What shall become of a man, one as frail as the morning dove, when he is violently and utterly stripped of wings that were his feeble ego?
It took Kentarō an entire week of self-imposed isolation, with nothing else but development of his technique and pondering to occupy his mind before he could accept the answer.
He would crumble. Like a bird that would fall from the imaginary skies, like a twig that would snap at thr slightest pressure, like an everexpanding sea of green; burn and rudecud to but a single blade, so little and insignificant...
Kentarō's bottomless dark eyes stared at the single strand of black before his face, wriggling to his will like a wave in the thick sea that was his long cascading hair. He became just like it, 'Or was I from the start...?'
...But a single wisp in the field of grass.
He felt his control over it wash away when his chakra spreaded throughout the whole mane. Kentarō's teeth grit from the effort of maintaining control. Few of his strands intertwined and moved along to the theatrics of his imagination, but most of them remained rebel rom his control, looking like they were electrified; and remaining cascading towards the floor.
He persisted for another ten minutes with little vidible progress, then finally, he released the flow of chakra to his legs and dropped cleanly from the ceiling, landing on both feet on the floor or his cell.
With nothing else but torment to occupy his mind, Kentarō trained, and trained, and trained. Trained until he fell from exhaustion, only to wake from nightmares of countless versions of himself drowning in pain and slavery. The cycle repeated until, on the first few days of his confinement, he finally mastered the so called Tree Walking Exercise.
Having done so, Kentarō started to come up with diffrent, more advanced forms of chakra control, starting from the development of his own technique while staying glued to the ceiling.
To create his own, more advanced form of chakra control, he had searched his remaining memories from the Earth day by day, until he finnaly found something that could be of use, something that could help him fine his control, and even enchance the genjutsu he relied upon lately.
The thing that had helped him develop this new, yet untested concept of chakra control were... memes.
Thus came to be the "Memetic Chakra Propagation", inspired by Richard Dawkin's idea of cultural genes.
Kentarō walked up to the mirror that he once dreaded so much and stared at his own reflection. His eyes flashed red when chakra swirled towards them. Suddenly every twitch of his muscle, the slight melanholic downturn of his lips, a small slouch of his posture from exhaustion and pensiveness became much more clearer to his gaze.
He had studied these eyes thoroughly in recent days. Eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds of sustained use before strain became unbearable. In exchange, he received photographic memory and the ability to perceive even the most minuscule shifts in movement.
'Can be useful in fights, or...'
With a quiet sigh of reluctance, Kentarō reached into the depths of his soul and summoned the memory he had long avoided: the soul-crushing despair he felt upon witnessing a thousand versions of himself trapped in that underground hell.
Still, he preserved and did not stop pouring chakra into his eyes.
'I have hid from it long enough.'
The single dots started to spin from the strain and anguish.The memory of the countless versions of himself drowning in dread, the soul-shattering realization of his own fragility became clear as day on the person in the mirror.
Kentarō gently gathered the spiritual energy containing this specific memory and infused it with physical energy drawn from bodily sensations he experienced under the genjutsu of Orochimaru's making. This small amount of moulded chakra flowed through his body, similarly to nature oriented chakra he mused; before gathering in a single hair strand of his, whence it circulated along its length; the strand gaining a fain, ethereal shine as if he had used some hair products in this single place.
This lone seed, will need a miniscule amount of his energy to circulate, and if he was correct, he would hain tremendous ammount of finer chakra control thorough it maintance, and additional weapon at hand.
He named it "Single Wisp."
The Memetic Chakra Propagation worked on basis that ideas, behaviors, and beliefs can act like viruses, spreading from mind to mind.
What he had created now, would be a Memetic Seed, a tiny, stable chakra packet that contains a behavioral and psychological payload. The seed uses the victim's own physical energy to grow, just like your average genjutsu would, but is created from his own feeling of weakness and despair; a seed that would grow with correct nutrition, which would be the exact same feelings Kentarō used to create it. Once inside the target, it would also corrupt their Spiritual energy, making the implanted despair feel self-generated and completely real. In theory it should bring forth certain memory of failure from his enemy combat under correct triggers like "You are fucking pathethic, can't even land a hit on me!", and then amplify or mould their existing feeling of anxiety into something stronger ; thus making them prone to making mistakes under stress.
With this eyes and already decent chakra control, he could create as many Memetic Seeds as he has strands of hair, the only problem resided in actual control of that many different behavioral packets.
