Chapter 6

During the weekends, when the academy didn’t have classes, Sano spent her time in the library or at training field thirty-nine, which was quickly becoming a second home.

There was something rewarding about improving herself. While she didn’t remember much about her Earth-self, she knew her Earth-self wasn’t as driven as she was here. Whether it be studious research about chakra, jutsu, or the history of shinobi; the physical training, perfecting the use of her small body, or partaking in inhuman levels of strength and dexterity… She thoroughly enjoyed it all.

About two weeks had passed since her run-in with her uncle Jogan and Tsunade, and today was the day she was supposed to meet her new Fuinjutsu teacher. Jiraiya, one of the legendary three Sanin. He was said to be a bit of a fool and a pervert, yet friendly and an expert on barriers. One of the best teachers she could ask for… Well, according to Jogan and the librarians she’d asked.

When the awaited knock on her door rang out through her small apartment, she scampered over, smothered down her trench coat, and tucked a few strands of loose hair behind her ear. First impressions were important, and she didn’t want to be a child in front of the man who could make or break her training.

She opened the door, crinkled her eyes into an eye-smile, looked up, and was immediately brushed past by a giant of a man. Jiraiya looked to be in his early twenties and stood a solid six feet tall, with a few inches thrown on top. He wore a suit of chain mail-esque armor under a white robe which was tied off at the waist with a simple belt. At the ends of the sleeves and where the robe transitioned into his pants, decals of flame licked upwards towards his elbow and torso.

His spiky white hair stood in stark contrast to the sharp lines of red makeup stretching diagonally down the side of his cheeks, angled outwards from the outward corner of his eyes. Eyes that barely spared her a glance before he strode into her room like he owned the place. Jiraiya took in her rolled up futon and the kitchen with barely a glance, shrugged, swiftly kicked the futon to unroll it, then slumped down to rest, head tilted back to bang on the wall.

Sano shuffled in after him and stood in the entryway, too shocked by his severe lack of manners to even contemplate signing a coherent response.

After a long sigh, Jiraiya cracked open one of his eyes to stare at her. “Listen kid, I just spent the better part of three years teaching a group of brats. I’m not really interested in this whole mentorship, but if I don’t at least try, Tsunade will kill me.”

After a quick jolt, she responded. ‘I can prove myself to you.’ She really didn’t want to let this opportunity slip through her fingers.

He sighed again, leaning forward to rest an elbow on his raised knee. “I don’t need you to prove anything to me. This is probably just not going to work out, so don’t get your hopes up. I told Hime that I’d give you at least a week. I’m not promising anything past that.”

With a loud crack of the neck, he gestured her over towards her. “Let’s get some questions out of the way. Firstly, why do you even want to learn Fuinjutsu? Normally kids go for flashy Ninjutsu.”

Sano sat down across from him on the edge of the rug that covered her apartment’s floor. ‘I’ve spent the last few weeks in the library learning as much as I can, but at the end of every single chapter, it says to never try Fuinjutsu without a mentor.’ She signed slowly, as longer sentences were much harder to convey. ‘The possibilities are endless with Fuinjutsu, and from what I can tell, it is the strongest ninja path to walk.’

“Hoh? Strongest you say?” Jiraiya smiled, but his eyes weren’t. “And what do you need this strength for?”

‘To be the best I can be.’ Was her immediate response. ‘Why would I not try to be the best? Nobody wants to be mediocre.’

“Kid, you’re what? Eight? Most kids just want to play around throwing fireballs, not sit in stuffy rooms working with seals. I’ll need something more than that.” He scoffed.

Sano frowned, looking down in thought. ‘Fuinjutsu can let me speak again. It would let me use all the elemental releases too?’

Jiraiya laughed, leaning forward to rest his chin on his knee and arm. “That’s more like it.” This time, his eyes followed along with his smile. “So, Tsunade-hime said you had a bunch of questions?”

With a speed that Jiraiya hadn’t expected, Sano whipped out her scroll and flung it open. ‘I have so many…’

——————————————-

“Yeah you can, but why would you layer the seal and add unneeded complexity when you could widen it, rework it, and make a larger one? It’s not like your idea needs to be small, if it will even work to begin with.” Jiraiya sat hunched, fist on his chin as he contemplated her questions.

She’d gotten him thoroughly invested with many of her questions, and it now felt like a back-and-forth conversation rather than a lecture. ‘Because my body only has so much canvas.’ Sano signed back, eyes locked onto him as she studied his every movement.

With a small hidden smile, she watched as Jiraiya short circuited. He blinked like that famous meme, four times, then swiveled his incredulous gaze to meet hers. “Your body? You want to put this on yourself?” He scoffed. “Are you insane?”

