This chapter is basically all genjutsu theory. Also, I changed my mind about calling this post "Chapter 15 - Section III" - this sectioning business is messing up the website's chapter numbers. So, this is now Chapter 17! I hope you enjoy. Thank you for supporting this story!
Chapter 17
"The only way to learn casting is through experience," is the first thing Shisui tells her. They sit facing each other, cross-legged beneath the shade of a large oak tree, the promises of chakra lingering in the air. Kumo hops onto Sakura's lap at the first opportunity and purrs loudly as he makes himself comfortable. "Remember how there are three 'levels' of genjutsu one can cast?"
Sakura fishes through her mind for the familiar memory. "Object-level, sensory-level, mind level?"
"Yup." Shisui hesitates. "Under most circumstances, I would first teach you object-level, then sensory, and tackle the mind-level illusions last. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much time we're going to have in the near future due to all my missions recently, so I'm going to take you straight to the mind-level illusions instead. It's the toughest one to grasp, but once you figure out how mind-level casting works, you should be able to pick up the other two no problem; the methodology is largely the same, as I've told you before."
"Like watercolor and acrylic, right?" Sakura smiles at him wryly and he grins back, clearly delighted that she still remembers his words from so long ago.
"Exactly. Now, I know from the manner in which we first met that you have no problems with chakra control, but channeling chakra into another human being can feel quite different from circulating it internally or pooling it into the soles of your feet. Have you ever experienced the exercise known as 'pushing hands' at the Academy?"
"Pushing hands…." Sakura frowns. "No, the name itself only rings the faintest of bells. Isn't it a type of partner exercise?"
"Yeah, it is. The practice is a sort of a mashup between meditation, internal and external chakra control, and partner synchronization." Grabbing her wrist in one swift movement, he yanks her to her feet and out of the shade. "Come on," he says. "Just follow my lead."
It takes a bit of self-control to bite down on the urge to question him, but Sakura swallows down the questions bubbling in her throat. The answers would reveal themselves in times, she's tells herself.
Falling into a relaxed stance with her right foot in front of her left, she watches as Shisui raises his right arm and holds it loosely between them, palm facing away from her. "Put your palm on the back of my hand and lean your weight on my wrist," he tells her. "Relax and imagine that you are using my arm to keep yourself up."
Following his directions, Sakura lets the tension in her body melt away.
"Good. Now close your eyes and try to feel for my movements through our hands. Move with me, alright?" Slowly, he draws his hand back towards himself, and Sakura tries to follow, keeping her palm attached to his skin. Several moments later, she feels his hand start to move sideways and then suddenly flip so that his palm faces her. After a second of hesitation, she flips her hand as well, so that he is now pushing his palm toward her while she retreats. Moments later, he guides their joined hands sideways again until they are back at their initial starting position, having gone clockwise in a circle.
"Great job, Chibi. Now that you know what the movements are, repeat them with me for a while, okay? The motions are simple, so you should be able to stop thinking about them quickly. I want you to keep your eyes closed and try to calm your mind, as if you are meditating, but focus your senses on me. Try to tune in to my chakra and replicate what you find. Pushing hands is in part an exercise in communication; I want you to start to sense my chakra so well that you can feel my emotions and anticipate my moves, and then replicate them and send them back to me. Make sense?"
The implications of those words hit Sakura all at once, and she opens her eyes. "Okay, Shisui-senpai, but are you saying I should be reaching out with my chakra?" The phantom ache of excruciating pain flickers down her spine unbidden, and Shisui catches the grimace she tries to hide.
"Yes, but not in a way that should raise any concerns," he says with a sudden ruffle of her hair. "From what I understand, your condition attacks when you use your chakra as a sense organ; an extra-sensitive receptor to stimuli. Technically, you could actually feel pain even if you only moved chakra within your body, since the determining factor is not where your chakra is but what you do with it—in other words, it would probably hurt for you to sense with your chakra even if you did not send any of it into your surroundings. If I'm correct, then this exercise should be completely painless because even though it would require a circulation of chakra between us, I'm not asking you to use your chakra in that sensory way." Crouching down, he meets her eyes with a steady smile. "I promise: if you feel even the slightest twinge of discomfort at any point, we will immediately stop. Okay?"
His voice is gentle again, as if she were a skittish young animal, and Sakura steels her nerves.
"Okay," she says. Taking a deep breath, she closes her eyes again and forces her muscles to relax, emptying her mind and focusing her senses onto the warm hand which slowly leans into hers.
And they begin to move.
The first few rotations are slow and jerky as Sakura slowly learns to feel the twitch of his muscles and to anticipate the shifts in his center of gravity. She adjusts to his movements until she can start to catch the moment he prepares to switch from pushing to retreating and vice versa, until the rough circle that their hands trace through the air begins to even out.
