Genkaku (Naruto fanfic)

Chapter 5: Red

"Hm that one kind of looks like a fox." Shizuka lazily pointed her her arm up in the vague direction of a cloud formation.

"I guess." Shikamaru's lazy drawl came from beside her. "Look at that one though, it's like a flower."

She pursed her lips as she stared up at the blob of clouds.

"I don't really see it."

"The left is the stem and then the bud is on the right."

Shizuka tilted her head slightly, neck stretching uncomfortably.

"Oh I see it now."

She had now been actively training, both at the academy and with Gai-sensei, for almost three weeks and she had improved a lot. Of course she hadn't quite managed to really catch up to her peers yet but the absolutely grueling training she did after school did wonders for her physical fitness. The muscle aches sucked though.

A shiver ran down Shizuka's spine just thinking about some of the first training sessions she had with her sensei. The man didn't stop pushing her until she quite literally couldn't get up anymore. The first two weeks of her training had been fully focused on getting her stamina up and target practice.

During the past few days however, Gai-sensei had gotten her started on some basic combat forms as well as chakra use. Her teacher had actually been surprisingly pleased with her aptitude for chakra control and some inner overachiever inside her had been extremely satisfied to hear that.

"Oh yeah, look what I can do now!" Shizuka sat up from where she had been stretched out on her back in the grass, beckoning Kiba and Chouji to pay attention from where they were playing a game of tag with Akamaru as the tagger.

Taking in a deep breath, she closed her eyes as she focused on the feeling of her chakra circulating under her skin. As she was still extremely new to the whole chakra game, it took her a little bit of time and a lot of concentration to really get a feel for its flow.

"You can look constipated? Very cool." Kiba interjected cheekily.

Without opening her eyes, Shizuka quickly elbowed him in the ribs in retribution. The boy let out a dramatic oof at the contact.

"Hush you."

The three boys had more or less adopted her into their little friend group as soon as she turned up at the academy, something she was eternally grateful for. It was nice to spend break time with others and slowly she had become more comfortable with them and they with her.

Finally grasping her chakra flow, she carefully directed the flow towards her eyes. As she felt the now more or less familiar prickle in her eyes, she opened them, red hue covering the edges of her vision.

"Wicked." Chouji said as he fist bumped her with a grin.

"But what does it do?" Shikamaru asked the million dollar question.

Shizuka's shoulders slumped in dejection.

"I haven't a clue."

Gai-sensei had deemed her ready to start working on her alleged kekkei genkai yesterday and together they had figured out how to activate it, but they hadn't exactly discovered yet what it did. 

Her teacher had made her do a few tests to see if any of her physical attributes were enhanced, most obviously vision but also smell, hearing and taijutsu were tested. But nothing was out of the usual besides that slight red hue in her eyes. 

After that Gai sensei had started doing some standard jutsu to check whether her doujutsu could somehow see through things like substitutions. Nothing. It was entirely unmotivating.