With the events of yesterday still fresh in their minds, a new day started. And since Kakashi had determined that there wouldn't be much threat of Zabuza acting for a while, as he needed to recover, this was the perfect time to get in some real training, something he hadn't done much of so far.
Given that they had already seen blood and battle, he finally decided they were ready for more than teamwork exercises.
And for that, he had chosen the perfect location. A large clearing in the forest, not too far from Tazuna's house, but far enough that they wouldn't be disturbed.
He had brought them there early in the morning, before the sun had even risen.
"Alright," he said, as he looked at the three of them, "today, we will be working on your chakra control. It is the foundation of all ninjutsu, and without it, you will never be able to perform any high-level jutsu."
He then pointed at a nearby tree. "As you can see, these trees are tall, and their bark is thick. Your task is to climb to the top of these trees without using your hands."
Naruto and Sakura looked at him as if he had just grown a second head.
"Climb a tree without using our hands? How are we supposed to do that?" Naruto asked.
"By focusing your chakra to the soles of your feet," Kakashi explained. "You need to gather the right amount of chakra, not too much, not too little, and then you need to stick it to the tree. If you do it right, you will be able to walk up the tree as if it were flat ground."
He then demonstrated by casually walking up a nearby tree, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
He walked back down and looked at them. "Now, you try."
Naruto, being Naruto, was the first to try. He gathered his chakra and, with a loud shout, ran toward the tree.
He made it about two feet up before the chakra at his feet exploded, sending him flying back and landing flat on his back.
"Ouch!" he shouted, rubbing his head.
Sasuke and Sakura couldn't help but snicker.
Something Naruto wasn't happy about at all.
"Hey! If you are so good, why don't you go ahead and do it, huh?"
Sasuke snorted, put his hands in his pockets, and started walking toward the tree. When he reached it, he didn't slow down at all and just started walking straight up, as if walking on flat ground.
He was fast, steady, and in a few seconds, he had reached the top. Then, he turned around and walked back down, landing softly on the ground.
This was all done without a single word.
Naruto just stared at him with his jaw dropped.
Tch.
Sasuke couldn't help but feel smug. While Naruto had a massive chakra reserve, Sasuke had something far more valuable: perfect control, something only a real clan-trained shinobi could have.
And when it came to chakra control, no clan was better than the Hyūga clan, who had gladly helped him train alongside Hinata, allowing him to master both tree walking and water walking.
"Well done, Sasuke," Kakashi said, not even looking surprised. "Your control is excellent. Now, Sakura, your turn."
Sakura took a deep breath, and with a bit more caution than Naruto, she started to climb.
She wasn't as fast or as graceful as Sasuke, but she was steady. She made it a good ten feet up before her chakra faltered and she slid down, landing on her feet.
"Good," Kakashi said. "You have a good grasp on the basics. With a bit of practice, you should be able to master it in no time."
"What about me?" Naruto whined, as he got to his feet, a pout on his face.
Kakashi let out a helpless sigh. He knew very well that Naruto had massive amounts of chakra, and the more chakra one had, the harder it was to control. Still, this was a skill he had to learn, and no amount of complaining was going to change that.
"Naruto, your problem is that you have too much chakra, so you need to focus on using less," he said, in a rare moment of helpfulness. "Try again."
Naruto, taking Kakashi's advice, once more ran at the tree. This time, he tried to use less chakra, but he used too little and just fell back down.
"No!" Naruto roared in frustration, before trying again and failing once more.
Sasuke, on the other hand, just walked away from the group and started to do some solo training. He had already mastered this, so there was no point in him wasting his time here.
He had seen Kakashi's Chidori, and he wanted to learn it. Well, learn it was saying too much. His Sharingan had already allowed him to copy the hand signs.
What he needed to do was train his Lightning Release. He knew a few lightning-style ninjutsu, but nothing on that level.
Like most Uchiha, he mainly trained in Fire Release and had only learned a handful of techniques from each of the other styles.
And Chidori was clearly A-rank, which was a big step up compared to his current Lightning Release.
So, he got to work. Not on the ninjutsu itself, but on its foundation, by trying to create a small spark of lightning in the palm of his hand.
It was a tedious and frustrating process, but he knew that it was the only way.
He wasn't sure how long he had been training, but when he looked up, he saw that Naruto had finally made some progress. He was still falling, but he was making it a bit higher each time, his persistence a testament to his sheer stubbornness.
Sakura, on the other hand, had already mastered the basics and was now able to climb the tree with ease. Not as well as Sasuke, but she wasn't far from mastering it.
