"That is correct, Kaori-sama." Haru replied respectfully.
The pink haired matriarch observed him from head to toes for a while. "I've witnessed your ceremony. Even though the test of Goro's kid overshadowed yours due to his peculiarity, your results were of the most orthodox kind of genius. Your chakra is dense and healthy. I have great expectations for you."
"Thank you very much Kaori-sama." he bowed, genuinely happy about her praise.
"If you are free, you may come to Aizen's little birthday party two days later."
Still sitting behind her desk, her daughter's eyes widened.
"MOM ! WHEN DID I SAY THAT I WANTED TO INVITE HIM !?"
Kaori laughted unabashedly at her indignation, "So what ? Deal with it lass."
Furious and red with rage like a hot pepper, she stormed out the room grumbling and slammed the door. Her mother was still laughing.
"Don't mind her, I know she doesn't take teasing very well but it's funny. I can tell she doesn't dislike you, at least."
Some sweat drops could be seen dripping of Haru's forehead. What a troublesome pair.
Haru wasn't very interested in making friends with the prodigals of the clan. As far as he was concerned they would all die in a few years, and in any case it was nothing more than a waste of his training time. Still, he couldn't just openly refuse an invitation from the matriarch so he answered that he would consider it with his parents before finally departing.
He has taken a habit out of reflecting on his training path and schedule on the way back home at the end of the day. Basically strolling, his steps his purposefully slow and unhurried.
Genshu would add a whole new dimension to his fighting style, but after a mere single lesson it was unsurprising that he wasn't confident in using it for now. They weren't even taught their first genshu yet, and if he was being honest with himself neither his ninshu nor his taishu were ready for it anyway. He didn't even know what his elemental affinities were, not to mention a single offensive ninshu besides a half mastered rasengan. Though he now had the basics of the Gentle Fist style and could use it to fight, his performance with it was merely on par with that of any talented four year-old kid of the main family as Koyuki fought him to a tie and Byakuya was in all likelihood stronger than her.
Whilst it was true that the main reason for it was that he mainly focused on the chakra control exercices in the meantime, if he didn't want to perform too embarassingly at the interclass matches he could have to step up his offensive game.
There was a little less than a month left until the competition, which may seem a little hurried for freshman who've began walking down the warrior path for about two months or so but thinking about it, it does make sense in a way.
Even though there were very few talentless people in Shirogakure and the primary defining factor of one's social status was the quality of one's blood, combat talent was not less valued than in the shinobi world. The strong were respected, a saying that held truth throughout the ages.
With merely two months of training timespan, the academy could only train the students in the most elementary skills for a short while and it was the perfect set up in order to identify the true warrior talents from the others. Those that went the farthest, with wit and efforts, with the meager skills they were given in the beginning.
Class A was priviledged in many ways already, but winning the interclass competition was the best way for the many branch students to catch up and even surpass their main family rivals. And for the main family students, many exclusive benefits could be optained this way, such as private tutoring, exclusive skill scrolls, custom equipment, chakra pills... Many things worth drolling for.
But Haru wasn't very interested in thinking about what he would like to be rewarded with for now, but his training schedule for the upcoming three weeks. Reflecting about his strengths and weaknesses, out of all the twenty freshmen that would partake in the interclass battle, Haru believed he had the best chakra reserves, and his physique was not inferior to anybody. His chakra control was by far the best too, meaning that getting full mastery of the rasengan was a must do. He had both the chakra to use it at least a dozen and a half times, and his chakra control would make the mastery a matter of days.
So rasengan was on top, and it would not take more than a couple days meaning that he still had at least three to four days worth of time to train in something else for the first week of his training. He pondered for a bit, before deciding to brush off his Gentle Fist basics for the rest of the week, at least up to the level he expected Byakuya to be by then. Which meant at least mastering the Eight Trigrams Sixteen Palms technique, or even the Thirty-two Palms version. That would probably take another week.
Next he was somewhat hesitant. He had three interesting ideas but he was unsure. It would be interesting, and ridiculously useful to recreate the Shadow Clone technique.
Although there were indeed no scrolls of this technique in Shirogakure for obvious reasons and Haru has never trained the mudras, the technique was very simple in itself, both in hand signs and in concept.
Not only could he multiply several times over the amount of time of his training this way, but that would also make a very effective fighting technique in itself. After all it was the core of the future seventh Hokage strength, and the mere thought of tens of shadow clones harassing his opponents at the same time with the Gentle Fist gave him chills. The only issue was that he had no idea at all if he could really reinvent the technique within the limit timespan. Maybe a day would suffice, but maybe a month would not be enough either. It wasn't a very reliable plan.
The second possibility was to start training in his chakra natures, in order to have a significant edge in mid range warfare. Whilst it would also give him a very significant advantage compared to the other participants, he also wasn't very confident to succeed in achieve chakra nature transformation, learning at least a ninshu technique and integrating it in his fighting style in such a short amount of time.
