Throwing open the door to Kazuhiro's office, I found my brother dozing on the pullout near the door. Rather, he had been dozing. The clack of the doorknob against the plaster shocked him upright, and I found myself staring cross-eyed at the point of a kunai he had kept under his pillow. Talk about cliché.
"Ohayo!" I greeted, cheerfully. "It's June twenty-second!"
"Is there something significant about the date that I'm supposed to know about?" he asked blearily, lowering the weapon to rub his eyes with his wrist.
"No, I just wanted to reassure you that you hadn't slept through the entire week," I replied sunnily. "Nii-san? Sleep in a bed tonight."
"Yeah, yeah," he waved me off. "I'm getting to a pretty good spot anyway, and I'll be running drills over the next week. Need to be well-rested for that." He yawned and stretched. "You seem especially chipper. What terrors have you unleashed on the Elemental Nations today?"
I scoffed at the dramatization.
"Let's hang out!" I proposed, not answering the question. He cocked an eyebrow.
"Hang out?"
"Yeah!" I cheered. "We haven't spent any time together lately. You just said you were almost caught up, right?"
I literally hadn't even seen him since before the dinner with the Tsuchikage—that's how busy we both were. If he'd come home at all, it hadn't been at night, and Biwa-sensei had drilled us all through each day.
"And you could help me with one of my new jutsu!"
"New jutsu, eh?" he asked with a puzzled grin. "Take another trip to the archives? But since when have you needed help with jutsu? I'm not a genius like you. What makes you think I can help?"
"Because you already know this one pretty well," I said with a cryptic smile before flipping through seals.
I, Saru, Mi, Tori, Ne, Ushi, Mi, Tori, U, Saru, I, Mi—Doton: Keijūgan no Jutsu (Earth Style: Lightened Boulder Technique)!
I slapped a hand on his chair, barely holding back an elated giggle as the weighty piece of furniture began to drift to the left. Without much force pressing it down to the ground, friction lost its power. Physics could suck my dick.
"Kami, what?" Kazuhiro asked, taken aback. "That's a B-rank! Who the hell taught you a B-rank?"
"I got conditional access to the B-Rank Archives!" I explained. "And a handful of Merits to spend in it. As a reward for the whole Hanzo thing."
Kazuhiro just shook his head, massaging his temples. "I can't believe you're being rewarded for such recklessness."
Kazuhiro had made time to yell at me after the whole debacle, prior to the dinner. I didn't question his source—he was a jonin and a Division commander, after all—and only put that together after the fact that he learned about it through the rumor mills, specifically regarding my bounty. He assumed I knew, so he didn't mention it at the time. That plus my segregation from the rest of the shinobi forces allowed Biwa-sensei to keep me in the dark.
"Can't you?" I shot back, and he sighed. Kazuhiro knew as well as I did that so long as I kept getting results, I'd keep getting rewarded, no matter how reckless he deemed my actions.
Despite his physiological and emotional weariness, a small smile broke out on his face.
"So you want some tips from a pro, huh? I think I can spare a couple hours for that."
I nodded vigorously. There were probably few people in the village at this point who could use the gravity duo better than Kazuhiro; his flight skill hinged almost entirely on his finesse with the techniques. By necessity, he practiced and experimented with it every day for years now.
"Are you finally gonna give me a tour of Training Ground X?" I asked, eagerly.
"Now that you can actually get there, I don't really have an excuse to keep you away, do I?" he agreed, and I cheered, taking him by the hand and pulling him out of the office and back towards the fenced-in training yard.
"Have you used it on yourself yet?" he asked as we stepped into the sunlight.
"No, I wanted to wait until you could supervise," I replied, and he ruffled my hair.
"Good. Now, as you know, the chakra cost is relative to the weight you seek to remove through selection. Since you're small and have a lot of chakra, you should have no problem keeping it up for the duration of the trip."
The target "selection" for the jutsu was outwardly simple—you wove the signs and touched whatever you wanted the technique to affect. Under the surface, there was a bit more going on. Jutsu worked by changing the behavior of the caster's chakra, but transforming Yin-Yang into something else means changing it from the stuff that keeps you alive into something that shouldn't be in you. Techniques could only be performed by safely sequestering the required chakra away from the collective, which means that all jutsu have hard limits in terms of duration. They could only last until the sequestered chakra was used up; after that, the jutsu would need to be reapplied. Case and point: that chair in Kazuhiro's office would remain unshackled by gravity until the chakra inside of it was spent.
If I wanted to cancel a jutsu mid use, I would have to do so manually, and that was dangerous because any transformed chakra left in the well had to be disposed of properly and promptly before it could damage the user's body. That involved canceling the reaction (some people had to perform extra hand seals to manipulate it further, but those with the appropriate degree of skill could use internal chakra manipulation) and bleeding the resulting mixture out of the nearest tenketsu. Which, naturally, could be felt by anyone with honed senses. If there was a way to salvage the chakra of an aborted jutsu, I didn't know about it, and it would have to be an incredibly high leveled technique.
In other words, using a jutsu was a commitment. You didn't do it unless you were willing to see it through. However, some techniques, by necessity, had work-arounds built into the sequence, like in the case of Doton: Moguragakure no Jutsu (Earth Style: Hiding Like a Mole Technique). You didn't want to risk leaving a trail of sand around for enemies to fall into or track, so upon ascension, the user could make an additional hand seal that condensed the remaining chakra into the smallest point possible, which would then retreat into the center of the selected target's mass. The Keijūgan had a similar function, though the condensed chakra traveled to the outer shell of the object instead of the core so as not to throw off weight distribution. Other techniques had entire companion jutsu to reverse the original's effects after it resolved, which was the case for my Doton: Shunkan Iaku no Jutsu (Earth Style: Instant Tent Technique).
In the case of the Keijūgan, I could change the duration of the technique by modifying how many hand seals I used, though there was a fine balance that needed to be maintained. I had to think about both the amount of time and the weight of my selection, which meant I'd have to do a lot of studying and a lot of experimentation before I could use it on just anything out in the field with precision.
Once I selected my target, a connection would be formed between it and the tenketsu in my hands. All of the sequestered chakra would flow into the target, so I didn't have to worry about it damaging me like in the case of some other jutsu. But it was still my chakra. Though I couldn't simply wish it away, I could manipulate it, making something incredibly bottom heavy by condensing the chakra towards the top, or vice versa.
