It'd only been two weeks, and I already wanted to die most of the time. Muscles that I didn't even know existed, pulled and screamed without warning. Without endorphins I would I'd already have taken my life.
The abyssal stupidity of the children made me want to throttle them, but I couldn't. I could get away with being isolated, but active spite would've raised all sorts of unnecessary alarms, all in the wrong people.
I had no doubt each student of the academy was watched like a hawk, after all, it's counterproductive to teach something to future traitors or psychos.
Since I wasn't Sasuke Uchiha and couldn't count on an act of swift revenge in the form of Itachi creating a mess in case something untoward happened to me, I had to be on my best actually-the -age-I-look-like behavior.
Well, they won't teach to future independent psychos. I thought to myself, after all, I could hardly consider anyone sane in a society that proudly produced child soldiers.
I had nothing against soldiers, humans at the end of the day were only extremely efficient beasts, it was good that we had a section of the population dedicated to keeping keep each other in check.
Every morning, I woke up at five, snatched some stuff up from the kitchens, and started running. Well, firstly I climbed I began by climbing the fence that sectioned off the orphanage's courtyard, then I ran in the park on the other side of the road.
I'd run non-stop for over half an hour before my legs started stiffing out. I stretched and drank from a water fountain. Some push-ups, then I reached one of the strange construct made of pipes (probably thought to teach the children how to climb), I stuck my legs in there and started working on my abdominal muscles.
When the strain became too much, I left it, and after drinking some more I began walking on my hands. My balance was good enough, even if I wobbled a lot at the beginning.
I could've used chakra to enhance my strength, but I'd no intention of doing so. For two reasons.
One, chakra augments the ability of what's already there, so the stronger the body, the stronger the power up granted by letting chakra flow in my coils. Well, that wasn't quite right.
Since that first night when I discovered my chakra, I've always been aware of it, like a warm weight on my stomach, and it was always flowing in my coils. But it's presence was passive, like a distended muscle: unless I willed it to, it didn't strengthen me.
I did a lot of stretching after finishing my exercises. I wished there was a river with water at 22C for me to swim in so that I could wash myself off while training muscles that were difficult to condition otherwise.
I stopped only when my arms trembled too much to go on and run some more in the park.
Two, I really disliked the idea of remaining wimpy looking, it just wasn't for me. Besides, a strong musculature in my pre-puberty body would set up adult-me to become an almost-Might-Guy-like adult.
Once I was done, I went back into the orphanage and hogged the bathroom first, then the washroom, where the early risers were already washing.
I had a large breakfast, and meditated for half an hour in my room, intent on becoming more aware of my flowing chakra. It was like having a pool of warm water held into a spherical bubble.
Flexing metaphysical muscles, I made it twirl in one direction, then another, following the little outpour influx that flowed through my coils. I wasn't really worried about hurting myself, after all, the chakra was a part of me in the same way my heart and lungs were.
So killing myself while feeling my chakra was off the table. It would've been like dying because I held my breath for too long, impossible. The human body had mutated to accommodate the chakra, but at the end of the day, it was a life force kind of energy.
I attended lessons at the academy, performing to the best of my ability on the practical aspects, that for now were simple obstacle courses while being less than bright in my academic performance. I still had difficulties in juggling around with kanji.
It brought with it a different way of thinking, and that made it difficult to follow a few details. At lunch, I ate alone, not that anybody wished to play with 'eat slug', and I was grateful, loud children quickly became annoying.
Even with In spite of my additional training, or maybe because of it, the obstacle course was more demanding than I initially expected. My "no-chakra-during-training" policy persisted, the teacher's certainly made no mentioning of using it.
I thought that they'd teach us about chakra after enough of us dropped out from the Academy, and it made sense, I wouldn't want to waste resources in teaching that stuff to a future civilian either. For now, it was history and math essentials.
The lessons finished at 17:00, when I bolted back to the orphanage and began helping the helped around our caretakers for around/about an hour, in exchange the matron kept teaching taught me how to write and read kanjis always more complex some of the more complex kanji, and.
She even taught me some poetry from time to time. The bare bones of it were memory exercises, but the elegance one could express through kanji was breathtaking.
The matron's name was Chihiro, which meant 'a thousand questions', and while I was the one asking them, she was kind and patient while answering them all. She was a note of innocence in the otherwise grim song of the shinobi nations.
After dinner, I spent several hours meditating, and performing the infamous leaf exercise. I was still performing it only with my hand with only one of my hands, but I was keeping track of the time and I kept getting better.
I understood what chakra control was all about: not wasting it. The Chakra flowed through my coils and out if of my tenketsus, the objective was only letting it out from the tenketsu I needed, and even then, only the amount necessary for the task, not even a drop more.
After that, there was the problem of keeping the flow even. It was hard work.
I had no idea about how to increase my chakra capacity. It stood to reason that it behaved like a muscle, so, the more you use it (with the opportune rest) the more it grows.
But working on suppositions was risky, so I choose to wait for the academy teachers to break in the topic.
The routine was lulling, and I understood that the world I ended up in was the more adult-rated version of the Narutoverse portrayed in the manga and anime. I could work with that. But I had one problem.
The Yondaime wasn't dead yet. That meant that the Kyubi had yet to attack.
I held no delusions, I couldn't prevent it, not if I wanted to stay under the radar. And my safety and well being came before one of the other fictional characters this world was made of. Hell, my life came before the storyline, so fuck it all.
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