Tazuna's house smelled of old wood, salt, and medicinal herbs. The air felt thick, like congealed broth.
Kakashi Hatake lay on a futon. His face was pale, but his single visible eye remained clear and hard. Chakra exhaustion following Sharingan usage wasn't just fatigue. It was a state where the chakra pathways felt as if they were stuffed with ground glass.
"Senbon," he said, staring at the ceiling. "A weapon rarely used for killing. Unless one aims for vital organs with surgical precision."
Sakura, who was changing the water in a basin, frowned.
"But, Sensei, you checked his pulse. Zabuza was dead."
"I checked what I was allowed to check," Kakashi grimaced, propping himself up on an elbow. "There is a state of temporary death. By compressing specific points on the neck, one can stop the heart and respiration. Hunter-nin know anatomy better than doctors."
Naruto, watching by the window as Tazuna's grandson, Inari, gloomily kicked a pebble in the yard, nodded.
"He took the body," Uzumaki added quietly. "Hunter-nin usually destroy corpses on the spot, erasing the village's secrets. But this one... carried it away. Zabuza is alive."
Silence hung in the room. Sakura paled. Sasuke, cleaning a kunai in the corner, froze. His fists clenched with a crunch.
Alive? Does that mean the nightmare will repeat itself?
"Exactly," Kakashi confirmed. "And next time, the Sharingan trick won't work so easily. The enemy will be ready. And I..." he looked at his trembling hands, "am not yet."
"What do we do?" Sasuke's voice sounded hollow, saturated with suppressed rage. "Wait for death?"
"No." Kakashi sat up with effort. "Train."
***
The forest on the island was different: damp, dense, permeated with the smell of moss and the sea. The crowns of giant trees disappeared into the low grey sky.
Kakashi stood, overcoming the weakness in his body. The three Genin lined up before him.
"Your current strength is negligible compared to Zabuza," the Jonin began ruthlessly. "You won't catch up to him in experience or techniques in a week. But you can improve the most important thing. Control."
He explained the essence: concentrating chakra in the soles of the feet, adhesion, walking vertically without using hands. A classic exercise that separated the wheat from the chaff.
"We learned the theory of this in the Academy," Sasuke scoffed.
"Try it." Kakashi nodded at the trees.
Sakura stepped up first. She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. Her chakra was weak but surprisingly stable, dominated by the Yin component—spiritual energy.
The girl stepped onto the trunk and ran. One step, two, three... She reached the highest branch and hung from it upside down, smiling.
"Excellent, Sakura," Kakashi approved. "Superb control. Your volume is small, but you don't waste a single drop."
Naruto politely clapped. He wasn't envious, understanding the mechanics: Sakura had a "small glass" that was easy to hold without spilling. He, on the other hand...
Sasuke stepped forward. The fire of rivalry burned in his eyes. If that girl could do it, then I, an Uchiha...
He concentrated his chakra and surged forward.
Six steps.
On the seventh, the bark cracked. Adhesion failed. Sasuke pushed off, performed a backflip, and landed, barely keeping his balance.
The mark on the tree was too deep. Excessive force.
"Damn it!" The Uchiha punched the trunk. Falling behind again.
"Naruto, your turn."
Uzumaki stepped forward, assessing the tree stretching into the sky.
Two systems battled inside him.
Qi—a calm river, obedient to every mental command.
Chakra—a raging ocean, mixed with the caustic, hot energy of the Fox, tearing to get out.
He decided to be honest. Or, at least, to outline the problem.
"Sensei," Naruto turned to Kakashi. "I have... difficulties with volume. My 'primary' chakra is too unruly. But there is... another mode."
"Another mode?" The Jonin narrowed his eye. "Show me."
Naruto closed his eyes.
Qi Control: Masking. Color Overlay.
He scooped a thread of Qi from his Dantian—effortlessly, as if twitching a pinky finger. He directed it to his feet, cloaking it in a razor-thin layer of blue chakra for camouflage.
He opened his eyes. Absolute serenity was readable in them.
