Two years flew by, or at least that's how it felt to me. From five, I was now seven years old, and Dad's small training yard was my world. It was no longer just a place where I played at being a ninja, but a second home, a personal battlefield where my limits were stretched and broken a little more each day. The scars on my knees and elbows were silent medals of every fall, every failure turned into learning. Dad, Kenji Uchiha, with his ever-vigilant right eye, a well of wisdom and determination, and his left, now a pale, opaque scar, a constant reminder of the price of power, remained my anchor, my teacher, my beacon in the darkness of a path only he understood.
Chakra control was the foundation of everything, the pillar upon which my strength would be built. I no longer just stuck leaves to my body with chakra, an exercise that now seemed childishly easy; now I could walk up trees as if gravity were merely a suggestion, a force I could play with. At first, I fell, a lot! My knees were always scraped, my palms dirty, and more than once I ended up with leaves and dirt in my hair. I remember one time I slipped and fell backward from a considerable height, watching the blue sky spin frantically before landing in a pile of dry leaves with a soft thump! Dad just looked at me with that intense gaze and said, without any reproach: "Get up, Itori. The ground is your teacher as much as the tree. Every fall is a lesson in how not to fall next time, how to absorb the impact." And he was right. I learned to fall, to roll, to absorb the impact with my body and my chakra. Soon, I was not only walking but running up tree trunks, leaping from branch to branch like a squirrel, my chakra an invisible glue beneath my feet, a natural extension of my will. The challenge became myself, overcoming my own fear and my limits.
The next step in chakra control was water walking, a much more complex and demanding technique. For me, it was a strange sensation at first, as if my feet were floating rocks on an unstable jelly. The surface of the small pond trembled with every step I tried to take, sending concentric ripples around me. My feet sank repeatedly, the water reaching my knees, my waist, soaking me completely. But I held on, felt the chakra in my soles, and managed to stay afloat, taking small steps before sinking again with a splash. It was slow and frustrating progress initially, but every time I succeeded, even for a second, the joy and sense of accomplishment filled me. Dad explained that the key was not just the amount of chakra, but the consistency and just the right pressure. "It's like finding the perfect balance, Itori," he would tell me, "not too much force that sinks you, nor too little that makes you float uncontrollably. It's a delicate dance." After weeks, I managed to take several steps, then a full lap, and finally, run across the water as if it were solid ground. I felt the constant flow of chakra beneath my feet, like an echo of my own blood.
Taijutsu with Dad was a brutally elegant dance, a choreography of punches, dodges, and blocks. His blows weren't meant to hurt me—I never felt that intention—but to teach me the impact, the speed of an Uchiha fist, the force that could be generated with the body. His movements were so fast that sometimes my eyes could barely follow them, a red and black blur moving around me. Dad taught me not only to block an attack but to dodge, to parry, to feel the opponent's intention before their blow connected. "You don't fight a body, Itori," he would tell me sternly, "you fight the spirit that moves it. If you can read their intention, you've already won half the battle." He made me repeat the same stances thousands of times until my muscles burned and my limbs trembled with fatigue, until the movement felt natural, a second skin. He pushed me, but never beyond what I could bear, and he was always there to correct my posture, my guard, the direction of my strike. "Faster, Itori. Lower. Feel the wind you create with your punch, the displacement of air that announces your fist." I learned to fall and get up again and again, my body getting used to the pain and resilience. My small fists hardened, my kicks grew stronger, and my body, though lean, began to show the first signs of defined musculature.
The most fascinating thing was how Dad talked about my chakra. He told me it was different, larger, like a mighty river flowing through my veins. That I had to learn to guide it, not to let it sweep me away with its immense strength. Sometimes, when I meditated in silence, sitting under the morning sun, I felt that energy boiling inside me, a kind of vibrating warmth that made me feel alive, connected to everything around me—to the trees, the wind, the earth. It was a sensation other children didn't seem to understand. When my cousins and classmates at the Uchiha academy trained, their chakra manifested as a small spark, a fleeting glow; mine, like a bonfire that grew ceaselessly, an internal light that was sometimes difficult to contain. I knew this was special, though I didn't fully understand why.
As my skills developed, so did my perception of the outside world. There was something else, something Dad didn't directly mention, but which I felt in the way other children looked at me. My hair, that intense, vibrant red from my mom, was like a beacon that made me different, that made me stand out in the sea of black Uchiha hair. When we played hide-and-seek or shuriken, sometimes I heard whispers from other children's parents, or even from older kids. "Is he a real Uchiha?" "Why is his chakra so... big? It's not normal for an Uchiha." They didn't say it to my face, but I felt it, an invisible barrier separating me. It was like an aura of curiosity, sometimes mixed with a little envy or skepticism, or even a hint of fear.
One day, a boy named Ren, who always boasted about his latent Sharingan (an ocular power that hadn't yet manifested in him, but which he constantly promised), tried to push me during a game of "capture the flag." I fell, but got up quickly, my Uchiha instinct reacting. Dad had taught me not to respond with unnecessary aggression, to be controlled, but my instincts said otherwise. There was a fire, a primal urge Nara had given me, that begged me to respond. I remember the look in his eyes when I stared at him. A gleam. I don't know what it was, but Ren backed away a little, strangely uncomfortable, as if he had seen something that disturbed him. His friends also fell silent. It was the first time I felt the power of my eyes, not to copy or analyze, but to intimidate.
Dad had told me stories of the war, of his epic battles against the Senju and other clans, of the fury of his Mangekyo Sharingan and how he had lost an eye in combat, a sacrifice for the clan. He told me it was the price of power, that not everything came without a cost. Sometimes, I would see him rub his blind eye with his fingertips, as if he wanted to rub away the darkness, or blink repeatedly with his good eye, as if the world moved blurrily and distortedly for him. I worried about him, about the pain he didn't show, but I knew he was strong, the strongest I knew. War was a word I didn't fully comprehend yet, a nebulous concept of struggles and sacrifices, but I knew it was why Dad sometimes looked so sad and thoughtful, and why his mission now was to make me strong, someone capable of surviving and prospering in this cruel world.
My seventh birthday felt like a turning point. I had mastered the fundamentals of Taijutsu and basic chakra control. My body was more resilient, my mind more focused, capable of meditating for hours without distractions. I could feel the chakra of Earth and Wind around me when I meditated, almost as if I could touch them, as if they were a part of me. Dad said it was time to go to the next level, to delve into the complexities of elemental techniques. And I, Itori, was ready. I was ready for whatever came, to honor my dad, to understand the river of chakra that ran through my veins, to unravel the mystery of my strength, and to prove to everyone—to the purist Uchiha and to myself—that I was more than just red hair. I was a shinobi, and my path was just beginning to unfold beneath my feet, promising even greater challenges and discoveries.