Correction. I would be able to do that, if my external chakra control wasn't so shit. Once again, I had learned a technique that I couldn't use to its full potential. That made me feel just swell about myself.
Using the technique on myself however—that was a different story. In fact, I had completely flipped the norm on its head. People usually had a far easier time manipulating the weight of objects, but failed miserably in doing so to themselves. They lacked the internal chakra control.
I didn't.
"The scroll said it was just a matter of using full-body enhancement with the affected chakra," I said. "Is that really all there is to it?"
There really shouldn't be any other surprises. The scroll needed to be a comprehensive instruction manual—any tips, or kami forbid, warnings, should be stated in the text.
Kazuhiro shook his head in bemusement. "Is that really all there is to it, she says. As if that isn't hard enough. You know, of course, that molded chakra can harm the body if recklessly channeled."
It was kinda impossible not to know that. I could feel every jutsu I cast; at the very least, they tingled. Some even stung. My Ninpo: Shunshin no Jutsu (Ninja Art: Body Flicker Technique) generally spent the most time in my body, and made me feel like my limbs were just beginning to fall asleep. It was something I could easily ignore, especially since I was, by the definition of the technique, running while doing so.
The second place by this metric was Doton: Shunkan Iaku no Jutsu (Earth Style: Instant Tent Technique) and that felt a lot worse. It actually hurt as the chakra traveled down from my hands to my heels, and the reason for that wasn't a mystery. It was an elemental technique, and elemental chakra didn't belong in a human's body in such a concentrated state. Yes, elemental chakra is a component of Yin-Yang, but using elemental jutsu was like injecting yourself with a mineral like calcium or sodium. Just because it's found in the human body, doesn't mean you can slap it anywhere and expect it not to hurt.
So, though I was out of touch with their struggles, I supposed I understood where the difficulty lay. Few people were capable of "perfect" chakra enhancement at all, and to most of those people using it, the act would continue to be a challenging mental exercise no matter how often they practiced. Then, on top of that, you add pain to the mix? That was an even greater distraction.
Pain was the body's signal that something was wrong. It was instinct for a person, if they were doing something that caused them pain, to stop that action on reflex. Trying to convince your brain that pain = good was a trial of its own.
Steeling myself, I flipped through the hand seals once more and took a deep breath. The molded chakra burnt my hands, and though they begged me to release it, I instead did the opposite. I forced it to circulate my canals evenly, calmly. I had full control, and though my Yin-Yang chakra wanted to fight it, I kept a tight leash. Soon, I was coaxing it up every tributary I could reach.
Oh, it hurt like a bitch. But at this point, my pain receptors were burnt out from all my experiments with Flash Flooding, and I could tune out the sensation.
The weightlessness, however—that I wasn't used to. The sensation spread with my chakra; first my arms began to float with no effort on my behalf, then my upper body, and everything else soon followed.
"Guess I don't need to be afraid of drifting away," I mused, not that I was ever truly concerned about that. "All I have to do is retract the chakra from my leg or something and I'll sink like a stone. But hey, guess that idiom doesn't—hehe—hold weight anymore. With the Keijūgan being a Doton technique and all. Stones can float now. Who knew?"
"Well, glad to see you aren't exempt from the giggly phase, at least," Kazuhiro said wryly as I rose to his height. Wait, is this why the Tsuchikage likes this technique so much? Because it makes him feel tall? "Even if everything else is a walk in the park for you."
Now that he mentioned it, I did feel oddly light, like I was mid-drop in a roller coaster. I wasn't even moving, and it already felt exhilarating.
"Carry me?" I requested. "I don't have a Wind affinity like you, and using a Futon jutsu seems overkill."
I didn't have any that worked like that anyway. The only Futon ninjutsu I had was the one I stole from Minato, and that cut through the surrounding air like a lance. Something more widespread, that pressed against the atmosphere around me, would work a lot better, though that would be difficult to control and more likely to send me careening into the sky.
This was why Kazuhiro had to get a new affinity surgically grafted into him. Without the ability to finely alter the air currents around him, the only motion he had complete control over was his descent.
In other words, I was shit out of luck. I couldn't rule the skies under my own power, which I knew of course. That wasn't why I picked this technique. At this very moment, strangely, I felt a touch bitter.
I had never cared for the concept of flight. I never particularly enjoyed flying in planes or helicopters, even though I did both frequently in my last life. In terms of superpowers I fantasized about, flight didn't even make the list. But now that it was so close, yet so far out of reach? I had gotten a taste, and wanted more.
Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Kazuhiro acquiesced, hoisting me piggy-back style with even less difficulty than usual. He bent his knees slightly, and I wrapped my arms around his neck so he could flip through his own hand seals. He had the sequence narrowed down into six hybrids, which was good for me to know. That would be my very first project.
Then he leapt, and I almost shrieked in joy as we shot up like a rocket. The strength of his jump was boosted by wind manipulation, and soon we were well above the village. Not cloud height—the atmosphere was thinner up there, and while our chakra-enhanced lungs were powerful, humans still had limits. Now that I had experienced it myself, I could explain my ability to apply knowledge I brought over from my home world, conceptualizing a mechanical or possibly fūinjutsu powered solution to the problem. Our enemies literally wouldn't know what hit them.
Kazuhiro had never taken me flying before. He couldn't, in fact; the Subjugation Principle™ ensured he wouldn't be able to cast the Keijūgan on another living being (as holistically reducing a person's weight wouldn't be possible without manipulating their chakra). That's why everyone in Kazuhiro's division who saw active duty all underwent the surgery. Otherwise, the jutsu could simply be cast on any moderately skilled wind user and my brother would have at least triple the manpower.
Ah, the Subjugation Principle. My old nemesis. It was a hard and fast limit, except not really, because people seemed to break it all the time.
I exaggerate. A couple people, in a few select cases, seemed to be able to break it, but those people all had something in common. They were incredibly—almost inconceivably—skilled at their respective crafts.
