Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. ~Alexander Graham Bell
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The next day was more of the same. Sensei didn't want to teach us any new Jutsu. He thought it would be better if we simply worked on things that would help our chakra control and improve what we could already do.
I thought that he was maybe a little surprised at how quickly the boys had picked up water walking. They hadn't mastered it in a day, but they were adequate.
I, on the other hand, thought a week was a perfectly reasonable period of time to learn a new jutsu. Naruto, who learnt Shadow Clones in a matter of hours, and Sasuke, who had devoted himself to the Great Fireball Jutsu until he had mastered it, agreed with me.
Sensei's eye roved over our serious yet hopeful faces.
"Please teach us a cool jutsu," Naruto begged.
"There isn't really anything I can teach you that will enable you to match Zabuza," Kakashi-sensei said seriously. "So it'd be best if you mastered the skill you already have. You've done well to learn water walking and tree walking. There are a few more chakra control techniques you could do."
There were as many chakra control techniques as you had imagination, in fact.
"Sensei," I argued softly. "If the next attack comes at the bridge we'll be at a disadvantage. The concrete and steel nature of the deck means my earth jutsu will be limited to the amount of mud I can spit… and that isn't much. Sasuke's fire techniques are, well, useless when there's so much water around." I gave an apologetic shrug in his direction. "Is there anything that you could teach us that might be useful in such a situation? Even if it's just a trick?"
'Trick' was actually ninja slang for a chakra technique that wasn't well known or developed enough to qualify as a jutsu. Over a lifetime, most ninja invented or refined enough tricks to fill a whole jutsu library. And most of them were lost. They were tiny things; breathing underwater, fire sparks to light cigarettes, condensation to refill a canteen, body temperature adjustment on a hot day… things like that.
Sensei sighed. "Well, I suppose there's a minor lightning jutsu or two you might be able to pick up." He stressed the 'might'. He was probably assuming that we'd work out on our own that learning jutsu was more difficult than we thought.
Naruto cheered.
"Alright. Naruto, you're with Tazuna today. Leave a clone here with your team mates and I'll run you through the jutsu." Sensei looked like the thought of teaching us was more hassle than he wanted to contemplate. Yet there was a hit of something else… was he pleased?
It was official. Kakashi-sensei made no sense.
"Okay," Kakashi-sensei said later on, at the start of our lesson. We listened intently. "This is Lightning Release: Striking Bolt. It's a C-rank, short to mid range elemental jutsu. Be careful with it. Water conducts electricity, so it should work well against Zabuza and the Hunter-nin, but it will be just as easy for you to electrocute yourselves or each other."
There were four seals; ox for power, rabbit for control, bird for flight and monkey for lightning. Lightning crackled at his fingertips before leaping away, slamming into a nearby tree leaving scorch marks on the barks.
"You can direct it a little, but mostly it will target the nearest object in the direction you point it. The range is about five meters, give or take. If there's nothing to hit, it will either just ground out… or rebound to hit you." He smiled cheerily. "So have fun learning. Try not to hit yourselves."
He vanished.
I felt like sweat dropping. "Eh… maybe we should spread out a bit. And maybe you," I pointed at the Naruto clone. "Should have more clones doing the jutsu so you don't cancel yourself. It wouldn't be good if Naruto tried to learn this on the bridge surrounded by metal and people…"
We spread out, close enough for shouting distance, far enough that we wouldn't accidentally attack each other and got to work.
The interplay between Lightning and Earth, as chakra natures, seemed counter intuitive. Lighting was grounded by Earth, so one would expect Earth to beat Lightning. Instead, it was the other way around.
That's because, when working with chakra, the physicality of the elements isn't the most important aspect; the chakra itself is. Earth Chakra is highly stable, filled with strong bonds between particles. It is most readily shaped for defence, and an army will break on a wall of Earth. Lightning Chakra, on the other hand, is highly agitated, overcharged, energetic. It overloads and shatters bonds.
Introducing Lightning Chakra to an Earth Jutsu will, therefore, cause the Earth Jutsu to collapse.
