Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is purely for entertainment purposes, and I am making no profit off of this.
Thirteen more days.
Only thirteen more days until the graduation exam.
Only thirteen more days until that headband would bring me life. Only thirteen more days until I gained a sensei. Only thirteen more days until the weakness would begin to truly be beaten out of me. Only thirteen more days.
My binds would be cut and I would be free. It was only a matter of time.
Twelve more days.
I punched the battered piece of wood that may have at one point been recognisable as a training post. It was hardly more than a cracked piece of wood at this point. I had been meaning to replace it for a while, but I never found the time.
Crick!
But I suppose that very soon, I would have to.
Crick!
Noticeable cracks began to run through the already splintered wood. This training session would likely be the last one for this particular training post. It had served me well, but it had taken too much of a beating.
Crick!
It was odd. The new crack ran along the face of the training post in such a way that the cracks on the wood began to resemble a face somewhat. The mouth was a bit underdeveloped, and the left eye slightly misshapen, but it almost looked like the 'face' was set into a solemn expression.
Crick!
WIth another punch, the cracks spread further.
The training post's 'mouth' turned upwards into a crooked smile.
I smiled back at it.
I raised my fist for another strike, my limbs somehow feeling both heavy and light at the same time. The blood that painted the post gleamed an almost silvery hue in the moonlight.
My heart beat faster and I had no idea why.
My eyes fluttered open and closed and I had no idea why.
My entire body shook.
I had never felt quite so enlightened and vacuous simultaneously.
In an explosion of bloody splinters and fractured dreams, my friend died. Was there a word for such a feeling of such concurrent remorse and euphoria? Was there a word for such a feeling of such synchronous intoxication and clarity?
Perhaps there was.
I believe the word that I was looking for was 'hope.'
Six more days.
"Are you Yamanaka Chisei?"
I cracked open an eye to look at the speaker, and, upon recognising them, quickly stood up and bowed.
"Ah, Akimichi-sama, I apologise. I didn't see you there."
Chouza just laughed boisterously and smiled at me, "No problem. I was just here to congratulate you on your graduation. It'll be in… six days? Right?"
I nodded, "Yes, Akimichi-sama."
"Incredible. Graduation at age nine. The best your clan's had since… Yamanaka Inorei? Damn. It's been a while since I've heard that name… " Chouza frowned.
I tilted my head slightly at the unfamiliar name, I was about to ask who this 'Inorei' was, but Chouza's expression quickly soured. I closed my mouth as Chouza looked at me one last time.
"You know… you almost… " He frowned, trailing off and turning away, muttering while he walked. His previous good mood was dampened.
My brows furrowed as I watched him leave, my mind turned, reflecting back to the brief conversation that we had held.
"Hey! It's you!"
My train of thought was interrupted, and, after making a mental note to research this Inorei person, I turned to face whoever had called. It was that Akimichi boy again.
"You're the guy that everyone's talking about?" He sounded incredulous.
Train. Stay alive. Do what you are told. Do what you are told until you are the one telling others what to do. That is the philosophy by which the strong live.
"Probably."
"But… really?"
I shrugged.
"I mean, I know you said all that stuff about training, and I know you said you train a lot, but… really? Like, really really?"
"Really really."
The boy squinted at me, likely in some attempt to figure out whether or not I was lying. After a moment, his face brightened.
"Cool! If you're so good, then you could help me with my training!"
My eyes widened slightly in surprise, and it took me a moment to process that.
This child, this naive… stupid little child, was asking me to help him? What, did he think that I had free time? Any time that wasn't spent performing basic survival functions like eating and sleeping was spent either out in the training fields or in the Yamanaka shop. Even ,in the shop I continued training, performing little chakra exercises under the counter or reaching out with my sensing skills when there were fewer customers in the shop.
I spent the better part of every damn day working my body to exhaustion in this insane regime to gain power. Too many times to count, I had collapsed out on the fields. I would look up at the midnight sky and wonder, was this really all worth it? Maybe it would be better just to die rather than torture myself any longer. And then I would get back up and do it all again, over and over, for reasons that I barely even remembered anymore. And this boy, this child had the gall, the audacity to ask for me to cut into that time? To cut into my survival?