Senju Hashirama and Senju Tsunade performed feats of medical ninjutsu that shouldn't be possible. There were incidents cited in our history textbooks where Uzumaki Arashi, one of Uzu's forebears and debatably its greatest leaders, would manipulate the chakra of others to force them to unseal the contents of keyed storage scrolls against their will. Chiyo of Suna had the ability to attach her chakra strings to an enemy's tenketsu and force them to cast jutsu, including bloodline techniques she did not possess herself.
Even Ōnoki, our esteemed Tsuchikage, laughed in the face of logic by using this very technique on enemies during the last war, hurling them far into the sky only for them to eventually crash down and shatter on impact. I also saw this in the anime, where he used the Kajūgan on a Zetsu clone, and the Keijūgan on Gaara's sand. Neither of which should be possible.
No one knows how he did that—how any of them did that. Given my background knowledge, I am of the opinion that there isn't a single, overarching condition to surpass the principle, or that there are even any true exceptions at all. I think each of these legends simply found a trick, or a work around specific to the effect they were working to achieve.
I even had a guess as to Ōnoki's, which is based on a moment in canon. Specifically, that confrontation at the Five Kage Summit where he deals with the Zetsu clone. It goes back to something I noted earlier, about elemental chakra and its relationship with the body. But more on that later. For now, I could bask in the sun on my face and the wind in my hair.
Close by, I could see our destination. The unofficial Training Ground X, created by Kazuhiro himself and his vice-captain Kenta, who had since been fixed a year after his operation initially went awry. It was accessible only by air (essentially—a properly motivated ninja could get just about anywhere), as it was atop one of the Sekitsui's tallest peaks, surrounded by sheer cliffs on all sides.
"This is so fun!" I cheered, the words whipped out of my mouth by the wind. If my mouth wasn't next to Kazuhiro's ear, he might not have heard me.
"I only found the charm in it a couple months into my training with the technique," he confided. "Control is what really tripped me up—of chakra, yes, but I mean control of your body. Flying isn't intuitive; unlike walking, it's a purely mental exercise. You need the jutsu's counterpart and fine-tuned Futon nature transformation to have anything resembling finesse."
I hummed, caught up in my newfound fantasies.
"I might just have to give myself a Futon Affinity then," I mused. "Then I could join you in the sky for real."
I could feel him immediately tense under my grip.
"You're joking, right?" he asked, pleaded.
I laughed at the panic on his face.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm joking. I don't think I'd look good with a collar."
Cosmetics were the least of my concerns. Kazuhiro couldn't fight well on the ground anymore. Not at the level of any other jonin, at least. The protective neck brace prevented him almost entirely from turning his neck, and though his senses were sharp enough to compensate, it restricted his mobility and jutsu use as well. He couldn't aim stomatic ninjutsu well unless he was flying above the target, and the most useful projectiles were fired in that manner. Plus, it wasn't strong enough to act as armor if an enemy got close, so engaging anyone in taijutsu was too risky.
"Yeah, I would agree."
If he was physically capable of giving me a wary side eye, he would be doing so.
"You said give yourself like it would be easy. Please don't tell me you're actually capable of that."
Okay, then I won't tell him. I'll keep it to myself that I would likely be capable of performing the operation on myself with more ease than the entire team of medics had with him. The entire challenge was integrating the existing chakra network with the grafted foreign entity. I just needed a clone or two to make the incisions and hold the added bits in place as I connected them. Easy peasy.
Again, not going to do it. Just saying that I could if I so desired.
"Of course not," I agreed. "Performing surgery on yourself is incredibly dangerous and foolish. I will definitely never be doing that."
He sighed in relief. "Good. You already have one unnecessary procedure on your horizon. I'd have to put my foot down at the idea of another."
Ah, right. The procedure. At long last, Aimi and I had hashed out all the details. We were mostly sure that we could tattoo an Inventory port inside my mouth without destroying any important organs. Now, whether I could actually use said Inventory port once it was installed? Eh, we'd see.
Just kidding, of course. I'd make it work. I had to. I needed this.
"Five days," I reminded him. "And they'll keep me a day at least for monitoring. You better pick me up from the hospital and take me out for ice cream. The cold will probably feel good on mah gums."
When I described what exactly they'd be doing, even Kazuhiro had winced. We did end up going with the "take out a bunch of my teeth and put them back in" plan.
"As Your Highness commands," he said tiredly, touching down onto the man-made plateau he had created. It wasn't nearly all I hyped it up to be in my head, little more than a flat circle around three hundred meters in diameter. There were scorch marks littering the stone, and I could see the Sky Division's mark on the surrounding mountains as well. Bits had been blown out of them with exploding tags, and a mess of boulders were nestled in stony crags. I bet in a year or two this would be the tallest mountain in the immediate vicinity by a significant margin.
"I thought you said there was a base of some kind here?" I asked, a little disappointed.
"I said there was a bunker," he corrected. "That holds some of the materials we use on a daily basis. But seriously, imouto. No one ventures through these mountains, sure, but what ninja would I be if I just left something like that out in the open?"
Using surface walking, he climbed part way down the sheer cliff as I followed him, my Keijūgan still active. It felt weird to use chakra like this while I possessed no weight; it was like I had little vacuums on my feet. With this jutsu, I could probably jump high, flip in midair and cling to a high ceiling or tree branch like a bat. That would be fun; I should practice that. God, I loved having enough chakra to use high-cost jutsu on frivolous stuff like that.
The bunker's entrance was dug into the side of the plateau, indistinguishable from the surrounding cliff face. Kazuhiro could only even locate it from a specific pock-mark in the stone, which looked entirely ordinary on the mountain itself.
Running through the incredibly familiar hand seals for the Moguragakure (Hiding Like a Mole) he began to climb through the stone as if it weren't even there, displacing just the slightest bit of dust as he transformed the solid stone.
"There's a wooden frame embedded in the mountain," he explained. "You can use it to find the lip of the entrance." He did appear to be grabbing onto something through the stone. "You coming?"
I chewed my cheek in dissatisfaction. "I don't think I can do that without ruining the entrance."
The Moguragakure worked by transforming stone and packed dirt into a kind of silt, the grains of which were lubricated and shifted by chakra. If I was on a flat surface, I had no trouble using the technique, even if, due to my issues, I couldn't remove traces of my point of entry nearly as well as others could. However, if the technique was used on a vertical surface, the only way to keep the loose silt from falling was by using external chakra control to stick it upright. If I were to use this entrance as intended, the stone façade would just drip down the side of the mountain.
