It was the hardest training Akira had ever been put through. By the time lunch had rolled around, she was already exhausted. They had done so many pushups she thought her arms would fall off. But it only got worse after lunch.
They spent the afternoon working on chakra control. Kishi had her control shurikans with her chakra strings, throwing them around and hitting targets that she couldn't see. He had her do her quicksand jutsu over and over again, trying to get her to make the pits faster. Then he taught her a new jutsu.
"This jutsu will serve you better over your career than the typical clone jutsu." Kishi was saying. "And it only involved one hand seal."
It was called the shadow clone jutsu. It created actual clones that one could use to fight with, distract enemies, and use separate jutsu, unlike the regular clone jutsu. Kishi instructed Akira on how to make the proper hand seal and how to separate her chakra into each clone she made. By the end of the day, she was able to make five clones, and had each of them controlling chakra strings.
"Alright, now dispel the jutsu."
"Release!" Akira said sharply. The shadow clones disappeared. Suddenly, she was filled with more knowledge. More intricacies for how the chakra strings worked and were controlled. And she was also more tired.
Kishi raised an eyebrow at her. "What did you learn from them?"
Akira struggled to find the words. "I learned more about chakra strings. But, did all of my clones experiences transfer to me? Is that how I know more now?"
Kishi gave her a soft smile. "You're very intuitive. That is indeed what just occurred. Your clones all experience the world differently than you do. Whatever knowledge they gain will be passed to you. That also means whatever training they do will be passed to you."
Akira's eyes widened in realization. "Does that mean..."
"Yes. With your clones, you can train faster and gain more experience and information than you can on your own. We will use this strategy in future sessions." He handed her a chocolate bar. "But for now we are finished. Get some rest tonight."
On hey way home, she munched on the chocolate bar, eyes trained on the ground lost in thought. So because of this, she walked straight into Yuhi.
Akira stumbled a bit, and Yuhi grabbed her shoulders to steady her with a laugh. "Hey, Akira! How's training going?"
Akira gave her a small smile. "It's good. Tiring, but good. How about you?"
Yuhi launched into a tangent about the workout she had been doing that day. Apparently her sensei was putting her through the ringer. They talked for a bit longer, then Yuhi had to leave to get home in time for dinner. Akira continued on her way, ready to go to bed for the night.
The next morning, Akira struggled to drag herself out of bed. Her arms, chest, and back were incredibly sore. Her legs cramped when she stood up, and her head hurt. Her workout with her sensei the day before had left her in worse shape than she thought it would.
She left her apartment for her morning run, which turned into a morning jog very quickly. She made only one lap around the village before she called it and headed back towards her apartment. But she still went by Kakashi's place first.
She was still mad at him, and almost didn't climb the tree to his window. But she saw him sitting on the windowsill again, so she went up to say hello.
"Morning Kashi," Akira said. She groaned as she sat down on the branch, her sore muscles complaining. Kakashi looked up from what he was doing and raised an eyebrow at her.
"Sore?"
She nodded. "Very."
He looked back down to his lap. Akira followed his gaze. He was holding a pile of bloody bandages in his hands, and he had a cut on his left forearm. She gasped at the sight.
"Kashi what happened? Was it another mission?"
He nodded. "I need help changing the bandage. I can't get it wrapped right on my own."
He held up a clean bandage wrap and some gauze to show her. Akira gave him an exasperated smile. As far as an apology goes, it was about as good as she was going to get. She motioned for him to hand her the supplies. He gave them to her, then held out his arm for her to wrap.
Akira cleaned the wound, then carefully wrapped his arm up for him. Thankfully it wasn't bleeding, and had already scabbed over. She tied off the wrap and gave him a smile. "There ya go. It shouldn't go anywhere."
"Thank you." He held out a plate for her. "Here's your breakfast."
On the plate was some toast with banana slices on it. The toast was buttered, and had cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on it. Her eyes widened, and her mouth started to water at the sight.
"Thank you!" She said enthusiastically.
"How's training going?" He asked. He balled up the used bandages and threw them through the window into his apartment, before closing it again and leaning on it once more.
"I did so many pushups yesterday I think my arms are going to fall off." Akira said, mouth full of toast.
Kakashi made a face. "Don't talk with your mouth full. It's disgusting."
Akira swallowed and stuck her tongue out at him. She took another bite. "I learned a new jutsu."
Kakashi scrunched up his nose and pointedly looked away. "What did you learn?"
"The shadow clone jutsu."
"Nice. How's Kishi?"
