Chapter 20: Weasel

Weasel had been hearing a lot of things about the new kid they were training, he had been away on a mission for the last four months and hadn't been able to learn much about the kid, the only thing he knew was that the kid was a genius comparable to him and he looked forward to testing the kid.

Weasel decided to test the kid by performing a sneak attack on him, if the kid managed to impress him he wouldn't mind giving the kid a couple of tips & tricks, that is, if the rumors really were true.

So, Weasel headed out to find the kid, but it turned out that he was out training with another Anbu, they were last reported to be at the training ground above the Hokage monument.

In the meanwhile, Shikamaru was indeed training with an Anbu above the Hokage monument, the Anbu he was training with had a dog mask on, Shikamaru was mostly satisfied with his physical capabilities and knowledge about the skills of an Anbu but he felt he was severely lacking in Genjutsu and Ninjutsu that weren't from his own clan, he only knew the Hiden Jutsu of his own clan and the Mystical Palm Jutsu.

So with his knowledge of the anime, he went to find the person who knew the most jutsu in the world, while he wasn't sure about that person knowing the most jutsu he was certain that he knew a lot of jutsus, the person he was talking about was Kakashi Hatake anbu name: Dog.

First, he had to locate Kakashi which was the easiest part of getting Kakashi to train him, he only had to ask around a bit and eventually managed to find Kakashi, then came the hard part, he had to convince Kakashi to train him with the usage of jutsus which took him an entire week to do, the first part of his plan consisted of constantly pissing off and attacking Kakashi until he finally agreed to train him, he was subsequently beaten time after time again but eventually managed to convince Kakashi to train him by simply asking him.

The first thing Kakashi did as Shikamaru's master was figuring out his affinity, which Shikamaru was already fairly certain of knowing as whenever he focused on the chakra originating from his stomach, his so to say 'Chakra Core', always felt like the sun itself was burning inside him and while the other feeling wasn't nearly as strong it still felt like an entire mountain of dirt was inside of him as he went through his chakra which felt coarse and grainy he was fairly certain that his affinities were Fire and Earth.

Nevertheless, they tested it with chakra paper and three-quarters of the paper violently ignited and burnt away until nothing remained while the other quarter turned into dirt and crumbled away in mere seconds.

Even Kakashi seemed surprised by the strength of his Fire affinity evident by his hum of surprise, even Kakashi had only seen a couple of people with a Fire affinity this strong which were the Third Hokage, some Uchiha, and his old best friend Obito Uchiha, other than that most people had weaker forms of fire release, while not having a specific nature release/affinity didn't stop you from learning jutsus of said element it did make it harder to learn jutsus of an element you didn't have an affinity with, for example; Shikamaru would have an easy time learning fire jutsus but would have a hard time learning water jutsus, his Fire jutsus would also be significantly stronger than an average person's.

The next thing Kakashi did was explain nature transformations, every element had an advantage over another, water was strong against Fire, Fire was strong against Wind, Wind was strong against Lightning, Lightning was strong against Earth and Earth was strong against Water, if you used a Water and Fire jutsu of the same level against each other the Water jutsu would be most likely to win and so on, next was the training for each nature.

To train Water you had to make your chakra flow as smoothly and as aggressively as a river, to train Fire you would need to ignite your chakra which could be trained on a leaf, for Wind you would need to sharpen your chakra and cut a leaf in half, for Lighting you would need to make your chakra as erratic as lighting and crinkle a leaf with it, and for Earth, you would need to make your chakra as stiff and immovable as the earth itself which could also be trained with a leaf.

While this was only the beginner-level nature transformation training this would already help out Shikamaru a great amount.

Kakashi had also taught him a total of six jutsu, three for fire and three for Earth, for Fire he had learned Fire Release: Fireball Jutsu, Fire Release: Flame Shuriken Jutsu, and Fire Release: Pheonix Flower Jutsu, for Earth he had learned Earth Release: Earth wall Jutsu, Earth Release: Rock Bullet Jutsu, and Earth Release: Double Suicide Decapitation Jutsu, also known as the Headhunter Jutsu.

He had been working on his nature transformation and these 6 jutsus for the past month, while he managed to master the first level of fire nature transformation he had yet to finish earth nature transformation, the advantage and strength of his fire affinity became incredibly obvious the first time he tried to do the Fireball jutsu.

He had managed to evaporate a part of the lake they were training Fire Ninjutsu at, he had once again surprised Kakashi with the strength of his fire affinity, Kakashi predicted that he would manage to form a relatively large fireball on his first couple tries, he had not predicted Shikamaru to form a Fireball jutsu as big as a Grand Fireball Jutsu on his first try, if he was an Uchiha he would most certainly be called the next Fire Release genius of his clan.

While it took him a while to figure out the Fire Shuriken Jutsu he managed to somewhat master it within a day and the Phoenix flower jutsu took him less than an hour to figure out.

His earth Release while not nearly as strong as his Fire Release was still better than an average person's Earth Release, the easiest jutsu to master was the Earth Wall Jutsu as he just had to pull a wall of earth out of the ground, the Rock Bullet Jutsu took him a couple of hours to manage but he eventually figured out how to effectively use it after sparring with Kakashi and having him demonstrate correct usage, while he was still struggling with the Headhunter Jutsu, he could sink into the ground but couldn't yet move around, it was the same feeling as if you were swimming through dense mud and it used a big chunk of his chakra just to move around underground, but he was slowly increasing his efficiency with the technique and it took less and less chakra to move around underground.

