You guys are insane! 200 reviews, that's incredible!
Thank you all so much! Though that leaves me in kind of a pickle: I need a little extra for you. The last time there were 18/19 chapters to give you facts about – now we managed 100 more reviews in 7 (!) chapters.
My head canon hasn't evolved that far yet! So I've decided to give you a different list of facts now: 3 things about each of Hisana's boys.
On a different note: Kohaku-sensei seems to polarize; either people love him, or they don't trust him:DD
Chakra manipulation is fun.
It's one of these milestones that team 7 established without meaning to: meeting your team, tree walking, Chuunin Exams, and … well, your team splitting up, but she's not going to think about that.
No; chakra manipulation is great.
Sensei flat out refused to teach them water walking before they master tree walking, so that's what they're doing first. Still wet and sweaty from the mission, barefoot and hyped up, they're staring at their teacher like a bunch of over excited puppies, wriggling and eager to learn. It's probably the first time they've looked like that, which would explain Kohaku-sensei's slightly wary look.
"Chakra," he starts slowly, "is the life force in your body. Similar to blood, it circulates without your conscious thought, but it can be manipulated more efficiently. You have all shown proficiency with a hand full of D- and E-rank jutsus, so you should be familiar with the basic chakra manipulation via hand seals."
Here he pauses until they all nod.
"Good. Now, using hand seals mechanically forces the chakra through specific channels that shape it in a certain way. For tree walking a basic version of this has to be achieved without seals."
"How is that supposed to work?" Haru enquires. "And why can't we do it with hand seals?"
"As I said, hand seals mechanically force the chakra through the necessary channels – imagine it like a stream being redirected by an artificial trench: Every seal opens for a split second a particular gate to lead a certain amount of water into a trench. What you achieve that way are short, precisely directed bursts of chakra for a jutsu. Tree walking is different; what you want is not a quick burst, but a steady stream to anchor you to the tree. There is in fact no practical difference between keeping these gates open for a longer time with the help of a seal, and forcing it open through chakra control – except that using seals for tree walking would be unnecessarily complicated. Tree walking is a simple exercise, so it would be akin to opening all of your trenches when in fact all you need is to spill a bit of your water."
"So in theory," Hisana muses, "it should be possible to do every jutsu entirely without seals, as long as you have enough chakra control to know exactly which trench is opened by which seal."
"That is correct. If you are curious, you can attempt to channel your chakra into a singular seal and try to compare the feel of it to the others."
"I don't feel much when doing seals," Sora admits. "Is that … not normal?"
Sensei shakes his head.
"That is in fact normal. Chakra control is like a muscle that needs to be trained. After mastering this exercise you will begin to feel it."
He makes a go-ahead motion and takes a step back.
"I will observe."
Hisana remembers all too well Naruto catapulting himself off the tree on his first try. She laughed back then, thinking him an amusing idiot. Now that she knows from experience what it feels like to bruise your butt, she simply tries to learn from it.
Carefully she tries to channel a bit of chakra into her feet, before deciding that this is probably not a good way to start either.
Instead she tries to coat her hands in it, vaguely recalling the mint green glow of yin chakra. At first nothing happens. Trying to force it only makes her face go hot with blood, so she turns to watch her teammates.
Sora is lying on the grass and – reasonably carefully – tapping his foot against a nearby tree. His face is screwed up in concentration, but nothing seems to happen.
"Look!" Mitsuharu yips excitedly.
Like her, he's trying it on his hands first. He offers one as if to high-five her and when she touches it, she sticks to him. There's a faint buzzing under his skin, like Shizuha when she's particularly aggravated.
The buzzing abates and they unstuck themselves with a weird, smacking noise.
"Ugh."
She fights the urge to wipe her hands on her leggings. It's not wet, but the sound makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
"How did you do that?" she asks, eyes trained on her own hand. Haru shrugs.
"Do you know this weird feeling when you force a shiver? It's kind of like that, only … you don't let go, you pull it into your hands."
She contemplates this for a second, still staring at her hand. Forcing a shiver …
She tries a few times without success, but then there's suddenly something at the base of her skull, like an additional muscle. Hisana flexes it and it sends her shoulders snapping forward and an electric charge down her spine. For a split second it's crawling all over her, then it's gone.