Sano slapped the scroll, then signed. “And if it works? You said it could work…”

“Kid, you haven’t even made an explosion tag. You’re getting way ahead of yourself.” Jiraiya tugged the scroll from out under her palm, then read over it once again. He ran a hand down his face, eyes flicking from the scroll to her occasionally, before he looked annoyed. “I’ll come by tomorrow at noon. We’ll work on some smaller explosion tags to get you started.”

Sano was giddy, but Jiraiya spoke before she could get more excited. His tone was serious. “You have potential. I will admit that much… but potential is only that—potential. If you don’t live long enough to rise to what you can be, then it’s meaningless. We don’t even know if you’ll be capable of making half the stuff you’ve been thinking up, and it’s not like you’ll be finding out anytime soon by the looks of it.”

“So, anything else you want to learn? I assume Genjutsu is one, going by some of your hypothetical seal ideas.” He asked, rolling up the scroll to place by his side.

‘Yes. Genjutsu would allow me to speak as well. Much easier too, I think.’ Sano paused, then added. ‘The skills needed for Fuinjutsu and Genjutsu overlap. They also complement each other.’

Jiraiya hummed in thought. “You’re not wrong, but learning from the few Uchiha capable of using Genjutsu to a satisfactory degree would be hard. They rely too much on their Dojutsu. While you could learn, there would always be a gap between you.”

‘What about the Kurama? One of my classmates is from the Kurama clan.’ Sano signed.

“The Kurama, eh? Not a bad idea. I don’t know too much about them. They’re pretty small? They would be better if you can get them to teach you… It’d be more of an even playing field. If you had a Sharingan, then the Uchiha would obviously be the better option.”

‘Do you know any Genjutsu? I’ve never actually seen anyone use one before.’ She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t curious to know what it felt like to be under one.

“I know one or two. Again, not my specialty.” Jiraiya narrowed his eyes in her direction.

‘Use it on me?’ Sano signed, putting on her puppy-dog eyes as she wiggled back and forth, begging.

With a lightning fast Tiger hand sign, Jiraiya did something as he muttered under his breath. Suddenly, Sano was caught mid wiggle, paralysed. She tilted over, shoulder thumping onto the hardwood floor. It reminded her of when she had first woken up in this world, but unlike that time, there wasn’t any pain and she could move her eyes to look about with ease.

“Pop quiz! See if you can break out of it by yourself. You’ve read enough Genjutsu books to know how. Now, put it into practice.” Jiraiya said calmly. With a mischievous grin on his face, he stood up. “I think I’ll make us some dinner while you practice! Let’s see what you’ve got in here…” Jiraiya opened her fridge, then carelessly dug through her food stash. “No booze?”

I’m eight! Sano wanted to sign, but she was paralyzed… Put two and two together.

To break out of Genjutsu, you first needed to know how Genjutsu worked. Genjutsu uses the casters Chakra to manipulate the targets, controlling it to provide an array of effects—mostly dealing with the five senses. So, to break out of Genjutsu, one has to purge the chakra manipulating them out of their system, or disrupt their own chakra flow in a sudden irregular spike and hope the rapid change will throw off the enemy casting the jutsu. If you didn’t know you were in a Genjutsu, that’s obviously much harder to accomplish.

There was the third option of inducing severe pain to shock someone out, but as Sano was paralysed, that wasn’t an option.

This brought up another facet of Genjutsu—Chakra Control. If one does not have a level of chakra control higher than the targets, then the Genjutsu will fail, or in a best-case scenario, be discovered instantly.

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Needless to say, Jiraiya had her beat in the chakra control department. This wouldn’t be easy.

It took only a second to find her chakra, which she followed along until she sensed the disruption. Of course, as Genjutsu deals with the senses, it was disrupted around her head—the Tenketsu points, or smaller chakra nodes, flared and pulsed in her mind’s eye.

It was said that you should make the Tiger sign and surge your chakra to break the disruption while shouting ‘Kai’, but that was difficult as she was paralysed. She couldn’t move her hands to make the sign, so she’d have to try the hard way. The Tiger sign wasn’t strictly needed, but if you had control of your hands, there wasn’t much of a point to not use the training wheels it provided.

Thankfully, Jiraiya wasn’t actively controlling the chakra disrupting her normal flow. If he was, she’d probably be at his mercy for as long as he wanted. She tried forcing her chakra to circulate, but that didn’t work as well as she’d hoped. Next, she tried to gather her chakra in her head, but again, that didn’t seem to work either.

Finally, Sano sent a massive spike of chakra through her pathways, speeding up her flow to three times its natural speed in less than a second, before returning it to normal.