"Okay, Shinto, try again." Aika said patiently. She'd taken me out to a deserted grove in the Nara Forest to practice my nature transformations. I'd mastered water walking and the Shadow Imitation Technique a short while ago and she'd had me jump straight into this immediately after.

I was surprised at how quickly I was able to grasp the Shadow Imitation Technique, it had only taken me a day to cast it and another week to be able to control my shadows pretty much however I wanted, but then, I was a Nara. I didn't have a kekkei genkkai, but I did have generations worth of shadow users in my blood. Every Nara who became a ninja was taught the technique at one point or another, and it had been this way for years upon years.

I hadn't picked up the nature transformations as easily though. I'd been at it for close to a month with slow progress. Whenever I wasn't at the Academy or training with Misaki, I'd been working with Aika for infuriatingly little progress. If I had to guess at the reason for that, it was, again, that I was a Nara.

Due to the aforementioned generations of shadow users in my blood, I was heavily predisposed to Yin chakra. That was good for certain things – namely the Shadow Imitation Technique and genjutsu which both drew heavily upon Yin chakra – but that made it harder for me to use elemental ninjutsu or elemental transformations. It didn't make it impossible, just harder. I wasn't incapable of using elemental ninjutsu by any metric, but I wasn't picking it up as easily as I had tree walking and the Shadow Imitation Technique.

Of course, that was just the theory. I didn't exactly have a way to prove my hypothesis, but whether I was right or not, it didn't change the face that nature transformations were ungodly difficult for me.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, sitting cross legged on the ground to focus. My chakra was predisposed to water and fire. I should be able to turn it into water and fire. I held a hand up in front of me without opening my eyes, picturing fire in my hand. I knew the recipe for fire – fuel, heat, air. Air was abundant around me. My chakra would be the heat and the fuel. I condensed my chakra in my hand and opened my eyes.

I sighed as I opened my eyes to see my hand empty. I looked up at Aika and said, "What am I doing wrong?"

"This is a very advanced exercise, Shinto. Don't let yourself become frustrated. You're doing well. Now try again." Aika said, an encouraging smile on her face.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes again.

Heat. Fuel. Air. That was all I needed to create fire. I lifted my hand again and sent my chakra into it, willing it to heat up, to fuel a flame.

I opened my eyes, a triumphant grin broke out across my face as I saw a flickering flame like a candle's hovering just above my palm. "Yes!" I cried, leaping to my feet and throwing my hands into the air, unintentionally causing the flame in my hand to wink out. I stared dumbly at my hand, looking up when I heard Aika laughing.

"Well done, Shinto. We'll spend the rest of the day getting you used to doing that consecutively, then we'll move on to water. After that, we can move on to teaching you elemental ninjutsu."

My victorious smile turned into a thoughtful frown.

"What's wrong, kid?" Aika asked.

I shook my head. "Nothing's wrong. Just… Do you know any genjutsu you can teach me? I feel like it would be easier for me to use genjutsu than ninjutsu, and I'd rather know both than just one."

Aika pursed her lips looking at me funny. "Where did the sudden urge to learn genjutsu come from?"

If I were to be honest with her, I would tell her it was because I was heavily skewed towards yin chakra thanks to my heritage and wanted to take advantage of that fact, but I didn't know if a kid was supposed to know that. We certainly hadn't covered it at the Academy yet.

"Genjutsu lets you mess with people's perception of reality. That's really useful in a fight. With that, the Mystic Palm Technique, the Shadow Imitation Technique, ninjutsu, poisons and my senbon and kunai, I'd be much more well-rounded."

"Are you sure you're not spreading yourself too thin, kid? There is such a thing as being too well-rounded. If you don't have a specialty, you won't have a reliable way to win fights."

That was an excellent point, one I had considered myself on several occasions. She was the expert here. It wouldn't hurt to ask her opinion.

"What do you think I should do?"

Aika raised an eyebrow at me. "You're asking me?"

"Why not? You've been teaching me."

