Previously:

"So… What should we do?" Naruto asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Learn how to control it." Kakashi stated simply. "Through very tough training."

"What are we going to do?" Sakura asked a little nervously.

"Hmm…?" Kakashi said, holding up a finger. "Tree climbing!!" His students blinked as they started up at him.

"Tree climbing!?"

Chapter 17: Training Commences

"Yeah…" Kakashi said, taking note of the openly skeptical expressions on most of their faces.

'Sounds kind of fun, actually…' April thought, figuring there was probably more to it than that. Now they knew why he had brought them into the middle of the forest.

'Sounds boring…' Naruto thought disappointedly, taking what their teacher had just said at face value.

"What kind of training is that?" Sakura asked dubiously.

"Well, listen until the end." Kakashi said patiently. "This isn't normal tree climbing. You'll climb without using your hands."

"!" Sasuke said, furrowing his brow slightly.

'And there it is…' April thought with a wry smile.

'Sounds fun!!' Naruto thought, suddenly a lot more motivated to begin.

"H-How…?" Sakura asked with a frown.

"Well… watch." Kakashi said, leaning on his crutches as he formed a hand seal to him focus while he molded his chakra. Once he had it where he wanted it, he gripped the crutches again and started hobbling towards the closest tree. He placed one foot flat on the base of its trunk.

"!!" The four genin gasped in astonishment as they watched him continue forward, swinging his crutches up with his next step as he left the ground and slowly made his way up the tree.

"He's climbing…" Naruto said as they all continued to watch Kakashi move higher and higher, stunned.

"Vertically… with just his legs…" Sakura added.

"… On crutches…" April finished with awe. Way to really stick it to gravity! She could run up walls and stuff using momentum, but this was on a whole different level of awesome! Kakashi-sensei was a boss!

"…" Sasuke said.

"You understand now?" Kakashi asked them as he stopped, standing so that he looked like he was hanging upside down from a thick branch like a bat while he leaned on his crutches for support. "Gather your chakra in the bottom of your feet and make it stick to the tree trunk. This is something you can do once you can use chakra well." He said with a smile.

"Cool." April said with a grin, eager to get started.

"Wait a minute!!" Sakura said. "How is learning how to climb a tree going to make us stronger!!?"

"Here's the main part. Listen closely. The purpose of this training is… First, to accumulate the right amount of molded chakra in the right location." Kakashi explained. "As I said earlier, this is the most important aspect when using a jutsu. This can be difficult even for a skilled ninja. The amount of chakra needed to climb a tree is small, but it must be exact. And it is said that the bottom of the foot is the most difficult area to gather chakra."

"So, basically… if we can learn this level of control, then we should be able to master any jutsu?" April asked.

"Well, theoretically…" Kakashi answered, glad to see she was catching on so quickly. April was probably the one who needed this training the most. She and Naruto were both starting to tremble with excitement. "The second thing is for you to develop the stamina needed to control chakra properly." He continued. "Depending on the jutsu, controlling your chakra properly… can be very difficult. And a ninja will usually be gathering and molding his chakra during battle, while constantly moving. Those types of situations make controlling chakra even more difficult."

'I see… and this exercise requires us to keep moving while molding our chakra, or else we'll fall…' April mused. It was perfect for what they needed to learn.

"Well, me talking all day isn't going to accomplish anything…" Kakashi concluded as he reached into his pocket with one hand, removing four kunai. "This is something you'll have to learn with your bodies." He threw the kunai.

"!" Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke gasped as one landed in front of each of them. April caught hers.

"Use those kunais to mark how high up the tree you make it." Kakashi instructed them. Then use that mark as your goal and try to surpass it. You guys won't be good enough to walk up the tree at first, so get some momentum and try running up the tree. Got it?"

"This training is nothing to me!! I could do this before breakfast!!" Naruto said with a grin as he and the others pulled their kunais out of the ground. "Because I'm the most improved!!"

"Okay, stop bragging…" Kakashi told him with a straight face. "Pick a tree and hurry up and try to climb it." Naruto made a face, but quickly joined the others as they formed a hand seal and focused on molding their chakra and concentrating it in the bottom of their feet.

"Here I go!!!" He shouted as he, Sasuke, and Sakura all took off running for a tree. Naruto placed his foot on the trunk of his tree and swung the other up to take the next step, but before he could even finish, he was already sliding down. "Ouch!" He cried out in surprise as he landed flat on his back, while Sasuke kept going, getting almost halfway up his tree before faltering.