"Don't worry, I'll replace it," he waved me off, but then I had an idea.
"Wait a second. The problem here is that gravity would pull the sand down!"
I ran through my newest set of hand seals and cast the jutsu on the cliff wall, before cycling to the Moguragakure. It didn't fall!
Mostly. It did bulge a little, because the Keijūgan didn't render it immobile; it just reduced the effect of gravity. A gust of wind made it concave a significant amount into the tunnel behind it, and I pouted, entering the bunker and forming an additional seal to condense the pocket, "canceling" the Moguragakure.
"It was a clever idea," Kazuhiro offered, and I scoffed as he blew two thin streams of fire through the darkness, lighting rows of candles fixed to the walls with an ease born from extensive practice. Then, he began the short tour.
There wasn't a whole lot to the bunker, though it did extend a respectable distance through the mountain. Kazuhiro had an office, a limited armory, and there were barracks filled with more beds than he currently had combatant employees (who underwent the surgery—his administrative staff wasn't making it here). They even had a break room with a Go table.
"Thank god for storage seals, right?" I mused.
"Yes, yes, you're amazing, imouto."
"I wasn't fishing for compliments, I was just saying."
When we ascended back to the surface, I noticed Kazuhiro's body language bore a certain hesitance. It was slight enough that I probably wouldn't have noticed if I didn't know him so well.
"You have something on your mind," I said, cutting the bullshit. "What's up?"
He shifted, keeping his face nonchalant. "Well, I know we came here to practice the Keijūgan, but I was wondering if you want to learn another one first."
"Learn another one?" I asked, completely taken aback. "Another jutsu? Won't you get in trouble?"
Kazuhiro's stance on not breaking the rules had never wavered. Not since my accident.
"This one, I have the right to teach you," he stated. "Since it's a family technique."
The pieces fell into place.
"Doton: Doro Nami O Tsukamu no Jutsu (Earth Style: Grasping Mud Wave)" I realized, a weird feeling in my chest. "You want me to learn it?"
"Do you want to learn it?" he countered.
"I…I don't know," I said, truthfully. "I'm not sure it would be a good idea to learn my…Imai Hisashi's signature jutsu. If someone he hurt sees it…I carry his last name, so those people already know we're related. But if they're reasonable, they'd know I didn't choose that. But you can't learn a jutsu by accident. They could take that as a statement."
Kazuhiro let out a breath. "I figured you might say that. You're right of course."
His tone confused me. He almost seemed let down.
"You want me to learn it," I realized, frowning. "Why?"
I knew that Kazuhiro loved Hisashi like he was his own father. It was incredibly difficult for him to come to terms with what the man had done. However, he'd made great strides in disavowing him, even internally. I could tell by the tone in which he referred to him, the few times the subject came up. He didn't care about upholding the man's legacy.
"Well, Hisashi was a jonin, but he was never a prolific shinobi," Kazuhiro waffled. "Even once I submitted his technique to the archives," which was a statement in and of itself, "no one really picked up the technique. I'm kinda the only person who uses it. Some people are even referring to it as…my signature technique."
Suddenly, I understood. Kazuhiro didn't want me to learn it for my father, he wanted me to learn it for him. To learn it as the sister of Asano Kazuhiro, Commander of the Sky Division, not as the progeny of Imai Hisashi, the friend-slayer. It was his way of validating our relationship, in a way only shinobi would understand.
I no longer had a lick of hesitation.
"Well in that case, I'd love to learn it."
His eyes widened a fraction. "Are you sure?"
"One hundred percent." I remembered what had just happened outside the bunker, and my heart twisted. "But…you know I'm not going to be able to use it properly, right? Not with my shit external chakra control."
"I know you, imouto," he said, a fierce, proud smile on his face. "I know that you'll find a way. It might not look the same, but I bet a year from now it will somehow be even more effective than anything I can do."
Ugh, he was such a sap. But deep, deep down, I was too, so I swooped in to give him a quick but tight hug. He just chuckled, wrapping an arm around me before I pulled away.
"I remember when you barely came up to my thigh. I had no idea a decade could pass so quickly.
"You've grown too," I pointed out. I meant that in a lot of ways, but it was even true from a physical standpoint. Kazuhiro was full-grown by the time he had adopted me, but anyone who experienced a sudden and dramatic increase in the size of their chakra reserves could have a second growth spurt. Kazhuhiro, coinciding with his personal instruction, had shot up several inches.
"Show me the jutsu," I demanded, beginning to feel the excitement I usually regarded learning new jutsu with, and he laughed, cycling through hand seals.
It had been a while since I'd seen this technique in use, and it was far more epic than I remembered. Kazuhiro slammed both hands to the ground, and the stone beneath me rippled, almost knocking me off balance as a wave spread outwards at high speeds. With Kazuhiro at its epicenter, the ring widened towards me, but I wasn't afraid. Instead of being smacked by the wall of earth, I barely felt any pressure at all as it parted around me like I wasn't even there.
As the wave reached the edge of the plateau, Kazuhiro finally saw fit to solidify it, leaving us in a basin. Now that I knew how chakra worked (and since I now possessed chakra-boosted intelligence), I could think of several ways to modify and apply the technique beyond its intended function.
"Last time I saw you use that jutsu, you couldn't make a big 'ole ring around you," I said with a smile. He could only make a much smaller wave around eight feet wide.
"Last time you saw me use that jutsu, I sucked at being a shinobi," he deadpanned, waving me off as I tried to protest. "So? What do you think?"
I considered the question. "Well, I might be able to pull something off with seals. I already have some background with different triggering types. Maybe I could make a sensory activation marker and hide it in the wave. Make it harden if the seal detected someone else's chakra signature. I just have to figure out how to make sure the wave actually carries the tag instead of leaving it behind."
Then, I had another idea. One that was an extreme divergence from the structure of the original technique, but would yield a similar effect using the same mechanics. A grin stretched across my face.
Yeah. Yeah. I think I could do that. I'd just have to wait for my upcoming procedure to be able to use it properly.
What? You thought my tongue's Inventory port was just something I was going to use for utility? Hell naw.
I was gonna weaponize the shit out of it. And I think I just found some new ammo.