"Oh damn!" she squawks, suddenly afraid she might have broken something in her body.
"A chakra surge," Kohaku-sensei's voice sounds from a few trees over. He's not looking at her, but the veins bulging around his eyes indicate that the Byakugan are activated. "That was a good start. Try again."
A bit uncomfortable, she obeys. The second time she manages to direct the shiver down into her hands, but before she can attempt to put it onto the tree, the feeling's gone again.
It takes patience and a weird sort of flexing, that's not quite muscle and more nervous system, to get a more or less steady stream, but once she has a handle on it the rest is easy enough.
Sora has managed to walk a few steps up the tree, still lying on the grass with his shoulders, and Haru is carefully crawling up his tree on all fours, not yet confident enough to let go with his hands. Hisana, eager to try it out properly, simply stomps her foot onto the bark a few times to test the chakra attraction and then pulls herself horizontally against it. She wobbles for the first few steps, thrown off by the two different gravitational pulls, but then makes it almost until the first branch, before she falls off.
"Oh ouch," Sora snickers as she rubs her butt. She throws a stick at him.
It takes her about fifteen minutes more to safely get to the first branch. By that time Haru has managed half the distance and Sora is still lying in the grass, feet occasionally bouncing off the tree like a rubber ball.
"Sensei," she chirps, "can I try it on water now?"
Kohaku-sensei regards the two boys thoughtfully, before giving a nod. She slides down the tree, wincing as a ripping noise announces the death of yet another pair of leggings, and walks over to him.
"Byakugan."
Veins bulge around his eyes. It looks slightly unhealthy, the way they're pulsating, turned grayish-blue by the chakra glowing beneath the skin.
"There is a stream up north, approximately 500 yards away," he informs her. "I will watch."
He doesn't follow her when she starts to run but, turning back, she can see that the Byakugan are still activated. Must be useful, she thinks, for watching a bunch of kids. She wonders if any Hyuuga children ever manage to sneak out of their rooms at night or if they always get caught. Or if sneaking out is beneath Hyuuga of all ages anyway.
The stream is only about ankle deep, but cold. It's not the sort of motivation she would have expected from Sensei – rather something like a deep, dirty pond, so that, if you fall in, you'll get brackish water up your nose. But then again, she knows he's watching, so it's not as if she'd dare to slack off either way.
A quick test reveals that yes, walking on water is harder than walking on trees. She strongly suspects that walking on moving water is especially difficult, which would explain why Sensei preferred the puny little stream to any possible brackish ponds.
By the time Haru comes skipping through the bushes, her feet are cold as ice.
"What's wrong?" her teammate questions, watching her curl up in sunny spot.
"I need a break," she huffs, dimly remembering what her mother used to say about cold feet and urinary tract infections. Do medic nin deal with such things?
"Also," she adds slyly, "I'd love to see if you can do it better."
After all Haru might have taken longer for the actual tree climbing, but he was quicker to concentrate his chakra properly. The boy shrugs.
"If you say so."
Watching Haru tumble into the stream again and again lifts her spirits somewhat. At the same time she dearly wishes to spontaneously develop the Sharingan – it must be priceless for learning chakra control. As it is, she can only observe how the tumbling gets less and the steady steps become more. Haru himself is no help in figuring out the her problem.
"I'm sorry. I just … make it go that way."
Sora never actually joins them. When he comes through the trees it's accompanied by Kohaku-sensei, to officially finish the lesson. There's a streak of dirt on his forehead and he's pouting.
"We will meet again here tomorrow," Sensei announces. "And every day after, if necessary."
Chakra control is indeed like a muscle. A well hidden one that she's never used before, but a muscle, and after a while it concedes defeat. Not to her, though. Not exactly.
The thing about Kohaku-sensei is that he seems to have a pretty clear idea of how things are supposed to work and how to make them work. It's equally creepy and a little comforting that, even if her body rebels against her, Sensei can make it submit through sheer force of will.
After four more hours with no satisfactory results, he simply seals enough of their tenketsu, that the chakra has no choice but to go the right way. All they have to concentrate on then is to keep up a steady stream of it. It feels a little like learning with training wheels – if training wheels made the rest of her body feel like a ten ton weight.
