The following day, Hasuka met with the two brothers once again on the same field. However today, the leader of their two man team oversaw their bonding exercises. Wearing the same guise of a different appearance, the training began.
"For our first practice," the short, green haired woman, named Torena, began. "A simple trust fall." At the stifled groans from her young audience, she continued. "We're starting off small so you at least have a foundation to build yourselves up from; we'll get to the exciting stuff later."
All nine possible combinations were utilized and went off without much of a problem, so they moved a step higher on the activity rung. "Now that a little trust is built, we'll work on forming some combination moves. We won't go too in depth today, for a number of reasons. I'm not feeling as well as I could be, mostly a headache that hasn't let up in several hours. Otherwise, I know the capabilities of my two pupils, and from what I have heard, you Hasuka are not much of anything other than a taijutsu fighter."
Hasuka winced slightly at how bad that sounded, but she couldn't deny the truth. She was built for fighting, not dancing around waving earth around like a stick. Even the handful of times when she was brought downstairs and forced to defend against attacks was only building her up for that.
"That's okay though," She continued. "Asoka, as you saw, is most proficient in genjutsu and Emoda, although you didn't see much of it, is a ninjutsu fighter that has a fair amount of chakra control under his belt, which allows him at least a bit of skill in taijutsu. Therefore, since this team is relatively balanced in all three fields, there shouldn't be too many problems."
"One aspect I would like to potentially look into his your chakra strings. You used them in quite an unconventional way yesterday which can be used to our advantage."
Unconsciously, Emoda's hand moved to his neck which he passed off by scratching the back of his neck instead. "Strings can be strong, but only as strong as the person wielding them. So, as a trial, try moving me."
Hasuka's eyebrows creased in concentration, unused to being commanded in their use so. Whenever she had practiced with Garoma he was more suggestive in the usages and manner of wielding them, so she would try something and if it didn't work, they wouldn't linger on the idea too much.
Reluctantly, she took a stance, left foot in front with the center of gravity balanced over her right foot. As the twins watched, she rose her hands like a conductor preparing an orchestra, and flexed the fingers. What they couldn't see however was invisible wires stretching tentatively outward.
They didn't move very quickly, as this was just practice and Hasuka was trying to concentrate, but eventually they found their target. Torena shuddered slightly at the feeling of the newfound connection, a strange expression on her face.
She had been directed in such a fashion before, but this feeling was different. Instead of being forced to move as the puppet to a master, this seemed more optional, friendly almost. Just through the connection she felt better, the headache that had been plaguing her eased from her mind.
Hasuka attempted to raise Torena's arm using the strings, and she had to consciously deny her arm's movement or else it would have jumped for the occasion. As it was, she let her arm follow Hasuka's movements as it wanted, directing her to attempt the movement of other body parts.
After some practice, she finally asked Hasuka to lift her up entirely off of the ground. This was a much bigger step than just manipulating the arm because from what Torena could determine, Hasuka's strings relied on consent. That could be taken as a good or bad omen depending on the circumstance, but it was an omen nonetheless.
This task was much more difficult because whether your conscious brain agreed to be lifted or not, gravity was not as reasonable. That is why, trial after trial, Hasuka was not able to lift Torena off of the ground.
Asuka released a sigh from his position on the ground, bored out of his mind. What was the point of this? He and Emoda weren't getting any practice out of this, and whatever initial merriment they had felt had quickly worn off. "Can we move on to something else?" He complained with a roll of his eyes.
Torena assented by giving the signal for Hasuka to release the strings, whereupon the latter collapsed onto the ground. Despite her training, she was not prepared for the amount of energy that she would have to use in order to stay connected to a living being as long as she had.
Chrakra strings would have been easier in this aspect because they would have connected to the leader and held the same chakra continuously. Using energy had it's drawbacks in that the energy literally connected to the other person's energy field and system. In that respect, the energy was constantly being drawn out of Hasuka and siphoned into the other person, without even knowing.
On inanimate objects the task was far easier because the energy was what made the object move, so a much lesser amount was necessary to get it to do that. Conversely, in a living body, the energy was not directed specifically enough to do that, and was instead partly partitioned to other parts of the body. One such part, the one that collected the most energy in fact, was her lungs.
