o A Few Days Later o
Naruto dodged a third small fireball before being immolated by the fourth. Thankfully, he popped almost instantly, another clone taking that one's place attacking Sasuke. It had taken a while, but the raven-haired teen had finally started to consistently conserve his energy when sparring against clones. Well, under normal conditions.
"Dobe, that's not funny!" Sasuke yelled, starting another Phoenix Fire jutsu.
"I think it's hilarious!"
Their argument was cut short by Kakashi appearing at the bridge, causing the three junior members of team seven to cease what they were doing and gather around the jonin.
"Nice hair cut Princess," the jonin remarked, noticing a small bit of hair gone from a spike.
"I knew it, it's noticeable! I'm going to make you bald, Naruto!"
"It was an accident, I swear! I didn't expect you to dodge that way. And the only reason he can tell is he's a jonin that sees you almost everyday."
Sasuke glared at Naruto, then rolled his eyes and huffed.
"Well now that that's over, how would you all like to learn some jutsu?"
All three teens directed their attention towards the cyclopean man.
"Seriously? Real jutsu we can use in the field? Awesome!"
"I thought that might catch your attention. I'm teaching each of you jutsu suited towards your elemental affinity. Naruto, you're lucky in that you might be able to learn the two jutsu I'm teaching to Sakura as well as the two I teach you. Now remember, until you practice elemental composition these may seem weak, even if they match your affinity. However, as you practice them, and once you start composition, they will become powerful tools. I'm said to know quite a few jutsu, yet I use fairly few of them. This is because I don't know them all equally well, and some are more effective than others."
"You like to give lectures a lot don't you sensei? I lost your point." Naruto said.
Kakashi sighed, "The point is, if you don't like the jutsu I give you, don't complain, or I'll give you something to complain about. I picked each one with a specific reason in mind, and these will help you out down the road. All right, I seem to be starting with you a lot Sakura, but yours are first. Naruto, pay attention, you might be able to use these as well. Sasuke, you ought to watch, so you can identify the hand seals if someone uses it against you, if nothing else. I'm going to perform the Earth Wall technique."
The three genin backed away to the position he indicated, and the clones Naruto had left from earlier watched from various points of view.
Kakashi slowly performed the seals: Tiger, Hare, Boar, finishing with Dog. Finally he stomped the ground and shouted, "Doton: Doryuuheki no jutsu!"
The whole ground shook slightly as a length of earth in front of him shot up into the air, six feet wide and stopping at eight feet high.
Kakashi shrugged as the genin around him looked at it wide eyed. Waving a clone over, he handed it two large exploding tags. "Now let's see how strong it is. Everyone noticed those were small demolition tags, not anti-personnel tags right?" His audience nodded, the boys especially excited at the prospect of blowing something up. Kakashi addressed the clone he had handed the tags too. "Why don't you go over to the other side of the wall and attach them to the center, and set them off. There's a 30 second delay since they're for demo work."
The clone nodded and smiled, going to the other side of the wall. Kakashi walked back away from the wall and put in his earplugs before handing out extras, "Everyone come stand by me, and keep your ears plugged, this will be loud."
His students quickly followed his advice, although the clones stood in various places to see the explosion more clearly. Naruto Prime raised his modified rain shield around the team, hoping to mute the sound further. Then the first clone ran from behind the wall waving his arms and shouting to anyone nearby that there was about to be a detonation. No one was supposed to use a team's assigned grounds, but it was better to be safe. It then ran off to watch.
Unfortunately, there was no way to know when the tag would blow, although they could guess it was around 25 seconds after the clone appeared waving it's arms. They stood there anxiously, except for Kakashi, and flinched when it finally went off.
It was loud, even through their earplugs and the muting ability of the jutsu. The four ninja could feel the air press against their bodies, and a shock came up through their feet. When the dust cleared, the wall was perfectly fine from this side, which completely shocked the genin. Running around to the far side as they took out their earplugs, the three teens saw small cracks running across the blackened surface.
"Impressive!"
"Woah, that's amazing!"
"You want me to do this, sensei?" Sakura asked as Kakashi walked up to them. He made a seal and the wall sunk back into the ground.
