A New Direction

"What's the matter, Sakura?" Tsunade asked sharply. "Was there something you did not understand?"

Next to Sakura, Karin and Ino were already sitting in the lotus position, their eyes screwed shut in concentration. They were attempting to establish the extremely complex chakra matrix that was the basis for the Yin Seal, but unlike them, Sakura had remained standing.

The problem was that if Sakura were to pour even a single drop of chakra into her Yin Seal, it would manifest on her forehead— and the jig would be up. No matter how much chakra she claimed to possess, there was no way Tsunade would buy it if Sakura were to condense her Yin Seal within a minute of learning her first Fūinjutsu!

"I-it's just that I'd rather not start something new, right now," Sakura stammered. "I'm in the middle of developing a new Jutsu, but I've run into a few roadblocks— and I was wondering if maybe you could help, my lady...?"

"Your very own Jutsu, hm?" said Tsunade, unconvinced. "At your age?"

Sakura walked away from the group and approached a rather large boulder.

"It would be faster just to show you," Sakura explained.

Taking a deep breath, Sakura tapped the boulder with her knuckles to properly gauge her striking range, before drawing back her fist.

"SHANNAROOO!" Sakura shouted, air hissing through her gritted teeth.

In a fraction of a second, Sakura coated her fist with chakra and punched the boulder. The instant her fist made contact with the hard rock, the chakra cloaking her hand exploded outwards, shattering her target into smithereens.

Tsunade's eyes widened in stupefaction.

Everything about Sakura's Jutsu— from the chakra control, to the force exertion method, to the flow of chakra through the arm, and finally to the preciseness of the explosion of chakra at the moment of impact— it all screamed, 'isn't this just my own Chakra Enhanced Strength?'

The obvious problem here was that Tsunade had never taught anybody her Chakra Enhanced Strength— Sakura had first learned an approximation of it from Orochimaru's imprint, before learning the true version from Tsunade's mental imprint through her Breast Meditation.

While it wasn't unheard of for two different shinobi to independently develop the same Jutsu (take for example the Hell Stab and the Chidori), and while Chakra Enhanced Strength wasn't nearly as complex as something like the Yin Seal, this Nintaijutsu was still quite complicated— at least when compared to the standard muscle enhancement methods learned at the academy…

Tsunade narrowed her eyes.

If Sakura couldn't show her work— how she had come to develop this technique without any guidance— then perhaps, some questions might be in order…

"Once I had come up with this Jutsu," said Sakura, her breasts still shaking wildly from her exertions, "I thought to myself: if I can add nature transformation to something like the Rasengan, then couldn't I do the same thing with my new Jutsu?"

"And then onee-sama's new Jutsu broke her arm, and I had to heal her," Karin interjected. "I thought she'd suck me dry…"

'Phrasing!' said Inner Sakura.

It wasn't as if Tsunade had never tried adding nature transformation to Chakra Enhanced Strength. Once upon a time, she had attempted to do so… before quickly giving up, as the level of chakra control required for the Jutsu was simply too high to add anything fancy— difficulty-wise, it was like trying to draw a smiley face on an arrowhead the moment the arrow was loosed from a war bow.

"Now hold on just one second," said Tsunade, blinking in surprise. "Did I just hear you casually claim that you've completed the Fourth's Jutsu!?"

"Of course I did, it was in my report from the Neji retrieval mission," said Sakura, as she sauntered over to another boulder. "Now, here's what happens if I include nature transformation...."

Sakura drew her pre-prepared wind chakra from her Breast Seal and guided it from her chest to her right hand, before letting out a war cry and striking the second boulder with all of her strength.

The instant her fist made contact with the rock, Sakura's wind chakra spiked out, immediately eroding part of the boulder into dust, before shattering the rest. A shockwave surged from the impact point, sending both girl and boulder fragments flying in opposite directions— carried by the swirling winds, Sakura sailed through the air like a rag doll.

"Onee-sama!" Karin shrieked in alarm.

"Just look at her go!" said Ino, raising a hand to her squinted eyes to shield them from the sun. "Even though she's stacked, Sakura-cow is surprisingly aerodynamic…"

Sakura landed on her butt ten metres away. She grimaced, pain lancing through her arm— even though she had lowered the output, she had still dislocated her arm. Thanks to the existence of her Breast Seal that could store elemental chakra for future use, the difficulty of pairing nature transformation with Chakra Enhanced Strength was lowered to a minimum— but even though it was easy to perform, what good was a Jutsu that always broke your arm?

"Let me see that arm," said Tsunade, as she walked over to Sakura's side. She then began sweeping her right hand over Sakura's arm, a soft jade-coloured light glowing in her palm. "Definitely dislocated, plus a few hairline fractures…"

Sakura sighed.

Although she had hoped for an upgraded version of the Gale Palm Jutsu, the standard version was more than sufficient for her needs. If she wanted to slam her enemies into walls or send them crashing into each other, there was no need to summon hurricanes…

"Unless you're pulling your punches, you should be aiming past your target, because you want your fist's momentum to carry through them," explained Tsunade, shooing an overly concerned Karin away. "From what I've seen of your two punches, the power is about the same, but the reason the wind punch dislocates your arm is because it abruptly cancels out your momentum and reverses it."

Essentially, Wind Chakra Enhanced Strength turned Sakura's fist into a rocket— with the propulsion facing the wrong way. Instead of her chakra helping her punch through her target, her chakra pushed air at her target, while also sending her fist back the way it had come from.

For every action, there is a reaction!

"So, I just need to pick the right element," said Sakura. "Something intangible, which won't push against the air, so not Wind, Water or Earth. And fire's a bit too dangerous to keep on your skin, which leaves only…"

"Most physical enhancement-type or cloak-type Ninjutsu are Lightning-based," said Tsunade, nodding appreciatively. "If you could master Lightning Chakra Enhanced Strength, you wouldn't even need to land a direct hit to beat your foes— powerful electric fields can interfere with the workings of the nervous system, and there is no training one's body against that."

Tsunade paused.

"Even so, the human body is naturally well suited to dissipating electric fields, and an electric field's intensity follows the inverse square law," she continued. "So even if you can't hit your enemy, you'd still have to get pretty close for your Jutsu to be effective..."