Bit by bit, a significant amount of Hasuka's energy was used to, as it seemed to her, almost patch up Torena's lungs. They hadn't been in a very bad state, but apparently her body saw enough of a disturbance to direct the energy there. However, it was a struggle to keep the energy from going there like it wanted, and that only took more work to do.
In a nutshell, it was draining. Garoma had not mentioned anything of this sort, although they had never tried it on living things, so she mentally filed this information away for later. As it was, Hasuka lied backwards on the ground, relishing the welcome breeze and taking deep breathes.
For Torena however, she couldn't feel more awake. Her headache had all but disappeared, and despite not being able to list her off of the ground, Hasuka had shown good promise to possibly join the Puppet Brigade when she was older. There was something odd about her technique though, and she couldn't put her finger on it.
Instead of being tired from standing around and giving directions, Torena felt better than when she had arrived. Why this was though, she couldn't be sure. Her breathing was better, and for that she was grateful, if not mildly confused. Feeling more up to the challenge, she decided on her next exercise.
Torena explained to the awaiting trainees that they would fight together in practice rather than theory. "So come at me," she challenged the trio. "The worst you can do is lose."
Thankful for the change, Emoda and Asuka immediately rose and took a stance, imitating the other to a tee. They faced inward, their opposing positions made the point of a triangle facing towards their sensei.
Hasuka, having stood up, faced her head on, standing as the base of their triangle. Sweat rolled down her back in the day's heat, so she wiped off what she could from the rest of her body, namely her forehead, on her bandages. The other two, who wore much less and tighter clothing, were perfectly fine.
As it turned out, Hasuka did not have to do much. The twins worked exceedingly well together to take on their teacher who simply dodged their taijutsu attacks, avoided Asuka's eyes, and very nearly got burnt by Emoda's fire. This was the first time she had seen his ninjutsu, so Hasuka absorbed what information she could.
It looked like Emoda primarily used fire attacks by the names of jutsu that he called out. Hasuka smiled at that, wondering if he could light lanterns like Sanchin. Using chakra to do that would be much easier than what she would have to do to achieve the same result.
Garoma said that doing so would be possible, but it required a surprising amount of energy that she wasn't prepared for yet. A lot of really cool and useful things couldn't be done at the moment which made her sad. Yet that only meant that she would have to get strong.
For the next week, training happened in a similar fashion. They would do some trust exercises, one-on-one time, and finish the day with group practice. It was monotonous, yet necessary if they were to become Chunin.
Kakashi debated on whether to stifle a sigh or not. They had were on a mission near Sunagakure and Obito had gotten a deep knife wound on his shoulder. If he had just been quieter the entire run-in could have been avoided altogether. As it was, the team had to cease in their movements so that Rin could treat him.
She suggested that he not do much with that arm for a week, which put a large damper on their plans. It was an intelligence mission about the upcoming Chunin Exams to take place in exactly a week. Konoha was slightly more than curious about what new soldiers they might be seeing soon, and what new talent to be wary of.
In Kakashi's eyes, it was a semi-pointless mission, yet he would carry it out without complaint, even if he would have to do it alone. Thankfully, they had moved to a place where they wouldn't be found before Obito passed out from blood loss.
"I feel bad for him..." Rin piped up as she rose from the ground, leaving Obito to lie comfortably on a cleared patch of ground. "If I had responded a second sooner I could have perhaps blocked the attack...or-"
"Don't," Kakashi commanded. "You are not at fault for his mistake."
"But-" she tried to deny.
"Rest," he ordered instead. "I'll take the first watch as always."
Rin silently retreated back to Obito, laying down on a patch of leaves a few meters away. Kakashi on the other hand, leapt up into a low hanging tree and gazed alertly at the surrounding forest.
Minato was tired. They kept him on the front lines almost continuously now, with little time at home when he even had the chance. It wasn't just that though. He didn't particularly like fighting, so against a foe with short red hair, he didn't.
Anytime he spotted the unknown fighter, he gave a sigh of relief, because it was far easier on him to dodge and evade than to kill. He knew sometime the boy, who looked far too young to be fighting in this war, would slip up and he would die.
And he would too, Minato knew. The longer this war dragged on, the more death would occur, and the two were not immune to that fate. As the sun faded beyond the horizon and the sky grew from red to blue, the fight for that day ceased and Minato teleported away.