Naruto walked up to the tree. Without a running start, he simply placed his foot on the vertical surface.
And walked.
Slowly. Calmly. Hands in his pockets.
He ascended as if gravity had ceased to exist. No sound, no crunching bark. Complete fusion.
Sasuke stared at this, his mouth agape. The kunai slipped from his slackened fingers.
He... he's walking? Sakura ran on inertia. I used a dash. But he's just walking?!
Naruto reached the branch where Sakura was hanging, nodded to her, and jumped down, landing silently like a leaf.
"That... was perfect," Kakashi said slowly. He was impressed: such a level of micro-control was usually accessible only to experienced medical ninja or Genjutsu masters.
"This 'chakra' listens to me," Naruto's face remained serious. "Now watch what happens when I use normal strength. The kind needed for combat."
He exhaled.
Qi Deactivation. Chakra Activation.
Naruto opened the floodgates. He reached for the reserves that allowed him to create hundreds of clones. Blue, dense, rebellious chakra flooded the channels of his legs.
The Fox inside chuckled: "Go on, show them our power!"
Naruto tried to hold the flow. To compress it. To focus it on his soles.
A dash toward the tree.
First step.
BOOM!
The sound ripped through the silence of the forest, resembling a grenade explosion.
The bark at the point of contact shattered into splinters. The trunk of the ancient pine shuddered, and pine needles rained down.
Naruto was flung back by the reactive force of his own output. He flew several meters, tumbled in the air, and landed hard on his back, heels plowing through the earth.
"Ouch..." he rasped, sitting up and rubbing his bruised side. "That's what I was talking about."
Silence hung in the clearing.
Sakura looked fearfully at the gouged chunk of wood. It looked as if the tree had been struck by a war hammer; this was far stronger than in their Academy days.
Kakashi shifted his gaze from the perfect, pristine footprints of the first ascent to the smoking crater of the second.
Gears clicked in his head.
Incredible... the Copy Ninja thought. Like two different people in one body. The first—a master with filigree control. The second—a walking elemental disaster, whose chakra volume is so vast and dense that it physically cannot be compressed into a thin film. This isn't a lack of talent. Rather, it's a catastrophic surplus of power.
He understood the problem. Sakura had a glass of water. Sasuke had a bucket. Naruto had a tsunami. Trying to control that with Sakura's methods was like trying to stop a waterfall with bare palms.
"I understand," Kakashi said. "The problem isn't incompetence. The problem is that your 'primary' reserve is too... turbulent."
Sasuke stood aside. He wasn't listening to the teacher's analysis.
He saw only one thing.
Naruto could walk on trees.
That first ascent. Calm. Humiliatingly easy. The Uzumaki could do it, but chose to show failure the second time.
To the Uchiha, it looked like a sophisticated mockery.
He's playing with us. Bitter bile rose in his throat. He showed he can do better than me, better than Sakura, better than everyone. And then he staged this circus with an explosion to say: "Oh, I have too much power, it's hard to control." He's mocking me!
Sasuke grabbed a kunai and forcefully drove it into a tree, hitting the exact center of a marked target.
"I will train," he hissed through his teeth, not looking at his rival. "Until nightfall."
"Sasuke-kun..." Sakura began.
"Leave me alone!" the Uchiha barked and threw himself at the trunk again, running higher than last time, driven by pure rage.
Naruto stood up, dusting himself off. He caught Kakashi's gaze.
"I need to learn not to blow up everything I touch, Sensei."
"Correct," the Jonin nodded. "Your training will be long, Naruto. You need to tame an ocean. But..." he paused, "the first ascent. Impressive."
Naruto gave a short nod. He didn't explain that it wasn't chakra. Let Kakashi consider it a "special mode of concentration."
The main thing was—now he had an official excuse for long hours of meditation in the forest.
"I'll go to that part," Naruto pointed toward the thicket. "So I don't maim anyone with explosions."
He walked away, feeling Sasuke's burning gaze on his back. The rift between them was growing.