Naruto : Catastrophe : Chapter 99

"You, on the other hand, don't. Your wind just buffets, and that's the only way you know how to channel it. If you want to make it cut, you're going to have to find a way to sharpen it completely different from the average shinobi."

Yup, that seals it. My chakra hates me.

...

"How am I gonna do that?" I ask, sullen.

"I've got a vague idea," he says, pulling a kunai out of his pouch and tossing it in a slow arch to me. I slip a finger through the ring and catch it, eyeing the unassuming throwing knife. "I want you to mould your chakra to the edge of that kunai until it mimics the sharpness of it and you can cut through that boulder over there without any trouble.

"One of my primary attacks involves coating the surface of a weapon with wind to make it sharper than a regular blade," he explains. "The big hump for me while I was learning it was getting my chakra to hug the edge of the weapon so it could cut to its full potential. I'm thinking you can do the same thing and start getting a feel for sharpened wind. Shouldn't be too hard, if you've got as much control over wind as Kakashi said you do." And with that he pushes off his tree and walks past me, sitting cross-legged by Shikamaru.

"So are you going to watch, or…?" I trail, and he chuckles.

"I'm not an academic, kid. I use wind to kill things, and that's as far as my interest in it goes. I could care less how you use it compared to everyone else." He pulls a slim black box from one of the pockets in his jonin flak jacket and snaps it open between him and Shikamaru, revealing a mini shogi board. "Feel free to ask questions, but while you're doing that I'm going to be working on this lazy bum." Shikamaru closes his eyes in response, feigning sleep.

I frown, spinning the jonin's kunai around my finger. "You sure we should be starting with this? I mean, I know it'll be awesome in the long run, but I don't think making my wind sharper is going to do any good if Sasuke busts out a fire jutsu on me. That's my first opponent, by the way. Uchiha Sasuke. Fire jutsu specialist."

Asuma finishes yanking my former classmate up into a sitting position, then turns his attention back to me and shrugs. "Nothing I can teach you is going to overpower a fire jutsu from an Uchiha. Maybe if you had a couple more ranks worth of experience with wind jutsu, but as you are it just isn't happening," he says frankly. "Your best bet is going to be an overwhelming assault right off the bat. If you can't put him down before he gets off a fire jutsu, you lose."

I flinch, the flat answer hitting me like an ice cold water bullet. "That's it? Blow my load right at the start and hope I get lucky?"

"You'd be surprised how often blowing your load right from the start works," Asuma replies wryly. "Now get to work. You've got two weeks to drum up some new tricks to catch your teammate off guard, and sharpening your wind is just the first. Chop chop."

I shuffle over to the boulder sitting at the edge of the clearing, gripping the kunai in my hand tight and wondering if learning off scrolls from Hatake wouldn't have been so bad after all.

...

"Okay, kid, we're heading back to grab some dinner," Asuma calls from the middle of the clearing, packing up his shogi board and dragging Shikamaru to his feet. "How's it coming so far?"

I look from the unmarred boulder in front of me to the setting sun above, and throw my kunai down in disgust. Screw wondering, scrolls with Hatake would have been way better than this crap.

"Nothing?" Asuma asks, walking over and peering at the boulder over my shoulders. "Jeez. I thought you'd make some progress."

"I can't do it!" I shout, jabbing a finger at the stupid kunai laying in the dirt by my crossed legs, mocking me. "My chakra won't take its shape. I've tried everything!"

And I have, too. I tried flat out overlaying my chakra on the blade for a while, until I realized that even if that did work I'd never be able to maintain it because my chakra has to be in constant motion. Then I tried running a small stream of chakra over the edge of the blade in a zigzagging pattern, but that didn't actually form a blade, just created the beginnings of a pressure burst.

I'd cycled through all sorts of random chakra applications, hoping one might magically snap into place on the edge of the blade, but none of them did. The closest I'd gotten to cutting anything was myself after an accidental pressure burst almost knocked the kunai out of my hands and into my chest.

I'd even tried forming one of the loops that I use for the Great Breakthrough around the blade, since god knows those things are sharp enough to cut when they get going. Unfortunately, my idea of letting the kunai itself act as a stabilizer hadn't actually done anything when the loop touched the rock. It had just destabilized and imploded like it always when I screw up my preparation.

"You sure about that?" Asuma asks, skeptical. "I've got a couple other ideas, but they're all pretty similar to this one." He pulls a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it up, taking a drag and sighing. "If you don't have enough control for this, I don't know what I can do for you. All the other stuff I was planning on teaching you involves cutting."

"It's not my control," I insist. "I tried making my chakra hug the edge, but wind has to be in constant motion so that didn't work. Then I tried surrounding the whole blade with a moving current, but all it did was surround the blade with a moving current." Maybe I can't make my wind cut. Maybe it really does contradict everything about normal chakra. Even normal wind chakra.

"Nothing to do but keep working at it," he decides. "I wasn't expecting you to get it on the first day, anyway." He turns away, moving back to Shikamaru and coaxing him to his feet. I'm still sitting in front of the boulder and glaring at the kunai when they shuffle out of the training ground, and it's only Asuma's distant voice that snaps me out of my sulking.

"Try meditating tonight if you don't want to work on the kunai! Works wonders with chakra control!"

"Meditate?" I repeat in disbelief, but he's already disappeared down the path to the village proper. "You've got to be kidding me." I grab the jonin's kunai and hurl it into the river, then push myself to my feet and kick the boulder, rocking it back an inch with the pressure burst I preface the kick with.

I stalk out of training ground ten with a scowl on my face and the weight of an entire wasted day of training on my shoulders. Figures Hatake would net me the only wind jutsu user in the village as a trainer only for him to not give a shit about me. What am I even supposed to do with a wind blade if I learn how to make one? It's not like I'll be going for the kill against my best friend.

And that's assuming I can even get this stupid exercise done in two weeks. Not exactly a guarantee, given I'm the first person to ever have to learn this way.

Maybe I can ask the old man for some help. Not dedicated training, since he's leaving soon, but I bet he's got about fifty legendary wind scrolls lying around in that library of his. All I need is something that can match up to Sasuke's fire jutsu, and I know I can win. I know it. I beat him as often as he beats me when we spar. All he's got on me is the elemental advantage.

I'm considering changing course and heading to the Hokage Tower then and there when I pass a familiar arch of flowers, and pause. I did say I'd pass on Neji's advice to Hinata after I got back from the exams, didn't I? I eye the fragrant entrance, weighing the pros and cons of sneaking in and getting poked to death if there's someone other than Hinata in there, or of trying to get the gate guards at the Hyuuga estate to let me in to see the heiress. Hm.

"Why don't we get a flower tunnel?" I wonder, plucking a flower off the curving wall and taking a whiff of it as I walk. Still fresh. Do they make people switch these things out?

...

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