Still, by reading his opponents' micro-expressions and emotional states, he could choose the perfect seed for each target. Kentarō would be a "patient zero", and in time as his control over chakra is refined; he envisioned crafting complex, multi-stage memetic viruses that would evolve based on the victim's reactions and spread from person to person like a plague, adjusting in the process to the mental state of the infected.
'A illusionary virus and advanced form of chakra control... I can work with that.'
Just as he was about to begin crafting a second seed, a soft clink of metal against the floor echoed from outside his cell door.
He hesitated for only a moment before rushing over and opening it wide.
Before him stood a bewildered Benjibaru, still bent over, holding a metallic plate filled with food. The boy slowly straightened up, eyes wide and full of confusion.
"K-Kentarō-san…?"
They stared at each other in uncomfortable silence.
There were many things Kentarō wished to say, and even more he wpuld like to do, though he decided to start from the simplest and most meaningful from them all.
He forced the embarrassment down, stepped forward and pulled the boy into a tight embrace.
"... I'm... I'm sorry."
Benjibaru exhaled in surprise, then returned the hug. A soft, genuine smile bloomed on his face.
"It's okay Kentarō-san." His smile deepened. "Welcome back~."
...
They walked through the dimly lit corridors, thr stone walls were cold as always, but the flickering glow of lanterns signaling night time gave the tunnels much warmer glow tonight, making the cold much more bearable.
As they entenred the forest-grown training ground, Benjibaru turned to him excitedly, and pointed at the three figures training together in the distance.
"There they are! Come, come Kentarō-san, they missed you too!"
Slowly, alomst unwillingly, Kentarō let himself be dragged by overexcited Benjibaru towards the rest of the group. Kin was the first to see them as they approached closer.
She rushed to them, and punched Kentarō strsight in the guts.
"You idiot!" She swayed her fist in front of his face as he lay in the ground, clutching his stomach. "Never do that again, you hear me, dickhead!?"
Kentarō chuckled weakly. "Missed you too, bitch."
"Hmpf!" She turned her head, but Kentarō still managed to catch that amused smile that had found its way to her lips.
Zaku leaned against the tree trunk with a grin on his own. "Well, well, well, look who finally crawled out from the wormhole. I was about to bet you will bury youself under the pile of shit or something, hm."
"Oh, but who else would make such great use of your wind pipes then, I wonder?"
Zaku's grin faltered, his eye twitching.. "Alright, I did not miss you at all, you fartface."
"You bringed him breakfast yesterday." Dosu approched them, his steps as silent as his voice. His eyes turned to Kentarō at last. "You are back. Good."
"Fuck off. It was simply my turn! Benjibaru went to check up on him every day, hm!"
The said boy puffed his cheeks. "Sometimes I made it twice!"
The group settled on the ground in a circle. As Kentarō listened, the conversation flowed more easily than he expected. Kin told him about their training, how they started to get a handle at Tree Walking; her tone sharp but clearly relieved. Zaku bragged about a new technique he had been working on, making the air vibrate with sound. Kentarō rwised bis brow, when he felt his senses alert him that he was under genjutsu.
"Not bad, hm?" Abumi boy grinned. "I've been creating an environmental genjutsu, when you were busy being emo in your cave."
Dosu spoke quietly, "We avoided trouble. But movements above ground had apparently increased. We stayed watchful."
Kentarō hummed at the information. 'Did the war reach here? That... could go both ways. Either we are freed, or we got massacred for association with Orochimaru...'
Benjibaru eventually interrupted his musings, as he leaned heavily against Kentarō's side. "Kentarō-san… you'll train with us tomorrow, right? Like before?"
Kentarō looked to the side at the boy and placed a hand on his head. "Yeah. I will."
Kin flashed a teasing smile. "How cute. He really missed you, you know! Though we all did, even of Zaku won't admit it."
"Fuck off!"
Light teasing and quiet updates about their life in flower through the conversation. For the first time in many days, Kentarō felt the heavy weight on his shoulder loosen, even of slightly.
Kentarō hesitated a little, before releasing the hold of the newly created Memetic Seed. He could create and use the same one at any time, so it's fine, for now...
Let us be children again, even if only this once.
His gaze swept slowly through the group heatedly engaged in small talk.
Kentarō flashed red eyes for a milisecond, sealing this memory deep in his mind.
'Yeah... with friends like these... it might be yet possible to see the skies again.'
At that thought, Kentarō's lips curved into a rare, genuine smile, and within his heart there kindled a soft, luminous warmth; gentle as the calming radiance of a hearth.