My head hit the ground, splattering the area around me with mud. A dull ringing filled my ears as my vision swam. Not wasting time, I struggled back to my feet only for a fist to slam into my stomach. Back to the ground I went, wheezing.
Isu shook his head, "You still don't respond fast enough brat. Also, don't just stand straight up. If you can roll to the side and stand at the same time it will work better. If an enemy wants to kill you, it's best to try and move as unpredictably as possible. A still shinobi is usually a dead one on the battlefield."
I nodded as I gasped for breath. Slowly I forced myself up. If there was one thing that grandpa hated it was cowardice or hesitance in the face of pain. I took my stance again, knife raised in front of me. He just grinned and launched himself forward.
I dodged his initial punch and swiped at him with the knife, which he blocked with the metal bracer on his hand. I kicked out at his groin but he shifted his body sideways and pushed forward. I let myself be pushed down and did a half handstand as I fell back and kicked toward his stomach with both my feet. Unfortunately, he grabbed my legs and lifted me over his head, slamming back down onto the ground with tremendous force.
I lay there for a minute, dazed. I heard him say something, but it only sounded like a distant mumbling. The clouds passed over head and idly I wondered if I was late for dinner. I still needed to pick up my car from the shop. Lazy mechanic would rue the day he tried to over charge me the bas-
Suddenly I was being picked up by my grandpa, his eyes peering into mine. He shook his head at me.
"That's enough for today, any further and I might mess up that head of yours. Go home and nap it off brat."
He set me down on the ground, where I promptly collapsed into a pile again. My mind had come back to the preset, but I found I had no strength in my limbs. Isu just sighed, and threw me over his shoulder. He started the trek back to the shack we called a home.
I spent the next day on bed rest, which really meant chores, because injury was no excuse for Isu to not dump all his responsibilities on his recently concussed grandchild. One amazing thing about chakra was it basically enhances every aspect in your body. Hearing, smell, taste, sight, reactions, strength, and in my case right now healing. What would have been a concussion and a week's bedrest would heal in about a day instead. He would never give me more than a day off unless he went too far, but that really only happened if we were using weapons and he got a bad gash or stab in. The most advanced medicine we had at this time was still fairly primitive, and infection killed as many shinobi as outright injuries.
I sat on a stool as I washed the day's dishes, wishing we had working plumbing and heating. I hadn't seen evidence for such, but frankly I hadn't been in other people's homes much in this life. As I scrubbed with the brush a sudden idea popped into my head. It had been about 6 months since we began training, and my droplet exercise had expanded greatly. I had gone from having a few droplets to having a small stream trickle from one hand, up and around my shoulders, and down to my other hand. It used the same attraction principle that I remembered from tree walking in the show.
I looked down at the crusty wooden bowl. Could I use that attraction and movement to wash these dishes? I placed my hand on the water and drew it around with chakra until my entire hand was covered in water. I placed my water coated hand on the plate, and tried to pull at the grime with my chakra infused water. Unfortunately, this was beyond my ability as I lost cohesion with the water. It splashed back into our sink. Frowning, I tried again only to be met with the same result. Three more tries ended with three more failures.
As I pondered this a new idea came to me. I simply paced the bowl in the water and tried from there. Without have to keep it on my hand it was much easier to use the chakra infuse water. Slowly a couple of the bigger pieces of old ramen broke away, but much of the grease and smaller pieces stayed stubbornly fused to the bowl. Perhaps if I tried with soap? The chakra infused the soap took a bit more effort than the water, but it worked even better at pulling the old ramen off. Just had to force it under the pieces a bit.
My next tactic was just as inspired. Dishes were easier to clean when soaked first right? I tried to inject water directly into the dried noodles, and this proved to be the best tactic yet. By my estimate about ten seconds of me injecting the chakra soap water directly into the noodles was roughly equivalent to about ten minutes of soaking. Not a bad chakra control exercise either.
