Actions

Work Header

The Color Silver

Chapter 58: Flowing, Windy, and Frustrated

Chapter Text

Autumn year 67

Naruto pov

“So what are we doing today, Pervy Sage?”

He frowned at the familiar nickname but didn’t call me out for it this time, simply reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small square of off-white paper.

“Hold this.” Jiraiya said.

I took the paper questioningly. “You just want me to hold it?”

“I’ll tell you what to do when you apologize to your master.” Jiraiya proclaimed smugly. 

“What?!” I pointed at him and started yelling about how he’s a grown man and he should be the bigger person only for him to turn his cheek with an indignant huff and sit on the hotel bed.

I grit my teeth and proceeded to glare at him for several minutes, the paper in my hand crumpling in my grip.

As soon as Jiraiya noticed he pointed to the paper and said that I had ruined it. “Now you’ll have to pay me for a replacement too.”

“Are you kidding me!? What kind of master are you old man!? You act more like a little kid than a grown-up!”

“At least I’m not a snot nosed brat!” 

 

Kagame pov

We were sat in the garden: myself, Ino, and Inoichi. It was pleasantly cool, not yet so chilly that we needed to bundle up, but it wouldn’t last for long, just another week or so left until the temperature would start to plummet. 

Inoichi had decided that it was time he taught Ino sensing, and she having told him how I was “kind of, sort of a sensor” managed to get him to include me in the lessons.

So here we were, sat in complete silence, legs folded into the lotus position, each of us focusing inwards on our own chakra. 

I already knew about meditation, already had a great idea of what my chakra felt like, yet Inoichi insisted that this was the first step to learning to be a sensor and couldn’t be glossed over just because I had some experience.

So here I sat, lotus, eyes closed, breathing deep and controlled. I felt my chakra come to me easily, cool, soft, flowing freely, familiar.

Inoichi spoke, a smile clear in his voice even if I couldn’t see it, “Good, but you’re merely skimming the surface, dig deeper.”

 

Sasuke pov

“Dip deeper! You’ve been at this for weeks now, how do you expect to learn if you don’t put your whole body into it!” Anko yelled.

It was annoying, she was annoying. It was nice having someone much more hands on than Kakashi, but kami, she was as loud as Naruto.

“I’m trying.” I bit out as I moved deeper into the kata, the muscles in my lower back protesting as I did so.

“Maybe we need to restretch and start over.”

Damn it.

 

Naruto pov

So after handing over the money that Pervy Sage insisted would be necessary to cover the price for a replacement paper, which was way too much for a stupid piece of paper, he then pulled out a spare!

“If you had another then why did I pay you!? Give it back, you old cheapskate!”

“Ah ah ah!” He waggled his finger as he held up my money above his head. “We wouldn’t want you to get over excited and ruin this piece too.”

I grit my teeth together and growled, “Fine. Just tell me what to do with the stupid thing.”

Jiraiya gave one of his wide shit-eating grins. “That’s easy, you just channel a small amount of chakra into the paper.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.”

I shot him one last glare before turning my attention back to the paper and took a deep breath, willing as small a fraction of my chakra as I could into the paper. My eyes went wide as it ripped clean in half.

“W-what does that mean?! Why did it do that?!”

Jiraiya stuck his face in close and squinted, making all sorts of exaggerated hums before answering. “Looks like you have wind nature chakra.”

“Ughhhhhhhh.”

He gave me a look that said I should know what he’s talking about and explained that it was like how Sasuke could use fire and lightning jutsus, but with air.

“Oh! So I could do cool stuff like make a sword out of air! Like shooooo, shooooo, shooooo! ” I said, mimicking sword swings with the sounds.

“Well…. Maybe not that, at least not at first. Something like that would require a lot of chakra control, which… well you are getting better, but not that much better.

“Hey!”

 

Kagame pov

After several hours, and no idea just what he meant by “dig deeper”, I was suddenly and inexplicably greeted by the feeling of being pulled under my chakra.

I recoiled from it, my awareness snapping away from inside as I fell onto my back and started panting heavily. My chakra was buzzing around me, gushing out from my core and surrounding my skin, making the chill of the afternoon worse than I’m sure it actually was.

Ino made an awful squawk of surprise and nearly leapt out of lotus to glare at me.

“What the heck was that?!” She demanded, rubbing the goosebumps on her arms aggressively. 

Did she feel that?

“Don’t worry about him, princess, he’s fine-”

“-I wasn’t worried!”

“Many sensors have a similar experience.” Inoichi shooed her away as he helped me to my feet, the world tilting and blurring as he steadied me. “We’ll end things here for today. Why don’t you get some rest, Kagame.”

My body felt… different, off kilter. My pathways were swimming with chakra as it poured back into my core from the outside, and I felt as though my head would float away into the burnt orange sky while my body would sink into the earth. 

After dragging my leaden feet inside and upstairs I all but collapsed into bed, the room spinning around me, threatening to bring up lunch. I welcomed the darkness of sleep more readily than I could remember in years that night.

 

By the next day my chakra had… settled, for lack of a better word.