"Great job." Shisui's voice floats softly through the air. "Now see if you can feel and copy the movements of my chakra as well. The goal we ultimately want to achieve is for you to be able to detect anything I throw your way and send it back to me."
She doesn't feel anything different at first. Just the sharp jerk of his wrist during one rotation, the soft slide along her palm the next. She brushes against his pulse point when she overextends her wrist and the faint tingle along her fingertips feels almost like chakra, but not quite.
And then, over ten minutes later, a flip of his hand sends a shock of electricity shooting up her arm so quickly that she nearly stumbles backward.
"You felt that?" Shisui asks immediately. He must have sensed the sudden stiffness in her fingers.
"Yeah," she whispers shakily. "Let's go again."
Slowly, he begins to send small amounts of his chakra into her hands with each push. Sakura feels the foreign energy wash over her like the tide: gentle waves of energy which trickle up her wrists and arms and then reluctantly recede as she guides them back into Shisui's hands along with an equal amount of her own chakra. She quickly relaxes into the rhythm. While her chakra is a warm blanket that flows between them, Shisui's chakra leaves behind a cool, refreshing tingle that settles pleasantly at her nape with each rotation.
"Shisui-senpai?" she whispers sleepily into the stillness.
"Shhh, just a little bit more," Shisui whispers back, sounding excited rather than calm. "Wait for it."
Sakura has no idea what they're waiting for, but the energy in his voice sets her on edge, and something in her chest coils tightly in response. The tingle in her neck starts to vibrate with more intensity and soon the prickling sensation travels down her torso and along her arms. She struggles to continue their back and forth, hand shaking with the effort of containing the feeling within her limbs.
"S-shisui-senpai, I—"
"Don't fight it, just let it go!"
And she does.
Her chakra travels through her fingers and into his in a shivering wave, leaping along his veins like a bubbling stream. In her mind's eye, Sakura can visualize it as a shimmering fabric gently wrapping itself around Shisui until he's completely curtained for one, perfect moment—
—and then with a gentle puff, the cloak scatters and dissolves into glittering dust.
Her eyes snap open and Shisui is there, clutching her shoulders and crouching down so he can grin at her face-to-face.
"You did it, Chibi! Brilliant!" He ruffles her hair and pulls her down to sit on the grass beside him. "I didn't expect you to get it so fast and so well—on your first try, even."
"What was that, though?" Even though Sakura has done nothing physically strenuous, she feels her breath coming sharp and fast, her eyes still wide as she stares, unfocused, at her hands.
"That," he says grandly, "was a genjutsu net!"
Sakura rolls the new term over in her mind. She's read through many of the village library's genjutsu books, but none mention a genjutsu net. Then again, none of them offer any real details on how to cast a genjutsu in the first place, aside from several ninjutsu-based illusions. She says as much to Shisui.
He merely shrugs. "You wouldn't find anything useful in the public library. Aside from the Uchiha, no one around Konoha really knows how true genjutsu works. And we keep most of our scrolls in the clan library. Partially out of a feeling of jealousy and self-importance, of course," he breaks off into a laugh, "but also because the information would be too esoteric for most shinobi to understand, anyway, and learning genjutsu on your own is incredibly dangerous."
He grins at her. "Aren't you lucky to have such an amazing teacher?"
Sakura levels him with a respectfully unimpressed look. Part of her wants to ask him more about the dangers of learning genjutsu, but Shisui is already scatterbrained enough as it is. She sighs.
"Shisui-senpai," she says patiently, "weren't you just about to tell me what a genjutsu net is?"
"Ah, yes," he says, looking a bit put out. "I was getting there. Every genjutsu has three main components: an energy source which powers the illusion, the contents of the illusion itself, and the canvas upon which the illusion is displayed." He ticks off each element with his fingers. "Chakra is the energy source, obviously. The contents of the illusion are dictated by either the caster's imagination or, if the caster so chooses, the target's thoughts. The canvas is basically the bubble that you envelope the target in, which also doubles as a net that traps the target within the illusion. Since non-genjutsu shinobi throw around ambiguous terms like 'vision' and 'genjutsu' interchangeably, casters have created a small list of standard terminology so that we can talk about genjutsu concepts with more precision. You should probably remember that we normally use 'power' to refer to the genjutsu's energy source, 'scene' to refer to its contents, and 'net' to refer to its canvas."
"And I created a net," Sakura says wonderingly. "So I've just...successfully casted a third of a genjutsu?"
"Well, kind of." He tilts his head and smiles enigmatically down at her without elaborating. "Let's do it again," he says instead. "Aside from working on the quality of the 'scene,' which takes a lifetime to master, casting a net for the first time is the toughest part. It's like the first time a kid figures out how to wiggle their nose, you know? It's easy after that."
Sakura can't help but laugh at the analogy. "Alright, Shisui-senpai. Should we try the pushing hands exercise again?"
