Chapter 10

Sano walked out of the academy with two extra scrolls tucked into her bag. It appeared that Tanaka-sensei already knew the answers to his questions. Jogan wouldn’t, or even shouldn’t be the one responsible for her continued training resources. Sensei was right, Jogan had already done more than enough and it was time for either herself or others to pitch in to help.

During the meeting, Tanaka-sensei had given her a scroll for an earth style jutsu and water style jutsu. They were not special or unknown jutsus, but still powerful tools to add to her arsenal. The water style jutsu was named ‘Suiton: Teppodama’ Which roughly translated to ‘Water Release: Mouth Shot’. The jutsu itself shot a single sharp senbon-style spike of water from the user’s mouth. It could do some damage, but wasn’t very lethal.

The earth style jutsu was slightly more impressive, ‘Doton: Mogurogakure-no-jutsu’ or ‘Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole Technique’. This jutsu would allow her to slip into the very earth beneath her feet by channeling chakra into it. It used a lot of chakra, considering you needed to infuse a lot of the ground beneath you with it, but had many benefits. She would be able to tell where she is within the ground and what was happening on the surface… somehow.

After her shift at the supply depot, she’d have to head to the training field to start learning them both.

When it came to taijutsu, Tanaka-sensei had at least given her some hope. He asked her to meet with uncle Jogan to see if he’d be willing to help her. If he couldn’t or didn’t have the time, then sensei would find someone to help her after class as she was obviously struggling and behind her peers. He said that even if it would never be her strength, that didn’t mean it should continue to be a weakness. She could agree with that sentiment. It all went well, she’d be average. +

After a quick trip home to make dinner, stuffing her freshly cooked food into a bento-box, Sano hurried off to the northern supply depot to start her work. Koji was waiting for her at the entrance like the day before, a glower set on his face as she approached. “You’re late.”

‘I’m right on time. Class was long.’ She signed back. It wasn’t her fault that they had a gauntlet match and then one on one meetings. There was no way she was going to get yelled at for that. It wasn’t even anything in her control!

Koji simply grunted, accepting her reasoning with way too much aloofness. “You know what to do. Six hours today instead of the easy four like yesterday.”

Not wanting to argue and more than willing to get this over with so she could go play—train with her new jutsu, Sano jogged over to her workstation, fully restocked by someone else, then got to work. First, she triple-checked that she didn’t have any of her chakra suppressing seals on, as that was a mistake she didn’t want to repeat. Then, she got to work.

After making ten explosive tags, which took roughly an hour, her chakra began to flag. Chakra, to her, felt like a sixth sense. The books from the library were quite accurate when describing the sensation of using your chakra. Her chakra felt like a jar. When you looked inside yourself, you essentially shook or ‘wiggled’ the jar, feeling how much was left. Of course, this wasn’t an active process, more instinctually knowing how much you were using or had left.

She’d exhausted her chakra many times already on the training field when learning water and tree walking. The effects weren’t too noticeable until she dropped to what she estimated was around twenty percent of her reserves.

Still, it was fairly odd to register though. If her math was correct, making an explosive tag used around seven to eight percent of her chakra reserves. Using this as a benchmark, she could test whether or not she was improving. Even if her speed of creation remained the same, if it used less chakra to create, or she wasted less during the creation, then she’d be improving!

Having your improvements be something you could feel or see made them feel better. Everybody knew that!

The next five hours passed as she created explosive tags, took breaks, and did math to see if she was improving. By the end of the day, right after the sun had set, casting the village into darkness, she determined that instead of seven to eight percent of her chakra being used for each explosive tag, she was now using seven to seven and half! Progress! She was probably just off with her rough guestimates of her reserves as a variable, but it was more enjoyable to think that she’d actually made significant progress.

Before heading off to the training field, she took her ‘suspect’ tags off to the safe room for testing.

They all blew up gloriously.

Heh.

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Sano sat on the soft grass of training field thirty-seven (she knew the name of it now!) and read her brand new ninjutsu scrolls under the light of the moon. Deciding that the water jutsu, Mouth Shot, would be easier to learn, she started with that.

The scroll was simply written and described the hand seals required and what each one did for channeling chakra. There were also plain pictures inside, similar to an instruction manual for some ancient Ikea furniture. For this jutsu, the hand seals were Dog, Ram, and Boar. Unlike the ninjutsu she learned in the academy or her paralysis genjutsu, elemental ninjutsu required her to mold her chakra into the elemental affinity she was going to use before channeling the chakra to a location. In this case and for this jutsu, she would need to mold her chakra—similar to when she molded the chakra to her hands and feet for tree or water walking—to her mouth.

Without further ado, and with a little too much excitement for learning, Sano blasted through the hand seals and followed the instructions. ‘Suiton: Teppodama!’

The warm feeling chakra focused in and around her mouth cooled instantly in a pleasant sensation of conversion, creating water… which then rapidly expanded. Her cheeks ballooned outwards as crystal clear water pushed itself forcefully from her lips and out her nose. Her lungs became lead as the water forming within her took any possible path given to it to flee from its origin—her mouth.

Sano fell to her knees as she tried to stop her chakra from creating water. With wide and panicked eyes, the eerily silent sound of wet slashes pouring from her mouth and nose echoed out under the moon lit night. Her lungs began burning as she silently hacked and instinctively coughed, chest seizing as she drowned on solid ground creating the sounds of a babbling brook.

Sano gurgled as air and water met in her throat as she tried to breathe. She landed face first on the ground, hands wrapped around her neck as she struggled and spasmed. Water now also poured from her terrified wide eyes as she cried in a silent panic.

She was drowning.

The cool pleasant feeling of water had only lasted a single second before it became liquid fire within her lungs. The water had stopped appearing, but the damage was already done. Her vision swam as encroaching darkness etched its way slowly and inevitably across her vision. She writhed on the ground within the soaked grass as she gurgled, wheezed and coughed.

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The last thing she saw before losing consciousness was a pair of sandals splashing water next to her.

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—Jogan Aburame—

His eyes opened, wide and alert before the knock on the door even arrived. The warning buzz from beneath his skin, the same honed through sleeping through the horrors of war, stilled as the threat was assessed. One of his Kochu stationed outside shared its sight with him, letting him know what to expect.

Slipping out of bed, he got dressed and opened his door. Standing at attention was one of the Chunin helpers of the academy. The lanky teen might have appeared harmless to the students, but he’d seen this particular boy in the past on the fields of battle. Roki—no surname due to being an orphan.

“Your niece had an accident while training. Training field thirty seven—you’ll need to comfort her. She’ll wake up soon.” The young man listed off the facts of the situation with a caring tone. “She tried learning a water release and nearly drowned herself… It was quite a bad reaction.”

“Come.” Jogan ordered, then Body Flickered out and away towards his destination. Roki followed alongside him as his insects scattered into the air, combing the area. In no time at all, his insects informed him of Sano’s location. Within moments, he was there.