Aika was silent for a moment. There was a calculating look in her eye. "Learn water transformation then a low level fire jutsu and a low level water jutsu. After that, I'll teach you the Mystic Palm technique and see if I can track down a genjutsu teacher for you."

I frowned. "You don't know genjutsu?"

She shrugged. "I know two, but both of them are too advanced for you right now. I wasn't a genjutsu specialist. I focused on using the Shadow Imitation Technique and healing. I was a support nin, but I don't think that's what you're wanting, is it?"

I shook my head. "I want to be a heavy hitter."

Aika chuckled. "What kid doesn't? Practice your transformations, Shinto." She walked away, a pained grimace flashing across her face as she faltered for a moment before moving on.

I frowned as I sat back on the ground. I had a lot to think about. Namely, what I wanted to specialize in. Aika was right. I couldn't be a jack of all trades, master of none. That was a good way to die in this world. I needed a way to kill people fast and reliably or I would be the one that wound up dead. Having versatility was good, but I needed to find something to focus on.

I sighed as I thought everything over. As much as I wanted to fling around jutsu like a magical grenade launcher, that didn't seem like the correct path for me. Ninjutsu was great, and I would learn as many jutsu as I could, but I didn't have the chakra capacity or the affinity for ninjutsu to be a jutsu-focused ninja. I would either need Sasuke and naruto levels of chakra or to be so efficient with my transformations that I used a pittance of chakra for every technique. If the struggle I was having with the most basic of transformations was anything to go by, I wouldn't be able to achieve that level of efficiency.

So what should I do instead? My chakra control was great, but nature transformations were tripping me up for some reason I couldn't figure out. I'd learned the Shadow Imitation Technique easily enough though. That relied on yin chakra, so maybe that's what I should do, focus on techniques that required yin chakra and chakra control not dependent on a nature transformation. There were other shadow jutsu the Nara clan had developed over the years, so I could seek those out and learn them. If I could pick them up as easily as I did the Shadow Imitation Technique, I could start practicing with them before my first year at the Academy was over.

There was also the fact that I was already getting pretty good with my chakra string projectiles, so it would probably be wise to double down on those – to find genjutsu and shadow techniques that would synergize well with them as well as getting those poisonous plants from Yamanaka flowers when my parents got back in town. I wonder if Aika would count as a guardian?

I tilted my head to the side, a, "Huh." escaping my lips as I thought of something else.

Why couldn't I just make new techniques? It wasn't like I didn't know the theory. I had really good chakra control too, just not for elemental jutsu, so I'd have to make genjutsu. Or… Could I make new techniques using the Shadow Imitation Technique as a base? Make new shadow-based jutsu?

Now there's a thought.

X

Dad and I were sitting in the small yard behind our house. We weren't well off, but the Nara clan cared a lot less about status than the Hyugas did, so our house was pretty nice when compared to the average living conditions in Konoha. We had a young, thin apple tree sprouting from our yard, a small garden and a house that was two stories tall. Mom and dad got back from their mission just over a week ago, and they had been helping me with shadow jutsu since.

I took a deep breath and focused, channeling my chakra into the technique dad and mom had been working with me on – the Shadow Gathering Technique, also referred to as Shadow Pull. Shadow Pull lets the user split their own shadow into a multitude of thin tendrils strong enough to grab objects. The range of their reach decreased with each additional tendril as your shadow was divided up ever further, but I only needed them to be able to expand a meter or so from me for my purposes. There were no hand seals for the technique, but you were supposed to move your arms a certain way regardless. I'd picked up the technique quickly. The reason I was still working on it was because I was trying to use it without moving my arms. My control was good enough that I felt I could maintain it with little focus.

I grinned as I sat perfectly still, my shadow flowing up into the air around me and dividing itself into dozens of pointed tendrils, curled around me to make me look like a many-legged spider. I no longer needed to move my arms to control the tendrils.

The tendrils pointed down and stabbed into the ground. From where they were connected to me, they gifted me up into the air, suspending me on arched shadows. I uncrossed my legs and rested my feet on the ground.

