Chapter 4 - Training Montage

(Word Count: 2,378)

Over the course of the next few days, I basically put all of my conversations with the Sannin out of my mind. I don’t know if I actually changed anything, but I had passed on all of the info I wanted to, now it was up to them. I had my own problems to worry about.

I was living with the Hatakes. Aunty Aiko was especially caring, though I have noticed that she was hit pretty hard by the deaths of my parents. They were close friends after all. The little Kakashi was adorable, he was crawling around already and exploring the house with reckless abandon. But I spent most of my time meditating. I was determined to finally begin actually working with chakra. 

3 days later, my Grandma was released from the hospital! I would need to move into her house permanently, because we couldn’t afford both grandma’s house and my house at the same time. We needed to sell the house, and I needed to organize all of my family’s things to be stored. Together with Aunty Aiko, I packed up everything. Grandma tried to help pack some of the belongings in the house, but she lost her breath quickly and Aunty Aiko and I made her sit down. Sneakily, I also moved the secret scroll where I wrote everything down from under the floorboards to my clothes bag. From what I know of the Anbu, they tend to stay outside of the homes of their targets. I had hidden the scroll in the middle hallway which had no window to the outside, so I should be safe.

A couple days after moving into Grandma’s, thanks to Tsunade’s help, I was able to begin sensing my own chakra. That’s when I began training what I liked to call, chakra-ryu. Ryu was a nen control regime. Basically, I’ve just copied Gon’s nen training montage. Moving my chakra around my body in different ways and ratios. Of course, I also practiced the leaf exercise. 

I was utter garbage at it. Trying to move my chakra to a specific point in my body felt like trying to scoop oil with only my hands. So far, I couldn’t even handle keeping my chakra in one spot, never mind the nen practice I was trying. I couldn’t practice for very long, because I would quickly consume the little chakra I had and I would be left exhausted. Still, I was glad to finally be making some progress with it.

Since I’ve begun training my chakra, I’ve also increased my morning exercise. Normally, I would only workout in my backyard, but now I’ve begun running around the village. Just one lap was enough to kill me, but I wanted to try cycling my chakra to recover as I was running. I don’t know if it actually worked or if it was just a placebo effect, but I managed to do it. I decided to do it everyday. After the run, which I would start at 7 and finish at 8, I practiced my shurikenjutsu and chakra control. All of that would take me until 10. After dinner I would continue practicing my chakra. I would make sure to use up as much chakra as I could, to try and increase my reserves. Then I would bathe and collapse exhausted into bed.

When Sakumo returned a month later, I knew that I had to try and get some training in with him.

That day, after lunch, I went over to the Hatake’s. I knocked on the door. Aunty Aiko answered. “Hello, Sakai! Come in! Guess what? Uncle Sakumo is back now!”

“I know, Aunty. I came over to say hi!” She beamed at me.

“Aren’t you a sweetheart.” I entered to find Sakumo playing with baby Kakashi.

“Who’s the cutest? You are! You’re the cutest, yes you are.” Why does it sound like he’s playing with a puppy? I looked at Mrs. Hatake. She just grinned back at me.

“Hello, Uncle!” I called. 

Sakumo looked over and finally noticed us. “Sakai! Welcome! How’s the little ninja in the making?”

“I’m good. I heard you were back home so I came to say hi. Also, I was wondering if you could help me learn some taijutsu?”

“Hahaha, of course! Start coming over in the mornings and I’ll teach you the Leaf’s Strong Fist style. How’s that?”

“Sounds great!” 

I spent the rest of the afternoon there, but returned to help Grandma with dinner.

The next day, after my morning run, I went back over to the Hatake’s.

“Good morning!” I greeted as I came into the backyard. I pulled up short when I saw the stern look on Sakumo’s face. 

“Sakai, what took you so long?”

“I just finished my morning run around the village.”

He was a little surprised at that, but he didn’t let it show. “Excellent. Let’s go for another!”

“Eh!?” but… 

Sakumo jogged past me. “Ah! wait!” I turned back around and started running after him.

We ended up running another 5 laps. I was proud to say that I only puked twice. But we didn’t return to the Hatake’s yard. We went to one of the training grounds farther out from the village. Despite nearly freaking dying from running, I took a moment to look around. This was the first time I’ve been to one of them. It was a large open clearing in the woods that surrounded the village. In the center of the field, were three thick posts in the ground.

“Now, In order to punch an enemy hard, you must have strong hands and wrists. Otherwise, you’ll hurt yourself with your own punch. That’s why we come here and practice our punches against wood. Overtime, this will strengthen the bones in our hands. It’ll hurt like a b****, but that’s just how it is.” I gulped, a little scared, but I was determined. He took out some tape. “In order to protect ourselves somewhat, we wrap our hands in this tape. Here, I’ll wrap one of your hands. Watch carefully so you can wrap your other hand.”

He began wrapping my left hand. “You start by looping around your wrist 3 times, then come up to loop around the back of the knuckles 3 times, then when you’re doing your fingers you cross around your hand, then up your pinky first, and work your way through all the fingers. Now you bind your thumb. There. You see how I did that? Now your turn.”

It was simple enough, so I easily wrapped my other hand. Unlike with Rock Lee, these wraps only covered my hand and wrists.

“Good. Now, go punch that post over there until I say stop.”

“R-right.”

I punched the post, and felt the shockwave travel up my arm. Crap, this hurts. I punched again, and again, and again. Each time, there was something in my stance that Sakumo fixed until I was actually using the Strong Fist Style

Throughout the next couple of weeks, we covered all the basic forms of the Strong Fist Style, and he even helped me with my shurikenjutsu and kunai handling.

