Leaf blower no jutsu (3,795 words)
Roka winced as she hobbled her way onto the training grounds trying to ignore the scornful looks Sasuke was shooting her. Ryu had really given her the runaround yesterday and totally crushed whatever self-esteem she had gotten from beating up Sasuke.
One of the caretakers, Matsu (or tou-chan as the kids call him) had healed her wounds from the fight. His specialty was dealing with cuts and contusions, as it was a necessary skill for living with hemophilia in a ninja village, (accidents happen, even if you're a civilian) but treating muscle strain and bone bruises was beyond him so Roka's state of discomfort persisted to the next day. She managed the pain with a bit of chakra and concentration, but Roka knew it wouldn't really be a good idea to do anything too strenuous today. She could have waited up for the other caretaker Kenzou, AKA Tou-san to get back from his shift at the hospital, but his brand of care was significantly rougher than tou-chan's. He always got upset at the state Roka returned in after her bouts with Ryusuke and he made that known through less-than gentle healing and disappointed looks. Tou-chan said he just didn't like seeing her get hurt but if that were true Roka didn't understand the need he had to smack her on the back of the head when he was worried. She loved them both though, the two men who'd raised her for the past six years and been around more than her own parents.
"Morning Roka." Naruto yawned blearily. "Sasuke-teme."
Roka waved.
"Hn."
Kakashi was absent.
The members of team seven weren't really morning people apparently.
Two hours later: "Hello, my cute little genin!" Kakashi greeted with a two finger salute.
"You're late!" Naruto shouted accusingly.
"Mah, I was lost on the road of life." Kakashi excused. "Now how about some sparring?"
Roka couldn't help it; she groaned in dismay. "Nooooo…" At Kakashi's raised eyebrow she blushed bright pink (not that anyone could tell) and stammered, "I- I don't mean no, per se- I'm not r-refusing or anything, it's just I…" She trailed off in an embarrassed mumble, "I overdid it yesterday sparring with Ryu."
"You call attacking him a spar?" Naruto asked incredulously.
Sasuke 'hmphed' and crossed his arms. She was obviously feeling well enough to team up on him after that little spat.
"No, not that- I mean after we let out of training." Roka clarified. "He… insisted."
Kakashi sighed. There went his meticulous lesson plan. Granted, the plan was just to have the kids take turns beating each other up while he read and ignored them, but still, now what was he supposed to do with them? Actually teach? Interact with them? Shudder to think.
"I'm sorry sensei." Roka said in a small voice, the annoyance in his chakra causing her to shrink… Hmm, chakra… An idea came to her and Roka hesitantly spoke up, seeing as Kakashi seemed to have no idea what to do with them. "Hey sensei? Do you think you could teach us a jutsu instead? Maybe wind natured since that's Naruto's and my affinity and it would go well with Sasuke's dual lightning fire?"
Kakashi blinked. "How do you know that?"
"Wind strengthens fire, right? Fire beats wind in the cycle of elements-"
"No, how do you know your chakra natures?" their teacher questioned. As far as he knew, chakra paper was too expensive to buy on genin pay and though Sasuke might have been able to get some with his family's estate he doubted the boy was at a point with his teammates where he would even think to share.
"Oh. Ryu is an elemental sensor." Roka explained. "A fact he likes to constantly remind me of." She muttered.
"Huh? But I thought you were a sensor too?" Naruto chimed in. "Wasn't that what you were teaching that deaf kid yesterday? And what're these 'infinity nurtures' you're talking about?"
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "It's element affinities, and chakra natures, dobe."
Before Naruto could rise to the taunt, Roka cut in. "I am a sensor Naruto, but not the kind that can tell what elemental jutsu a person is more suited to. That's very rare. What I can do is a lot less useful in battle."
"Ooh~" Naruto nodded in understanding. Then he turned excitedly to their sensei. "So does that mean you're gonna teach us some super awesome jutsu?"
"Well…" Kakashi contemplated, looking away from three sets of puppy eyes executed with various levels of success. "Elemental ninjutsu might be a bit advanced for you three. But maybe a d-rank jutsu like the shunshin-,"
"I already know the shunshin." Roka protested.
