Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter

Posted: Thursday, 3 December 2009

A Reluctant Shinobi

Chapter 3

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A five year-old boy paced slowly through a small forest. The trees were spaced a comfortable distance apart which allowed for the pleasant stroll instead of a battle through the undergrowth that generally accompanied the forests of Konoha.

Every now and then the boy would stop and stare at a root that stuck up out of the ground, the hollows in one of the trees or even a branch that hung low over the path.

An observer would see his features twist into a frown more often than not, before he would move on, the imperfection in the landscape miraculously gone.

He walked for what could have been hours or minutes, but he ended up in the middle of a wide clearing. A shoddy house stood in the middle, its creaking wooden walls seeming precarious and fragile even as it stood strongly in the peaceful surroundings.

The boy eased the door open and the inside proved to be vastly different to what the outside portrayed.

It was a dizzying mass of impossible stair cases, (many of which trailed along the ceiling and walls and ending up nowhere) doorways which led to twisted rooms, windows that opened to every different kind of scene or weather possible and music flowing from different places, which many things tucked in odd places.

To anyone who just walked in, it would look like the room from hell – like a dozen teenagers had lived there for weeks; like a localised hurricane had swept through and left everything in disarray and a toddler had been the interior decorator.

…But to the five year old, there was an important method to the complete madness that made everything make perfect sense.

All of the memories he had been able to find had been scooped up and hidden within the array of meaningless memories and fantasies, which worked as an effective 'blanket' for hiding away his life experiences – they weren't exactly a basket of roses, and he knew that he didn't want any ninja with a mind invasion technique to see them and hold the information against him.

There were quite a few interesting things that he'd partially dug up – the memories obviously being from his infancy, which more often than not only contained smells or sounds; sometimes the visual without the others… it was very confusing, but it was enough to raise some questions about just where he had been before ending up in the Konohagakure orphanage.

Anyway, those images were hidden under many layers of his day-to-day life at the orphanage; he'd also designated rooms for hiding his language in – they actually were disguised as a large portrait that, if you looked closely enough, you would be able to read words in kanji and the proper structuring of sentences.

…Any way he looked at it, he was just happy that he'd been able to clear out the forest.

Kai actually couldn't really remember the point at which he had discovered the little house in the middle of his mental forest, nor when he found that he could shift the memories from being easily accessible for invaders to being hidden in a way that would hopefully at least confuse someone reaching for them. A few days after he had concluded that the forest was just his 'mind scape' so-to-speak, he had found himself wandering through it in his millionth attempt at 'finding a balance between his physical and mental energies.'

One thing lead to another and he had been so frustrated with the root-memory that he swore he had tripped over five times that hour that he had wrapped both hands around it and pulled.

He had been standing and looking at the uprooted memory in abject horror for approximately ten minutes – how was he supposed to know if he had wrecked his mind or not? Before he started cursing and trying to put it back in.

When it had just seamlessly returned to its place in the forest floor, it got Kai thinking.

It hadn't hurt him to move the memory. It had also gone right where he willed it. He felt that he could work with that.

It had taken hours of experimentation to discover the sheer extent that you could manipulate and hide away memories; it really ended up coming down to his imagination in thinking up new ways to hide the information away.

But that was not really what he was focusing on at this moment.

There was a door that he'd not been able to get into in his 'house' – one that had been there even before he started twisting its dimensions and turning it into an impossibly twisted fun-house of memories lying 'underneath the underneath.'

Internally he lamented the stupid sayings that he was being forced to pick up via the now daily scroll additions that he quickly learnt were on the basics of the shinobi arts.

Stupid invisible ninja.

As he looked around his personal 'madhouse', he wondered if the absolute solitary was getting to him. Really, he guessed that if any Yamanaka walked in here right now, he'd probably be deemed clinically insane.

He shrugged the troubling thought off by comforting himself with the rationalization that all shinobi were probably certifiably insane.

He didn't bother to remember that they were trying to turn him into a shinobi as well and that he still didn't want to be one.

To get back on track, there was a locked door that he just couldn't get into inside his mind.

Kai had discovered unwittingly that when he organised his thoughts – even if the organisation in and of itself was disorganised chaos – the door seemed to move further open the more memories he gathered and sorted.

It had been three days and an estimated shit-load of hours and Kai had finally managed to open the door wide enough to peak inside.

He had immediately shaded his eyes against the glow. It was a huge, pulsating mass of… something. Kai guessed that it might be his chakra, and that was why he'd had to organise his mind in order to open the door.

The only problem he'd seen immediately was that it sure didn't feel like The Scroll said – it wasn't 'warm' or 'steady'. At least it felt 'natural'. It had been flowing around as if restless; and he couldn't be sure since he didn't actually have access to it, but it felt more on the 'cool' side.