- - - { ワナビー } - - -
Nine a.m. It was practically afternoon for a shinobi, but Jiraiya had put up with enough shit, earned enough public admiration to start his day when he damn well pleased. He used this privilege to sleep in whenever possible, and he refused to feel bad about it.
By nature, this privilege extended to his team because they couldn't take missions without him, and Jiraiya wasn't quite hypocritical enough to insist they start early when he wasn't willing to do the same. There weren't any authority figures around to ensure their punctuality anyway. Despite the added leeway, he knew for a fact that Minato and Mikoto showed up at Training Ground Three at five a.m. sharp every morning.
Sasuke was the only one on his team that took advantage. At least, he used to. But for the past few weeks, Jiraya had arrived to find him already hard at work, attempting to balance on the surface of a small pool he had created for his student's benefit.
Jiraiya watched his least talented student with a sigh. If there was one silver lining to the shit show in Rain, it was how Minato's draw with Imai Kasaiki lit a fire under Sasuke.
Everyone admired Minato, but the younger generation especially put him on a pedestal. He was untouchable, for better or worse, and while that made many like him more, a good portion had instead become jealous. Sasuke was most assuredly part of that number.
But then Minato had drawn against someone his own age. If it was another Konoha genin, Sasuke would have been overjoyed to see his teammate taken down a couple notches. However, the person who beat him wasn't an ally. It was an enemy—no. It was the enemy.
If a genin from Iwa could beat the strongest genin in Konoha, what did that say about the rest of them? What did that say about Sasuke's chances of survival in the coming war?
Nothing good. And so, Sasuke trained. Jiraya would be proud if he wasn't so tired.
Jiraiya would never forgive Hiruzen for assigning his kid to his team. Now, the responsibility of protecting the Hokage's son would fall squarely on his shoulders. And if he couldn't turn Sarutobi Sasuke into a great ninja worthy of his name, that would fall on him too.
He already had his work cut out for him, because, to put it frankly, Sasuke sucked at almost everything. But then again, so had Jiraiya, and look at him now.
At least Jiraiya also had Minato there to point to and loudly proclaim, "hey! Look at how he turned out! Clearly I can't be that bad at my job."
Currently, his two students that weren't lagging behind huddled together, using each other for research as they periodically cast ninjutsu. The revelation that the Uchiha's Sharingan could be replicated, theoretically, by just anyone had sent the clan into a panic. It had been hushed up, so Jiraiya wasn't sure exactly who in the village was capable of it. Not that many, surely. He bet Hiruzen, Tsunade, Sakumo and potentially Orochimaru had the potential, but the only person confirmed to have the ability was Minato.
It must be nice to be so talented that even you couldn't fully comprehend what you were capable of. Minato was a free thinker, but he was shackled by basic human understanding. Learning jutsu required both a boatload of practice and a substantial knowledge base; that was common knowledge. They had all noticed that Minato seemed to breeze through the first category, and that was rightly chalked up to his superior intellect. But he had never tried to learn a jutsu without studying it at great lengths. As great as he was in the field, Namikaze Minato was an academic at heart, and that was just how he did things.
Apparently, however, everyone had been underestimating Minato (including the boy himself). Which was insane, given how well regarded he was, even by those decades older than him. Everyone had such high expectations, yet he continued to shatter them.
His knowledge base, his understanding of chakra and beyond that, his ability to perfectly harmonize with his energy was already more than sufficient. Within reason, he could piece together new jutsu on the fly, provided he knew their hand seals. He could even modify jutsu he was already familiar with, which was almost more impressive. He only began to falter in incredibly niche cases—sequences containing the Tatsu seal, for example, tripped him up for a couple tries, and fine shape manipulation seals did as well.
Though they were few and far between, those minor flubs weighed heavily on Jiraiya's student. Because Imai Kasaiki didn't appear to suffer from them like he did. His signature jutsu used the Tatsu seal, and she copied it perfectly all the same. Jiraiya tried to talk sense into him—they hadn't observed Iwa's little monster for long enough, maybe she had her own issues. She was hardly infallible, not with her inability to control her chakra externally. One of his spies uncovered that she was incapable of using Lightning Release as well.
Minato wasn't reassured. In this matter, he felt like he was, for the first time in his life, struggling to catch up. He didn't make the discovery; it had been handed to him on a silver platter. He insisted that, compared to her, he was an amatuer with it. When Jiraiya asked him why he thought that, Minato began rattling off observations and their significance drenched in technical jargon before it became apparent that his sensei didn't understand what he was saying and he broke off the conversation with a dissatisfied flick of his head. Jiraiya felt like he was debriefing an expert shogi master after a legendary match with a peer, utterly lost in the recounting of their strategies. An amatuer attempting to understand masters. And he was supposed to be the sensei.
He shook his head to rid himself of his feelings of inadequacy. Now wasn't the time for that; they had work to do.
"Okay, team. Listen up."
Immediately, Minato and Mikoto dropped what they were doing to jog up to him, and Sasuke was only a couple seconds behind. He had a scowl on his face, and Jiraya got the sense that he had just gotten in a groove. Whoops.
"We got a mission," Jiraiya announced, and saw Mikoto stiffen. Her eyes flickered very briefly to Minato, who looked as unaffected as before. This would be their first mission since Rain; they had been granted leave to train, and that leave had been extended in the wake of the Cloud debacle.
"It's time to redeem ourselves," he continued. "Tadakuni Mizuno is on the move. He's being escorted to the Land of Mountain Streams to begin his cultivation. We're going to make sure his efforts never pay off, no matter how much time and resources Iwa funnels into them."
Biwa had, actually, been right on the money. Team Seven was there for his client, but not to kill him. That would have been a waste.
Tadakuni Mizuno was a scummy man who had wormed his way into partnerships and even close friendships with the Nanari no Jumokui, one of Konoha's agricultural private interest groups. They were the only people in the world who knew how to grow chakra-infused trees, which was where chakra paper came from. However, it had much more valuable uses as well. It could be used as a powerful surface for fūinjutsu which, since the fall of Uzu, was far more accessible than it ever had been. Plus, it could be burned and mixed with infused iron to make chakra steel, in a process that was much more quick and efficient than what anyone outside of Konoha could replicate. Which was why Konoha had so many more low-level chakra blades than any other nation (except maybe Iron, who had invented the process and had been stockpiling such weapons since long before the Hidden Village system came to be).
