"Naruto."
I look up, startled, and see Hatake standing in front of me. A clone of his, at least. Somewhere behind him the real Hatake and my teammates are locked in fierce combat, well into the day's team training. Me, I'm sitting in the grass by training ground seven's little red bridge, my arms and legs covered up almost entirely by bandages.
"Yeah?" I ask quietly.
Hatake's clone crouches down to my level, and I see concern in his single visible eye. "You alright?" I nod. "Are you mad I wouldn't let you participate today?"
"Nah, I get it. Need to give the stitches a day or two before I snap them," I say, cracking a little grin. The concern doesn't go away, but he doesn't push me further. For now.
"How's that chakra exercise I gave you coming along?" He asks instead.
I wave the kunai in my right hand in a so-so motion. "I'm making some progress. I think. It's a lot different doing it with a kunai."
Hatake hums. "Having a smaller focus would do that, yes." The roar of a fire jutsu echoes from another section of the training ground, followed by a muffled boom. I turn my attention back down to my hands. "You're… sure you're alright?"
"I'm fine, sensei."
"Alright." A gloved hand reaches out and ruffles my hair, dispersing into a cloud of chakra smoke before I can swat it away. I don't bother trying, though. I'm too wrapped up in the sight of my hands, and the bandages wrapped around them. One for the palm of my left hand, and two for my right middle and index fingers. Bandages that Hinata had wrapped around the cuts that she'd stitched for me. I slide my kunai under the one on my left hand, and slice it open.
The bandage falls away, revealing smooth flesh.
After Hinata had regained her senses following my unintentional hurricane, she all but threw me over her shoulder and carted me off in the direction of the hospital. It had taken a lot of assurances, pleading, and finally a guilt trip to convince her to take me back to my apartment to treat my wounds instead. She wasn't happy with it, but she was even less happy with the prospect of the hospital eating up the time I needed to train for the finals. So we hobbled to my apartment, and I broke out the first aid kit.
I expected her to leave once I got through the door, because it was getting really late, but instead she decided to come in and patch me up. I protested as best I could against the disinfectant and the stitches, assuring her I just needed some wrappings, but she was having none of it. So I let her clean out my wounds and sew them up with surprising care, and then apply the bandages. When she was done she gave me a warning that ended up coming out like a plea. Don't overdo it with training for a few days. Cuts as severe as mine take time to heal, and tearing them open again would only make things worse on myself.
When I woke up this morning there wasn't a scratch on my body.
Digging the stitches out of my skin was an unpleasant ordeal, and I ended up re-applying the bandages anyway because now I was bleeding from the holes left behind by them instead of the cuts. I didn't tell my team that when I got to the training ground, though. I wasn't really in the mood for team training.
Jeez, Hinata, you should have warned me. I had no idea the stuff I was doing in that void was happening in the real world, too.
It had been an offhand comment I'd thrown out to fill the awkward silence while she was stitching up one of the cuts on my chest. I wasn't even mad about it, really. I was more frustrated with myself for letting Hatake's technique get out of control like it did, however it was that happened. But all of the sudden Hinata stopped stitching and looked up at me, her slim eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
Void?
Turns out meditation isn't supposed to work like it did for me. Even the Hyuuga version never progresses past vague sensations. It just gives you a better feel for your chakra, which is where the Yin-Yang distinction comes from. It doesn't give you complete control over your chakra either, like it did for me. It's just really good meditation.
I clench my left hand, then transfer the kunai in my right over and cut the bandages on my fingers. Then I hold the kunai in both hands, and will my chakra to coat it, like it did yesterday. Twin streams of wind race up my arms and out my hands, coalescing on the edge of the kunai, but it doesn't take long for them to bleed off the edge and flutter amongst the grass.
Asuma's exercise is nothing like it was in the void. Where in there it was almost as if the wind was carrying out my intent of its own volition, here every little motion is something I need to control, like usual. And yet… it's easier. Just a bit. It's the same way with Hatake's chakra exercise, too. Now that I've felt what it's like to do it, I'm not flailing in the dark anymore. I know more than what to do, now. I know how to do it.
And according to Hinata, that doesn't make any sense.
I trace the blade end of the kunai along my left palm. I've never questioned my accelerated healing before. I've had it for as long as I can remember. Every scrape, cut, and bruise I've accumulated through the years has disappeared after a day, and even severe wounds like the stab I picked up in the first task are gone after a couple days of rest. I always assumed it was some obscure trait I inherited from one of my parents, but…
I let the kunai slip out of my grasp, and stare down at my unmarred hands and the wind whirling around them. I close my eyes. I remember the feel of the hurricane as it tore into me, the wind's vicious refusal of me, and my sudden connection to it. I remember the titanic roar from far, far below.
I open my eyes and find the wind circulating around my hands seething, opening up dozens of tiny cuts along my skin in its sudden fury.
"What am I?"
...
Asuma and Shikamaru are in much the same position as they were yesterday when I enter training ground ten, except Asuma has already set the shogi board up and Shikamaru is playing between glances up at the sky. I walk right up to them, bypassing the boulder, and Asuma glances up at me.
"Yeah?"
"I'm ready to move on," I say. He raises an eyebrow.
"You finished that exercise overnight?"
"Not exactly," I admit. When his expression doesn't get any less dubious, I step over to a nearby tree and hold my palm out a few inches in front of it. I channel my chakra, and again I focus on the feel of the hurricane when I connected to it. The fury in the roar. The wind shoots out of my hand and rages against the tree, cutting scars in the bark and sending tiny wood chips flying. It's nothing like the winds I'd been caught in the middle of, but when I look back at Asuma I find that it's enough.
The jonin sensei whistles, eyes fixated on my wind. He doesn't spare a glance to my bandages. "Not bad, kid. That's a hell of a lot of progress for one night. You sure you've never done this before?"
I stop the current and let the wind calm. I shrug. "I tried meditating like you told me." I pause in the motion, a sudden thought occurring to me. "Hey, do you know if meditating with elemental chakra is any different from normal chakra?"
Shikamaru averts his gaze from the sky to me, and Asuma shakes his head. "It's not. It's just harder for most, because they're not as comfortable with their elemental chakra as they are with their base chakra."
I sag in disappointment. "Ah, alright."
"Why?" Shikamaru asks, to my surprise. And Asuma's too, from the looks of it.
"No reason," I assure him, rather than explain. I still haven't decided what to make of all this. My defect, the seal on my stomach and all the weirdness surrounding it, the crimson dreams, and now the void and that roar. None of it makes any sense, and something tells me it's not all coincidence. Somehow. "I was wondering if it was different without the wind, is all."
"Right, well," Asuma says. "I'll be honest. I wasn't expecting you to get the hang of it this fast. But since you did, we can get started on what Kakashi really wanted me to teach you."
I blink. "What do you mean?"
"From what Hatake tells me, your defect makes it a lot harder for you to keep up in a close encounter in comparison to a regular shinobi," he says, and I nod grudgingly.
"Now, I have no clue how to convert elemental chakra to regular chakra manually, and I don't even know if my old man could help you there. So we're not going to bother with your defenses. Instead, we'll be working on your offense."
...
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