Knowing that Sasuke had long since mastered this, and seeing him do other training, getting even further ahead, made Naruto determined to master this, and fast.
So determined that he had a crazy idea.
An idea he had kept in the back of his mind ever since learning that the Shadow Clone Jutsu could transmit information, all the way back during the bell test.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" he shouted, creating two dozen shadow clones.
Then, he had them all line up, and one by one, they all started to climb the tree.
The result was a chaos of falling Narutos, a symphony of shouts and crashes, but it was also a brilliant display of parallel learning.
Sasuke paused his own training, watching the spectacle with a mixture of annoyance and grudging, reluctant admiration. It was cheating. It was a crude, brutish method, completely lacking in finesse. It was also, he had to admit, devastatingly effective. The sheer volume of trial and error Naruto was subjecting himself to in a single minute would take a normal shinobi a week.
He really is unfair, Sasuke thought, not for the first time, a sour taste in his mouth. This was the power of the Kyūbi, a power he could never match. Not in sheer quantity.
He clenched his fist, the tiny spark of lightning in his palm sputtering out. He had perfect control, but what was control against an ocean?
With a growl of frustration, he pushed the thought away. Control was everything. It was what separated a shinobi from a brute. He would master the Chidori not with an ocean of chakra, but with a needle of perfect, focused precision.
Training continued like this for the first few days, and once Sakura had fully mastered tree walking, she moved on to water walking. Naruto eventually did as well.
As for Sasuke, since he didn't need that kind of training, he would often be on the bridge itself, protecting Tazuna, because even if Zabuza was currently unable to make a move himself, that didn't mean Gato's goons couldn't act.
But against those, Kakashi judged that Sasuke would be more than enough, and indeed, after scaring off a few fools with a handful of shuriken on the first day, none dared to show up to make trouble. Sasuke didn't need to fight. All he needed to do was show off his Sharingan for a few seconds, and it was more than enough to deter any would-be attackers.
It was on the fourth day of their stay in the Land of Waves that things began to shift. The morning air was thick with the smell of salt and wet earth. Kakashi, who had spent the last few days meditating and recovering, still hadn't regained his full strength, but the exhaustion was no longer a visible weight on his shoulders.
He found Sasuke sitting at the bridge's railing, a small, controlled arc of lightning dancing between his fingertips. The Chidori was not yet formed, but the shape, the sound, the raw energy were beginning to take shape.
"Progress," Kakashi noted, leaning against the railing beside him.
Sasuke didn't look at him. "It's not enough."
"It never is," Kakashi replied philosophically. "That jutsu requires a level of lightning nature manipulation that even most Jōnin struggle with. The fact you've gotten this far in only a few days is... impressive."
"Zabuza will be back soon," Sasuke stated, the lightning in his hand dissolving. "I need to be ready."
Kakashi hadn't yet offered to truly teach Sasuke the Chidori, but he also knew that he had no real right to tell him he couldn't learn it on his own.
After all, he himself used the Uchiha clan's Sharingan to learn hundreds of ninjutsu, and he hadn't gotten permission before doing that. So saying that Sasuke couldn't learn this ninjutsu when he was an Uchiha by blood would be more than hypocritical.
"I suspect it will take a few weeks before Zabuza has fully recovered. He needs to be at his best before he would dare make another attempt," Kakashi said as he looked at the workers on the bridge.
"I don't get it. If the bridge is this much of a problem, why not just blow it up or something? Surely this Gato wouldn't be unable to do that, right?" Sasuke asked, voicing a question that had been on his mind for a while.
"A good question," Kakashi praised. "The reason is politics. This bridge, despite being fully funded by the locals, can be considered of interest to the Fire Daimyō. He has his eye on it. If it fails to be built, so be it, no big loss, but if someone destroyed it? That would cause him to investigate, and that would reveal Gato's crimes. So Gato can't destroy it, only stop it from being finished."
This was the reason why Gato had hired Zabuza in the first place. He didn't have the power to attack this directly, but he had the money to hire a powerful enough shinobi to stop it.
Sasuke absorbed this information, another piece of the complex puzzle that was the shinobi world clicking into place. It wasn't just about power; it was about leverage, about subtlety, about navigating the treacherous currents of politics.
He looked back at the bridge workers, their faces etched with fatigue but also with a flicker of hope. They were building more than just a bridge; they were building a future, a lifeline to a world beyond Gato's tyranny.
The more he learned, the more he realized just how important politics were, whether it was the politics inside Konoha that led to him being on a team with Naruto, or the politics of the Land of Fire and the Land of Waves.
It seemed impossible to escape it.
(End of chapter)
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