The last possibility was his last Kekkei Genkai, the Shikotsumyaku. Even though it has been quite some time since Haru felt that he could probably take a bone out of his body and that he knew how insane the potential of this blood limit was, the mere thought of doing so grossed him out a bit. At the core, he was still a twenty first century human. Such an act was highly unnatural in itself.
But if he begins his training with the Shikotsumyaku with his mom, then there was no need to worry about coming out on top of any foe later in the interclass competition. Even a mere entry level Shikotsumyaku mastery would easily slaughter most students even after one or two years of training at the academy.
Naturally, even Byakuya's Taiyogan would not help him against the boned rib cage of the Shikotsumyaku. For now, even if he didn't fancy it very much it was indeed the most reliable plan, taking everything into account.
But that would be for later, for now the rasengan would mark the end of his preliminary chakra control training. He has completed at least four chakra exercices in two weeks, from elementary to advanced so even if his chakra control wasn't the best in absolute terms it should be at least around the Jounin level, which could be considered exceptional even in Shirogakure even at ten years old, not to mention four.
More than enough to master any ninshu, genshu or any warrior paths technique with twice the results for half the time and efforts in the upcoming years.
Just as Haru was engaging through the last street that led to his usual training ground, an acute pain on the back of his head made him miss a heartbeat and he almost fell to the ground.
Disoriented, he heard a few laughing noises behind him as he tried to steady his footing.
"Does it hurt ? Poor little thing… He's quite delicate don't you think guys ?"
"He is indeed."
"What you say boss !"
"Bahahaha."
When Haru turned around to see who were the little punks who got tired of living, four guys looking a little bit older than him greeted his sight. Three of them seemed to be branch members, and one who had blond hair had the Byakugan. At first he reckoned that he had no impressions of them but one gave him a familiar feeling.
He was one of the kids that failed his ceremony a few weeks ago, and as Haru couldn't care less about such a minor character he had no idea about what his name was. The others were probably sophomore cycle students, and that meant that the guy with the Byakugan was probably a classmate of Aizen. Haru smirked, sometimes he was quite amazed by his own quick thinking. So this was all about Aizen after all.
"I do hope you all have a very good reason for what you have just done." Haru stated coldy.
"Of course we do." Replied the blond haired kid cockily. "Just to give you some friendly advice, I don't care if you like her or not but stay away from Aizen. She isn't something a branch family bastard like you can mingle with."
Sure enough. At this moment Haru didn't reply immediately, but slowly raised his right hand to get a feel of the back of his head. His fingers were bloody, which was a feat in itself as his yang physique was much more resilient compared to normal people and even shinobi, as it was a necessary trait required to handle the burden of the Shikotsumyaku. A normal four year-old kid taking that pebble hit in the neck could have died. These bastards were ruthless.
Haru smiled lightly, his expression unfathomable. "Oh.. Well you see, the thing is…"
"Who the fuck do you think you are ?"
In a heartbeat, Haru's figure vanished and crossed the ten meters that separated him from the group. Before any of them could react, a palm loaded with chakra striked the sternum of one of the branch family underlings.
His body was thrown tens of meters backwards, flying then rolling down the street as his breath halted for seconds. The impact shocked his diaphragm, and as he tried to get up he began hyperventilating as he panicked, unable to breath normally.
Haru's strike was absolutely ruthless. He meant every single bit of malice he put in his palm, and it wasn't until then that the others started reacting.
"Bastard ! Kill him !" Roared the blond kid, as he lunged forward upon him.
Deflecting a first palm aiming to cripple his left shoulder with the back of his hand, Haru turned toward the reckless newcomer before kicking him out in the belly. Immediately, a fierce fight then engaged between him and the two other branch kids, where surprisingly Haru was not really at a disadvantage.
As he had two pairs of hand to fight with only one, Haru made use of his legs as well. Displaying a very agile and mobile Taishu style that wasn't exactly following all the traditional stances of the Gentle Fist, in order to mitigate his numerical disadvantage Haru was taking advantage of his style's impredictability to throw them of guard many times.
His weakest opponent was the freshman of the branch by far, as his inexperience and lack of any kind of mastery over the Gentle Fist style made him more often than not a liability to his older teammate. Making full use of his Byakugan, Haru saw an incoming palm strike in his back and jumped up as he seized his frontal opponent arm's wrist gently, and his foot landed heavily on the top of the head of his opponent in his back.
In a swift circular motion, Haru threw the body of the guy whose wrist was seized towards the main family kid who didn't join the fray immediately after getting up for some reason but was observing. The later jumped sideways to avoid his underling's body flying towards him and it crashed heavily behind him, piercing a body sized hole through the house's wall and making a large commotion.