She swallowed her bite this time before talking. "He's nice. He gives me chocolate at the end of the day."
Kakashi seemed to smirk. "Yeah?"
Akira nodded. She shoved more toast in her mouth.
"I'm going on a mission again today."
Akira perked up. Kakashi never told her anything about himself. "What's the mission?"
He looked back at her, annoyed. "I can't tell you that, stupid."
"Hey! I'm not stupid."
"Fine then. Annoying."
Akira glared at him. "Meanie."
"Brat."
Akira pulled a piece of bark off the tree branch and threw it at Kakashi. "Rude Kashi." He caught it out of the air and twirled it in his fingers.
"I'm going to be gone for a few days. So you'll have to make your own breakfast."
Akira pouted. "Darn, okay." She looked down at her plate, now empty. "Just make sure you come back."
Kakashi reached out and ruffled her hair. Then he took the plate out of her hands. "I will. You better get going. Kishi won't be happy if you're late."
Akira frowned and slowly stood on the branch. "I don't want to know what his punishment would be."
Kakashi chuckled. "No, you really don't."
Akira looked at him with wide eyes. That was the first time she had heard him laugh. Then she smiled. "Be safe out there, Kashi." Then she jumped off the branch.
The next few days went similarly to her first day of training with Kishi. Each day they did a workout that was always so hard Akira thought her lungs would never recover. Then they would work her chakra so much she thought her chakra would never recover. She had never worked so hard in her life.
Akira loved it.
On the fourth full day of training, it was Friday now. That afternoon, Kishi and Akira started to work on different ways of controlling her chakra.
Instead of using the hand seals to focus her chakra movements, Kishi had her use arm movements instead. He explained that it would be the same concept as using hand seals, they were just going to be bigger movements. He had her try to create a mud wall with arm movements instead of hand movements.
It felt silly, but Akira went along with what he told her to do. The first movement was bringing her fists together in front of her chest. The second movement was putting her palms on the ground. After that, she would bring up the mud wall. The movements were incredibly easy, but they felt foreign after using hand seals for so long.
On the first few tries, Akira created very crumbly mud walls. But after that, she started to get the hang of it. She was able to bring up bigger and bigger mud walls with each go at it. Soon, she was practicing the move with her shadow clones. When she would dispel them, she would gain more insight into what her chakra was doing.
On Saturday, Kakashi was still gone, and the workout was just as brutal as the last few days. In the afternoon, Kishi had Akira work on the mud wall again, and focus on feeling where her chakra was flowing when she made the arm movements. Then they moved on to other earth style jutsus that were common practice.
They made arm seals for swift earth, which moved the ground the opponent was standing on away from the user like a conveyor belt, pebble barrage, which sent pebbles flying through the air, earth shurikans, which used chakra to create shurikans from rock, and the earth holding technique, which made the rock around an opponent's feet grab and surround them up to their ankles. Each jutsu they worked on came easier with the arm seals the more she used them. Soon, Akira was able to successfully do multiple types of jutsus back to back with the arm seals.
"Great job, Akira." Kishi said at the end of training for the day. "Tommorow will be a day off for you. I want you to rest your body and your chakra so you can come back stronger on Monday. We will amp up the pressure then, so make sure you're ready for it."
"Yes Kishi-sensei." Akira said with a small bow.
Kishi returned the bow. "In the mean time, I would like for you to do some more reading on chakra string usage. There should be some good resources in the library that you can use."
Akira nodded enthusiastically. Her training was going so well, she was excited for Monday. They went their separate ways. Akira made her way to the marketplace to grab some food for tomorrow. Since she had the day off, she might as well treat herself to a decent meal. She picked out the items she would need, then made her way to the library. She found three books on chakra string usage and checked them out.
The next morning, Akira woke up early to do her morning run. As she did her laps around the village, she thought about the way her chakra had been behaving while using the arm seals versus the hand seals. The arms seals seemed to induce a more powerful chakra burst with less control than the focused hand seals. But instead of using strings to control and shape the earth, it seemed as if the earth had done it on its own. She would have to ask Kishi about that. Was she overthinking how to create her own jutsu? Perhaps there was a better way to accomplish her goals.
Akira finished up with her morning run and made her way back towards the center of town. She went past Kakashi's place as usual, running up the tree to see if he had come back from his mission yet.
His apartment was empty, as was his windowsill. Akira frowned in disappointment. She had been hoping he would've been back by now. She went home wondering what kind of mission he was on that was taking him so long. It must have been something really high ranked, so something cool. She hoped he would tell her about it once he got home.
