CH_6.9 (180)When Kako opened her eyes on a bed in the dical house, she found Takuma sitting at her bedside, reading a scroll. He looked up from his scroll at her.
“You’re awake and fairly quickly at that. How are you feeling?” he asked.
She narrowed her eyes, showing her displeasure. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you to wake up so we can have a chat.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Well, I do, and you will listen because I will only say this here,” said Takuma; sothing in his deanor told her that she should listen. “I won, so according to the bet, we will be working on the sa team…”
Kako bit the inside of her cheek and clenched her fists. She sat up on her bed to be on the sa level as Takuma.
“So, what? You’re here to gloat about it?” she spat.
“… but I don’t want there to be bad blood between us, so I’m here to dispel the animosity between us for the sake of the team. I don’t want to spend my ti here locking horns with you. Therefore, I suggest we make peace. And as a token of my intention, I will forgo the two months of my tasks we decided for your punishnt.”
Kako stayed silent. It was clear from the look in her eyes that she was suspicious of Takuma.
Takuma stood up and bowed to Kako. “I apologize for bad mouthing you and your clan during the fight. I didn’t an any of that; it was simply a tactic to throw you off your calm. Your sword was dangerous enough that I had to resort to other tactics.”
“So, we are just supposed to beco friends now?” asked Kako, scoffing.
“Not really,” Takuma shrugged. “Honestly speaking, I’m not interested in becoming friends with you. All I’m proposing is that we treat each other as professionally as we can. We don’t need to be friends to functionally operate as teammates. I simply don’t wish for unnecessary hostility.”
Takuma stood up and rolled up his scroll.
“I have said my piece. It’s up to you if you wish to be civil with ; my peace offering will hold even either way. Rest well, I will see you tomorrow,” he said before taking his leave.
Kako dropped back to the bed and sighed as she stared at the ceiling, thinking.
———
.
“Huh, I thought she would give a reply,” Takuma muttered as he exited the building.
Barely an hour had passed since the fight. It was a strange feeling—the fight was akin to a Ring fight, and he usually had those in the late evening, but today, the day had barely started.
“I should go talk to Anko,” he muttered.
“I’m here.”
Takuma flinched and looked to the side to see Anko leaning against the wall. She waved to him as she walked to him. “Yo, that was a good fight. Chakra Augntation, Taijutsu, Genjutsu, Water Release, Earth Release—that’s a good amount of stuff in your repertoire. I must say I’m liking you more and more as a mber of my team.”
Takuma smiled. “So, what do you think? How did I do?”
“Well, if you are asking,” Anko humd. “You wasted too much ti at the start. If you had planned it better, you could’ve ended the fight without using the genjutsu. You only hit her with a couple of augnted strikes, and those hurt her enough to make her not risk being close to you, even with a sword in hand. You heavily underutilized those and let her get in the cuts and knicks she did.”
Takuma lifted his hand and looked at his fist.
“It’s more like I can’t utilize the chakra augntation,” he said.
“What do you an?”
“I made this chakra augntation on my own—”
“You created it on your own!?”
Takuma laughed and waved Anko’s surprise down. “It’s not that impressive.” He explained the base concept of how he used to overload the chakra adhesion (used for wall-sticking) to create power by expunging the chakra outwards. “Because I don’t have any experience in jutsu creation, and I was told once by soone that the base concept itself was flawed from an augntation perspective, the use-case is quite restrictive.
“My augntation has multiple variables I have to consider with every strike. Whenever I hit soone with an augnted strike, I experience a knockback recoil. I have long gotten used to it, but each recoil makes slow down just a bit, but it’s enough that I have to be mindful, or I can put myself at a disadvantage. I have to consider if I’m using a punch, a palm strike, a kick, what kind of kick, or if I’m using my elbow or knee; then I have to consider my opponent, where am I hitting them, how much force can they shrug off, and because of the recoil I have to think about the follow-up—if I want a quick successive attack then I need a lower recoil to make the transition seamless, but if I can afford a mont of pause, I can go for a heavy hit.
“Moreover, the techniques’ demand of control itself is a problem. In the start, I used to break the bones in my arms whenever I used the augntation recklessly.” He looked at his hand. “I have fractured my knuckles, wrist, and fingers more tis than I can rember. I have gotten better through experience, but the flaws in the technique that caused the injuries in the first place still remain. I can’t go above a certain power limit, or I would injure myself.”