"You won't be able to do that for a long time, but if you practice for a while, you'll be able to block projectiles and fire techniques with it. I'll give you and Naruto a scroll with some tips in a bit, but let me tell you some strengths and weaknesses of it. First, it's obviously a defensive jutsu, but it is weak to electrical and wind attacks. It will stand up to fire and water attacks very well, as well as physical and explosive forces. Until you get very good at earth composition, you will have to be standing on the ground, preferably not on sand or rock, although with practice you can overcome that. Once you have gotten the composition down though, you'll be able to do this."
Kakashi performed the jutsu again, but this time spat a line of mud on a tree. After a moment, the mud expanded and raised itself a foot off the tree. Kakashi released the technique, allowing the mud to fall to the ground.
"Obviously that was just a demonstration, not full strength, but you get the point. It's worth mentioning that if you add extra earth chakra like I just did when you're already on the ground, the wall gets even stronger than before."
He looked around at his charges; they were full of excitement at the thought of learning techniques specifically picked out for them.
"Now, let's brainstorm. How can you use the wall besides a defense? Let's say you blocked an attack with it, what would you do next?"
The teens slouched and thought. A minute later, "If you knew an offensive earth jutsu you could use the wall to fuel it," suggested Sasuke.
"Good! Any other ideas?"
Naruto spoke up, "They can't see you behind the wall, so you should use the time to do something tricky, or do a replacement somewhere else."
"Also valid. Sakura?"
"Ano, could you weaken the wall voluntarily? If you could, then attacked the wall so it blew to pieces towards your opponent…"
"Hmm, tricky, but if you pulled it off it would likely be very effective. Good job. All right, that was exciting; I'm afraid the next one doesn't have such an awesome practical demonstration though. It's called the Underground Projection Fish technique, and although it's only a C-rank supplementary, it's extremely useful. I used this jutsu the time I hid in the ground during your test. There's also a jutsu called Hiding like a Mole that is an advanced version, but it is more challenging."
He listed the seals, then performed them. "Underground Fish no Jutsu!"
He sank into the ground within seconds, and sprang out behind his audience and tapped them on the shoulders.
"Ahh! Sensei, don't do that!"
The man made his odd looking smile, then literally dove into the ground. The genin looked around them, trying to spot him. Like a dolphin, Kakashi breached the surface and threw pebbles at his students, before standing on the ground, which was solid to him once more. The teens looked impressed as they rubbed the spots the pebbles hit them.
"I think the uses for this are fairly obvious, ambush, hiding, running, disorienting your foe, etc. etc. I'll leave it to your imagination to think of possible uses. Now here's a question. Sakura's primary affinity is water, yet I gave her two earth jutsu. Why do you think I did that?"
The genin assumed their thinking poses. Naruto had his arms crossed, and tilted his head left, then right as he thought. Sakura's eyes wandered around looking at nothing in particular. Sasuke had his eyes closed, his eyebrow occasionally going up as he held his chin.
Sakura eventually answered, "Is it because it's very hard to do jutsu without the element you want present? Rivers are common around Konoha, but there's earth almost everywhere you go."
"Very good Sakura, that's correct! Fire and lightning jutsu are easier to do from scratch because they are forms of energy, specifically heat and electricity. On the other hand they are harder to control. Wind is made of air, which is all around us; but water and earth take more chakra and skill to perform a given jutsu without the material around you."
Kakashi stretched a bit and continued, "Okay, It's Naruto's turn. I'm going to teach you two wind jutsu. First is the Wind Enhancement jutsu."
Kakashi drew a kunai that looked very well made. It wasn't your average throw-around kunai. On further inspection, the teens could tell it was a slightly different shape to. "This is my personal close-quarters-combat kunai. Most of our stock weapons don't channel chakra very well, but this one was made with several enhancements, including chakra conductivity. Before I show you the jutsu, I want to show you some basic abilities you can do once you've completed elemental composition training."
Kakashi held the kunai in front of him and grunted, sending electricity crackling over the surface of the blade.