Akira spent the morning reading. After lunch, she took her books with her to the training ground that she and Kishi had been at all week. She sat against a tree and read about controlling shurikan with chakra strings. As she read, she absentmindedly played with a stone using her chakra. She twidled her fingers, not really paying attention to what she was doing. Until she accidentally hit herself with it.
"Ow!"
Akira looked down at her leg, and was surprised to see a drop of blood sliding down her ankle. She hurridly looked away, instead trying to find the culprit of the wound. She was surprised to see that at the end of her chakra strings was a small shurikan, made out of the pebble she had been playing with. Akira cocked her head to the side. How had she done that without focusing on it?
Then something clicked. A passage she had read earlier echoed in her mind.
Once chakra strings are attached to the user's object of choice, the user should focus on the action occurring that they want to see happen. This connection from the chakra to the thought process will allow the user to apply slight movements with their fingers to control the object without focusing too much on performing the action itself.
She hadn't been focusing on creating a shurikan, but she had been reading about them. Had she really just created a shurikan with only her thoughts?
"I wonder..." Akira trailed off. Akira sat up and shifted so she was kneeling on the ground. She focused on a section of dirt about five feet away from her. She infused her chakra into the earth below her, and thought about what she wanted to happen.
"Mineral spire!"
A spire of rock thrust out of the ground in the exact spot that Akira had been focusing on. Akira grinned. Her chakra reservoirs had barely been touched.
Focusing on individual chakra strings had been a drain on her chakra, and had taken too much time. If Akira focused instead on infusing her chakra within her target area, she was able to act quicker and use less chakra.
She put her hands back on the ground and infused her chakra into the earth once more. Akira closed her eyes and focused. She felt her chakra travel through the earth, expanding out around her. She wasn't sure why, but just joining her chakra with the earth and imagining things into existence was much easier than physically forcing her way through the earth with strings.
Akira felt a vibration in the ground nearby. She sensed a new chakra, someone else's that she recognized. She opened her eyes and sat back on her heels, looking around for the visitor.
"Hey, Akira!"
Akira's head snapped around to look over her right shoulder. Somaru was standing a few feet behind her with a smirk on his face.
"Hey Somaru."
"Practicing making mud pies?" He asked, teasingly.
Akira rolled her eyes. "Like you would know. What's up?"
Somaru sat down next to Akira, peeking at her still open book on the ground. "Well, Yuhi is training at the hospital right now, and I'm bored. So how about a spar?"
Akira shrugged. Sparring did sound fun right now. "Sure."
She set her books in a neat pile by the tree then stood and followed Somaru out into the middle of the training ground.
She assumed a ready position, and he did the same a few feet away from her.
"Taijutsu only," Somaru said with a smile. Akira smirked and nodded. Time to see how her training with Kishi was coming along.
"Go!"
Akira and Somaru ran at each other, trading punches and kicks. Neither one of them landed anything on the other. Akira used her training with Kishi to her advantage. She focused on using her small size as a weapon, dodging Somaru's attacks and getting inside of his blows. She found it was much easier to deflect his hits than stop them outright, just as it had been with Kishi.
Akira somersaulted through the air over Somaru's head and swung a kick at his side. He grabbed her foot and tried to throw her over his shoulder, but she was able to break his grip with her other foot and did a handspring away from him. He closed the distance between them and attempted to break her defense through a series of punches and kicks. Akira ducked under his kick and uppercut his thigh, knocking him off balance. It was the first blow that either of them had landed.
Somaru growled in his throat and launched into a new attack. Akira dodged most of them but was hit across the face by one of his punches, throwing her backward onto the ground. She was quick to get up, her jaw throbbing. She rubbed a hand on it, glaring at Somaru who smirked back at her.
Akira ran at him again, jumping into the air and throwing a kick at his head. He blocked her, so she set another kick at his side. He blocked that one too. But she was gaining ground on him. They traded more blows, dancing around each other like violent gymnasts.
Akira took another hit to the side, taking her breath away momentarily. She jumped out of his reach from his next blow to regain control. Then she charged. Akira slid in between Somaru's legs as he threw a punch, stopping herself with her hands and pushing up into a handstand, aiming a kick for his head. He ducked underneath it, but Akira wasn't done. She leaped to her feet and threw punch after punch at him. She got a good hit in on his cheekbone, sending him stumbling backward. She followed, dropping low and swinging her leg at his. She made contact and he fell to the ground.