Eventually, Sakumo had to return to the frontline. Still, I felt a lot better about my progress in taijutsu. I guess actualling having a teacher makes a lot of difference. Even with him back at the frontline though, I still continued the practice he set for me.

News came that Lady Mito has passed away. This means that Kushina was now the jinchuriki for the nine-tails. This reminded me about the situation with the Senjus and Uzumakis, but there’s really nothing I can do about it. Tsunade’s basically always at the front lines, so I can’t really go up to any old Senju to ask. So, I did nothing.

One morning, having finished taking a bath, I was coming back down to help Grandma with cooking lunch. I was greeted with a very worried Grandma.

“Sakai, dear. Don’t you think you’re pushing yourself too hard? You’ve been coming home exhausted in the mornings, and then doing the same thing in the evening, only to collapse into bed. Not even your father trained so hard. You’re only 2, you have all the time in the world. What’s the rush?”

“Don’t worry, Grandma. I’m not overdoing it. I’m very careful in following the practice that Uncle Sakumo set for me. I just want to get stronger. Strong enough where I can protect everyone I love. I don’t want to lose anyone again.”

“Oh, Sakai.” Grandma was heartbroken, seeing her young grandson push himself so hard.

Time progressed onward, with Sakumo being here to help train me some months and others he’s gone to war. He was too powerful a ninja to keep away from the frontlines for too long, so it was honestly a bit surprising that he was even around.

I’ve gotten pretty good at moving my chakra around, with the nen practice, and I’ve mastered both the leaf concentration exercise and the tree walking exercise. Both were pretty straightforward, just maintain a constant output of chakra in one spot. It was water walking that was killing me. I had to constantly change the chakra at my feet according to the water beneath me.

At some point in time, I got my hands on a piece of chakra paper. I tested my chakra nature, and it turned to dust. That meant I had earth nature chakra. Which… I don’t know. There weren’t many cool earth release jutsu that I could remember. I could only remember someone spitting out a mud river. No, wait, there was that chakra absorbing dome the sound four used on Naruto and the boy gang. Still, I wasn’t too enthused about playing with mud.

Now, how do I practice earth nature transformation? Though ninjutsu won’t be my direct focus, it’ll still be the smart thing to do to learn at least a couple of earth style ninjutsu to round out his arsenal.

The next time Sakumo came back, I asked him about learning an earth ninjutsu, but he said that it was way too early for me to start worrying about nature transformations. I would use up all my chakra with only one ninjutsu, which could be fatal.

Kakashi started talking! He’s turned 1 recently and now he’s running around like a bandit causing mayhem for his mom. He also began calling me big brother. Warmed my heart. I definitely did not cry.

I’ve turned 3 now. For my birthday, Sakumo gave me my own set of wraps, and a small tanto and agreed to start teaching me bukijutsu. Aunty Aiko got me some chocolates. Strangely enough, I’ve even received a gift from Tsunade. It was a couple of medical textbooks called "The Clinical Examination of the Human Anatomy and Physiology," volumes 1 and 2, written by Senju Tsunade. They came with a note that once I'm done studying from these textbooks to come to her and she'll teach me medical ninjutsu. So that was cool. I opened one of the books and peaked inside. I couldn't understand anything. I'll have to head to the library to get reference books. This'll take me a while. From my grandma, I got a really nice pistachio green haori that was embroidered with a darker green trim. I loved it, and began wearing it everywhere.

Grandma and I visited our family’s grave stone. I talked to them about what training I've been doing.

Time passed, and my evening schedule now included the medical books. I had to ask grandma to buy me some notebooks and pencils to take study notes in. I even went to the library on occasion to pick up reference books for things I didn't understand. I was dead serious in understanding everything in these books. Afterall, my future strength depended on this knowledge just as much, if not more so, than my taijutsu.

My Taijutsu is coming along well. Now that I’m better at chakra control, I try to apply the principles of nen enhancers from HxH to my attacks and defense. I think it’s called Ryu? In my practice sparring, with Sakumo when he’s here, I’ve tried directing more chakra to the places where I’ll be hit and then more chakra in my fists and legs when I punch and kick. It doesn’t work exactly like it does with nen in HxH, because chakra is different. If I apply too little, it acts as a sticking force and can actually worsen my defense. Too much applies a repulsive force. It's this that I tried to apply to my taijutsu.

But the key is timing. If I applied the chakra too early, it would cushion my blows. Too late and it does nothing. I have to time it to the moment of impact, which is incredibly hard to time in the middle of a fight. In fact, I’ve only managed to do it once, but it's getting there. 

For my defense, it's a bit easier on the timing, all I have to do is sustain the flow of chakra until the blow lands, but in order to not waste the precious little chakra that I had, I needed to get the timing to just before the impact. Which works great! It is a lot harder to use this when the blows come to unconventional places, like my side or back, but it’s good practice.

I also tried to use the sticking force to catch Sakumo’s punches to give me an opening to counter. The inspiration for this was this one scene in the anime where Sasuke catches an enemy’s thrown kunai with his foot and flings it back. It’s a lot harder to do in practice, because the adrenaline makes me want to go all in, and I tend to just repel it. Unfortunately, it uses up a lot of chakra and I can’t do it for very long.

Sakumo praised me for my ingenuity though, and said I have the start of a unique fighting style.

For my bukijutsu, over the course of the year, I began learning the fundamentals of the sword, which was Sakumo’s speciality. Though he did also teach me the basics of several different weapons. I was most interested in the sword, hammer, and axe. The weird chakrams and hand scythes didn’t appeal to me, but I did learn what to expect from them.