"You're sure you're okay to train?"
Neji rolled his eyes for the third time in the fifteen minutes they had been standing in the training ground. Tenten had been nothing but horrified to see his bruised and battered face, but wasn't surprised when she found out who delivered the beating. She stood next to Neji with a concerned look as she twirled a kunai around her finger. "Do you require a doctor's note? I said I'm fine so let's just get on with the training."
Kana sat atop one of the three wooden posts so she could watch what was happening as the two backed away from each other. "Okay, Neji, the best way I can explain this is to think of how you concentrate your chakra to your fingertips," she started, "You're essentially going to be doing the same thing, but instead of focusing it just out of the tenketsu on your fingertips I need you to try pushing it out of all of the chakra points in your right arm – I swear to god if I see you roll your eyes one more time I'm going to tear them out."
"But I already know how to do this," he protested, "You saw me use it during the bell test."
She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees; she was beginning to regret the decision to wear her normal jonin attire, as the flak jacket felt like a tiny greenhouse underneath the glaring heat of the summer sun. Her eyes slanted and flickered over to Tenten, who nodded in understanding. A shuriken was thrown directly at Neji as he raised his arm in defense; a ripple in the air appeared along the top of his forearm just as the metal star reached him, though it sliced through the chakra and stabbed into his flesh.
Tenten appeared to be surprise that her half-assed attack went through, but Kana had predicted the outcome before even arriving to the training grounds. "You have the basic idea for the Body Blow Technique down, but when I lobbed that ball of chakra at you it didn't have the same density as something like a weapon," she explained, "So our chakras sort of cancelled each other out, which is a start, so I need to you try again."
Her Kurogan activated as she began to observe Neji intently, focusing primarily on how his chakra moved as he channeled it. "Make sure you're evenly distributing it among your chakra points," she reminded him, "You don't want any weak points. When you think you're ready, Tenten will throw another weapon at you." Kana was aware that the boy wouldn't be able to stop the attack entirely, but that wasn't necessarily her goal for today. She needed him to be able to evenly distribute enough chakra to slow down a physical attack before working him up into the more advanced stages of the Body Blow Technique and Palm Rotation.
"Guy, I want to take over Neji's training for the final stage of the Chunin Exams," Kana stated rather abruptly.
The large man looked up at her from the textbook he had been studying to raise a thick eyebrow, "Is that so?" He didn't put the book down but it clearly no longer held any of his attention. The teenager was well aware of the negative connotations associated with someone insisting that they train another jonin's student, especially if that person wasn't a jonin-sensei themselves, so Kana was riding on the hopes of their friendship being able to act as a buffer. Even Genma, who was participating in a drunken game of strip poker a few feet away, momentarily raised his head in response to her request.
"You know that the Hyuga and Shimi clans have a bond that runs deep and, because of this and how similar our kekkei genkai are, we have a mutual understanding of how our jutsu work. In most cases it's only in a general sense, but I've been doing a lot of research in the last couple of months…" She paused long enough for Anko and Ibiki to shuffle between them. Those two surely made a strange couple, that was for sure. "What I'm trying to say," she continued, "Is that I think I'm the best person to train him right now. I know I'm not jonin-sensei and, in all honesty, I don't have any interest in attempting to train anyone else, but I figured out how a particular Hyuga-specific jutsu works and I believe it is something that Neji should learn before the next stage."
Guy reached out and clasped her knee in his outrageously large palm with a confident look in his eyes. "I understand what you're trying to say and, if you think you can do it, I absolutely trust in your abilities one hundred percent. When they're finished with their trials in the Forest of Death, you can stand in as Neji's sensei."
"Sensei" wasn't exactly the word she would have used to describe herself, but Kana was just glad that she had Guy's immediate approval. A sense of pride emerged as she understood just how much trust and confidence her father figure and former sensei held for her. Though the more she thought about it, the more it felt like she had been requesting permission to ask for Neji's hand in marriage. Weird.