"Ugh!" He grit his teeth as his chakra splintered the wood beneath his foot and quickly marked his place with the kunai as he fell back and did a flip, landing smoothly on the ground below. 'I didn't think it would be this hard… Too much chakra, and the wood cracks and you get repelled. But too little, and you don't stick at all, and that happens…' He thought, furrowing his brow as he glanced from his tree to Naruto's, watching as the idiot rolled around on the ground while groaning in frustration and holding his sore head.

'Well, that's about the difference between those two…' Kakashi thought as he watched his students.

"!" Kakashi and Sasuke said as April suddenly shot forward, heading straight for the tree in between the boys'. She had needed a little more time to accumulate her chakra, but once she had it, she was off like a rocket, approaching her tree with a velocity that allowed her to pass up the height Sasuke had reached by three strides before she had to mark her place and do a flip to land on her feet as she fell back to the ground.

"…" Naruto stopped rolling around as he and Sasuke stared at her. Seriously?

'It took her awhile to get started, but she got a lot further than I expected…' Kakashi observed.

"No way! How did you do that!?" Naruto demanded of her while Sasuke clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Even though you're slow, you're almost to the top!!"

"Yeah, but… unfortunately, it's not good enough…" April said dismissively with a sigh. "I was only able to get that far because of my momentum." She admitted a bit sheepishly, a little chagrined. "See?" She tried to go up again more slowly, proving her point when she failed to get any further than two proper steps before sliding back down. Kakashi sweat-dropped as he watched. Without her speed, she would be on the same level as Naruto. She may be winning the race to climb, but as far as the true purpose of this exercise went… April was definitely losing.

"This is pretty easy!!" Sakura said brightly, getting their attention.

"!" Her fellow genin said, surprised when they looked over and saw how high she had gotten. Sakura was already sitting on of the top branches of her tree.

"Ehe!" She giggled happily, proud that she had finally managed to come in first for something.

"Sakura-chan!!" Naruto gasped.

"Wow…" April said, impressed.

"It looks like the one who's best at controlling chakra right now… is Sakura." Kakashi remarked.

"Wow!!! You're great, Sakura!!! That's the girl I put my confidence in!!!" Naruto cheered loudly, doing his best to sound happy for her, even though it pissed him off a bit.

"Yeah, way to go!" April added with a smile. At least one of them was getting it. Sasuke was totally silent as he glared at the ground in front of him in annoyance.

'I wanted Sasuke-kun to be impressed… Why does it always turn out like this?' Sakura wondered dejectedly, hanging her head in disappointment. She wanted him to compliment her, not Naruto…!

"Wow, not only does she know a lot about chakra, but her control and stamina are quite good." Kakashi said with a brilliant shit-eating grin. April pouted slightly, starting to feel a little jealous. "As of right now… Sakura is the closest to becoming Hokage, unlike a certain someone…" He added, causing Naruto to flinch. "The Uchiha clan isn't as great as I though, either." Sasuke narrowed his eyes into a sharp glare.

'Whoa, those are fighting words…' April thought, sweat-dropping, as she watched Naruto and Sasuke exchange a disgruntled glance with each other. Kakashi-sensei was clearly trying to provoke them… and it was obviously working.

"Shut up, Sensei!!!" Sakura snapped. 'Sasuke-kun's going to hate me!!' She thought worriedly.

'Of course, Naruto and Sasuke have an incredible amount of chakra hidden within them that Sakura can't match. If this training goes well, they could be powerful assets…' Kakashi added silently as he watched them. 'As for April…' He shifted his stance and hobbled back down. "Come with me. I need to have a word with you." He told her as he stepped back onto the ground. "You three, keep practicing." He instructed the others as he headed further into the woods.

"?" April raised an eyebrow, feeling a little apprehensive about suddenly being called out like that, but she obediently followed after him.

'Okay!! I'm going to catch up to Sasuke first!!!' Naruto decided, clenching his fists.

"Okay, this should be far enough." Kakashi said, stopping once they were out of earshot of the others. "Hey, you don't have to look so nervous." He told April when he turned back to face her and saw the look of apprehension on her face. "I just wanted to talk to you about something I noticed during the fight yesterday. There's something strange about your chakra flow."

"My chakra flow?" She asked, furrowing her brow slightly in confusion.