"Damn! When do we get to start composition training?" asked an excited Naruto. The other two looked suitably impressed as well.
"Well, normally you don't bother with it until you're a chunin, but I want you all to start the basics of it after you start taking C-ranks. I'm afraid it's very boring work though. You went over the fundamental nature of each chakra in the Academy right?"
Sakura nodded and elaborated, "Wind is sharp and cutting, earth is strong and hard, lightning is shocking and piercing, water is fluid and agile, and fire is hot and burns."
The two boys nodded, this was basic stuff.
Kakashi nodded, "While any element can be used for different purposes, fire, lightning, and wind are primarily offensive. Water is supportive and earth is defensive. But let's get to the jutsu."
He put away his good kunai and explained. "The Wind Enhancement jutsu emulates the effect of channeling wind chakra onto a weapon, only since it is an actual jutsu, it gives a much stronger result for most people. Remember that I'm relatively poor at wind, so this might be a little lackluster."
The jonin told them the seals then performed them, but instead of yelling the name, he took a deep breath and grabbed a shuriken and basic kunai. Breathing out onto the shuriken, he made a large nebulous outline of churning wind to wrap around the throwing star, maybe a foot in diameter. He had it lying flat on his fingers, and made sure his students noticed that it was stuck to his hand with chakra by turning his hand upside down. He then flung his arm out towards a small boulder nearby. The genin were stunned to watch the projectile carve straight through solid rock and dig a skinny trench for 5 yards through the dirt before stopping.
Kakashi wasn't done though, he still had some breath left, and applied it to the kunai he was holding. He started at the base and exhaled as he drew the kunai down, away from his mouth, extending a blade of air two feet long. "Anyone care to sacrifice a kunai to see something really cool?"
Naruto leapt forward, holding out another kunai. Kakashi smiled and accepted it, then pressed the two knives together blade to blade. Within three seconds, Naruto's blade had been cut straight through by the jonin's wind enhanced kunai.
"This should be very useful in conjunction with your clone's copied weapons. Since it's so lethal, I don't want you using in spars once you've learned it unless I allow you to, got it?"
Naruto had a grin that took up most of his face as he nodded enthusiastically.
"Okay, the second wind jutsu is called Gale Palm, and it creates a very strong wind, enough to knock over an opponent, or to boost projectiles. Most ninja that use it are experienced enough to just slap their hands together, but if you use the bird seal first, and visualize the result, you'll be able to focus the chakra correctly without composition training."
Kakashi demonstrated, slamming his hands together flat, creating a strong blast of air in the direction he was facing.
"Alright, Sasuke's turn now. You're a little tougher, since you have access to the Uchiha library, you can find instructions to almost all the fire jutsu I know. So I'm going to teach you one lightning jutsu and help you perfect one fire jutsu of your choice."
Sasuke nodded, finding that a fair proposal.
"I'm going to show you Electric Arcs jutsu. It sends pseudo random arcs of electricity from your hands to where you direct them. You've seen the Star Wars manga, right?"
The teens nodded, Naruto quite vigorously. There were rumors they were going to make it into a movie, but were having a tough time with special effects until they turned to genjutsu specialists. Supposedly a bunch of them were using henge and other optical jutsu to make props and effects.
"Force lightning was based off of this jutsu. Remember though, while it can be quite strong, it's also fairly draining, so you should only use it for five, maybe ten seconds at a time on its weakest setting. It's also fairly short range."
As Kakashi prepared to demonstrate this technique, all three genin looked ecstatic. It wasn't every day you got to see a move right out of a manga, and force lightning just looks so cool.
The jonin walked closer to the boulder he had carved up with the wind shuriken and performed the required seals slowly, saying them out loud. Then he ran through it a second time normally and called out "Raiton: Electric Arcs no jutsu!"
Arcs of electricity crackled to life, firing between Kakashi's fingers and the stone he was pointing at. The tendrils' paths appeared random, and they would be nearly impossible to dodge. Even keeping in mind that it was their teacher's strongest element, the destructive power was impressive, the writhing arcs carving scribbled lines out of the rock's face. It looked like a dozen worms eating their way across the surface of the boulder.