The process of growing the trees was well guarded, but Tadakuni Mizuno had stabbed all of his friends in the back to uncover the process before immediately high-tailing it to Iwa. However, there was one secret he didn't know to look for, and that was the environment.
Oh, he thought he knew it. He thought it was just a matter of finding fertile land with a certain soil acidity level, in the appropriate climate with just enough rainfall. That was why he had to leave Iwa to start his farm; the southwest of Mountain Streams was similar to Konoha in this respect, so there lay their best bet of replicating the farmer's conditions.
The real secret to growing healthy chakra trees couldn't be duplicated, however. It couldn't be stolen from Konoha either. It was a longstanding impact of the First Hokage on nature itself—the fingerprint Senju Hashirama left on the home he loved more than his own life.
Sage chakra.
Jiraiya's grand-sensei, through his Mokuton, imparted a long-lasting fertility on the land. Unless Ōnoki could produce his own Wood Release user to similarly enrich Mountain Streams, their trees would never approach the size, robustness or chakra capacity of Konoha's.
But small and sickly as they may be, they would still exist. And Konoha refused to let Iwa have even that small advantage.
It was more a matter of principle at this point. The betrayed Jumokui wanted blood, and even if Konoha wasn't obligated to act on their whim, given the circumstance they would be happy to provide.
Killing Tadakuni Mizuno was too quick. Too easy. They would let him live happily for now, but over the years, the truth would rear its head. Trees took a long time to grow; the Tsuchikage knew this. To him, this was a long term investment. But Kamizuru Ōnoki was not an unduly patient man. When Mizuno continued to fail to provide results, he would begin to suspect he was being hoodwinked. That the man he devoted so much time and resources to either failed to steal the correct instructions or worse, had been lying about taking them at all. Mizuno would live in extreme stress, slowly watching everything he worked for turn to dust. There would be nowhere for him to run. And eventually, the Tsuchikage would take his revenge.
Poetic. And, it would keep Iwa from attempting to steal their secrets in the interim. It was almost better it turned out this way, that Tsuchibokori no Biwa stopped them from simply changing the crook's notes as was originally planned.
"We're going to sabotage the grove, once they choose it," Minato guessed. "How?"
"We'll talk about that on the road." Jiraiya sighed. "But for now, there's something I have to bring to your attention. The last Bingo Book found its way to the Tsuchikage's desk, and he's put it together that you're the one his son's team encountered. He's issued his own bounty for you in the latest addition, and it's…strange."
Fishing the small but thick book out of his weapons pouch, he opened it to the dog-eared page, and offered it to Minato, who took it wearily and leaned against the nearest tree. Both his teammates looked over his shoulder on either side.
—
波風ミナト
Namikaze, Minato
Rank: Genin
Threat Level: C
Status: Konohagakure no Sato Shinobi
108,356 Ryo Reward — Iwagakure no Sato - Dead
87,000 Ryo Reward — Kumogakure no Sato - Dead or Alive
Ninjutsu: 3⁴₄
Taijutsu: 4⁵₃
Genjutsu: 3²
Intelligence: 5⁵
Strength: 3⁴
Speed: 4⁵
Stamina: 4⁴₃
Hand Seals: 4⁴
Notable Skills: Battle Fūinjutsu, Original Wind Technique(s), Noble Summon Contract
Personality: Savior-complex, Passive, Prideful
Elemental Affinity: Wind
BEWARE: a student of Jiraiya (Densetsu no Sannin), and often found in his company. Counter-oriented combatant.
—
Some of that information was already on there from the Raikage; he'd apparently had a bird summon belonging to one of his ninja tailing the group overhead. That's how he knew about Minato at all, since the Kyuubi had slaughtered every witness reporting to him. However, Iwa's entry added more complete information about his skills.
When multiple nations submitted entries to the Bingo Book, the data was collated and formatted into something uniform and cohesive. If details conflicted between entries, they were noted for the reader's benefit.
Jiraiya could immediately recognize that Minato's entry was modeled after the one Konoha submitted for Imai Kasaiki. The numbers that quantified skill levels were subjective, and while they generally needed to be relatively accurate (if the issuers actually wanted hunters to be successful in collecting their bounties), Jiraiya happened to know that Iwa frequently understated their enemies' capabilities to make them seem weaker than they actually were. Both as an insult, and so that more bodies would be thrown against their target. They didn't care about the safety of any freelance bounty hunters, and knew that any target could be run down over time, no matter how skilled they were. Jiraiya had seen copies of their own Bingo Books, and the evaluations of the shinobi featured in them were consistently higher than Iwa's supplied entries in the international edition.
Which is why it stuck out to Jiraiya that they didn't seem to do that here. Four-four in Hand Seals? Three-four-four in Ninjutsu? Five-five in Intelligence?
Not only were those impressive (and accurate, by Jiraiya's estimation) numbers, but they were the exact same as what Konoha assigned Imai in her entry. And that wasn't the only thing that was mirrored.
Savior-complex, Passive, Prideful. As opposed to Cruel, Violent, Prideful, which was what Konoha had to say about Iwa's little hell-spawn. The first two were almost antonyms, which should be glowing positives. However, Iwa had twisted them into something more mocking than complimentary. A point which was only driven further by the third adjective, which was the exact same. Despite the differences in attitude between the two of them, Iwa claimed that Minato was just as arrogant as the kunoichi.
However, without a doubt, the most unusual thing about Iwa's contribution was the bounty. Jiraiya didn't think there was a single other entry in this book that ended with anything other than a zero in the hundreds place, much less the tens or ones (except for his team's and Imai's fake bounties from Hanzo).
"We thought the bounty they gave you was a code or something, but Cryptology is coming up blank," Jiraiya told him. "It just seems like it's a random string of numbers."
But if that were true, why was the bounty so damn high? Yes, it made Minato a more valuable target, but that disparity served to heighten Minato's prestige more than anything. He was curious to see if Minato could make anything out of it.
A long minute passed, and they were all treated to the sight of Minato's expression becoming sourer and sourer. Suddenly, he lashed out, slamming the side of his fist against the tree hard enough to shatter the bark and shake its branches.