Dad was grinning up at me. "Well done, Shinto."

I didn't answer. There was something else I wanted to test. Chakra strings extended from my hands, waving in the air in front of me while my shadows spread out behind me. My chakra strings and shadow tendrils both reached into my weapons pouch, each string and tendril emerged holding a kunai or senbon.

"You might want to move, dad. I've never tried this before." I said as I stepped in front of a small target we'd set up in the yard. I was using practice weapons, but that didn't mean they weren't able to harm people, just far less likely to instantly kill.

Dad hopped up, walking away to lean against the backdoor of our house. "Don't need to tell me twice. Show me what you've got, Shinto."

I flicked all of my tendrils and my strings forward, sending my weapons flying towards the target. I spaced out each throw so there was a constant stream of weapons flying away from me.

I only hit the target twice. Twice. I'd emptied my entire weapons pouch in the span of fifteen seconds, and only hit the target twice. Finely controlling so many extra limbs at once was playing havoc on my concentration. It was really hard to keep track of everything well enough to properly aim.

I sighed, my shoulders slumping as my shadow returned to its proper position, outlining my silhouette on the ground beneath me. "I need to practice that." I said, dejected.

"You also need to get some storage seals." dad idly commented, looking around at the weapons strewn about the ground with a raised eyebrow. "You'll run out of projectiles way too fast otherwise. I can't think of a better way to carry the amount of kunai and senbon you'd need to effectively use that technique without storage seals."

I frowned, turning to look up at him. "Don't other Nara use Shadow Pull for throwing stuff?"

Dad smirked at me. "They use it for pulling stuff to them. I don't know if I'd be able to pull off what you just did. I don't have the control for it."

I grunted. "Sure, but you're specialized in ninjutsu. Aika still isn't satisfied enough with my nature transformations to teach me jutsu. You can throw around jutsu no problem. It's a pain in the ass for me."

He lightly smacked me on the back of the head. "Language."

I scowled at him, and his lip pulled up.

"Shinto," he said, laying a hand on my shoulder. "You're young. You've got time to work through your problems with ninjutsu. You've got time to work through everything you're stuck on. I doubt there's any other kid your age who is as far along as you are."

I scoffed. "Tell that to the Uchihas and Hyugas that keep beating me in sparring."

Dad shrugged. "You're not not allowed to use Shadow Imitation in sparring, are you? Besides, you're not built for punching things hard. They are. You're more suited to slipping away from attacks and striking swiftly when there's an opening. I'd offer to teach you some more, but I think it would be more beneficial in the long term for you to keep working with that Misaki girl…for a lot of reasons." He added the last part under his breath.

"What kind of reasons?" I asked, a frown on my face.

Dad smiled at me and squeezed my shoulder. "You don't need to worry about it, Shinto. Come on. Let's pick up all your weapons." He moved to walk forward, stopping when he saw my shadow splitting into tendrils as I advanced, snapping down to pluck up my senbon and kunai as I walked within range of it, depositing each back into my weapons pouch.

Dad whistled. "That sure is handy. Your mother is probably done with lunch by now. Let's go eat."

We walked inside and greeted my mother. She'd made us all simple sandwiches with ham and lettuce. As we ate, we caught her up on my progress and the issues I was running into.

"I can't help you with your control, but I graduated from the academy with a girl in the barrier corps. I could ask her to teach you how to make storage seals." Mom said.

"Really?" I asked, perking up. "That'd be great!" I knew how powerful fuinjutsu could be. While I already had too much on my plate that I wanted to learn – the Mystic Palm Technique, genjutsu, ninjutsu, projectile throwing, taijutsu – knowing how to make storage seals would be really useful going forward.

"I'll talk to her tomorrow when I go to the administration building." Mom said, a happy smile on her face as she gathered up our dishes.

I frowned. "You're going on another mission?"