Another thing I noticed was that material mattered. I had a number of different dishes from wood and clay bowls to tin forks and spoons. Wood bowls were the most clingy and difficult to work with, clay and metal were far easier in that they didn't absorb the chakra nearly as much as the wood. For the purpose of washing dishes this was ideal as it made it easier to both pull the grime off, and didn't lose as much chakra when infusing the dirt with water for soaking purposes. I wonder if the reason was that the wood was once living so it absorbed the chakra more easily. Today was a great day for discoveries.
A hand smacked my back hard as I was playing around with my discoveries. At least he avoided my head. Isu stood there with a disapproving look. "Didn't I say not to use your chakra unless I approved brat?" he said. "What are you doing anyway that's so important?"
Instead of saying anything I simply took the next dish and showered him. He looked down curiously despite his scowl. Slowly his scowl moved into a more thoughtful frown as his brain processed my newfound dishwashing skills.
"Move brat"
I moved aside he quickly took my place. Silently he copied what I was doing. It took just a minute of practice, but then he moved at a lightning pace and cleared the rest of the dishes. This made me profoundly jealous of his chakra control. He gave a nod and turned back to me.
"Alright, you can do that from now on." He proclaimed. "Not actually a bad control exercise. Might help with water manipulation too, though that works a bit differently. Cheeky brat, at least you got something of a brain in there. But no more using chakra on the chores unless you run it by me first. Water is usually a bit safer to play with, but if you tried fire to heat the water you could have boiled the water in your skin. Knew an idiot that tried that once. Knew nothing of fire release but thought it couldn't be that hard. Well, he managed it alright. Managed to completely fry his nerves, boil his blood and destroy his muscles. Had to amputate. He died a month later on a botched mission."
"Let that be a lesson to you boy, chakra is not a toy. Even something like increasing your own strength could tear your muscles in half. It's why we do so much exercise and sparing and not just flowing chakra through your body to increase speed and strength. Body learns how much it can handle better that way."
Well now, that sounded like Tsunade's super strength. Definitely going to have to learn that in the future. With clones of course, or maybe some animal experimentation. Actually, that sounded like a good reason why Tsunade's strength wasn't more common around the world. Maybe you had to have a pretty good idea of how much the body could handle and how to properly augment it in addition to the chakra control necessary. So, a medic nin figuring that out sounded a bit more likely.
"For that matter," he continued, "when trying new techniques, try to always be sure it's going to happen outside your body. That little water sticking and moving trick? Can do it with your blood too, real easy to mess up your insides though. Never try to manipulate your blood alright? At least not while it's in your body."
I nodded my ascent. Though now that I started thinking of new ways of playing with my chakra many of my chores looked like training opportunities. Watering plants? Water control. Weeding? Earth practice. Painting? Construction? Fishing? All of these were now control and elemental training.
I dipped my hand in the water, and sheathed it in the dirty liquid. I wandered if I could separate the dirt soap from the pure water? Could I do that with salt water? Salt might be a valuable money-making source. Was anyone already doing that?
"You're a curious sort, aren't you?" Isu stated more than asked. "Little tidbit for you, I know I told you about elemental transformation before. Water, earth, yadda yadda. But what you are doing is not actually water transformation."
I looked over at him with raised eyebrows
"Yeah, transformation is an actual transformation. Fire chakra actually becomes fire, at least in part. Still some differences that I don't fully understand it. Water chakra becomes and infuses with water, which places it under your control. What you're doing right here is manipulating it, but it's on an attraction principle. Your chakra isn't actually taking on the principles and properties of water, it's just forcing it to stick to your hand. Your kind of on a half-step right now. Good for when you actually fully succeed though."
Well, another mystery to solve. But one I will have to do on my own it seems. Isu was good for practice applications, but his theoretical knowledge was a bit lacking at times. He was a soldier, not a scientist.
The next few days passed in a blur. Getting my but kicked in sparing, learning new traps, and experimenting with chakra. With Isu's oversight of course.
Painting? Failure. Paint sticks too much to my hand for any practical applications. Took a lot of scrubbing to get out. No real benefit to infusing a brush with chakra. No better spread. It just makes me more tired. Maybe if I could control it remotely and with precision, but that is for future me.