"I can't stand her," he spat, and Jiraya frowned.
"Her?" he repeated.
"Cryptology couldn't decipher it because it's not a code," he explained in annoyance. "It's Zodiac notation."
Jiraya arched an eyebrow, wondering how he was so sure. Sasuke seemed a little slow on the uptake.
"Zodiac. Like hand seals?"
There were, of course, twelve hand seals, all named after the twelve creatures in the Zodiac. Ninja found it useful to assign them numbers based on their order in the cycle as a sort of shorthand when learning jutsu.
1: Rat (Ne)
2: Ox (Ushi)
3: Tiger (Tora)
4: Hare (U)
5: Dragon (Tatsu)
6: Snake (Mi)
7: Horse (Uma)
8: Ram (Hitsuji)
9: Monkey (Saru)
10: Bird (Tori)
11: Dog (Inu)
12: Boar (I)
If Minato was right, cryptology was overthinking things, as they so often did. However, though simple, that reading was hardly intuitive. Damn geniuses and jutsu.
On that topic…
"You said her," Jiraya noted. Given the context, there was only one person he could be talking about. "Are you saying this is a message from Imai?"
Minato nodded jerkily, his mouth set in distaste.
"From her to me. I'm sure of it." He pointed at the third digit in the string of numbers, skipping the first two for now.
"Eight is Ram," he recited from memory. "Three is Tiger, five is Dragon, Six is Snake. There isn't a zero in the notation, so the first number can't be one. It's ten, for Bird."
Bird, Ram, Tiger, Dragon, Snake. Great, an abstract message. One based on symbolism. Jiraya hated these. Not many had an eye for interpreting them, but Minato wasn't most people.
"What do you think it means?" he asked, because obviously Minato had some idea. And from his reaction, it wasn't exactly complementary.
"It's a double entendre," he muttered with a scowl. "Each of these animals have a multitude of different connotations, based on legends and common observations. And, each hand seal has attributes. The first meaning I can plainly see—"
Ah, yes. Plainly.
"—revolves around these two." He points at three and six. "Tiger is the hand seal closely tied to Katon, while Snake is tied to Doton. They are stand-ins for the two of us. Beyond the number play—three being half of six—the remaining creatures relate to each other through one of the tales in the Found Scrolls from before the time of the Sage. The legend states that Yatagarasu—the crow deity, a bird—guides the samurai Kintarou to slay Enkai, the wicked dragon who was offended by an Oiran and took his anger out on a coastal town by raising the tide to flood it. Yatagarasu urges Kintarou to bring Enkai a golden sheep that was supposed to be more entrancing than the Oiran as a peace offering. However, when he brings the sheep to Enkai, he instead slays it in a fit of hubris, thinking he doesn't have to pacify the dragon and could instead just kill it and live in glory."
Minato scoffed. "The fight doesn't go well. Kintarou would have died if not for Yatagarasu, who blinds the dragon with his three talons, giving him the opening to slay it and save the village. In other words, it's divine intervention. Basically, she's calling me arrogant, and saying that the only way she'd fall to me is if the Kami themselves came down from heaven to strike her down."
Jiraya was wondering how the fuck he could get all that from a string of numbers. The way Minato's mind worked mystified him at the best of times. But before he could try and propose that he was maybe looking at this the wrong way, Minato continued.
"That's only one reading. Another that I can see uses the same principle, only this time we look at it from an elemental affinity perspective. This isn't a story—it's more literal. Wind, to Fire, to Earth. The connection between wind and fire being Ram—that hand seal is tied to motion. Properly integrating a Hitsuji sign into a jutsu can propel it forward more rapidly, or in an uncommon direction."
That was a gross oversimplification, but Jiraiya understood the point.
"Meanwhile, Fire to Earth, connected by Dragon. Tatsu relates to widespread effects, altering the jutsu to cover a wider area. My reading, based on this line of thought, is this. She's saying that Wind will carry Fire, spreading it across Earth. No—kōjin. Earth. Ash. Wind will spread the fire until all is destroyed."
He stilled. "My affinity is Wind. I'm the bird. It's a warning."
Just as Minato doubtlessly had, Jiraya recalled their parting words. Imai had called Minato, well, an idiot idealist. But she also implied that such a mindset was unfair. Even dangerous. If Minato's reading was correct, she was saying that if he tried to make the world reflect their ideals (Minato's extrapolation of the sentiment behind the Will of Fire), there would be grave consequences.
"How would she know you have a wind affinity?" Sasuke asked self-importantly, as if he was really bringing something to the table. Mikoto socked him in the shoulder, and he seemed to read the mood after that.
"My original jutsu was Futon natured," he answered softly. "It's basic logic."
As Sasuke turned faintly pink in embarrassment, Mikoto cut in.
"This is all a little bit of a stretch, isn't it?" she asked, hesitantly. "I mean, this is official. A kage wouldn't place a bounty on someone just because one petty girl wants to take a dig at her enemy. Especially when Minato's the only person meant to understand the message."
Jiraya sighed, recalling some old stories his sensei had told him about Kamizuru Ōnoki.
"No," he disagreed, wearily. "That's exactly something the Tsuchikage would do."
Meanwhile, Sasuke continued to stare at the bounty page over Minato's shoulder, eyes furrowed in thought as he seemingly tried to find something to contribute that would impress them. Jiraya was admittedly surprised when he actually found something of substance.
"What about the twelve spirits?" he asked abruptly. Under everyone's attention, he grew a bit pink. "What? I don't put stock in stuff like that, but Eiko," a civilian girl he had a crush on, "does."
Mikoto rolled her eyes, but Minato frowned in thought.
"What about the twelve spirits?" he asked. "I don't know what they each represent."
It spoke to how useless he perceived the knowledge to be that Minato didn't bother to learn about it in detail. The Twelve Spirits were traits associated with people born at different times, based on the zodiac. Each year was associated with an "outward animal" which represented a person's perceptions of themselves, but that was only part of the whole. Each month is associated with an "inward animal," which was an insight into the type of person you will become as they further mature, while each day is represented by a "true animal;" the person that others perceive them to be. Finally, there was the "secret animal," which was supposedly the best representation of that person. By combining all these animals together, a believer can attempt to find some meaningful statement about their target and potentially predict their behaviors. Some even claimed to be able to read their fortunes.
