Will of Fire: Kakashi Hatake

Chapter 9

The next morning, Akira found an apple and some toast waiting for her on Kakashi's windowsill. She didn't see Kakashi in his apartment, so she ate the toast and left the plate on the windowsill and took the apple with her. She ate it as she made her way home. When she got to the training field that morning, Kishi was there waiting for her.

"Good morning, Akira," he said with a small smile.

"Good morning sensei." She responded with a polite bow.

"How was your day off?" They started their morning stretches. Kishi was big on every aspect of training the body, but he was also big on stretching. It proved helpful, and Akira's muscles weren't as sore anymore after training each day.

"It was good, I read some books on chakra strings, and sparred with Somaru. Though that didn't really end well." Akira frowned. "Then Kakashi taught me a new jutsu!"

"Tell me about the spar. Did you win?"

Akira smiled. "According to Kakashi I won. But Somaru didn't like that I guess, because he attacked when my back was turned. And even though he said we were only going to use taijutsu, he started using ninjutsu. He tried to use the fire dragon jutsu, but Kakashi stopped him."

Kishi frowned. "That doesn't seem like a friendly spar to me." He leaned towards the other leg. "What jutsu did you learn?"

"I learned the earth bomb jutsu. It was hard to learn, it took me awhile to get it."

He nodded. "It's a two step chakra infusion jutsu. I'm surprised Kakashi picked that one to teach you."

"Actually I picked it, and he agreed that it would be good for the chunin finals. He gave me an earth ninjutsu book."

Kishi raised an eyebrow. "Is that so, huh? Interesting."

Akira frowned. "Why's that interesting? He's my friend."

He shrugged. "Nothing. Alright, let's start our workout."

After thoroughly pushing Akira to her physical limit, they stopped for lunch. They sat under a tree, enjoying rice balls and fresh fruit that Kishi had brought. Akira told him about the jutsu that she had read about in her book, the ones that seemed really hard that she wanted to learn. Kishi assured her that she would be able to learn them in due time.

When they finished eating and had let their food digest for a bit, they started on chakra control exercises. Kishi had Akira walk up a tree while making shapes with rocks in each of her hands. She had to make a shurikan in her right hand, and a kunai in her left hand. It was a careful balance of chakra between her limbs that she had to maintain at all times, otherwise something would fail. The first few times, despite being normally very good at walking up trees, she would focus too much of her chakra on her hands and would end up falling. She learned her lesson very quickly though, and the tree became second nature as she maintained the chakra control into her feet while also focusing on her hands. In no time she had mastered the task.

Kishi had her do the same thing on water after that. This time is was harder, because the surface beneath her feet was moving. And he challenged her to make different shapes each time, and a different one in each hand. Akira ended their chakra control session very much soaked. But she was finally able to balance on the water and make the correct shapes.

The rest of the afternoon they spent on jutsu. They discussed some of her readings, then worked to expand her knowledge and help Akira understand more of the inner workings of her chakra and how she controlled it. Akira learned very quickly that she had a tendency to overthink most of the jutsu she attempted, which is why she often struggled to learn it.