Mom's smile strained. "Sorry, sweetie, but yes. We need to keep paying the bills. Your dad and I are going to set out once the weekend is over. But don't worry! we can do whatever you want until then."

I smiled, accepting her reasoning. I knew how it went. I was an adult in my last life. Bills were a pain in the ass, and if you didn't pay them, you wound up on the street. Their only income source was missions, so they needed to keep going out to keep me fed. I couldn't really hold that against them. I'd miss their help with shadow techniques, but their absence might give me a chance to make my own.

"Can we go to Yamanaka Flowers then?" I asked. "The lady there said to go back with my parents."

Mom and dad shared a questioning look before turning back to me. "Why did you want to go to Yamanaka Flowers?" Mom asked.

"Poisons." I said. "I want to start growing my own poisons in the yard. She said she couldn't sell to me until I had my parents with me. I'm guessing she wants you to supervise me."

Dad's expression turned thoughtful. "I'm guessing you want to use poisons on your kunai and senbon then?"

I nodded. "A barrage like that will be all the more deadly if a single prick can kill."

"You don't always want to kill your targets, Shinto." Mom said, frowning. "Sometimes, you need them alive."

"I know. That's why I asked the lady for a paralytic and a hallucinogenic as well as something lethal. I'd rather have an option to capture an enemy that didn't rely on a constant chakra drain from the Shadow Imitation Technique."

Dad turned to mom with a smirk on his face. "He seems to have thought this through."

Mom pursed her lips, setting the dishes in the sink before walking over in front of me. She took my hands and leaned down over me. "You're not allowed to experiment with poisons unless you're with me, your dad or Aika-san. You have to agree to that, or I won't buy you poisons."

"I agree." I said easily. I wasn't experienced with poison, so supervision wouldn't hurt me.

Mom nodded, satisfied. "Good. Go clean up and get ready to leave. We'll head to the store in a few minutes."

"Okay. Thanks, mom!" I hopped off my chair and ran to the bathroom to wash up.

X

Emi Nara watched her son run from the room with a frown on her face.

"What's wrong?" her husband asked.

"I think we're away too much, Shin. We've always been away too much. Shinto is too grown up already. He should be giving cute girls flowers, not getting flowers to poison his enemies and asking cute girls to teach him how to fight."

Shin stood up and took her hand. "He's enjoying himself. He's an odd kid for sure, but that's not inherently bad. We make sure he doesn't hurt himself while he's here, Misaki's parents watch them while he's over there, and Aika-san watches him the rest of the time."

Emi's frown deepened. "That's another thing. Why is the Clan Head's aunt personally training our son?"

Shin's lips pulled into a thin line. "Maybe she just doesn't want him to be alone?"

Emi glared at her husband. "I know you're not stupid, Shin. What do you really think?"

Shin sighed, reaching up to rub his forehead. "You know what I think, Emi. Shikaku-sama wouldn't constantly ask about him if he wasn't interested in Shinto's progress."

Emi's eyebrows were furrowed in anger. "They want my baby to be their prodigy." She spat the word as if it made her taste acid in her mouth.

"Shikaku-sama gave me his word that Shinto would graduate from the Academy when he is supposed to. He won't let them fast track Shinto's graduation." Shin said seriously. "After that, Shinto will join a genin team and he'll have a jonin to protect him. This is a good thing, honey. If Shikaku-sama stays invested in Shinto's progress, our boy will have all the resources he could ask for at his disposal. And Shikaku-sama is not like those who pushed the Kakashi kid. He won't throw our son into a war just to prove the Nara's superiority."

"But why Shinto? Why my boy? Why did our son have to be special?"

Shin hugged his wife. There were several possible explanations for why Shinto turned out as he did, but he knew Emi was more asking rhetorically. He wouldn't bring up old pain while she was already hurting.

Emi's hands balled into fists where they were wrapped around Shin's back. "After this next mission, I'm taking some time off. He needs one of us around him more. We haven't been there for him, and that changes now. We'll alternate who goes on missions."