"Your muscles are only supplied with a minimum of chakra now," Sensei informs her and Sora. "Once you've mastered water walking I will unblock them."
It does the trick.
After only an hour she's able to step onto the stream without so much as getting her toes wet. It's weird, because she can still feel the water moving beneath her feet, but it's also fun, because a little tweak of chakra will make the stream carry her along like a conveyor belt.
Yes, she thinks in amusement as she's tugged along like a paper boat, behold the fearsome arts of the Konoha ninja.
The fun and games last until Sora has managed to wobble his way onto the water.
"That's quite enough," Sensei calls from further upstream. "Gather around."
He pulls a bundle of small, thin papers from his jacket and presents them to the team.
"Does anyone know what this is?"
"Chakra paper," Hisana blurts out without thinking. Kohaku-sensei stares her down.
"Thank you Hisana-san," he says pointedly, "The next time raising your hand would be appreciated."
Months of scolding and occasional jabs at their manners have made team 11 mostly impervious to embarrassment, so she only smiles sheepishly.
"As you should already know," he continues, "there are five basic chakra natures – as well as yin and yang chakra. Differently natured chakra is used in different natured jutsus. Every person has an affinity for at least one elemental chakra nature. You will need to channel a small amount of chakra into these papers to determine your primary affinity."
"'Primary'?" Sora quips, "So there's a secondary one?"
"Yes. Though that needs to be determined by experience. The paper will only react to the nature most prominent in your chakra. Mastering two natures is a jounin level ability, so there is no need to worry about it yet."
He hands out a paper to each of them, before demonstrating.
Between his fingers wetness crawls up the paper, as if it had been dunked into water. After a moment the paper collapses under its own weight.
"Awesome!" Sora grins. There's a moment of silence in which he concentrates on his paper, before it crumbles in his hand. "Earth, right?" he cheers, blowing the dust out of his hands.
Sensei nods.
"Oh."
Next to her a piece of Haru's paper flatters to the ground, cut clean in two.
"Hisana-san," Sensei prompts.
She turns towards her own paper and concentrates. There is the slightest tickle in her fingertips, where the chakra enters the paper, and then water is running down her arm.
Oh.
"Oh," she dimly hears Sensei echo. "How unexpected."
The roaring of waves in her ears almost drowns out the voices of her teammates. Her lungs tighten in phantom pain, trying to press out water that's not there anymore. She shivers, the memory of cold water all around her still fresh as ever.
Haru's hand on her shoulder snaps her out of it.
"Well," he says, "at least that explains why it didn't work out with the katon jutsus."
It does, she realizes belatedly. While she's managed to will the Gokakyu no Jutsu into compliance, all other katon jutsus have given her trouble to a point where she's considered simply giving up.
"Unusual but not unheard of, for an Uchiha," Sensei muses. "This will not pose a problem. In fact, with a suiton a doton and a futon user this team is well rounded enough."
She's … disappointed. A fire nature affinity pretty much comes with the Uchiha name, and now she has the absolute proof that she's an impostor – not good enough for the clan jutsus. Even a raiton affinity wouldn't have been so bad; at least she would have shared that with Sasuke.
"Now," Sensei startles her out of her thoughts, "a few simple techniques to start you off …"
It's slightly creepy, her affinity. She's not quite sure if it's a coincidence, if 'Hisana' herself was not quite … right, or if her death has done something to her. Something real and physical enough to change this body she's possessing.
That's why she's slightly apprehensive when Kohaku-sensei shows her the hand seal for her first C-rank suiton jutsu.
"Go ahead," he encourages. "Suiton jutsus are not as violent in nature as katon jutsus; if you have mastered the Gokakyuu, you will have no trouble with this."
She smacks her hands together in a tiger seal.
"Suiton: Teppodama!"
He's right. It's the same sensation of chakra drain, but instead of converting outside her mouth, she can feel it starting to change even as the chakra crawls up her windpipe. Shocked by the eerily familiar sensation, she chokes. Water spurts out of her nose and drips onto her feet. Somewhere behind her Sora starts laughing.
"Are you ok?" he chortles.
She opens her mouth to answer, but instead of words there's only more water coming out.
