Chapter 57

"Yes!" Sakura shouted as she felt splintered wood of the tree on which she was practicing her Chidori. The bark of the tree was singed around the shallow hand-sized wound in the trunk. It was impressive for less than a week and probably strong enough to diffuse Deidara's bombs. Sasuke liked to practice by himself and was even farther than either of us, judging by the state of the trees I had looked at the previous night.

"Haru, what are you doing?" Sakura asked, breathing hard from the chakra expenditure of the Chidori.

"I'm just watching you practice." I was sitting against a nearby tree, focusing on sensing the chakra of Sakura's technique. This wasn't my first lighting release technique, but it was vastly different than Kurenai's invention.

"It's weird when you just sit there staring at me. I thought you hated when people watch you train. Why is it suddenly okay when you do it?" she said snidely.

"I'm doing important research. It'll help me out in the long run."

There were two parts to Kakashi's technique. The first step was the production of lightning chakra that gives the technique its destructive power. The second step was attaining the physical speed necessary for the lightning chakra to begin pulling the wielder faster than they would be able to ordinarily move. Combined with the reflexes of the Sharingan, it would hypothetically be a sure-kill technique as the manual delivery of the attack would ensure it wouldn't miss.

The Chidori combined the highest levels of speed and destructive power to be found in a single-target assassination jutsu. Understanding how it worked explained why Kakashi only ever needed to invent a single technique. Lacking a Sharingan to avoid counter-attacks when being pulled in a straight line by the lightning chakra, I was more interested lightning chakra itself. More specifically, I wanted to channel it through my weapons and projectiles.

That was assuming I could figure out how to condense the fucking lightning into my hand. Even Sakura's minor success was better than anything I had accomplished so far. Anything that required hand seals always felt unnatural to me. Sure, I figured out those techniques eventually but it had always taken me a really long time.

I always felt dumb making hand seals. I understood the theory of how they were supposed to help focus your chakra as you performed the series of gestures but it never really felt natural to me. My best techniques didn't require any hand seals. The ones that did require hand seals I worked on endlessly until I made sure I could use them in a fight and, in some cases, until I didn't need the seals anymore. But I didn't have months in which to learn the Chidori.

The fire nature transformation had come easily enough. It just felt natural to make things burn. It had taken a while to apply it to a Rasengan but that was just a matter of coordination and dedicated practice. Kurenai's anti-genjutsu took me nearly the entirety of my Academy career to master. I thought that experience with lightning techniques would help but electrical signals were different from pure, condensed electricity.

I knew it was probably possible to perform the Chidori without hand seals but getting to that point would be the hard part. Thus, I observed Sakura's moderate successes with the technique through my chakra, feeling it reverberate against nature and my own extended chakra that I might intuit a clue.

Sakura sat down next to me, exhausted and satisfied with the progress of her latest attempt. "So, how far have you gotten, Haru?"

"Not very," I said furtively.

Sensing weakness, the girl grinned. "Eh? The all-powerful Haru is having trouble learning a technique?"

I turned my palm up and concentrated on building chakra above my hand. The trick with lightning chakra was compacting and condensing the energy of the chakra until it sparked and wanted to move on its own. Thin, purple arcs of light began to crawl up my arm over my coat as I tried to intuitively copy Sakura's own blue neo-Chidori. It did nothing other than make my skin tingle so I discharged it into the ground.

Then I surreptitiously checked to make sure my hair wasn't standing on end like with my first attempts at using lightning chakra offensively. Sakura didn't need to know that though. "Why doesn't it want to stay in my hand?" I wondered.

"I'll get it eventually. Hey, Sakura, I want to ask you something. What is lightning?" I asked the allegedly book smart girl.

"Have you never seen lightning before, Haru?" She gave me a suspicious look.

"I just want to hear from you what you think lightning is. There's no right answer or anything. Just give me an exact definition according to you."

She seemed to become even more suspicious of me. "Isn't lightning just when electricity shoots down from the sky? I'm pretty sure it happens because of the electric charge of the air. I don't know exactly why it happens though."

"My next question is...if you could learn any one technique, what would it be? It doesn't have to be a real technique. I'm just curious what kind of technique you feel would suit you best."

"Why are you suddenly so interested in me, Haru? You used to never want to talk to me." Sakura had her hands on her waist and was looking down at me, expecting an answer.

"You weren't on my team before. And like I said, I'm just curious." I gave her a friendly smile.

Sakura narrowed her eyes at me. But soon she looked up, considering her answer in her head. "I don't know...maybe...something that could help people? That's a weird question. What kind of technique would you pick, Haru?"

"Something that would level the playing field. Something that can completely neutralize chakra."

"That...is a secret."

"Ugh, whatever. It's not worth it to ask questions when you have that look on your face." Sakura walked away scornfully, returning to shocking the bark off the trees.

"What look on my face?" I wanted to ask but the girl was already too far away to continue the conversation. My curiosity mostly satisfied, I returned to puzzling out how the flow of electrons would be interpreted through chakra and why it would be good at piercing things. I didn't know if I was thinking about it wrong or just unable to wrap my mind around it but it just didn't make sense to me. The rapid oxidation of fuel caused by the application of heat was simple enough. "But where are the electrons actually going? Wouldn't the Chidori just make a magnetic field? Why does it spark so much?"

I wished I had more chemistry knowledge in my head. But instead all I had was this mild headache from thinking too hard. Deidara's return was only a couple days away.