"Can you use it in combat?" Kakashi asked condescendingly.
She blinked. "Sensei, no one but Shunshin no Shisui ever used it in combat. It takes too much forethought and concentration."
Kakashi sighed. He didn't think she'd know that. Damn.
"Please teach us a wind jutsu!" Roka begged. "Ryu only lets me use my worst skills when I fight against him and he already knows two fire jutsu and an earth jutsu."
"How about this," Kakashi proposed, "I'll teach the three of you a wind jutsu if you, Roka-chan, will coach the boys in chakra sensing and teach them the shunshin."
"Chakra sensing?" Roka asked, tilting her head to the side. "Why would they need that if they've got me?"
He shrugged. "As much as I hate to admit it, you three won't always be together. You might have to spit up on missions and once you're chunin the team might have to be dissolved. It's a useful skill that could save their lives, don't you think?"
"I guess." Roka hedged. She bit her lip. What was to say that as soon as her teammates learned enough of her best skill they would 'dissolve' the team and reform without her? No, she reasoned, unless they were born sensors like her, it would years of hard work to be able to sense a person's location by chakra alone, much less identify their signature. She would have time to make herself indispensible to the team before then. "All right." Roka agreed. "But you'll have to bring in some high quality earplugs and blindfolds and I'm not up to teaching them shunshin right now."
"So teach us a jutsu." Sasuke demanded.
Roka made a cough that sounded suspiciously like 'sensei' but when Sasuke ignored her hint to improve his manners she continued in a normal voice, adding her own "please."
"Yeah!" Naruto cheered.
"Oh, all right." Kakashi sighed. Straightening from his habitual slouch he gave the genin an imposing look. "Now pay attention. I copied this jutsu from a rogue Sand ninja a while back."
The three watched intently as their teacher demonstrated the hand signs. Roka flinched as his chakra built and surged-
"I call this-!" Kakashi yelled, striking the ground with his palm, "Leaf blower no jutsu!"
A single leaf stirred in the artificial wind and rolled over.
"That's it!?" Naruto shouted.
Sasuke gave their teacher a skeptical look. "Leaf blower no jutsu?"
Kakashi eye-smiled and rubbed the back of his head with a sheepish look. "Mah, I'm sure it has a different name in Suna, but as all I ever really use it for is to clear campsites of debris, that's what I call it."
"That's so lame!" Naruto complained. Why can't you teach us a more useful jutsu that we can actually use to fight with and stuff?"
Roka was frowning. "How come you built up all that chakra and only let out a little bit?" She asked.
"Dramatic effect." Kakashi smirked. "If I'd used all that chakra then the blast would have knocked you all off your feet." He flashed his students the victory sign. "Bye-bye!" Then he poofed out of existence.
The three shared a look at their sensei's sudden departure then Naruto jumped up and whooped. "All right! So it's a super powerful jutsu after all!" He eagerly but carefully performed the hand seals and turned his palm to the ground. Nothing happened. "Huh?" Naruto tried again. "I don't get it!" He loudly pronounced after a few more tries.
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Tch. Dobe. Did you even remember to channel chakra?" Naruto's indignant spluttering proved that he didn't.
"Well if you're so smart why don't you do it?" Naruto challenged.
"Fine. I will." Sasuke tried next. His hand signs were much faster than Naruto's to his smug satisfaction. Then he confidently pointed his hand to the ground and directed chakra to his palm. Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then his fingers began to twitch and his palm felt hot. Sasuke frowned and tried more chakra only for the spasms to travel up his arm and the heat to increase. With a grimace Sasuke grabbed his wrist to hold it steady, pouring more chakra into his limb and ignoring the pain.
"Sasuke stop!" Roka cried.
With a jolt Sasuke ceased molding chakra and realized his hand had started to turn pink.
