Inheritance

CHAPTER 19

Which left the physical side of things. The fun stuff.

He could continue to work on integrating his Sansetsukon with his fighting style, both as a staff and in it's 'released' form. He had begun work on that during his mission to Suna, and when he had attempted to use his Sansetsukon against the statues, it had still been incredible awkward. Fortunately, Yuugao had apparently stopped by his house at some point, and left a scroll detailing the basics of the weapon. Grips, basic attacks, blocks, stances. All individual pieces Naruto could merge into his overall fighting style.

Which, at some point during is training with Yuugao, Naruto had realised would be the key to his style. Yuugao was trying to push him to take bits and pieces, little snapshots of other styles, and use them to construct a versatile style that had a response for every situation. The first moves he had learned with the woman were taken, mostly, straight from the Academy taijutsu forms. Basic blocks, punches and kicks. The bare essentials of any style, the foundations, if you will. From there, it was down to the blonde himself to build. If he felt he needed to work on his holds, and grappling, he could research styles that emphasised grappling, and pick the bits that suited him, the parts that matched his rhythm as he fought. It was an ingenious idea, and one that bolstered his already high levels of respect for the woman.

Taijutsu was of course, the next area he needed to work on. He had a set of core moves and stances, but they were the most basic of moves. And although with the help of his Bunshin he had the learned to a very good level, every shinobi to ever wear a headband was familiar with them. He needed to start to expand his knowledge, and working what he knew into a more defined way of fighting, a clear 'fighting philosophy'. He had a few scrolls, again provided by Yuugao that he had read through, and had selected parts of it that he believed work fit in with his way of fighting. Now all he needed to do was to learn them and see if it would work in practice.

Next up of course, was ninjutsu. In actual fact, ninjutsu was the area he was most happy with. For a rookie Genin, his range of ninjutsu was incredibly impressive - a testament to the usefulness of Kage Bunshin when learning ninjutsu. However, his control was an eternal sore point with the blonde. It needed refining, and that would in turn refine his ninjutsu. However the only exercise he knew was the ping pong ball technique he had learned from Iruka. On the surface that particular exercise looked incredibly difficult, but for someone with his amount of chakra, it actually wasn't. All you needed to do was learn how to expel a particular amount of chakra across an increasing surface area. It had been difficult at first, purely because his control was that bad in the first place, and he found it hard to maintain a constant level of chakra expulsion. Most shinobi could do it in their sleep. It looked like he was going to have to pay another visit to Iruka to see if he knew any more exercises.

That, was a hell of a lot to work on in three days.

Naruto grinned. Fortunately, thanks to a combination of the Kyuubi and the Forbidden scroll, Naruto was rarely short on time.

Shikamaru took in the looks on his the faces of Ino and Choji. Utter surprise. Choji had stopped eating the BBQ they had ordered. Ino's mouth was actually hanging open. He smirked at the blonde and raised his eyebrow accusingly.

"Catch any flies yet, Ino?"

Her mouth shut audibly, the sound somehow giving the Nara significant pleasure. If only she'd shut it more often, she'd be far less troublesome.

"Listen, all I'm saying is that we're shinobi now. The mission I was on, it- well, it went wrong. Me and Naruto were left well out of our depth, while Kakashi fought against two Jonin."

"How'd you make it out, Shika?" Choji had carried on eating, and asked mid mouthful, causing Ino to wrinkle her face up in disgust, the only thing preventing her from saying anything was the fact that Shikamaru was talking.