"I had to learn about them in kunoichi class," Mikoto revealed, disdain palpable for both the class and the practice itself. "What do you want to know?"
Minato wet his lips. "Secret animals. What traits represent the signs in the sequence. There are negatives and positives for each one, right? Just give me the negatives."
Mikoto looked up at the sky in thought. "Birds are fragile," she rattled off. "Rams are morally indecisive. Tigers are destructive. Dragons are proud. Snakes are shackled by the material."
It didn't take too many mental gymnastics to find a meaning in there, given the interactions the two had. Fragile morals would crumble in the face of pride and reality. In this reading, Minato could be the Bird or the Tiger; both would be just as scathing. But there was no question who Imai would be. The Snake, grounded in reality.
That she stuck with the negative connotation to describe herself along with Minato was just as poignant a statement. It was a weakness to be incapable of appreciating intangibles like hope or faith. To be continually held down by pessimism and cynicism. But this choice made it clear; Imai wasn't bragging or attacking Minato with groundless bluster. In acknowledging her own flaws, she made Minato's seem far more egregious.
With an irritated huff, his student snapped the book closed, seemingly not wanting to find any more hidden meanings.
"Triple entendre," he corrected, bitterly. Jiraiya gently clapped him on the shoulder. He didn't really know what to say; he was used to being put down in ways he could tell were offensive without knowing exactly why. Being on a team with Orochimaru would do that to you. Still, while his teammate was an insufferable asshole, Jiraiya trusted him with his life. Even in the beginning, when they held nothing but disdain for one another, there was an understanding there. That they were allies, and they would do right by each other when the going got tough. That was the Will of Fire.
To hear that from an enemy? Someone who really wished you dead? That must feel a lot worse.
"She's right."
Jiraya could do nothing but blink in dismayed shock. He'd curse himself later for her need to, but Mikoto immediately stepped up to disagree. Her platitudes fell on deaf ears.
"She is. She's right about me."
Despite his words, there was a fire in his eyes.
"But she won't be forever. I swear to you all. I just need more time. To think. To train."
Finally, Jiraiya remembered his duty. It was time to be a sensei.
"We know. You've always taken every challenge and come out stronger for it. This will be no different."
His wide, answering smile lifted a weight off Jiraiya.
"Now," he said, clapping his hands once. "Let's go ruin the life of someone who deserves it."
- - - { ワナビー } - - -
AN: Hey guys, a lot going on in this chapter. It was supposed to be considerably shorter than it ended up being—it's around twice my target length of a chapter. So I hope that makes up for two weeks. My plan, which I mostly stuck to until recently, was a single 4000 word chapter a week. I'm uploading less consistently now, but all the chapters I've released in the last one to two months have been 50-100% longer, so I guess I should feel a little less shitty about the delays.
Sasuke is Hiruzen's son! Aka, Konohamaru's father. A couple people guessed that, so not too groundbreaking of a reveal. I was planning on saying that in the last chapter we saw Jiraya and Hiruzen, but I couldn't find a good place to fit it in.
Similarly, I was planning on revealing the thing with Mizuno there too, but didn't for the same reason. Biwa wasn't just being paranoid! Team Jiraiya was actually there to fuck with him! But information wins out. It doesn't matter that Kasaiki's team completed their mission successfully when Jiraiya's spies are passing him enough crucial info to correct his failing at a later date.
Speaking of Jiraiya—why didn't you guys tell me I was spelling his name wrong this entire time? I didn't know there was an i in front of the y. God, that's embarrassing. Ah, well.
Can anyone tell I've been listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar? That last bit was a doozy. My brain feels like it's about to melt. I made up the legend Minato referenced, but Yatagarasu was a real Shinto deity, and I tried to pay homage to actual myths. I also tried to explain the Zodiac as accurately as I could, but I had to paraphrase heavily so some stuff might have gotten lost in the attempt. Sorry if it's stupid. I had to come up with all that a couple weeks ago, when I wrote the second dinner party chapter, but that was just in broad strokes. I came up with the three messages I wanted to convey, but I left hashing out how to get there from a string of numbers until I sat down to write this one. Definitely shouldn't have done that, but whatever. I didn't have time back then.
I was chagrined to see all the reviews after the second to last chapter wondering about the bounty, expecting the explanation to be something they already knew. Like a reference to canon, or their fight or something like that. Naw, I didn't mean it like that. I was just leaving you in suspense. How many of those readings do you think Kasaiki actually intended? All three, or is Minato giving her too much credit? I'm not gonna give you an answer; any headcanon is just as funny.
WIth this scene, I just wanted to illustrate how unusually both Minato's and Kasaki's brains work, compared to the brains of everyone around them. It's like they're speaking a language that only they can understand, which is almost literally what is happening in this chapter.
For the scene with Kazuhiro, I had to go back and read some of the earliest chapters to refresh my memory, and let me just say…wow. They were kind of ass. It's no wonder people quit this fic a couple chapters in. I wasn't trying hard back then—my writing process was laissez faire, there was barely any planning. I had a bullet list of all the topics I wanted to cover to build up my magic system and that's kinda it, with a few exceptions. Editing was almost nonexistent too.
I'm annoyed at myself for that. It's gotta be fixed, especially since I'm attaching my actual name to it now by plugging my book. I'm going to do it, but I don't want to string you along by going back to edit stuff I've already done rather than put out new stuff, so it's gonna be a second before I can really sit down and do both things at once. Hopefully I'll have some time once this month is over.
I don't have a Ptrn. If you've gotten just five bucks of enjoyment out of this story, please consider buying my original work on amazon (information in my bio). Between the two sites this fic is posted on, I have over 2600 readers. If even half of you choose to support me in this fashion, I would have considerable bargaining power when it comes to getting future books published. More publishing deals means I can quit my day job, which translates into more time for fanfiction. It's a one time thing, and you even get more of my writing out of it.
Plus, you should totally check out my other fic on archive. Across the Totem-Verse, (username Poncho_o). It's a Spider-Man, Across the Spider-Verse fic. Sooooo…yeah.
I think it's time to go on another mission, don't you? A real mission, not just an excuse to pit Kasaiki against Minato (yes, I'm self-aware). See you when I finish the next chapter.