When Lu awoke in the library, he noticed that he was wrapped warmly in a blanket. This shocked him considering the last time he'd ever been taken care of in this manner was before Orochimaru abducted him and his parents from a small village and conducted the horrors in which the snake sannin considered his 'experiements'. Lu removed the thick crocheted blanket and folded it neatly on the table he was reading at. He then packed up all of his personal materials and returned each scroll and book to the librarian, thanking her in advance for the blanket and left to walk through the village and get some fresh air.
"...that damn cat is going to be the end of the village one day, I swear by it," Lu heard a familiar, flat voice, which he recognized belonged to shikamaru complain.
"It's not all that bad, shika," Lu heard who he assumed was Choji reply.
"Pfft, as if, it only wasn't that bad for you because you don't keep up with your hair and frame like I do," Ino dissmissively retorted.
By this point, Lu was right across from the trio of genin and realized that they stopped talking and began staring at him and his hair.
"Sup," Lu greeted tiredly, waving a hand in the trio's direction.
"Sup," Shikamaru lazily droned.
"So… what's with the sudden silence and staring? Something wrong with my face?" Lu asked sarcastically.
"Nothing it's just that-" Choji started to speak up
"Your hair… it's.. Different," Ino pointed out.
"Different? I haven't changed my hair in weeks, what are you two talking about?" Lu inquired, raising an eyebrow slightly.
"I think it's best if you see for yourself," Shikamaru input, handing the silverette a mirror.
"What. the. HELL?!" Lu shouted excitedly. "My hair- it's… braided?" he questioningly added.
The trio just sat in silence, eyeing the boy as if something had come over hima nd watched as he composed himself once more to the usual put-together attitude he maintained when he was a student in the academy.
"I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone capable of doing hair, so why is it that I have cross-patterened cornrolls all of the sudden when I can't recall knowing a single person capable of doing this while I slept?" He asked aloud, to no one in particular.
The trio, again, just sat there and eyed the silverette before shrugging it off and continuing the conversation as usual.
"We're going to go train with our sensei, Asuma… again. As if we haven't been working our asses off for two days already with that horrid feline monster our daimyo's wife calls a pet cat," Shikamaru, in an unusually even and uncomfortable tone, shuddered solemnly.
"If you're interested in coming with us, you can, although I can't guarantee your safety," Ino added with a wink.
After Lu's showing at the graduation exams, there was a sudden spike in attention he received from the female population around his age. Since most girls considered that Sasuke would never take interest in them, Lu was the next best option.
"I guess I could come along, but before I do, what exercises do you have to do for training? I'm curious as to what the next generation of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio will have in store for us," Lu inquired, tilting a skeptical eyebrow, which was slowly becoming his one-off response to almost anything.
"We do chakra control excercises in the form of leaf control, taijutsu training and teamwork coordination drills against Asuma himself to see how well we can perform together," Choji explained while eating merely a few chips out of a chip bag, which didn't go unnoticed to Lu, who just remained silent. He couldn't remember the last time someone called the Akimichi boy anything negative relating to his eating habits or weight and got away safely before he could pummel them for at least a few seconds. In his absent thought, Lu shuddered, to which Shikamaru noticed, but quickly dismissed it as something that wasn't important.
"I guess I'll tag along. I'll go with you to the spot, and then return thirty minutes after I shower and get all of my gear to train," Lu decided before following them to the location then shunshinning to his apartment.
"Hey, Shika, wouldn't it be a bit backwards to shower just to train and get sweaty?" Ino asked quizzically.
Shikamaru shrugged as they waited on Asuma to arrive and begin their training. Two minutes later, a huge pile of swirling leaves appeared infront of the genin with five figures in the center of them. Lu readied a kunai and formed three chakra bubbles, but soon relaxed when he saw the familiar faces of Shino, Hinata, and Kiba.
"What's the point of this?" Shikamaru asked, sitting up from his spot in the grass where he was watching clouds.
"I bet he's only here with those three because of his girlfriend," Ino snorted.
This comment slightly pissed Kurenai off, but it was only notied from the slightest flare of her killing intent, which everyone except Ino, who was ignoring the woman in order to tease her sensei, felt.
In the silence created from Ino's mild outburst and Kurenai's flaring of killing intent, Lu got some time to think and noted that everything he'd worked on last night could be applied in this environment, as long as he could get an understanding of what he needed to change for his personal taijustu style and concluded that staying along for their training would benefit him more than everyone else present which is exactly why, minutes later, he found himself sparring Shino and his kikaichu, practicing applying new forms of the bubble style jutsu.
