Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Naruto of the Mirage ❯ Chapter 8 ( Chapter 8 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Kakashi slowly regained consciousness, and with it, all of the aches and pains that come with chakra exhaustion.

“I wonder how long I was out for this time?” The lazy jounin asked to no one. He opened his one visible eye and found himself laying on a futon in a room he didn't recognize. Shortly afterwards the door opened to reveal his team in varying states of exhaustion.

“Only a day and a half, actually.” Came the reply to his seemingly rhetorical question, from the last remaining Uchiha.

“Were you training?” He asked the genin.

“Just a little bit sensei.” Naruto replied. “Mostly just some taijutsu.”

Kakashi nodded in approval and attempted to sit up a bit, succeeding after two tries.

“It is imperative that we send for help.” He said, his voice in a dead serious tone. “Zabuza is alive; the standard procedure for hunter-nin is to dispose of the body on sight, not to take it somewhere else. I think that the `hunter' was working with Zabuza and simply put him in a death-like state. He is still alive and has at least one person working with him. If his partner is skilled enough in the medical arts, which I think they must be because the knowledge needed to put someone in a death like state is well above average, than we have about two weeks or so until Zabuza is well enough to attack again.”

This brought a gasp from the genin who thought the ex-mist ninja was out of the picture.

“Sasuke or Naruto, do either of you have a summoning scroll for a messenger bird?” Kakashi asked.

Both boys nodded their heads in the affirmative and produced two identical scrolls.

“Good, I need one of you to send a message to the Hokage, requesting back up. Right now, the three of you aren't strong enough to fight either of the two foes we have identified right now. But I plan on changing that.” His last sentence was accompanied by a slight smirk, barely evident through the fabric of his mask.

While the boys saw this as a good thing, Sakura didn't like the look her sensei had. Not one bit.

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The next day dawned early and with not a single cloud in the sky, although the genin didn't have the time to admire the surrounding wilderness. Kakashi had taken the team to a location in the forest surrounding Tazuna's house. There were trees every direction one could look and a stream about four feet deep ran through the forest, bisecting the trees into two distinctive areas.

“Now, I'm going to teach the three of you to control your chakra. This will help you conserve chakra when it comes to battles you may fight later on. Theoretically, if you master even basic chakra control, you can perform any technique. Of course that is theoretically and based also on the size of your chakra reserves, but don't worry too much about it. Now, Naruto, and I assume Sasuke have already completed the exercise I'm going to give you, Sakura, so they'll have to do something else. All right, Sakura, you will be climbing trees.”

The pink haired girl's face contorted into a look of confusion, before she asked how that was going to help her chakra control.

“Well, you see…you won't be using your hands.” Kakashi replied, and proceeded to walk straight up the closest tree, crutches and all, without his hands. “It is said that the soles of the feet are the hardest part of the body to gather chakra to, so this will help with proper molding, but also, if you use too much or too little chakra, you won't stick to the three, so it will also help with your precise control over the amount you use.”

Sakura pondered over her strategy to conquer this stage obstacle, before she pulled her hands into the ram seal and gathered chakra to her feet.

“If you feel uneasy about this, you might consider running at the tree.” Her sensei suggested.

Sakura ran at the tree at top speed and was able to run more than three quarters of the way up, before she fell back to earth and landing on her feet after a graceful back flip.

“Very impressive Sakura, you didn't make the top because of poor control, but because your reserves are so small.” Kakashi explained to the three genin. “I want you to continue to run up and down the trees when ever you can, this way, your reserves will increase significantly.”

Sakura nodded and continued with her exercise. Meanwhile Kakashi turned his attention to his two remaining students.

“The exercise you two will be doing is called water walking, and it sounds exactly like what it is.” He walked out on top of the water and stood on the surface. Suddenly he wobbled a bit and quickly returned to shore. “As you could probably tell, this requires much more chakra to perform. During the tree climbing exercise, the goal was to release a constant amount of chakra to stick to the tree. With this exercise, the goal is to release the correct amount of chakra, and then keep control of it away from your body. You see, the chakra you release in this exercise, isn't going to be trapped by the tree, so you have to create `stilts' with your chakra and push them to the bottom of the water. The stream of chakra must be constant and controlled. If we were in Konoha, we would practice over a hot spring, but since were here, this river will have to do.”

When the copy ninja had finished the directions, the two boys began to test out the new skill. It was slow going, especially for Naruto, since he had so much excess chakra. Sasuke was able to steady himself on the surface by noon, but Naruto was struggling. His feet were battling the water, surfacing and then submerging once more. They took a break at noon and reunited with Sakura, who was very tired by now and could use the rest.

After lunch they returned to their assigned tasks and continued to struggle. Sakura had made it to the top of a thirty foot tall tree a few times, but when she tried other trees, she seemed to top out at around thirty five feet or so. She assumed it had to do with her small chakra reserves. The boys were a different story all together. After his initial success with water walking, Sasuke was having a small amount of difficulty. He was able to stand on top of the water fine, but if he tried moving more than small baby steps, he would loose control and wet his feet with cold river water. Since he wasn't the chakra monster his brother was, he took a break around two in the afternoon and continued reading the information the Hokage had passed onto him. The actual manuscript was too valuable to bring with him, but he had taken many notes on the information contained within, and brought those. The steps outlined to control fire weren't exceedingly complex, but required a good amount of control to do.

Naruto was still having troubles with the exercise, but he was now able to stand on the water, but any attempt at movement would throw off his control. But he kept at it, and while Sasuke was practicing some fire control skills, Naruto was finally able to move a bit…albeit, unconventionally. Having troubles keeping his chakra at a consistent level away from his body, he simply used his chakra to skate along the surface of the water. It was effective, but it wasn't the point of the exercise.

When Kakashi returned later, he noticed the improvement his students had made. Sakura had improved her reserves somewhat, it wouldn't be an instantaneous process, but he was quite happy with her improvement. The boys…well Sasuke had been able to stand on the surface easily, and then take a few steps, but after two or three his control or reserves faltered and he would fall in. `Nothing another day or two of practice wouldn't fix.' Kakashi thought to himself. Naruto, on the other hand, was making slight progress, he could stand on the water, but taking any steps, larger than an inch or two was impossible. He did show of his new `skating' ability, and while it impressed Kakashi and Sakura, (reluctantly) Kakashi was quick to point out that it wasn't the goal of the exercise to skate, but to walk.

The team began to head back to Tazuna's house for dinner in a comfortable silence, the genin were either too tired or annoyed to speak much.

“Oh, yeah, before I forget, the back up I requested will be here tomorrow, so I'd make use of the day training, since you might not get too much more time.” Kakashi said, still reading that perverted orange book of his.

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