But Somaru was up just as fast. He pressed her backward until Akira was able to get underneath one of his punches aimed for her face and deliver an uppercut to his stomach. He stumbled backward, wheezing.
"You're going to pay for that," he growled. He whipped out a kunai and ran at Akira again.
But Akira didn't have any kunai with her. Today was her day off, so she hadn't brought any. She cursed herself for her dumb mistake. It would never happen again.
Akira dodged under Somaru's first few swipes, but wasn't able to get out of the last one in time. He caught her across the cheek bone, sending a spray of blood across the grass. Akira hissed in pain and outrage. How dare he attack her like that? This was supposed to be a friendly spar.
She ducked under a kick, dropping to the ground. She placed her right hand on the ground while blocking another kick with her left. When she stood back up, she had a wicked sharp kunai in her hand made out of multicolored minerals. She blocked Somaru's next stab with her newly formed kunai.
Somaru's eyes widened at the sight of the blade, then he glared at her again. He started to press her back towards the trees, fighting more fiercely than he had before. Akira bared her teeth in frustration. Was he really trying to kill her?
Akira ducked and dodged, and got a few more hits in. But Somaru was smart, and was holding her at bay from getting inside his blows with his kunai. Then he pulled out a second one.
It was all Akira could do to prevent getting stabbed. He hit her makeshift kunai hard enough to shatter the rock, leaving her weaponless again. She started aiming her blows for his wrists, and was finally able to make contact with one. His kunai went flying, and Akira jumped to grab it. She blocked his blow on the way down and leaped backward away from him.
Somaru smirked at her. "Getting tricky are we?"
What had come over him? Why was he so aggressive in his fighting today? He was treating her like she was an enemy.
Akira ran at him, forcing herself to leave the friendly sparring match mindset she had been holding herself in. If he was going to go all out, she was too. Their fight lasted a few more minutes, with neither one of them gaining much ground. Until Akira was finally able to get in a good hit on Somaru's chest. It knocked the wind out of him and he stumbled backward. Akira followed unrelenting, not letting him get his balance back. She punched him in the stomach, then the face. Finally, she jumped and spun, kicking him across the face and sending him sprawling onto his back.
They both stopped for a second, panting. Somaru pushed himself up into a sitting position.
"You've gotten better," he said in between breaths.
Akira nodded. "So have you." She offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet. Then she turned her back on him and started to walk away.
"Who said we were done?"
Akira felt the shift in his chakra. She spun to face him just as he kicked her in the chest. She flew backward and landed on her back. She rolled onto her stomach to dodge the downward kick he had aimed at her. She jumped to her feet and leapt back a few feet, wheezing.
She had dropped the kunai in surprise when he had kicked her, so now she was weaponless. Which Somaru took full advantage of. He threw his kunai at her and pulled another one. Akira leaned to the side to dodge the kunai, but wasn't fast enough to get out of the way of the swipe he took. She blocked it with her forearm, feeling the blade slice through her skin.
Akira bit her tongue to keep from crying out at the pain. She aimed a punch at his head with her left hand, which he dodged. Then he leapt backward, doing hand seals.
"Fire style: fireball jutsu!"
Her eyes widened. In a panic, she slammed her fists together, then her palms into the ground. "Mud wall!"
The wall of rock rose before her, just in time. It blocked the fireball that he had sent at her, though she could still feel the heat of it. What was going on? Somaru had said taijutsu only.
She felt him behind her before he even attacked. Akira spun and lifted her arms to block his kick that he had aimed for her head. She caught it with crossed forearms above her head. Blood from the cut on her right forearm dripped down onto her face. It made her feel sick. But she couldn't stop fighting him to clean it up.
Akira pushed his leg away and jumped up to the top of the wall she had created. Somaru followed, and they traded a few blows up there. Then Akira jumped down to the ground, Somaru hot on her heels. She stopped momentarily to pick up a few pebbles, quickly shaping them into small shurikan. She spun and threw them at Somaru, aiming for his arms.
Somaru easily deflected them. They exploded upon impact with his kunai. "Is this all you've got? I thought you've been training with the ANBU?" He taunted. He threw another punch aimed for her head. Akira got underneath it and her fist connected with his jaw.
"I have. But I'm not trying to kill you, Somaru."
"You won't win unless you try." He made more hand seals. "Fire style, fire dragon jutsu!"
This time, their close proximity didn't allow Akira to put up a mud wall in time. She crossed her arms over her face to try and protect herself. The heat burned her skin, and she waited for the inevitable. Was this really how she was going to die?