Chapter 14: New beasts and improved Taijutsu
Oh how Sasuke loathed me too. He was almost hostile about his anger at never forcing me to use my full power or ever winning one of our spars. Iruka sensei tried to offer us new sparring partners but I didn't care either way and Sasuke vehemently rejected the idea.
"If I am ever going to kill my brother I need to be the best and until I win against Kenzo that will never happen!" he had said firmly.
Iruka sensei was helpless at that point and could only let Sasuke futilely try and close the distance between us. See the thing about closing gaps was that you had to actually understand exactly how vast the gap was before you could say you did. Nobody in the world had a single clue what my full power was and I worked quite hard to keep it that way. By my fifth and final year at the academy I could launch solidified air with a single punch that packed so much sheer power that if it hit a normal person they would turn into bloody mist.
I know that because I used it on a normal wild boar about as big as a person and that was what happened. In a related note I had been slipping away in secret since the Uchiha massacre to train since I couldn't do so any more in the regularly used parts of the village or my house without exposing my strength. Funnily enough I had earned a bit of a reputation in the village from the way I looked and acted. I was eleven this year and had matured in a decidedly strange way by now. My body was literally as durable as steel to the point I could deflect regular sword strikes with my skin alone without getting even a scratch.-
Beyond that my wild black hair never grew past my shoulders and hung wildly from my head. I was about five seven at this point which put me above average but not extremely tall. My body was entirely comprised of dense but flexible muscle not that you could tell since my favorite outfit was a loose mesh shirt covered by a long bark brown cloak and matching cargo pants. I also had to wear gloves because my fingernails were all highly durable and sharp implements that could do a lot of damage if I wasn't careful.-
In terms of attractiveness I was not too bad looking with sharp features and green eyes. I was by no means a super model but I could definitely be considered above average in that department. Thanks to my secret training sessions I had also obtained another three chakra beasts who like the rest all got Rens treatment of a small injection of sage chakra when I got them. Any of the really powerful and dangerous chakra beasts near the village had been killed long ago so like Ren the ones I found were all budding chakra beasts and my sage chakra gave them the last push into true chakra beast territory.-
After the initial "jump start" if you would all my beast naturally developed a chakra ability unique to them. Some like Kibas ability to cloak himself in lightning had jutsu that mimicked them such as the Raikages lightning chakra mode. While others like my snakes ability to create physical clones from it's chakra instead had pale imitations such as clone jutsu and shadow clone jutsu. Neither of which could withstand being attacked like my snakes clones could. I wasn't allowed to learn shadow clone jutsu due to it's high rank but that didn't mean I wasn't aware of how it worked.-
Anyways my three new beasts were Mizuhe the cricket with the ability to elementalize itself into mist. A bear cub that referred to himself as Kuma and had the ability to absorb sunlight and after mixing it with chakra release it like it was Godzilla's atomic breath, I REALLY wanted that ability. My final beast was also my weirdest since it was a caterpillar that ate chakra and thought my chakra was the tastiest. Did I mention it was the size of my leg and had rainbow colors?-
Oh you should have seen my dads reaction to the thing, pure confusion like he had no idea what the heck he was even looking at. Not that I could blame him since I couldn't identify the things species either despite going through every record of insects I could find. The not so small caterpillar was also the only chakra beast I found at that level and hadn't needed the jump start from my sage chakra, which it got anyways out of tradition. I had tested it with Ren but giving more sage chakra to my beast didn't actually do anything after the initial jump start so I didn't give them anymore after that.-
Mimicking my new beasts finally patched up a glaring issue with my taijutsu style in the form of my legs lacking ways to contribute beyond moving or hind kicks. I gained two new moves with my cricket form in the form of a forward kick that used EVERY muscle in my legs and a blurringly fast forward tackle. Mimicking Kuma gave me the strongest but also slowest form of the style that utilized absolute force above all else but needed the longest time to prepare.-
It was a bit like compressing a spring as I primed every muscle in my body while coating my arm in chakra to lessen the strain on it. My bodies full power sent through a single limb in a single attack caused a lot of devastation but at the same time came with it's own recoil as without the chakra coating my arm I would snap it in two places severely. That was a lesson I learned the hard way and needed to somehow explain away to get the arm treated.-
Mimicking my caterpillar didn't net me any positives besides a creative new way to use chakra to attack. It was basically just punching or kinking and following the physical attack with a projected fist or foot made out of chakra like an echo, I called it chakra lag. It was nastily effective too if my opponent didn't know about it before hand as after dodging the physical attack most people relaxed their guards subconsciously since there was a time gap before I could attack again. It was small but everyone had the same problem which was what made the echo that came during that gap devastating.-
It was exactly like dodging a punch and without that person recovering or even stopping the original punch getting decked out of nowhere. I am pleased to inform that I got asked to record the technique down and it was given a rank of B much the same as chakra flow. Unlike chakra flow however it was not so simple to learn for others and apparently even the third Hokage took about five attempts to get the hang of it. The same Hokage who mastered every chakra nature and could use any jutsu that wasn't a kekkai genkai in the village , he needed to try multiple times to grasp it.