Shin pulled back and searched his wife's eyes; he saw a determination in them he would not overcome. There was only one thing he could do. "Okay," he said with a nod. "We'll make sure one of us is with him from now on."

Emi smiled and leaned in to kiss him. "Good. Now get ready. We're going flower shopping!"

Shin raised an eyebrow at her. "Emi, we're going deadly poison shopping."

"But at a flower shop. I'm sure I can convince Shinto to buy some flowers for that Misaki girl. He talks about her all the time. He likes her. A mother knows these things."

Shin had an amused smile on his face as he let his wife drag him through the house, telling him her plot to get his son to give the Hyuga girl he trained with some flowers.

X

"Hello! Welcome in!"

"Hi." I greeted the brown-haired woman who was behind the counter the last time I was here. "I brought my parents this time."

She looked past me at my parents and addressed them. "Did he tell you what he wanted?"

"Something lethal. A paralytic. And a hallucinogen." my dad recited off, his hands in his pockets.

"Are you okay with this?" the woman asked, looking between them.

"Better he learns under supervision then tries it on his own." Mom said, a smile on her face as she walked forward. "Do you have anything like that?"

I raised my hand, struck by a sudden urge. "You wouldn't happen to have some tea plants too, would you? I'd like to try my hand at breeding different tea leaves." Uncle Iroh seemed to enjoy it, and it wouldn't eat into my training time too much because I could work on it while I kept my poison garden.

The woman behind the counter smiled. "Come to the back."

She led us around the counter to a storeroom. There, she showed us around several plants that would work for my stated purposes. In the end, I found three different plants for lethal injections, two for paralysis and one for causing my enemies to hallucinate. My parents brought up the point that it would be a good idea to use multiple poisons instead of relying on a single one. While I didn't intend to make poisons my main avenue of attack, it made sense to vary my arsenal a little bit. My question at the end shocked the lady who worked here.

"How much of each of these poisons can I inject without harming myself?"

The woman who was helping us stopped halfway through handing my parents their change. "Why do you ask?"

"I need to build up an immunity to them. It would really suck if my own poisons killed me."

"I–" before the lady could say anything else, I was yanked off my feet and held up to my mother's furious gaze.

"You will not inject yourself with poison unless there is a trained medic standing right next to you. Agree now or I return the plants." mom said, her eyes narrowed dangerously.

I gulped. "I promise! I wouldn't do that anyway." I grumbled. I wasn't stupid. I wasn't planning to imbibe a drought of nightshade or anything like that. I just wanted to not die if someone caught one of my kunai and cut me with it while I was fighting them. Was that really so much to ask?

"Good." mom nodded, content she'd gotten her way. She set me down and turned back to the lady helping us. "Oh! I almost forgot. Do you have any purple hydrangeas?"

I looked suspiciously between my mom and the lady as they seemed to have some unspoken conversation. They both had conspiratorial smiles on their faces as the woman said. "Of course, one moment."

Three hours after we'd left the shop, we were back at home. My dad and I had our sleeves rolled up as we dug holes and planted my poisonous flowers on the other end of the yard from mom's vegetables. Mom was reading aloud from a scroll filed with hand-written notes the Yamanaka lady had given us on how to properly care for and cultivate all the plants we'd bought.

The hydrangeas mom bought were in a bouquet on the table. Apparently, mom bought them for me to give to Misaki. I'd asked if Misaki would get the wrong idea, but mom started into an hour-long lecture about flowers and their meanings that I could not for the life of me follow. At the end of it all. I turned to my dad. He'd simply said, "The flowers mean thank you." Honestly, mom should have just led with that. A thank you gift for training with me was innocent enough. I'd give the flowers to Misaki at school.

The three of us spent the rest of the day making sure the flowers were well tended and then went to sleep. The rest of the weekend was divided between shadow training and board games. It was a nice break from everything.

Mom and dad walked me to school then left, already packed for their mission. They didn't know when they'd be back, but from experience, I was guessing they'd make it back sometime in the next month. I had plenty to keep myself occupied until then.