Watering garden? Similar issues. Not enough control or power to get the whole garden. Watering can is easier. Surprising benefit is weed pulling. Chakra infusing the weed strengthens it enough so that I can pull out the roots instead of it breaking to pieces. Stops some of the more stubborn weeds that had been hanging around. I can slowly move earth around, but that was too slow and weak to use currently. Maybe after I could use earth release properly.
Construction and repairs were easier simply for being stronger. If I could directly manipulate the material of whatever I was repairing I bet I could become a handy man God. I didn't know much on the structures of housing though, so my one-man construction crew would have to be put on hold for the foreseeable future.
Fishing was a tremendous success, if I could actually touch the fish. Using chakra made them unable to slip from my hands. Took some practice though. A couple of times I hurt my hand on the water going in as the water would condense for a moment. I assume it was because I was kind of doing something similar to water walking. My traps were always kinda shoddy, no good material and limited experience. Isu showed me a few things but he was always more of a personal in your face guy. I made it a point to eat as much protein as I could get my hands on so more fish was always welcome
The next six months passed much like this, training in the mornings and experiments in the evenings. Town was just a bit too far for a casual trip, and I had no friends anyways. It was hard to befriend people you rarely saw, and frankly were just a bit too dumb to treat as real peers. Isu didn't really care one way or another. If this was my first go at life, he would have definitely have messed me up in the head for his neglect. Still might honestly. Fun thoughts.
That's not to say that I stayed in our home. I was exploring all the tunnels and land around our little shack. Gathering wood and wild foods for us, hunting some rabbits and other small game, I even started cataloguing plants and animals. Little pictures and explanations of edible and non-edible mushrooms, tree types, and anything else I could spy. Even found some maple trees. Going to try and harvest some syrup from them, after I finally get some money and hire a smith. I could learn smithing myself, but I would need either money for lessons, or an apprenticeship. From what I can tell must such things around here are family trades.
The time passed in the blink of an eye. A very painful eye blink with all the bruises I was getting. I was now a full year into my training. I was faster than I had ever been in my previous life. Had more stamina too. My strength, while strong for my age, was still weaker than my adult self. Still, I remembered Kakuzu being able to stop Choji's enlarged fist. Whether by nature or by the threads I was going to be a physical powerhouse.
I was starting to have enough chakra for some simple ninjutsu, of which I had learned the Henge so far. Really my biggest limiting factor was not having enough chakra to practice for more than half an hour or so. It took quite a bit more to use jutsu than the basic enhancing or little manipulation tricks I was doing. Also, the transformation was an illusion, no physical component. That was a bummer, though it made more sense than a real physical change. I knew such thigs were possible (such as the Akimichi) but not with this technique. Another thing I would have to discover as Isu had no idea how it worked beyond that it did.
I had no talent for genjutsu. I had the control, I had visualization, but something stopped me from manipulating his chakra directly. It was frustrating, but I had a roadblock. Isu was a taijutsu fighter first, a ninjutsu user second, and a genjutsu user never. So I was stuck for now. That being said I was decent at dispelling it.
It was about a week after my training anniversary had passed that Isu got a visitor. They spoke in hushed tones, and by the look on Isu's face he was not pleased. By the time the man left he was downright scowling at the man.
As the door closed Isu turned to me. "Alright Kakazu, we have a mission. Get ready whatever you have. I will look it over before bed and we will leave in the morning."
I gave him a long stare
"I know I know, I said we weren't going to take missions for another two years yet, but there has been a big bandit problem recently. Something about a war going on in the south and a bunch of deserters. They need me in the field, and frankly you need to get your hands bloodied. Don't think I haven't noticed your hesitation whenever you strike at me. I was content to ignore it for a while, but it's pass time for you to kill someone"
The casualness of his statement was a bit disconcerting. I was not a pacifist, but I didn't believe in killing as a first option either. Still, I knew this day would eventually come. I nodded my ascent and left to prepare my supplies.
"One more thing!" Isu called out, "We won't be alone on this mission. So, I expect you to be on your best behavior. That means talking brat. I've looked past your silent spells, but that won't work for a stranger. Do you understand me?"
I simply nodded. More people, joy.