Sakura woke up feeling refreshed for the first time in five weeks. Her reserves were a little over three quarters full and she felt like she could do just about anything.
"What a lot of shinobi don't know is that you need exacting control over your chakra if you have both deeper or shallower reserves than average," Atsuko stated sitting back after poking at the fully formed seal element. "Shallow reserves need fine control so they don't exhaust themselves doing simple things. Deep reserves need fine control so they don't overpower the jutsu and make it fail."
Is that Naruto's problem? He's putting too much chakra into his clones?
Could be. It would make sense.
"I want you to gather your chakra- all of your chakra, but I don't want you to form any hand signs. I want you to hold that chakra." Sakura did as she was told.
"Now form this sign," Atsuko manipulated the fingers of one hand and showed her student how it was done.
The puff of smoke next to Sakura was smaller than it had ever been before but there was a fully formed clone standing next to her.
"What's so different about this clone?" Sakura asked poking it in the shoulder. Hard.
"Ow!" it yelled. "That hurt!" Sakura's eyes went wide and they darted between a smirking old lady and the scowling clone.
"That's not a normal clone. That's a solid clone," she said eventually. "That's like Naruto's shadow clones."
"That's right," Atsuko confirmed. "It's called the Kage Bunshin or shadow clone. The two handed sign is this," she showed extended her middle and index finger of both hands and form a 'plus' sign with them. The horizontal fingers were placed in front of the vertical ones. She then poked Sakura's clone in the stomach with the end of her cane and it popped out of existence.
"Hey! Ow," she grumbled rubbing both her stomach where the cane had hit her and her shoulder where she had poked her clone. It took half a minute for Sakura to catch onto the implications of that.
"Wait do I get the memories both mental and tactile from the clones once they disappear?"
"Sharp as a shuriken you are. What advantages can you think of with that information?"
"Intel gathering. You wouldn't have to find a way to get out of a place if you're just finding out information, get in, find what you need, then -poof- all the information just arrives back in your brain easy." Atsuko nodded. "You could use them for other learning too. Training could potentially go faster as well," Sakura added.
"Both correct. The training aspect of it would work for muscle memory, or for practising ninjutsu. Taijutsu with ten clones on the other hand, will just make you ten times more tired and won't build up your muscles or your stamina," she explained.
"This isn't a jutsu that just anyone and everyone can do though," Atsuko continued. "Because you actually share your chakra with them, the shadow clones will survive several hits, but at the end of the day they are just clones. Once they run out of chakra they will disappear since they can't regenerate it. If they're hit particularly hard they will disappear, any chakra they had remaining will disappear too so you need to be careful. Creating one clone or ten clones will split your chakra between you all evenly. For someone with low reserves this would be extremely dangerous so be careful who you teach it to, and when you use it. Fortunately you've managed to expand your reserves to be able to support at least a dozen clones- more if you drain your seal, though I recommend you leave it to sit for a while."
"I've got more chakra than I know what to do with," Sakura replied waving the comment away. "I'm finding it hard to believe that I will have more after forming the rest of the seal elements." She gasped and raised up her hands in a victory pose. "I can cut down on the time it takes me to make all those seals."
"You can also start learning some ninjutsu." Atsuko held up a piece of paper and channelled a bit of chakra into it. It immediately became wet. "Chakra paper. My natural chakra affinity is water and so suiton or water jutsu's cost me less chakra to perform. I only have the one natural affinity, though sometimes a shinobi will have two. It's unusual to have three or more natural affinities, but you can learn other elemental jutsu's, they will just cost more chakra to perform."
She held out another square of paper and Sakura took it. "I just channel chakra into it?"
"That's right."
She concentrated and a bright smile bloomed over her face as it became wet. Her expression melted into one of surprise and confusion when part of the paper crumbled away and part of it turned sludgy like mud.
"Doton, Earth affinity, and Suiton, Water affinity. That is unusual for someone of a civilian background. I can teach you water jutsu's, some wind jutsu's, and a very few basic fire jutsu's but you'll have to work out any earth ones on your own I'm afraid. That's an element that I could never get a handle on. But first you're going to learn hand signs."
"But I already know hand signs Bāchan," Sakura protested.
"You were taught two handed hand signs. You are going to learn single handed hand signs. What happens when you've broken a hand, or it's trapped. Single handed signs can keep you fighting and save your life. You're lucky that single handed signs are mirrored for your left and right hands but you need a certain flexibility and control over your digits to make them correctly, and not everyone can."
"Are they called the same? To perform a jutsu is the sign sequence the same for both one handed and two handed signs?"
"Yes and yes."
"Can I switch between hands during a sequence? So I use my left hand to do the first second, and third signs, but my right hand for the fourth and fifth?"
"I've never thought about it, but my brother could do two different jutsu at the same time by doing one with his left hand and one with his right. He had water and lightning affinities. Very effective." Sakura winced and she even felt Inner shudder at the thought of just how effective that would have been.
She didn't know how earth and water could combine, but having two natures and knowing that she might eventually be able to perform two different jutsu at the same time gave her incentive to shut up and learn.
Atsuko had to show her several times the correct positioning of her digits. Her hands kept wanting to slide into the position of the more familiar two handed signs and she kept getting rapped on the head by Atsuko's cane for it.
They settled on a list of jutsu for Sakura to learn. The list was compiled of three D rank, four C rank, and two B rank jutsu's and included the water clone, the hiding in the mist technique, the water prison, and the water dragon jutsu- all of which Zabuza used in his fight with Kakashi.
Atsuko, however, started Sakura on a jutsu that wasn't affiliated with any element. She started with the signs and how to use the body flicker technique.
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~G