Kakashi made a brief shout, and the arcs got thicker, making it too bright to look at directly, before he stopped suddenly. In the brief time it had been stronger, the jutsu had reduced the already abused boulder to a pile of large rubble.
The cyclopean man took a deep breath, then exhaled. "You all covered fundamentals of electricity right? Wattage verses amperage verses voltage, and so on? I only ask these questions because it's been a while since I was in the academy myself."
Naruto beat Sakura to answering the question. "Sure, voltage is like water pressure, amperage is like the volume of water – how wide the pipe is -, and wattage is the actual amount of electricity getting moved, pressure times pipe width."
"Yes, that's a simple but mostly accurate way of looking at it. Now I was using extremely high voltage, and a fair amount of amperage until the end where I pumped up the amperage as well. To hit my target at this distance will take the same amount of voltage, but what if I lowered the amperage to almost nothing?"
His students pondered that for a few minutes before giving up. "Sorry sensei, they didn't really go very deep on the subject. Would the arcs connect, but not do any damage?" Sakura guessed.
"Yes actually. Well, it's more complicated than that. At very low amperages there is a mild shock, like static in the winter. As the amperage grows, it becomes more painful until at ten milliamps electricity paralyses your voluntary muscles. Between 20 milliamps and 100 milliamps, breathing temporarily stops, and from one to two tenths of an amp the heart goes into ventricular fibrillation. Ironically, if you go above that, you start burning things, but the chance of death actually goes down."
"That is complicated. I'm glad I'm not a lightning nature," Naruto joked. Sasuke chuckled.
The adult continued, "If you drop the voltage, the jutsu takes much less chakra to perform, and will only shock targets near your fists. Since it is so versatile, it takes a lot of training to master it." Kakashi looked directly at Sasuke. "Like the wind enhancement jutsu, this is a very dangerous tool, and you are not to use it against anyone you don't want dead until you've had sufficient composition training and I say you can. With this jutsu it is much easier to kill or seriously wound your target then it is to paralyze them, even if you don't want them hurt."
Sasuke nodded seriously, and Kakashi smiled. "The reason I'm teaching you these is because believe it or not, I'm pretty proud of you all. I think you're doing a damn fine job so far. I've been pushing you much harder than most of the other jonin sensei; while there have been a few bumps you haven't let me down. So as long as none of you do something stupid, I'm planning on letting you take the minimum number of D-plus-ranks."
Naruto grabbed both his teammates around the shoulders and did a stupid looking jig. "Hah! This calls for a celebration! Let's skip ramen today and go to The Bunch of Grapes for some of that piza stuff!"
Everyone was shocked. "Are you all right Naruto?" Sakura asked, "I learned a basic diagnostic medical jutsu over the weekend, I think I ought to try it on you."
"I'm not sick, I just want pissa and, um, flys."
"Pizza and fries Naruto," corrected Kakashi, "and I think it's great you want to broaden your culinary horizon. Does anyone object?"
Sakura shook her head in the negative, and Sasuke shrugged amiably as he removed Naruto's appendage from around his shoulder.
"Good then, but it isn't lunch time yet, I want you all to read at least one of the jutsu scrolls I'll give you, then start practicing it while I help each of you one on one."
The jonin handed out the scrolls, Naruto getting four, Sakura two, and Sasuke one. If Sasuke was unhappy with this, he didn't show it, appearing to be quite pleased to get such a powerful and multifaceted jutsu, as well as the promise of help towards perfecting a fire jutsu of his choice.
"One more note, today we'll be doing a special mission; I don't want to ruin the surprise, and it's technically still a d-plus-rank, but I think you'll like the change of pace!"
Naruto was visibly restraining himself from questioning his sensei about this mission, but after a minute of reading one of his wind scrolls, his attention turned to learning cool moves of death and destruction.
Sakura finished her earth wall scroll and mentally debated reading the underground fish versus starting to practice earth wall. Deciding that if she read both, she could more easily decide which to practice, she opened up the second scroll and started committing it to memory.
Sasuke was also a quick reader, and as he had only one scroll (albeit a long one), stood up to start practicing first.