At the time he had just been happy that he'd seen something that looked like chakra – his life depended on his ability to use it… or more specifically the lack there of.

So that was how Kai ended up filing away his memories and generally cleaning up his mind. He knew that he only had a week until the deadline was up – one week with which to access his chakra and learn to manipulate it with some reliability.

According to The Scroll – for that chakra manipulation scroll would forever be referred to with capitals by him – it was impossible to get a decent grasp on chakra in less than three weeks. Well the damn thing had also said it would only take a few hours to tap into it. Kai's only hope was that he would somehow be able to manage it in only a week.

Kai could only hope that possible future death would be good motivation – that was really the only reason he was even doing this stupid stuff – sure, he didn't want to be a shinobi, but Kai was nothing if not a survivor.

He looked around his madhouse, pleased to see that it seemed more… complete than when he had started. He turned to The Door and mentally crossed his fingers before approaching it.

Please, Kai thought to himself, please let this work, or I'm dead.

He reached for the door and put his hand on the solid wood. He stood still for a second before gathering his nerve and pushing.

The door slid open easily.

Kai stood gaping at the huge roiling mass of chakra.

All was still for a moment.

And then the glowing white ball surged against some barrier that looked like plastic – it had obviously been keeping it together and in one place. The thin barrier stretched and Kai was able to notice that it glowed a different colour to the blazing ball of energy before the barrier snapped apart and the glowing energy rushed out of its former shape and outwards; soaking into the walls and ceiling and he could feel it spreading through his mindscape.

It was when it had saturated his mind that he felt the burning begin.

It was moving slowly and it was simply excruciating.

Kai screamed as he was ripped into reality and as the pain multiplied as it crawled down his arms, moving throughout his whole body.

The last thing he saw was The Scroll unfurled and disregarded on the ground beside him before he blacked out from the pain.

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Kai woke up with a pained groan on his lips and a massive headache.

He clutched his head and screwed his eyes shut, unwilling to test his body at the moment – after all, he had nothing to track the time, and he now had no idea how long he had been out or how long left till the dead line passed.

That was bad. Extremely bad. Actually, Bad with a capital B-A-D!

He decided that if he was to be 'disposed of' soon, he may as well see what was left of his body.

He reluctantly opened his eyes and glanced at his arms, half-expecting them to be bloody sticks – even if he had just used them to hold his head – after all, after that pain it was almost inconceivable that nothing had changed visibly.

He was contradicted, however, by the smooth skin of his arms that was displayed plainly. He couldn't be sure, but he thought that a few scars he'd had had actually vanished.

It was quite a shock.

He furrowed his brow and pulled up the legs of his loose pants to check them as well – it turned out to be the same.

He blinked, absolutely dumbfounded.

And then he got to thinking about just what that pain could have been.

He carefully pulled himself to his feet, wary of how stiff his muscles were – most likely a result of his being knocked out. He got to his feet with surprising ease and started doing the stretches that he had memorised from one of the scrolls that had come after the first, but focused his mind inwards.

The obvious question was just what the hell that white energy had done to his body that caused such pain. He was fairly sure it was his chakra, but there was the question of why most of it had been trapped within that barrier in the first place. As he had no idea where to find an answer to that, Kai decided to skip that question and move onto the most pressing.

He finished the exercises and chose to remain standing, focusing inwards. He was surprised to immediately feel a cool presence under his skin – he could sense it slowly moving around his body; calming and soothing and rippling. He likened it to water; always moving and flowing.

A small smile touched his lips.

Really, he had never felt anything like it.

He almost reluctantly opened his eyes and was happy to find he could still feel the reassuring presence in the back of his mind; how it flowed calmly through his body.

He breathed out a sigh in relief – it seemed like he had stumbled upon his chakra, no matter if it felt different to what The Scroll said it should.

Thinking of scrolls… Kai glanced at the spot where scrolls usually turned up and was shocked and worried to see two scrolls resting in the corner.

Did that mean he'd been unconscious for two days?

Now that he thought about it, he was absolutely starving and thirsty. He cast his eyes around the room and found, to his relief, a fairly large 'meal' (that was cold) and a jug a water. He sighed. Didn't anyone know how to cook around here? Kai snorted when a picture of that robot-shinobi wearing a frilly pink apron and watching an egg boil came to mind.

Yeah, right. Cooking shinobi – or at least Cooking Root Shinobi sounded as ridiculous as it would probably be.

He shook his head to focus back on task – he had two scrolls to memorise and about three days to be able to use his chakra to 'reinforce his muscles' in order to go faster and put more power into punches.

Kami was he in trouble.

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Yo guys :)

Well, I hope you enjoyed the newest instalment, any feedback is appreciated

Skyflyte12