Ino had unceremoniously delved into questioning her father before breakfast was even ready that morning.

“In essence, the chakra sensing technique we’ll be using requires one to probe into the deepest part of their chakra network, the core, and then externalize the chakra inside it, without allowing the contents to dissipate into the surrounding area.” 

Oh.

It’s like gyo or, wait-no, what was that called? The other thing?

Ryu?

I immediately ignored breakfast edicate and pulled out my book at the table, flipping through the pages until I found what I was looking for. 

Page 71, here we are, Ryu.

Ryu : An advanced application of chakra based upon the principle of Gyo, in which a shinobi allows their chakra to flow out of their tenketsu to form a barrier around their entire body.

 

This can be used for offensive, defensive, or evasive purposes in combat by strengthening the user’s body or cushioning the impact from enemy attacks.

 

In addition to it’s combat efficacy, Ryu can be used to increase a shinobi’s field of awareness. By pushing their chakra outward the user can obtain sensory awareness of others through their chakra coming into contact with that of allies and enemies alike. Though it is not recommended to keep Ryu’s radius at greater distances during combat as it can easily lessen the user’s battle prowess through an overload of sensory information, as well as cause the user to lose chakra to the environment at an advanced rate.

 

Winter year 68

 

Naruto pov

The southern peninsula was really warm during winter, it didn’t ever snow here apparently. Which was kind of a bummer because I was looking forward to pelting Jiraiya with snowballs, but I guess it made sense he would take us here since my training needed leaves. But still! He was so annoying! He totally deserved to be on the receiving end of a snowball ambush. 

So I sent out a few shadow clones to get the next best thing. Water balloons.

I hid a grin when he showed up in the clearing to check my progress, eyes tracing over the countless leaves with nicks littered across them.

“Working hard I see.”

“Oh you bet! I’ve been working really hard.” I had to work really hard just to keep the grin off my face so that counted too! Not that I let my genius idea distract me from training. 

The leaves were proof.

Jiraiya glared suspiciously at me. 

Uh oh, he’s onto me.

Panicking I shouted, “Now! Fire at will!”

Jiraiya clasped his hands together as my clones came charging out of the bush with a furious battle cry, and just as they threw their balloons…

Wind release, great breakthrough.”

The balloons went flying back with a great burst of air, hitting my clones and soaking them.

“Haha!” Jiraiya barked out a laugh. “You’ll have to get up pretty early to pull one over on the Great Toad Sage! Better luck next time, twerp!”

 

Kakashi pov

Well this is nice.

Lovely really.

My favorite possible thing that could happen.

After spending nearly a week at the outpost by Waterfall country I had the distinct pleasure of being sent through their land to Earth country to carry out several assassinations in order to cause enough political unrest to shift Taki’s gaze towards their other border. And then just as soon as I’m allowed to return home for a break I get called into the Hokage’s office.

My favorite place in the whole village, possibly even the world.

“I really would have liked to have someone warn me ya know. I knew being Hokage was for absolute fools, but the amount of bullshit that has been dumped onto my lap since coming back has been astronomical.” Tsunade groused. 

And like a good little shinobi I nodded along and pretended to be sympathetic. All while wondering, why the fuck am I here?

“Do you have any idea of the problems I have had to deal with because of your student?”

Oh, well, yeah, that would explain it.

“To be fair, Sasuke isn’t my student any longer.”

“Oh I wish this was about Sasuke right now. At least then I would understand what the fuck is going on, but no, you had to have another student who Orochimaru wants to get his slippery fucking hands on.”

What.

 

Of course this is my life, why not? I’m used to the Kami throwing absolute bullshit my way at every turn. So fine, sure, Kagame has a bullshit kekkei genkai that’s not compatible with his body, but is compatible with Orochimaru’s curse mark, sure. At least that dashes Iruka’s jinchuriki theory though, so it’s almost less bullshit.

 

Kagame pov

It looks nice.

That was my thought, staring into the mirror as I wore my new yukata for the first time. It was clearly made of nicer material than any of my others, so it looks like I was right to have entrusted Kagari-san in making it. Though if I was being honest with myself I hadn’t imagined my first time wearing it would be for the Rinne festival, considering it was made with combat in mind. Still, it was the nicest thing I owned and I had to wear it eventually. I spun around in the mirror, pleased with the almost hypnotic effect produced by the black lattice pattern.

It should serve my genjutsu well… if Captain Yamato ever lets us go on missions again.

As soon as I was finished dressing Ino began banging on my door, telling me to hurry up so she could do my hair. Before I could even finish turning the door knob she was pushing her way in with hair ties, clips, bobby pins, and what looked to be a hair curler, which honestly I didn’t even know she had considering I had only seen her with perfectly straight hair.

Far too much hair pulling and sniping at each other later, we were finally leaving, and were late at that. But considering we would be seeing Shikamaru and Choji, I was totally fine being late. Ino had put my hair into a curly half tail that, while very pretty, was not exactly my style. But like I said, we were going to see Shikamaru… and I still had complicated feelings about that.

It was as we stepped through the compound gate that I saw something that froze me in place and promptly dashed any thoughts I might have had about the whole situation.