She was pulled out of her thoughts by the sudden movement of Tenten throwing another shuriken at her teammate; her eyes tightened in anticipation with Neji's as he visibly braced himself. The force of the weapon caused it to fly a little too close for comfort, but it didn't completely pass through his chakra as Kana had been expecting it to. It instead appeared to be caught in a sort of stasis in Neji's chakra until he allowed it to fizzle.
"Wow, Neji, that's amazing!" Tenten cheered, "You completely stopped my attack!" She looked up at Kana expectantly, who was grinning from her position on the post, "Is that it? Is that what you were trying to teach him?"
Sweat had begun to bead on his cheeks and upper lip, Kana noted, a testament to the strain of maintaining that level of chakra control. Kana shrugged and sat up. "In a sense, yeah. This is the first step that Neji needed to take to learn the jutsu I'm going to teach him. But you need to be able to blast the chakra out of the entirety of your body, and maintain it."
Neji's eyes darted up to meet hers with a fierce determination that actually rivaled Lee's for a moment. She saw this as a confirmation that he was ready to continue so she crossed one leg over her knee and decided to up the ante. "I want you to do the same thing again but, this time, shield the entire right half of your body." She looked over to Tenten, "And I want you to throw three shuriken this time instead of just one."
"Got it."
"I understand."
His stern eyes slid shut into an expression of absolute concentration and Kana was thankful that he had a natural talent for chakra control; she wasn't entirely sure if she would be able to explain this to anyone that didn't already have a grasp on how to use the chakra network. Then again, she wasn't all that great at explaining things in general - she was a fighter, not a teacher, for a reason. It seemed she did well enough in Neji's case, as she could see his chakra puffing out of his chakra points as he tested himself; this definitely wasn't as successful as when he was just focusing on his arm, as his chakra wildly exited his body.
Only a few minutes passed before she could see Neji's breathing turn into shallow pants, and the sweat that had formed on his face began to trickle down his chin. "Neji, stop trying to push your chakra out as soon as you build it," she instructed, "You're only stressing yourself out and wasting chakra. Focus more on evenly distributing it across your body, then worry about expelling it." He didn't look at her but nodded in understanding, this time folding his hands together in the hitsuji seal. Kana wished her kekkei genkei was more like the Byakugan so she could directly see how much chakra was being built up behind each tenketsu, instead of only being able to see vague blurs. Knowing that her eyes were so inferior to the other dojutsu of the village was frustrating at times; they really only helped her scout the area and tell people apart from their chakra signature, and she seldom envied wielders of dojutsu that benefited in battle.
Lee swam around Kana's side so that their faces were parallel. "Say, Kana, what is it like to have dojutsu? What does it feel like, I mean?" His large eyes were wide with curiosity, his long eyelashes holding tiny water droplets that flicked onto his round cheeks with each blink.
She had been floating on her back in the river, lost in thought, so his question took her quite by surprise. You could practically hear the gears turning in her head as her mind struggled to find the words to explain something that felt so natural to her. Kana activated her Kurogan, focusing on the sensation as the world around her transformed. "It's… Well, there's sort of a pulse at first. Imagine the headaches you get when you're dehydrated, but without the pain. I guess it's more like a throb?" She knew she was doing a terrible job at explaining this - she didn't need Lee's perplexed expression to figure that out. "But it only lasts for a second, and then the world kind of looks as if you're entering another dimension. It's… It's dark – the world turns to this dark grey color, no matter what time of day it is, where there are no shadows or shines. Everything is outlined in white. Sweat, hair, leaves… It's like looking at a drawing that's flat, but three dimensional at the same time. And the only color is within people, because I can see their chakra. It's like seeing a blue fire that burns through every part of their bodies, and everyone's is different in their own way… And you can see so much at once. It's almost overwhelming – you can suddenly see everything, and you can see so far."