They were already nearing their daily training and were now playing a match of Shogi which they regularly did, most of the time Kakashi had an advantage in the game simply because he had a better strategic mind than Shikamaru but Shikamaru was quickly catching up showing off his true Nara blood, as with every game he came closer and closer to winning from Kakashi.

After a match of thirty minutes Kakashi had managed to defeat Shikamaru and Shushined away, this was also the moment Weasel had been waiting for, the best opportunity to perform a sneak attack was when an opponent had his guard down which Shikamaru now clearly had.

So within seconds, Weasel was behind Shikamaru Slashing at him with the standard Anbu tanto, of course, Shikamaru was aware that something was going on, he had noticed Kakashi being distracted for a couple of seconds in their game after which Kakashi had sped up their game and beat him in the next thirty minutes which usually took an hour, so Shikamaru made sure not to put his guard down and instead paid extra vigilance to his surroundings while acting as if his guard was down.

Shikamaru had immediately sensed the faint killing intent which was released by the person attacking him, it made the hair on his neck stand up, he was certain that whoever was attacking him was a master, the only people he had ever felt emmit such killing intent were his former teachers, murderers, and psychopaths (Mouse), so instead of parrying the attack like he originally intended to he dodged and turned around to look at his attacker.

Weasel was fairly surprised by Shikamaru's actions but didn't allow it to show in his own actions as he immediately continued attacking and slashed at Shikamaru's throat with his tanto, Shikamaru kept falling back and managed to dodge the slash at his throat by a hairsbreadth.

As he fell back he pulled out his own tanto which was situated on his back and stopped retreating, there was now four arm's distance between him and his attacker, his attacker had stopped and started observing him.

Both Shikamaru and Weasel were now observing each other, watching out for even the slightest twitch of a muscle, a rustle of wind indicated the true start of their battle, they both exploded towards each other and their tanto's clashed against each other, his enemy's stature was much bigger than his own so he had a disadvantage when attacking but would have an easier time dodging his opponents' attacks.

Weasel was yet again surprised by the skill shown by Shikamaru, it seemed that the rumors about him were indeed true, he smiled underneath his mask and attacked Shikamaru with renewed fervor.

Weasel slashed at Shikamaru's right and consecutively threw three Kunai to Shikamaru's left cutting off his route to dodge, instead Shikamaru ducked under Weasel's attack and slashed at Weasel's back, this had all happened in less than three seconds and Shikamaru thought that he had managed to secure a hit on his opponent, but evidently, he had underestimated his opponent as Weasel sped up and easily dodged Shikamaru's attack.

Weasel then yet again confronted Shikamaru in a close-range battle barely giving Shikamaru time to think about his actions, Shikamaru at this point was beginning to sweat as he had never before been attacked with the intent to kill for such a long amount of time and it took him a great amount of effort just to stay focused on the battle.

They were now yet again confronted at close range and Weasel was still taking the initiative to attack, Shikamaru saw a hit that was slower than usual coming at him so he positioned his tanto to deflect the other tanto in a way that would allow him to slash at his enemy without having to worry about a counter-attack, but instead of deflecting the enemy tanto his own tanto had seemed to completely miss his opponents and his opponent's tanto appeared to be a couple of centimeters above of where it had previously been and Shikamaru would not be able to dodge, all he could do was helplessly watch as the tanto headed towards his neck.

Time had seemingly come to a crawl to Shikamaru and a single thought ran through his mind; 'Is this how I die?' This simple question caused a seemingly primal fury to awaken within Shikamaru, his usually black eyes now seemed as if they were a bottomless pit of darkness and death, one which Weasel looked right into, Weasel had never before felt his instincts go off as they did at that moment. He truly felt as if he was going to die at that moment. The simple fury and anger on Shikamaru's face had shocked Weasel.

Weasel's own eyes had changed, his previous black eyes were now shining red with three tomoe spinning within his pupils, with the activation of his Sharingan he noticed that countless shadowy tendrils were heading towards him at a speed he previously would have been unable to dodge.

At the same time in Shikamaru's mind a barrier had seemingly been broken as a connection he had never felt before had been established, with that connection came the absolute refusal to die and he had subconsciously used the ability he had just acquired.

Time for himself had also slowed down and that allowed him to see the countless tendrils of shadow that were heading toward his opponent, when he looked back at his opponent he had noticed and finally figured out who his opponent was the long black hair, and a blazing Sharingan had given away that the person he was fighting was none other than Itachi Uchiha.

It was too late for him to stop the tendrils now, they seemed to act on their own free will and ruthlessly attacked Itachi.

Itachi seemingly teleported away from his vision and afterward, he felt nothing but peaceful darkness.

~~~

Man, this chapter was fun to write, also this was my first true fighting scene so please don't hold back on the criticism also I planned on using the Japanese anbu names but Itachi's mask is a weasel which in Japanese is literally Itachi so I decided to use English names instead.

I have now also revealed Shikamaru's special ability and that's all I will say.