"Remember to start out with very low voltage and amperage at first Sasuke, I'm trusting you not to kill yourself from chakra exhaustion. Go over to that boulder and keep your hands an inch from the surface after you perform the jutsu. Increase the voltage until you make sparks, but keep the amperage low," Kakashi said absently as he read from his 'precious'.
Sasuke went off to do that as Sakura wrapped up her scroll and lay it next to her. Staying seated, she performed the seals required for the underground fish projection technique. "Underground Fish no jutsu!"
The girl slowly sank into the ground about an inch before stopping.
"Good start. Remember to focus on the visualization and chakra flow. Being underground feels really weird, so it will take some concentration. Do not submerge your head until I allow you to; if you stop the jutsu underground you'll be trapped and unable to breath."
Naruto meanwhile had scanned both wind scrolls and decided gale palm would be easier to learn. Having finished that scroll, the blond walked off and visualized a strong burst of wind while holding the bird seal. Releasing the seal, the boy shouted "Gale Palm no jutsu!" and brought his arms together slapping his hands. A weak breeze started with the bang of his palms.
"That was pretty poor, the only reason you got the breeze is because you're so wind aligned. On the bright side, that potential means if you ever perfect the technique it could literally blow people away," Kakashi commented.
Naruto nodded, and made 200 clones that ran off in all directions to find space to work. Soon the entire area was windy, with confusing buffets of air blowing in every direction. Naruto Prime sat and read the wind enhancement scroll. Kakashi made a small nod, and continued reading his love.
oooooo
The three teens had made progress, but lunchtime had come and passed, and now they needed to get their 'special' mission from the tower.
"That was delicious; next time can we try the pineapple and ham pizza?" Naruto asked as they traveled to the Hokage Tower.
"We can each get a small pizza for ourselves, I want to try anchovies," Sakura declared.
"Hnn, you all want too complicated ones. Cheese, onions, bell peppers, with extra tomato sauce."
"Sounds boring to me, 'but to each, their own'. Why the extra sauce? Why not cheese?"
"I like tomatoes."
"So you do like something after all! That's good."
"Hnn."
The four ninja continued in silence the rest of the way to the tower. They were nodded up by the receptionist, and entered the mission room. They had seen the Hokage for the first three days, but after that, it was all taken care of by chunin like Iruka and tokubetsu chunin. The three hadn't been aware that there were special chunin or genin, and were interested to learn that many civilians held clerical positions, since trained ninja were too important to keep behind the desk constantly. Therefore, tokubetsu genin and chunin were non-fighting civilians with skills needed for a military related job. It also cleared up the matter of security clearance.
"Hey guys, we're here to pick up the supply run job," Kakashi said as they entered the room.
Iruka wasn't here today, so the team didn't know anyone by name.
"Good, that patrol station needs this stuff pretty bad. You're not exactly in a rush, but don't lollygag," replied the day's lead mission handler. "It's on the border of Suna, which is why it's only a d-plus, there should be no chance of fighting. Still, there could be bandits desperate enough to try and take the supplies off a genin team, so stay sharp."
The man handed Kakashi a map and a stack of storage seals drawn on animal skin. Naruto knew that this was to prevent the supplies from getting destroyed. If paper storage seals get wet and smear or tear, they usually became worthless, making the stored items impossible to get out without specially written, custom seals designed individually for each destroyed seal. The process was complicated, and usually required a seal master. Prevention was much more efficient than the cure.
"Alright team, go home and prepare for a four day C-rank mission, just to be safe. Tie up any loose ends and meet me at the west gate in an hour."
His students saluted and ran down the stairs, eager to be on a mission outside the village.
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End Chapter the Fifth
Author's Note: Some of you may have noticed I've used both English and Japanese for jutsu. This was not a mistake, nor will I be putting a translation at the bottom of each chapter. The jutsu I use Japanese for are well known jutsu like shunshin, or they sound really cool, like Doryuuheki, which is slightly less known, I admit. Anyway, I'm not spelling out everything for you. This is an M fic, so that means you're all big boys and girls, and know how to use context clues, or the internet if you're really confused.