Roka let out a sigh of relief. "I think since wind is not your natural affinity you were defaulting to lighting which caused the twitching and fire which caused the heat." She bit her lip. "I think we should continue to take turns trying it so that we can keep an eye on each other and no one gets hurt. We'll act as each other's spotters right?"
Naruto nodded in agreement and Sasuke crossed his arms, totally not blushing at all.
Roka formed the hand signs and sent chakra to her hand. Nothing visibly changed. Bringing her hand closer to the ground she managed to move a few blades of grass. She shrugged. "I think I got a tiny puff?"
"My turn! My turn!" Naruto yelled. He made the signs and focused his energy-
Roka's eyes widened, "Naruto that's-!"
"Leaf blower no jutsu!" A huge gust of wind rocketed out of Naruto's hand, sending him skidding backwards and chunks of dirt to fly into his teammate's eyes.
"-too much chakra." Roka finished.
Naruto was too busy celebrating his success to pay any attention to his coughing teammates or the dozens of tiny cuts now lining his palm. By the time he tried again they would be healed. Sasuke huffed in annoyance and tried again, stopping each time his hands heated up or he felt a twitch.
"Um… Sasuke?" He didn't bother to look up as Roka tentatively tried to get his attention and Naruto continued to dace further off. Undeterred Roka continued. "I don't know how much chakra theory they teach you in the General Academy… so it might help to know that fire nature chakra is actually a misnomer for heat… and both heat and electricity like to travel along and stay within materials that are conductive to it. So heat and electricity are some of the hardest elements to channel outside of the body. I think there's something about chakra in the breath that makes the Grand Fireball work and why you don't see people shooting fire out of their hands all that often… or at all. Wind on the other hand always wants to escape."
Sasuke didn't give any indication that he was listening at all and Roka sighed. It also didn't look like he was going to stop any time soon and let Roka have a try. "Naruto!" Said blond bounded over, face still lit from his achievement. "Could you watch Sasuke and I since you've already gotten it?"
Naruto pouted. "Awe, but now I wanna try doing it with both hands! Can't I just have some clones watch you?"
Roka blinked. "Huh. I didn't think of that."
The three of them continued to practice, Naruto eventually being expelled to the other side of the training ground for stirring up too much dust. He found he could only do short explosive bursts and at Roka's suggestion worked on making a continual stream. Roka herself was having varying levels of success. She could perform the jutsu, but anything more than a breeze made phantom tingles run along her arm and she had to stop for fear of damaging her chakra coils. Tou-san always fretted and worried over her chakra use, constantly warning her not to over do it. Born chakra sensors of her caliber sometimes exhibited health issues such as weak and sensitive coils or tenketsu prone to rupture. Considering the sickly state Roka had been in when she arrived to Konoha, he assumed she was one of those cases. Because of that, Kenzou always warned her not to quickly channel large amounts of chakra. Annoyingly that seemed to be a requisite to make this jutsu at all useful. At least Sasuke still wasn't getting anything at all. Another blast of angry uncontrolled chakra emanating from her dark teammate could attest to that.
Roka flinched. "Do you and Naruto want to go somewhere less flammable and practice joining your wind and fire?" She suggested when she couldn't take the oppressive frustration leaking out of Sasuke's chakra anymore.
"No."
Roka swallowed and tried to discretely edge further off.
Beginning to feel frustrated with her own slow progress, Roka took a seat and started playing with the grass. There had to be some way to make a stronger wind without using so much chakra… maybe if she used both hands like Naruto then spreading it over two surfaces would cut down on the risks. It did double the amount of wind she could safely produce, but it still wasn't much. Roka laid back in aggravation. Wind was her nature! This should be easy for her but once again her stupid sensitivity got in the way. At this rate she'd never beat Ryu! There had to be a way. What if she had a fan? No, then she wouldn't be able to make the hand signs. What if she moved her hand like a fan? Feeling slightly foolish Roka experimented with doing the jutsu while waving her hands about in different ways. Getting bored she put her hands together and pushed wind out of them simultaneously. The force that pushed her hands apart was surprisingly strong. Huh. This time Roka kept her hands about a foot apart and slowly inched them together. It got harder and harder the closer her hands became. What if she set the air streams diagonal to each other?