"There shouldn't be a need for that anymore. Exercises like those are just training wheels. Just try to recall that feeling and hold my hand, ok? Makes it easier to jumpstart the genjutsu. Also, let's try to sustain the net for a few seconds this time—that will give you the sense of what 'powering' a genjutsu feels like. Now close your eyes for a second."
As soon as Sakura does so, she is seemingly transported to the top of Hokage Mountain. The air is summer-warm and the village glows a dusky orange beneath the afternoon sun.
"Shisui-senpai?" Sakura asks the empty air. A breeze ruffles by and the vision fades just as the sweet scent of oak leaves hits her nose.
Shisui smiles when she opens her eyes. "Creating a genjutsu without a 'scene' is actually quite hard, since the mind tends to automatically insert something to fill the space. I just showed you a simple scene that you can use as a filler for your genjutsu. No need to worry about the details—it's really just a source of placeholder text if you find that you want some. Do what comes naturally."
Sakura nods and closes her eyes again, drawing the image of the village back to the forefront of her consciousness. Once she's held the vision in her mind for several moments, she blindly extends a hand toward Shisui.
"I'm ready," she murmurs, brain mostly focused on molding her chakra. Warm skin wraps around her fingers, and Sakura carefully begins to send a trickle of chakra down her arm.
In her mind's eye, Sakura watches as the chakra pools at the surface of her palm and arcs upward onto his as if in slow motion, before speeding up again as soon as it touches his skin. In moments, Shisui is once more covered in a glittering curtain of energy, and Sakura feeds that curtain with a steady stream of chakra as she tries to figure out how to fill the empty canvas with the scene Shisui had shown her. She imagines the image in her mind dissolving into her chakra as trillions of tiny points of pigment, swimming down her pathways and into her fingers before flowing into that curtain surrounding him.
For an instant, Sakura's mind suddenly lights up as the curtain flash-floods with dizzying color. And then, like a dam breaking, the wave of color surges over her as well.
Startled, Sakura opens her eyes to a whirlwind of half-formed scenes swirling across her vision.
"Shisui-senpai?" she ventures.
But he is gone. Instead, she finds herself staring down a narrow, red-painted corridor plastered with scrolls. She blinks and sees a flash of long, dark hair, a slim shoulder turning a corner and vanishing out of sight. Before Sakura can take even a step forward, however, her surroundings blur and reform into a vision of herself at three years old, eating her first stick of dango. This scene, too, disappears an instant later, replaced by a glimpse of a huge, grey-brown eagle taking off from the branches of a dead tree.
"Shisui-senpai—," she tries to call again, when all of a sudden the countless images around her seem to coalesce into one. The world stops spinning.
Sakura shivers in the stillness and hazards a glance upward to find herself staring at the late-afternoon sun. A soft wind caresses her face and her nose is suddenly filled with the smell of oak.
The scent swells within her mind, a dawning thought.
'This is...my genjutsu?'
Realization runs like cool water down her back, and Sakura shivers with slight apprehension. Why hadn't Shisui hadn't mentioned anything about this? Looking down, she finds herself atop the Hokage Mountain, but the edges of the cliff are blurry, and beyond them there is only whiteness.
"Shisui...senpai?" The breeze blows harder. Another trickle of unease flows through her. Sakura closes her eyes and tries to summon chakra to dispel the illusion.
But there is no chakra.
Her eyes snap open. "What—"
The ground suddenly rumbles and roars beneath her, the landscape shaking as a loud crack echoes through the air.
'Noooooooo!' Comes a loud, ringing scream which seems to emanate from the very fabric of this universe. Color explodes through the whiteness like an unfurling ribbon, spreading out into the distance. Sakura watches as the village appears before her in an instant, and then the training grounds, and then forest and on and on and on—
'Noooooooooooo!' Comes the scream again, tearing straight through her chest, and then Sakura blinks and she's in the air, flying blindly as clouds drift around her and beneath her.
She tries desperately to summon her chakra again but it is still missing, and Sakura can only whimper her terror as her body is hurled through the empty sky, down, down, down, until the clouds start to part and she can see a vast field of blue through her tears, and then a small spot of green within the blue, and then a large, barren tree rising up from the green, its branches a network of scars above the grass.
And then, finally, Sakura sees the figure. She's still too far away to make out any features, but she knows with sudden certainty that it is a person. And then the person turns, and Sakura feels in her gut the moment that they lock their still-colorless eyes with hers.
Sakura's vision clears. Time seems to still. And in the sudden quietness, the figure speaks directly into her mind.
Go back.
The voice rattles down her spine and slithers up her neck and curls up, finally, at the base of her skull like a snake returning to its den. For a moment, Sakura feels nothing but the electric tremor of that sound vibrating through her entire body, through every organ and every cell, touching parts of her she didn't even know existed, growing stronger and louder and hotter and brighter.
And she lets it overtake her.