Chapter 3 - Eichiro Teshima
Before we arrive at Konyo's years in the Academy, there is yet one early friend to introduce who arrived at the orphanage around this time. By this time Konyo was keeping a close watch on the shinobi recruiters who were masquerading as adopters for poor orphan children. Eichiro Teshima, who was of the same age as Konyo was a prime target for them, having measured his chakra potential and as he was a non-entity who had just arrived at the orphanage. Konyo's intervention would ultimately put an end to Root's recruiting practices and it helped that he was having regular meetings with the Hokage in light of the discovery of his "magic."
One day, Konyo was called up to see the Hokage and for the first time there was another shinobi in the room to be let in the secret. Hiashi Hyuga had been summoned to witness this unique child as the Hokage needed someone with the Byukagan's sensory capabilities and he could hardly have used another Hyuga without word spreading to the clan's head anyways.
"Well, Konyo," the Hokage gestured to him. "This is Hiashi, the clan head of the Hyuga, and I hope you will agree to allow a third person into the knowledge of your capabilities, which I have already classified as an S class secret. Because let us be frank, that is how… important your abilities may turn out to be."
With Konyo's affirmative nod, the Hokage allowed him to begin. Hiashi immediately activated his Byakugan to observe the boy as the Hokage had specifically requested.
Konyo went through his repertoire having improved slightly, but only slightly in the last couple of weeks since he had rescued Naruto. Hiashi watched with growing astonishment as the boy proceeded to close the binds of a window and open them again with a wave of his hand. Without any noticeable gesture or hand seal he unlocked one of the Hokage's filing cabinets and locked it again.
Hiashi had to muster every reservoir of self-control not to have his jaws hanging out as the boy turned the carpet purple from red and back again and somehow had a nearby lamp double in size before he with another snap of his fingers it shrank back to normal. He was staggered and could hardly know what to say. What was most interesting was how the boy was using chakra under the steadfast gaze of his Byakugan, he was aware of chakra circulating, but only slowly throughout the boy's pathways, much slower than would be the case with the use of conventional jutsus. Nor were the boy's reserves particularly large, for a civilian child of his age that was, he was just above average. Yet how was the boy doing so much with so little chakra expended?
What blew Hiashi away the most however, and which convinced him it had to be a new kekkei genkai was the distribution of chakra flow as the boy continued to showcase his abilities. It was entirely spiritual chakra and indeed the unused pool of physical chakra was still sitting completely idle. He had never heard of any technique that would only make use of one type of chakra, but here it was the flow proceeded entirely from the mind with none of the body's cells or muscles adding to the flow. Even the most yin-intensive of techniques in his knowledge contained at least SOME physical chakra.
How was this even possible? The boy had never been trained, Hiruzen had told him. And yet he was showcasing capabilities, some of which he knew of no jutsu that could replicate. He was only using spiritual chakra exclusively something he had never heard of, or even thought possible to fully separate the two types of chakra in their flow and use.
He was almost unable to tear his eyes away from the little miracle in front of him before dutifully reporting all he had seen to the Hokage.
"Did you see any changes in chakra flow between the different abilities, transformation, affecting objects, and teleportation for example?"
"No Hokage sama, certain things the boy did sped up his chakra flow, but only slightly and it remained vastly below what normal jutsus would generate, and he never used physical chakra. Not once. And he never came close to exhausting his chakra reserves, it seems his levels remained approximately three quarters full at least, including the half of physical chakra left intact."
Hiashi went home quite shaken and not knowing what the implications would be for this boy in the village in the future.
Now that the nature of Konyo's power has been a little illuminated we will return to Konyo's role in helping to bring the organization Root's recruitment practices to the attention of the Hokage. For having informed Hiruzen on more than one occasion about his suspicions regarding some of those who claimed to be adopting orphans, the Hokage sent the ANBU to investigate more closely. When Eichiro Teshima was so "adopted", he was the catalyst that allowed the ANBU to track and end this particular recruitment practice. Danzo was summoned for a noticeable tongue-lashing by the Hokage who insisted that Root recruits be only chosen from grown shinobi. Hiruzen of course saw the dangers of allowing Danzo to recruit and train children to be exclusively loyal to him. Shaken by the turn of events, Hiruzen would be more suspicious of Danzo in the future (even as he remained his second in command) and this would in later chapters have far greater ramifications than what is presently related here.
As for Eichiro Teshima, he was returned to the orphanage and soon became friends with Naruto and also Konyo, who had been responsible for saving him from Root's gruelling and dehumanizing indoctrination program. The three became inseparably close even though they were the polar opposites from each other in personality, with Eichiro being obsessed with art and drawing and generally a quiet and shy boy. Naruto was boisterous and mischievous while Konyo of course behaved much like an adult, although still with a child's naiveté in many ways.
We can easily picture Naruto's reaction when he found out that Konyo was enrolled in the Ninja Academy. Naruto who thought his nii-san was so cool for receiving shinobi training before him pestered Konyo until he agreed to tutor Naruto everyday in the basics of taijutsu forms.
Being a shinobi in training had its perks, Konyo soon realized, as all the other orphans now looked up to him as a kind of leader among them and he had no more issues with their bullying behaviour towards Naruto or anybody else, in his presence at the very least. In the academy however, Konyo was an indifferent student one year younger than his peers, performing quite badly in ninjutsu even as he excelled in taijutsu and bukijutsu thanks to his naturally excellent reflexes. He was decent in tactics and strategy as well thanks to old Harry's auror experience, although he had to admit the shinobi were quite on a different level altogether.
As for non-shinobi subjects, he relied on some of old Harry's memories to get by as a top student, although old Harry had forgotten much of the basics of a child's technical education (like mathematics) by the time he was of that advanced age.
What he did realize from his exposure to shinobi training, was the need to greatly emphasize speed training as fights took place at a way faster level than old Harry's world where people could rely on magical power. If he was ever to use magic effectively in battle, he would have to be extremely quick.
The second and even more important, and we can say life-changing realization, was his exposure to leaf sticking exercises which were introduced in the Academy in order to improve the chakra control of students. As he steadily improved his chakra control, he realized that performing magic also became much easier and the potency of his spells increased to the extent that he was now able to perform first and second year Hogwarts spells wandlessly.
Realizing that the key to overcoming the problem of not having a wand in casting magic, was this method of improving chakra control, made Konyo throw himself towards mastering more and more chakra control exercises. It made perfect sense in a way, the wand was in old Harry's world the instrument to direct and control magic flow, without which the witch or wizard could not focus and concentrate their magic. Better chakra control accomplished the same ends by allowing the chakra user to employ a more exact amount of chakra needed for a technique.
As the Hokage said, magic then corresponded to the very heavy Yin component of his chakra and it seemed he had a kekkei genkai thanks to old Harry of being able to naturally mould his chakra in a pure Yin release to do things that no other shinobi could do with ordinary techniques.
Many months of hard work would ultimately pay off for Konyo. Within a year of entering the academy, he was able to perform spells flawlessly up to an OWL level completely wandlessly and non-verbally. The accuracy of his apparition had also improved immensely and its noise level was being steadily reduced. It still wasn't enough though however, he was still too slow in casting to make it practical in battle against fully trained shinobi. But Konyo realized that the problem could be solved with greater chakra control eventually as well as increasing his speed through physical conditioning. He could already cast the more basic spells quicker than relatively advanced ones.
NOTE: Eichiro is Sai.