"Yes. Up until now, everyone has been assuming that you're only capable of producing a low level of chakra, because it feels like you're only releasing the bare minimum… However, normally someone with such a low level of chakra would never be able to perform a technique as complex as the shadow clone jutsu. Chakra is normally invisible to the human eye, but watching you fight the other day while using my Sharingan, I was able to see what was really happening with your chakra… You see, it isn't that you can't produce a lot, it's just that for some reason… you can't maintain a steady level. I don't quite understand how it's possible, since I've never seen anything like this before… but it seems the reason for this is that your body is somehow reabsorbing whatever chakra you mold at an alarming rate. The reason why you're so easily exhausted when it comes to using jutsus isn't because you can only produce a small amount of chakra at a time, it's because you always have to produce an abnormally large amount in order to compensate for this. It only seems as though you aren't, because normally excess the excess chakra would leak out through your pores, but in your case, there's nothing left to leak, so it appears as though you're only producing a small amount, because that's all anyone can sense being used." He explained seriously. Her own body was nullifying whatever chakra she tried to produce and accumulate almost as fast as she could make it. Normally, one would assume she was under the influence of some kind of cursed seal, but the medical team that had examined her when she first came to the village would have already found it if that were the case. As it stood, there was no discernable cause for this strange phenomenon. Frankly, it was a miracle she could perform any at all. Becoming a shinobi would have been impossible for her if she didn't already have such a precise level of control…

"!" April said as her eyes widened in surprise. "You mean, the problem isn't that I can't produce or control my chakra… but that it's somehow automatically being canceled out inside of me?" She asked, frowning as she furrowed her brow. She had felt from the start that producing chakra was really difficult for her, but to think it was something like this… "People in my world normally can't use chakra… maybe this is the reason why? Unlike the people of this world, we must have somehow ended up evolving in a way that makes it difficult for our bodies to conduct the energy needed to produce chakra... like a battery that can't hold a charge…"

"Well, that makes about as much sense as anything else, I suppose…" Kakashi said, watching her carefully to gauge her reaction. "But if that's the case, then how are you able to use it? From what I've heard, you only started being able to perform jutsus after coming to this world."

"Well, it's probably thanks to my JDK instructor teaching me about qigong." April said thoughtfully. "Oh, qigong is an ancient Chinese health care system that integrates physical postures, breathing techniques and focused intention." She added as a quick explanation, in case he didn't know what she was talking about. The word Qigong (Chi Kung) is made up of two Chinese words. Qi is pronounced chee and is usually translated to mean the life force or vital-energy that flows through all things in the universe. The second word, Gong, pronounced gung, means accomplishment, or skill that is cultivated through steady practice. Together, Qigong (Chi Kung) means cultivating energy, it is a system practiced for health maintenance, healing and increasing vitality. "Qigong practices can be classified as martial, medical, or spiritual. All styles have three things in common: they all involve a posture (whether moving or stationary), breathing techniques, and mental focus. Some practices increase the Qi or 'life energy'; others circulate it, use it to cleanse and heal the body, store it, or emit Qi to help heal others. My teacher focused mainly on teaching me the martial and spiritual aspects of it, because he felt healing should be left to the professionals, since performing the medical techniques can do more harm than good if executed improperly. We focused mainly on the practices of the soft internal styles, like Tai Chi; and the external, vigorous styles such as Kung Fu, which would probably be considered types of taijutsus in this world."

"I see…" He said thoughtfully. That did indeed sound very similar to the way ninjas used chakra. She must have simply used what she already knew about focusing her own spiritual and physical energy and applied it to what she learned about chakra in this world. That would certainly explain how she was able to adapt so quickly. She already had some training in that area, it just hadn't been applied actively towards the use of ninjutsu or genjutsu yet. "You must have had an excellent teacher."

"Yeah…" She agreed with a soft smile. "He was like a second father to me. He's the one who taught me about proper nutrition and how take care of myself... after I started living with my uncle."

"I'm glad you had such a good teacher." Kakashi said gently, placing a hand on her head. "It saves me a lot of trouble." He added with a smile.

"That doesn't mean you can start slacking off on me now, Sensei." April quipped with a rueful smile.

"Wouldn't dream of it." Kakashi replied. "After all, you're going to need to train at least three times as hard as the others to overcome that handicap of yours. Just be careful not to overdo it, or you could end up dying." He said, causing her to flinch in shock.

"That isn't funny, Sensei…" She said with a pout.

"It wasn't a joke." He said seriously. "That's why I needed to have a word with you about this. It's much easier for you to over tax yourself than it is for the others. You especially need to be careful during this training."

"… Okay, I understand." April said with a sigh, looking disappointed that she couldn't just go wild like the others. It kind of took half the fun out of it…