Kana deactivated her Kurogan, appreciating the sudden burst of color, and sighed. "I'm sorry, that probably just sounded like nonsense."
The expression on Lee's face was so intense that she had to fight the urge to burst into a hysterical fit of laughter. "No, I think I do understand," he exclaimed, his moving lips causing water to splash around. It took every ounce of willpower to not allow the first giggle that was trying to force its way up her throat. With his expression and the way his head moved when he spoke in such an excited tone, he sort of resembled a fish out of water. "You feel the sensation of throbbing just before the world becomes dark and full of blue fire. It truly sounds like a remarkable thing to experience, Kana!" Lee tilted his body so he could plant his feet along the rocky bottom of the stream and stand up, "Please tell me, what does my chakra look like to you?"
"Lee will you just let her enjoy her day off?" Tenten scolded from the riverbank, "Really, we all came here to relax and you're pestering her with questions about-"
Kana lazily raised her arm up from the water and waved, "It's nothing." She didn't need to activate her kekkei genkai again to conjure up an image of Lee's chakra – it wasn't the most unique thing she had ever seen but it truly did leave an impression. "It moves wildly within you, and shines brighter than others."
She heard Guy cheer on about the power of youth, but Kana didn't pay much attention as she rolled herself onto her front and stood up in the clear water. She moved in close to Lee so that her lips barely grazed the edges of his black bowl cut, which was still plastered to his forehead and cheeks. "And you know what?" she whispered, "It shines much brighter than Neji's."
"Alright, I think I've got it." Neji's sudden voice snapped her back to the present. Tenten looked up to Kana, who waved for her to go ahead. Why was she looking for her permission?
'Oh, yeah, I guess I am technically a sensei today,' she thought, 'That's weird.'
Three shuriken flew in Neji's direction. Kana held her breath and watched them violently cut through the air towards him; if they hit the boy then she'd probably have to postpone his training until he healed up. He already had multiple small puncture wounds and a broken nose on top of the cut he received today so they were already pushing his body farther than it needed to be pushed in an exercise that was already exhausting in nature.
The glow of chakra burst out of Neji's side as he released it in a quick burst. Her eyes narrowed when she saw the shurken slow, and she released the air in her lungs when they awkwardly flopped to the ground. "Good job, Neji!"
She could see that he was pleased with himself, even if his face remained stoic. Still, the boy collapsed to his knees and unzipped his sweater-shirt to allow for airflow. Tenten ran over to kneel by his side with concern written all over her lightly tanned face. Kana hopped down from her post and deactivated her Kurogan as it was obvious there wasn't going to be any more training for today – Neji had little chakra left and there was no point in pushing him any further on the first day. "You've done enough," she said, her voice calm but proud, "Let's go back to the village for now."
Tenten looped his arm around her narrow shoulders and helped him off of his fours, wrapping an arm around his waist to steady him. Kana stayed back to pick up the discarded shuriken as to not leave the training field a mess for whoever came by to use it later.
'I remember when he could barely focus his chakra enough to run up a tree,' she thought to herself, stroking the heavy metal stars she held in her palm. On a whim she reached into the pouch she had strapped to her right leg, feeling around with her calloused fingertips until she felt the familiar bracelet. Kana pulled it out and looked down at the colorful jewelry, rolling the little plastic beads as she rotated it around her fingers; the bracelet wasn't anything fancy, just a black braided cord with white, red, black and grey beads strung on it in no particular order. There were two small coins hanging as charms, as well as a charm of a white and red fan and a dark grey spiraled cloud: the Uchiha and Shimi clan emblems. 'I guess you've grown up, too, haven't you?'
"Kana, you okay?"
Neji's call from across the field took her attention off of her little good luck charm; she lifted her head and gave them a smile. "Just picking up the shuriken!" she shouted back before breaking into a jog to catch up with them, placing the bracelet back into her pouch with the throwing stars.