of it was luck to how much of it was natural: she had survived Itachi's jutsu and was on her feet in a single day, and had always been resistant to genjutsu's, and had always had a great memory.
Not to mention the fact that she couldn't remember Itachi's jutsu. Sasuke had said that he had seen the death of his clan hundreds of times over, while the anbu that had also gotten hit with said that he had been tortured for three days straight, and yet, Sakura remembered nothing. It was almost as if her brain knew that the information it had perceived wasn't useful, and had decided to eliminate it without a care in the world, just as if it were a mere dream (or better yet nightmare).
In the face of this, Kakashi's decision to risk her life made sense. She was still a bit sore over it though.
"The test was to see how easy/difficult it would be for you to create a self illusion, despite me specifically telling you that it was a lightning jutsu. Apparently none were found, and you used the jutsu without trouble, despite not understanding it."
She nodded. Seemed consistent. Another annoying/useful thing about dark chakra was that it acted as if it were a reflex, not an actual unknown energy that the body can use. While normal chakra required perfect mental discipline and incredible visualisation to use properly, dark chakra didn't even have to be understood to use. This test once again proved that, since she had genuinely thought she was creating lightning (that's why she used normal chakra in the first place), and instead, had created a 'self illusion' that created a red ball of seemingly silent electricity.
"At what level is your self illusion training up to?" Asked Danzo curiously.
"Pretty good all things considered. I can cut off whatever of my five senses I want, see light were there isn't any, or darker, without too much difficulty."
"Good. Can you guess why I wanted you to learn this? Surely removing a sense isn't beneficial."
"Well, there are certain cases where it can be useful, like if somebody used a flash seal or something, but my main guess is that I'm now going to learn how to transfer the effects to others."
"Excellent reasoning, but wrong. Learning to connect and manipulate other minds is a complex thing, for every mind is different. If you want to learn how to deep read another person for example, you would first have to read hundreds of minds, just to get used to the different ways your average person stores their memories and processes the world. Such a task is difficult and time consuming, despite your natural affinity. No, this exercise has the objective to learn to manipulate yourself to be better, to think fast, to remember anything perfectly, to not be distracted by pain during an intense battle." Danzo finished intensely. "The first step, which you seem to have completed, is to cut of whatever you want, on a whim. The next step, is to enhance it".
Sakura looked at the man with wide eyes. To say that she was speechless was a big understatement.