Roka experimented a while longer until her continual dual jutsu use began to get tiring. Her chakra hadn't fully recovered since her fight with Ryu and she was nearing the end of her reserves. Looking up Roka found the Naruto clone delegated to watch her and Sasuke had fallen asleep. Judging by the livid look on Sasuke's face he hadn't had any progress with the jutsu, but both his arms looked to be intact so that was a plus. A sudden high-pitched screech had everyone flinching and Roka reaching for a kunai.
"Sasuke-kuuuun!" At the edge of the training grounds a pink haired girl in a red cheongsam came running towards them.
"Sakura-chan!" Naruto and his suddenly awake clone shouted in glee. "I got a super cool new jutsu that Sasuke can't even perform yet! Wanna see?"
Two more boys appeared, following behind Sakura. She ignored them and Naruto's remark and basically anyone who wasn't Sasuke, running up to him and proceeding to talk his ear off trying to get him to go out with her for lunch. Looking rather put off; Naruto went to interrupt when one of the boys caught his elbow. Wearing a grey top and a pony tail, he had a rather hopeful look on his face. "Naruto-kun! You know that prank you pulled that made the teacher's notebook spin whenever he sat down? Do you think you could teach me? I have this new invention that but I can't figure out how to correlate the pressure plate to rotational motion. Actually could you teach me all of your pranks? Some of the feats of mechanical engineering you've come up with are genius!"
"Uh…" Naruto muttered, taken aback by the praise. Then he straightened, puffing up his chest. "No way! I'm not going to teach the secrets of my super awesome pranking skills to some klutz like you, Tobio! You're the one who made me kiss Sasuke-teme and then all the girls beat me up."
What? Roka loosened an earmuff. Did she hear that right?
Tobio's eyes widened. "But that was an accident! Please? I swear I'll make it up to you!"
Meanwhile the other boy had snuck up on Sakura as she talked to Sasuke. When he was right behind her he took a handful of her hair and tugged.
"Ow!" Sakura yelled. "What was that for Bunta-baka?"
"You should cut it." He only remarked with a smirk. "If I can pull it then so can an enemy ninja."
"For the last time, I'm not cutting my hair, so stop telling me to." She huffed.
Sasuke had decided to stalk off during this exchange but didn't manage to get far before Sakura noticed and made chase.
"Sasuke-kun!"
Seeing Sakura leaving, Naruto scrambled after. "Sakura-chan, wait up!"
"Naruto-kun, will you please teach me?" Tobio asked hot on his heels.
Bunta and Roka were left blinking in the dust of their hastily departing teammates. Bunta gave her a once over. In the sudden silence left in the wake of the other genin, Roka felt herself shiver under his casual perusal. "Nice combat goggles." He eventually commented. A moment of awkward silence later Bunta shrugged, gave a little wave and walked off.
And then there was one.
Roka sighed and lay down for a much needed nap.
Sasuke hid behind the outermost genjutsu surrounding the hideout and sighed in relief as he watched Sakura and the Entourage Of Idiots pass by, oblivious to where he'd gone. Now all he had to do was wait for them to get far enough away that he could leave and eat lunch in peace. As he waited, Sasuke stared down at his hands with a scowl. Why couldn't he get that jutsu? Even the dobe and the cripple had gotten it before him.
"Sasuke?" Black eyes snapped up to see Yuri staring curiously at him. "What are you doing here?" She asked.
He huffed and unclenched his fists. "People were bothering me."
She nodded. "Right." So he was hiding. Without another word Yuri sat down and started unpacking her lunch. She looked up at him, eyebrows raised as invitation.
Sasuke rolled his eyes but acquiesced, taking a seat on the ground next to her and the extra pair of chopsticks Yuri offered. The two ate in silence, each caught up in their own thoughts. Yuri could tell by the grumpy pouting set to his lips that Sasuke's ego needed stroking. The question was, why? He didn't look injured; she'd taken catalogue of his body and how he held himself as soon as Yuri saw Sasuke at the hideout. So if he wasn't beaten in a spar then that meant that he was having difficulty with a technique.