"Again," Sensei says patiently, "don't let it frighten you. You can stop the conversion at any point; it is not real, physical water until you let go of the chakra. Sora, concentrate on your own work."
Chastised, her teammate turns away. Just a second later a yelp announces his own failure.
"I'm stuck …!" he cries, voice strangely muffled. When she turns around he's sticking head-first in the ground, legs kicking uselessly.
Sensei blinks very slowly and his lips press into a thin line; there might have even been an almost inaudible sigh.
"Please continue, while I dislodge your teammate."
She spits out the last traces of stale tasting water and complies.
"Suiton: Teppodama!"
This time Hisana is more prepared for the choking sensation of the chakra conversion.
Water shoots out of her mouth in a big stream.
It's not like Gokakyu, she corrects. Yes, the buildup in her belly is the same, as is the way the chakra bubbles out of her as if someone shook a soda can, but that's where the similarity ends.
In a way, she thinks, this is more violent even. Instead of blowing out the ignited chakra like a fire-breather, elegant and deadly, the suiton jutsu fills her mouth with cold water to the bursting point before propelling it out like a jet stream.
Afterwards her lips are cracked and bleeding.
"Better," Sensei comments, from where he's still instructing Sora. "Not perfect, but getting there."
Three facts about ...
Sora
1. Sora's siblings are all boys. Until the very last one his mother kept hoping for a girl. There is a whole trunk of dresses that she made stowed away under his father's bed.
2. Sora's father is only a genin. After a long and rather depressing stint in the Genin Corps, he was ready to take the Chunin Exams for a pay raise, to feed his growing family. But two months before the Exam Sora's mother got sick. He stuck around to take care of her, and by the time the next Exams came around she was dead. After that he was too scared of dying and leaving his children alone, so the promotion never quite worked out.
3. Sora might have been classified as a taijutsu prodigy – if his body hadn't suddenly decided to take a break from that while going through puberty. In a matter of four weeks he grew two inches, and hasn't stopped yet. Currently he's not even sure where his limbs end anymore.
Mitsuharu
1. Mitsuharu's father is a bladesmith immigrated from the Land of Iron. In Iron he used to make swords, but in Konoha he was put out of business by a man called Morine Genta, who wasn't particularly nice about it. Instead he has opened a civilian smithy, where he makes cooking knifes. (15 years later, when Morine got 'the arthritis', he was put out of business by Goya Madoka– who promptly received a set of top quality cooking knifes in the mail.)
2. Haru is actually the oldest of team 11, with Hisana's birthday being two months after. Sora is almost 9 months younger still.
3. While easily frightened, Haru has impressive control over his reactions to fear. Under pressure he might start to stutter though; the resulting effect can be quite bizarre, as he still has perfect control over his facial features.
Kohaku-sensei
1. Kohaku-sensei inherited his 'temper' from his grandmother. While playing the obedient wife in public, she famously chased her husband all over the Hyuuga compound whenever he dared to interfere with her parenting. To this day Kohaku-sensei himself has never chased anyone anywhere – that doesn't mean he doesn't occasionally think about it.
2. Kohaku-sensei is in fact regularly mistaken for a woman. As this is a rather common problem among Hyuuga men, he's actively trying not to take it personal.
3. Hisana's suspicions about clones in the bunker were spot on. Kohaku-sensei used them to monitor each of them by having them crawl along the ceiling. That's why nobody ever saw him.
Sasuke
1. Sasuke is an emotional eater. The first two evenings of team 11's first 'mission' he spent on the couch, stuffing his face with Hisana's homemade potato salad.
2. Sasuke is currently the only thing keeping team 7 from hunting down team 11. He worries his team might embarrass his cousin, because Naruto has expressed the suspicion that the boys might be 'more ninja-y' than Hisana, and therefore more likely to know cool jutsus, and no crush in the world could keep Sakura from wanting to ogle older cool shinobi.
3. Sasuke is a restless sleeper and often kicks or talks in his sleep. Because of that Hisana has considered using her genin pay to move them into a bigger apartment with two bedrooms. Sasuke has already found several ads under the bed and therefore realized what's going on. His way of putting a stop to this is to repeatedly profess how much he likes their apartment, as well as taking the apartment listings out of their newspaper every morning.