Which means as a natural Earth type, Lightning was the last thing my chakra wanted to form. It was the complete opposite in both form and ability.
But I had been the one to ask for a technique to learn, so no way was I going to give up.
By lunchtime I had achieved… not very much at all. The yelping and assorted curses flowing through the forest told me that Naruto was slightly ahead of me, but still well behind the 'controlling it' part.
It was a new experience for me, to have to struggle with my chakra like this. Maybe 'struggle' was the wrong word. That implied it was being uncooperative. That wasn't it. I was my chakra and my chakra was me… it was just that I wasn't succeeding as I was used to.
It used a lot of chakra too. My earth jutsu took a fair chunk, but even unfinished this jutsu took more because it wasn't my natural chakra nature.
I took a break. Maybe I'd go get some lunch and bring it out for the boys and wait for my reserves to recuperate.
That sounded like a good idea.
An hour later, I sat on the dock at the back of the house, swinging my feet and savouring my lunch. I'd given Tsunami a stash of my ration bars and the easing of some of the worry in her face had made it worth it. The boys were still working on the jutsu, barely breaking to scoff down the food that I'd brought them.
I hummed to myself, using my chakra to scoop up a ball of water. It was an easy trick. All you had to do was create a ball of chakra and hollow out the inside, leaving a thin shell. The water would be restrained inside, as long as you made the shell thick enough that it didn't leak, and didn't lose concentration.
This kind of thing… didn't use any chakra. What I emitted, I could reabsorb once I was done with it. It was slightly harder to control outside my body, but not by much. I spun the chakra into a hollow tube, like an enclosed straw filled with water. Currently, I could only make it about the width of my finger, but I was planning on eventually making it thin enough to be used as a pen. I could make it thicker, but thinner was harder.
It was highly mobile. I could use it like a whip or a staff, if I wanted. Water was non-compressible, so when I hit something with it, it would act as a solid. Providing that I didn't lose concentration. I'd never actually used it in a fight before.
I didn't actually know how to fight with either staves or whips - beyond the obvious 'hit them with it' - but as a chakra construct it negated a lot of the skill required. I hadn't been intending on using it, but having something solid between myself and Zabuza's huge sword sounded like a good idea. Using water against Haku was probably wasted effort, though, with his Ice blood limit.
I stepped out onto the water, twirling my construct like a staff.
Longer, shorter, rigid staff to flowing whip…
The lightning jutsu was the problem though. I wanted to learn it. I knew enough to know I'd probably never be a ninjutsu fighter, but that didn't mean I didn't want to learn jutsu. They were interesting. Fascinating. Magical. Not for what they did but for what they were.
And the fact that Sensei taught us it. I couldn't not learn it. What would he think? Would he ever give us anything to learn ever again?
So how to learn something that goes directly against my nature?
It was possible to learn elemental recombination for different elements. It wasn't really necessary for jutsu of this level, and I had no idea how to go about it anyway. Being able to use 'pure' elemental chakra made jutsu stronger, certainly but people could do elemental ninjutsu without being able to convert chakra to different elements.
That was the problem. Converting elements. My earth affinity didn't go to lightning.
Converting…
Something tickled the back of my mind. Converting. Changing from one form to another. Adapting. Altering. Transferring.
I frowned.
Transferring? Transfusion?
Part of the chakra transfusion jutsu was purifying chakra of its elemental affinity, yes. But that was other people's chakra… well no. I had used Naruto's because I didn't have much chakra. But you could use your own.
You'd still have to purify it then. So, there was a way to purify your own chakra of it's elemental affinity. Then you'd have base chakra to work with. I'd still have to convert it to lightning… but I wouldn't be trying to swim against the current, so to speak.
That was my plan then. I'd work on it this afternoon to see if it was viable.
Dinner came quickly. I'd made some progress on the Striking Bolt jutsu. Purifying chakra was something I already knew how to do, but using it on my own chakra, then holding that base chakra separate, then trying to use it in a jutsu was taxing. The process had to be repeated each time I tried to use the lightning jutsu, and it was time consuming.