"Genjutsu or Ninjutsu?" Yuri asked once she'd swallowed her mouthful.
Sasuke gave her a raised eyebrow at the non sequitur.
"You're frustrated." She stated and held up a hand before he could deny it. "Your Taijutsu is amazing and your Bukijutsu is flawless to the point where your sensei would have no reason to supplement those skills." Yuri paused to make sure he heard her, only slightly more than truthful, compliments. "So is it a Genjutsu or Ninjutsu that you made the horribly incompetent blunder of not mastering on your first try?"
Sasuke had the decency to blush at the accuracy of Yuri's assessment. She knew him so well. "It's a wind jutsu." He told her.
"Wind? You're wind natured?" Yuri asked in surprise.
Sasuke sighed. "I'm not. But Roka and Naruto are so Kakashi showed us all a wind jutsu."
"That's so strange." Yuri mused. "Roka's file said she was originally from Wave and their nature is usually water. And Naruto is a native so it would make more sense for him to have fire or earth affinities. I wonder who his parents were. Immigrants maybe?"
"Native or not he definitely has wind nature." Sasuke grumbled. "Naruto got the jutsu on his first damned try."
Yuri gave his a dubious look. "Really?"
"Well second technically."
She gave him a knowing smirk. "You sell yourself short, Sasuke. You achieved the Grand Fireball on your first try."
Sasuke scowled.
Why did I think you'd be like Itachi? His father's disappointed reaction to his measly first attempt played through his mind. Clenching his fists Sasuke nearly snapped his chopsticks before Yuri gently pried them from his grasp. She frowned, unsure what she'd said wrong. That jutsu was essential to the Uchiha, so a triggering memory perhaps?
Eventually Sasuke explained. "My first try was pathetic. When Naruto tried it… the blast was so powerful."
Averting her contemplative stare, Yuri playfully rolled her eyes. "A crowbar to the back of the head is powerful but it means nothing if you're heard before you get there. He's all chakra and no skill. Don't try to compare yourself to that idiot."
"I guess." Sasuke muttered.
Yuri hid her frown with a practiced smile. "Come on, don't tell me you want to be like Naruto? Are you going to start wearing orange now? Or am I going to have to start calling you future Hokage-sama?"
Finally a hint of a smirk reached his lips and Yuri grinned in accomplishment. The look slowly died though as she thought back to her own hectic morning.
"What's wrong?" Sasuke asked.
Yuri blinked and was quick to plaster on a smile that Sasuke saw right through. "It's nothing, just-," She sighed, relenting with Sasuke's disbelieving stare. "My teammate got in trouble with the his clan and as punishment was forbidden to participate in the upcoming chunin exams. That of course means that I won't be able to participate either because entry requires a full team."
"Damn." Sasuke summed up what Yuri was feeling.
"Yeah. Damn." She agreed.
"What did he do?"
Yuri snorted. "He confessed his love for Hyuuga-san. Murakumo is such a fanboy. 'Course the Kurama elders weren't so pleased to find out their bright young branch member was gay and crushing on the Hyuuga's bright young branch member. They're a dying clan after all; need to make sure everyone does their part in producing the next generation."
"Hm" Sasuke agreed. The two of them sat in silence after that. Sasuke wasn't so good at emotional platitudes, not the way Yuri was. So he didn't say anything to assuage his friend's disappointment. He just sat with her. Yuri appreciated it none the less.
Notes:
Not much happening in this chapter, but I promise there are important bits that will be touched back upon later. Thanks for reading and don't forget to leave a review!
Acronyms to remember:
SAF= Special Accommodations Force
MAD= Medical Anomalies Division
PID= Physical Impairment Division, sometimes shortened to Physical Division or Physical
SID= Sensory Impairment Division, sometimes shortened to Sensory Division or Sensory
NMP= New Military Police
KonStan= Konoha Standard (referring to sign language)
Next time on, Welcome to the MAD House: Painting a Story