The Akira Files

Conflicted

Akira’s POV

“Hey, kid, wake up.” Jiraiya’s voice broke through my thankfully dreamless sleep.

“Ngh,” I rolled over. “What?”

“I think Naruto deserves to know, and pretty damn soon.”

“Why?”

“Well, not knowing that you are a girl seems to give him the confidence to sleep next to you.”

“So? Our futons are near each other.”

“Kid, turn over.”

I sighed before doing as he said, and doing so nearly scared me to death. Naruto was way to close, I could feel his breath and was now very conscious of his arm around me. Seemed I was his new pillow or something.

“Jiraiya…” I whined glancing toward him with wide eyes. “help.”

He chuckled a bit before sliding me out of Naruto’s grip. “Now you see why we should tell him?”

“But, what if he avoids me? Won’t he be mad I lied for so long? He’d think I’m some sort of weirdo. What if he shuns me, never talks to me after this? I shouldn’t have lied, I should have told him a while ago. Do not give me that look!” Jiraiya raised an eyebrow as my voice got louder and more hysteric. “He won’t be my friend if I’m not a guy!”

“Akira?” Naruto sleepily rose. “What’s going on?”

“Uh…Jiraiya has something to tell you. Bye!” I zipped out the door and ran outside. He can tell him, maybe when I get back he’ll be less mad? Yeah, yeah he won’t be mad, Naruto doesn’t get mad…I really hope he forgives me…

I trudged through town feeling down but also feeling a weird sense of relief, no more hiding it I guess. I should have done this ages ago. Well, even now I can’t go back right away so I might as well train.

I wandered to a small clearing just outside of the village, keeping my senses alert for anyone nearby, if I get kidnapped again I swear I’m going to kill myself… I stood in the center and cleared my mind before running through my exercises which primarily focused on meditation and sitting still, something I wasn’t exactly good at.  Over the past few weeks I had managed to increase my temperature rang by about 3 degrees, I could increase my temperature to 107 degrees before feeling faint and I could decrease it to 93 degrees before my shaking became uncontrollable. Which is precisely what happened as I tried to decrease it again today.

I ended up curled in a ball trying to keep my mind going, trying to increase the temperature with meditation. Twenty minutes later and I was able to stretch out slowly still feeling a wintry cold around my muscles. My arms shook as I lifted myself up and onto my feet. My breath turned to steam as it escaped into the warmer air. A few calming breaths and I had almost full control back, I decided to summon my mentors for further instruction.

I summoned Suffio as she seemed the wisest and most tolerant of them all, “So you’ve managed to freeze yourself again?”

“…yes.” I mumbled rubbing my arms. “I know that increasing the range I can tolerate is a good skill but all this meditation isn’t teaching me to fight. I don’t want anything like the Akatsuki to happen again.”

She hummed in thought, “Well, I suppose you could be ready…Why not? I’m sure you can handle it. So you have seen fire jutsu’s before correct?”

“Uh…” I thought back to Sasuke. “Yeah, my teammate has fire jutus.”

“Good, have you seen him form the hand signs?”