The boys bolted their food down and raced back outside to keep practicing. Or, in Naruto's case, to finally start practicing, since he'd been complaining about how boring being at the bridge was. I wondered how strange it felt to be in two (or many) different places at once. It didn't seem to be affecting him negatively, so I shrugged it off.
"Not going to join them?" Kakashi-sensei asked, amused.
"My chakra supplies are low," I said with a yawn. "It'd be more efficient for me to rest and keep training in the morning."
That didn't stop me from casting a long look at the door though. More efficient, yes, but I had been close to getting it. I was sure.
The next day was Sasuke's turn to guard the bridge, while Sensei disappeared off to do whatever scouting Sensei did during the day, leaving me with Naruto. Naruto who had had dawn watch so was wide awake and LOUD while I was still blinking sleep out of my eyes.
" - was a boy, but he was prettier than Sakura-chan!" Naruto said, waving his chopsticks in the air. "That's so weird. He was looking for some herbs or something and he asked me if I was a ninja -"
His voice droned on. I blinked at him. Something about that was very familiar.
"- name was Haku, he was pretty neat, he asked me if I had precious people to protect …" His voice trailed off pensively.
Ah. That was it. I couldn't work up the energy to be worried about it. Haku hadn't attacked him and it wasn't like Tazuna's location was secret or anything. The fact that Naruto had run into him meant that he hadn't got near the house, which was the whole point of the night watch. I couldn't fault Naruto for being friendly about it.
"Do you?" I asked, picking at my breakfast.
"Do I what?" Naruto repeated, snapping out of his thoughts.
"Have precious people to protect?" That was a bit of a tongue twister.
He looked startled, but grinned. "Of course! There's the old man and Iruka-sensei and the Ichirakus and you and I guess even Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei…"
Me? I blinked, ignoring the warm feeling in my chest. "Well, I guess we better go start training, so we can do that protecting."
Inari gave a snort, but we both ignored it. I wasn't really in the mood for one of his resistance is futile talks.
The week passed. Sasuke, unsurprisingly, ended up with the strongest lightning attack which led me to believe that his secondary affinity was lightning, and it probably wasn't much weaker than his fire affinity. Naruto's attack was weaker, comparatively, and less controlled, but since he had so much chakra he could throw more of them. My attack was decent, but the amount of time it took me to mould and convert my chakra to use it was much longer than either of theirs. Long enough to be a risk in battle.
"Well done, team," Sensei said. "I must admit, I didn't actually expect you all to learn that." He smiled cheerily. We all stared back smugly. Exceeding his expectations felt good. "Alright then. Tomorrow is the most likely time for Zabuza to attack. By now he should have healed from the near death state the Hunter-nin put him in. That said, all of us are going to be accompanying Tazuna to the bridge tomorrow."
It seemed that Sensei did think that Zabuza was going to stage a confrontation. We exchanged looks, half anticipation, half excitement, half dread. We'd been expecting an attack through the whole week and it had been tiring. It finally have it in sight…
We prepared carefully in the morning, amped for the coming fight.
"Maybe Naruto should leave a few clones by the house," I suggested before we were about to leave. "To make sure they don't come after Inari and Tsunami." Hostage situations were tense and unnerving and very rarely had a good outcome.
"Good thinking," Naruto said, creating a few clones to guard the house. Some of them stayed obvious, others hid themselves in the forest.
Tazuna eyed us all warily. "You sure about this?"
"Fairly sure," I tried to smile reassuringly at him. I'm not sure it really worked.
"… I don't pretend to know about being a ninja, but shouldn't we avoid walking into a trap?" Tazuna asked doubtfully.
"The trap you know about is less dangerous than the trap you don't," Sasuke recited easily. "Springing an obvious trap is a chance to turn it back against the ambusher."
"Don't worry, old man! You've got Naruto Uzumaki with you! We're going to win this!" Naruto grinned, fierce and sharp. "Zabuza doesn't stand a chance against us!"
As we closed in on the bridge, I felt it. There was no need to race ahead to check.
"They're here."