"Just a little bit," I grumbled out.
Me and my bleeding heart.
For fuck's sake.
Four more days.
I had allowed the Akimichi boy to sit in on one of my training sessions with shurikenjutsu. He was to sit and observe and not make a single fucking noise because I had already agreed to have him here for some stupid fucking reason and I swear to God if he distracted me for even an instant-
Ahem.
A kunai clumsily rolled out of my pouch as I reached out with my chakra to move it across my skin. I was getting better with it, and I was sure that with a few months' worth of extra practise, I'd be able to get it down pretty smoothly.
In a flash, the kunai embedded itself dead in the centre or the rightmost target.
Bullseye.
I drew two shuriken and those too found their way into the centres of the targets that I had aimed for. I reached for more, and I threw them as I got them.
Thunk!
Thunk!
Thunk!
Thunk!
At this distance, there was nothing to it.
Bullseyes all around.
There was a flicker of chakra off to the side and I turned to level a baleful stare at the Akimichi boy that was dicking around with his chakra or something stupid.
Or at least I would have, had he not been sitting on the side opposite from where I had felt the chakra signature.
I frowned. I had felt that chakra signature several times in the past. The first time I had felt it, I threw a kunai in the direction of the signature, but now I didn't think I could dismiss it as a coincidence.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on my sensing abilities.
And my frown grew deeper as even with my much improved sensing skills, I was still unable to pinpoint the signature in time. Whoever it was was already outside of my range.
"Aw, why'd you stop?"
Thunk!
The Akimichi child yelped as a kunai buried itself into the tree that he was sitting against, right next to his ear.
"I said no distractions."
One more day.
I had finally dug up a record on 'Yamanaka Inorei.' The guy that Chouza mentioned briefly in the clan gathering a few days ago. The records in the Yamanaka library were surprisingly scarce for a guy who was supposedly one of the strongest members of the Yamanaka clan to have lived.
Even if Chouza seemed disturbed by the mere mention of his name.
I actually had to go the shinobi library in the village to get anything on him, there was hardly anything of substance I could find in the Yamanaka one. At least, in the sections that I had access to.
And I quickly realised why.
He was a few years older than Inoichi and had graduated from the Academy at age eight. The Academy teachers had lauded him extensively, and he had graduated at the top of his class.
Training under jounin Ogawa Hiroto, he made the chunin rank in two years, when he was just ten years old. He ran many successful missions with a few different teams, most notable of which being his contribution to the Battle of Mt. Ketsueki in the Land of Earth during the Third Shinobi World War. In that battle alone, he had ninety-four confirmed kills.
Nice, and impressive, but nothing that really popped. Ninety-four kills was great, especially when fighting against other shinobi, but this guy had nothing on Minato's thousand kills.
But the next passage told me everything I needed to know.
Yamanaka Inorei suddenly betrayed both his clan and his village, with no known motive. He killed two Yamanaka clan members in a addition to twenty-three others, most of them civilian. He then fled the village. An A-Rank bounty was placed on his head, one that has yet to be claimed. It was possible that Inorei was still active, and if he was, he would be in his mid-forties.
Again, it was nothing in comparison to Itachi's straight-up genocide, but Inorei was the reason that the Yamanaka began only letting high-ranking members of the clan learn the clan jutsu, and even then, members would have to submit to a mindwalk.
Inorei had access to practically all of the clan jutsu. He could have used them to wreak havoc on the village, but the ninja chasing after him observed that he appeared to be more concerned with getting away than actually killing people. The people he killed were just in the way.
Still, it was a wake-up call for the Yamanaka clan. They strictly regulated the clan jutsu, only letting a few that were deemed 'safe' to be learned by the common members, while the dangerous ones were heavily guarded.
And Chouza had looked at me, and saw some kind of… similarity… between me and Inorei. There was something common to us both, and Chouza had been visibly troubled by it.
Perhaps we had had similar looks, or maybe our drive to become stronger was the same, or maybe it was simply that we both displayed an unusual amount of skill and intelligence for our age.
Or perhaps it was something else.