He looked at Anko.
“Every augntation is a risk. I have to ntally and instinctually calculate all of it to land a proper punch. If I didn’t need to, every attack of mine would’ve been augnted—I have the chakra for it. I know that if I tried, I could’ve shattered Kako’s jaw in one shot or caused heavy internal injuries in her abdon, or killed her if I placed my hits properly on a vital—in return, however, I would’ve lost my arm. From a certain standpoint, a kill for a broken arm doesn’t sound bad, but that trade-off is imnsely risky.”
Iryo-jutsu was miraculous, but it couldn’t solve everything. A broken arm not treated quickly could get complicated enough that amputation was the only choice.
“Sounds dangerous,” Anko said as they walked through the camp. “If it’s so dangerous, why do you still use it?”
Takuma had only one answer to the question. “Because it makes dangerous. When they realize that I can hit that hard, they beco hyper-conscious of it. There’s fear in their eyes, caution in their movent, hesitation in their intentions.” Takuma didn’t realize that there was a grin on his face. “And flawed doesn’t an useless; I figured a couple of things that work around it.”
He removed two kunai from his pouch and pointed at a nearby tree.
“Watch,” he said.
Takuma threw the two kunai one-at-a-ti at the kunai.
“The second one was faster?” Anko comnted.
“Let’s see, shall we?”
They walked to the tree and saw that the first kunai was barely a quarter of its length into the thick tree bark, but the second kunai was more than halfway into the tree.
“It’s brutish, but everything has its uses,” he said.
Takuma had figured out that he could propel the kunai faster and stronger by expunging chakra behind the kunai a mont before it left his hand. Force was a product of mass and acceleration; Takuma increased the acceleration with his augntation technique and created a sharp jump in force. In return, he sacrificed accuracy, so he could only use it at close range or when he had extra ti to aim.
“You used it against Kako, didn’t you,” asked Anko, unsure if her guess was correct.
Takuma nodded.
“I don’t think it’s particularly impressive, but I can see it having its uses,” she said. “Would improving chakra control improve your augntations?”
“Improving chakra control improves everything, ma’am,” Takuma chuckled.
“Anko,” she reminded him.
“Yes, my apologies,” he replied. “But it’s not like I haven’t worked on chakra control.” He trained chakra control on a regular basis. But it was also true that he hadn’t seen improvent in his control recently.
“I don’t know what thod you used, but you haven’t used mine,” she said.
“Your thods?”
Takuma didn’t know why, but seeing the glint in Anko’s eyes as she coyly smiled sent alarm bells in his mind. Sothing in him told him otherwise, but he still asked, “Will they help improve my chakra control?” If his improved his chakra control, his abilities all-round would improve.
“Of course, but it might be tough; if you agree now, I won’t accept complaints later.”
Takuma’s fingers twitched. He was wondering what kind of training Anko was talking about. Her behavior was tingling his instincts; the last ti he had felt like this was with Maruboshi, who had put him through his ‘basic training’ during the academy. He had hated every second of the training because of how tough it was.
Takuma trained every day, but he didn’t particularly enjoy it. Training was a way to grow stronger; as such, he did it every day.
‘Maybe I should decline...’
“My thods are actually my teacher’s special thods,” she said.
Anko’s eyes gained a particular look as though she was testing him, observing his every expression.
Usually, Takuma would notice the change, but the mont he heard that Anko’s thods were her teacher’s thods, his answer was decided, and he replied as enthusiastically as possible.
“I will take your offer, thank you!”
Takuma, of course, knew who her teacher was. Even if he hadn’t read the source material, after living in the Hidden Leaf for as long as he had, he knew Mitarashi Anko and her teacher, Orochimaru of the Snake, one of the Legendary Sannin. One of Hidden Leaf’s most wanted, currently rogue missing-nin, one of the shinobi with the highest bounty on their heads.
The man was terrible— terrible, but great. Anko was a chunin, so he figured she would have so more advanced training thods, but Orochimaru simply gave her more credibility.
Anko looked stunned for a mont before she laughed and slapped Takuma on his shoulder a couple of tis.
“You’re an interesting guy!” she said. “I will teach you, and I will teach you good!”
Takuma felt good. He had showcased his ability to the entire camp and had managed to build a good rapport with his chunin lead. It was not bad for a day’s work.
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