As Shino dispelled his kikaichu, they began resembling a fog with how dense they seemed to be in number. Lu found this quite odd as Shino, at least from Lu's perspective, was a reserved student so going all-out like this would contradict the image he'd already had of the boy. Realizing that Shino was also a student of Kurenai, who's a genjutsu specialist, it wouldn't be too far off to assume the density of the bugs was an illusion. Lu jumped back, creating enough distance for him to create a few head-sized bubbles, preparing them to launch at the kikaichu. The idea was that, if he sapped the chakra away from them and didn't come into contact himself, he'd be fine and he could get rid of the genjtustu. The lightning property of the jutsu also added a bit of a 'shock factor' that allows for Lu to launch an attack as the kikaichu are momentarily stunned. Putting his plan into action, he also had another idea which was to create 100 small bubbles, similar to Shino's kikaichu, spreading out towards Shino, kind of enveloping him. As Lu created his bubbles, he noticed a few kikaichu coming towards him, so he immediately launched the bubble jutsu at the silent Aburame heir and waited til they nearly made contact to rush at him and sweep the boy. To Lu's surprise, Shino was pretty adept at taijutsu and held off Lu before his kikaichu recovered and Lu would be in danger if he didn't pull back, so that's exaclty what he did. Shino pursued the darker male sending out a very small amount of kikaichu to surround and eventually, when there were enough around him, he commanded them to compact onto eachother and essentially drain the boy of his chakra reserves. It was at this point that Lu made a swift retreat back to the tree branches above him and noticed no kikaichu pursued him. If Lu had a guess, it was that they were extremely weak because they'd just been born mere seconds ago. To capitalize on this grace period, he immediately dispersed another 100 bubbles and this time, he rushed Shino before his bubbles got to him. He bet on his bubbles coming into contact before he was completely out of chakra, which to any other shinobi was plain suicide. It was at this point that Kurenai and Asuma dropped everything they were doing with the other students and stopped the spar between the Aburame and Awakastu boys before something terrible happened.
"Why'd you stop our spar? Nothing bad was going to happen, I think," Lu confusedly asked.
"You were practically going to kill yourself with that move you just made," Asuma grunted, annoyed at the boy's ignorance of his current situation.
"I'm sorry? How so?" Lu asked, a little offput by how serious the man came off as in regards to his safety.
"I'm sure you know the Aburame clan's kikaichu drain chakra quickly… right? Knowing that, you still charged him and you were about to engage in taijutsu with him, is that correct?" Asuma slowly asked Lu.
"...Yes? I can get that chakra right back and his kikaichu are newborns, the only way they could've drained me fast enough is if they had matured enough, which, by now they have," Lu deadpanned, slumping as he spoke, implying he was a bit bothered by the interruption.
"You can "get that chakra right back"? How do you believe you can recover chakra that quickly? Soldier pi-"
"My kekkei genkai drains chakra with inexpensive chakra bubbles molded by lightning and water," Lu interrupted before the man could even finish the absurd, at least in Lu's perspective, sentence. "I wouldn't sacrifice a ninja pill simply to spar another genin from my village, it's a waste of pills and I hate taking those things anyway, the drawbacks are nothing short of annoying," Lu, with a bit of anger, explained.
For his part, Asuma did seem unbothered by the information Lu just dropped on him, but in reality, he was astounded that the boy even had a kekkei genkai, knew jutsus from it, and it was a combination of elemental affinities rather than an individual jutsu originally created by his clan. Then again, the boy was orphaned by Orichimaru of all people, so his clan probably was wiped out some time ago. Meanwhile, Kurenai had been working with the kunoichi of both team 8 and 10. Ino was tasked with learning a D rank genjutsu, one that if mastered, could be used in active combat to throw off opponents. The genjutsu was the Demonic IllusionL: Hell Viewing Technique, and paired with the psychological warfare the Yamanaka clan was known for, could be highly effective against opponents. It subjected its targets to visions of their greatest fears, may that be death, failure, or the loss of a loved one. All shinobi are conidtioned not to allow their emotions to affect them when on the battlefield as that is the greatest cause of death. Hinata was being trained by Kurenai in hand to hand combat, outside of her clan's natural taijutsu. Her reason for this, in her words, was to 'avoid being predictable' because of the reputation Hinta's clan held. Choji, Shikamaru, and Kiba were instructed to work on their clan jutsus and after an hour, they were to face each other in sparring matches solely relying on said jutusu, taijtustu, and tactics. After an hour of those sparring matches, they were to spar without their clan jutsus and report the resulting winners of each sparring match to collect data on their performance with and without their clan's jutsus. After Lu's conversation with Asuma, Lu and Shino were put together to spar against Asuma as a team, despite the fact that they are not teammates and probably wouldn't be for some time. The goal of their sparring was to bring out more of their innate talent and see how creative the chakra-draining teens were.