Chapter 6.1- One Thousand Hands

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The Genin Exhibitions were the talk of the town for the month until the day they arrived. Everything in Konoha was turned up to eleven as. Everyone tried to put their best foot forward to prepare for the visiting villages. Even my Hyuga cousins had not been left out of the excitement. Visiting the compound to pick up a scroll on tenets control showed me that they were already working on painting the entire thing again. Insane. Especially considering they did a repaint every two years and the last hadn’t even been up to a year ago. It went to show just how seriously everyone was taking this.

I couldn’t judge them. Was I not much the same? My ninjutsu and taijutsu were polished to perfection. The seals I’d held off on implementing into my arrows until I was more than good enough to do them myself were completed post-haste. They couldn’t do everything I wanted, but they could do enough. The major remaining project was a seal for the bow itself. A seal that would turn it from an exceptionally well crafted bow to a ninja weapon on the level of any of the Swords of the Mist, or even the Raijin no ken. Speaking of the Raijin no ken, Uncle had even been kind enough to allow me study the weapon after months of holding back and insisting that if I wanted to build anything similar, I should design the matrix on my own. It was clear that the pressure of the exhibition was getting to even him, at the very least it was making him much more helpful than usual.

On the other hand, Hatake Sakumo seemed to have decided that he didn’t give a rat’s arse about what was coming or when he was coming. He’d done his duty of notifying us that it was happening and that we’d automatically been registered by the Hokage’s own recommendation and went back to business as usual. We’d already taken our mission for the month, so that meant we spent our time training now. “Sensei, can you help me with this?” I heard Uzume’s voice from the other end of the clearing and chuckled.

She’d caught the bug like nothing else. All her training was geared to winning the Exhibition in whatever way she could. Already bored with my last, I leaned away from the scroll I was bent over and turned my attention to her. Her fist crackled with lightning-natured chakra as she attempted to channel it into her Gunbai of all things, but the wood just seemed to accept the chakra and do nothing with it. Chakra flow. Interesting technique. I’d dabbled with it a bit for my arrows after remembering what Killer Bee could do with a pencil and lightning release in the anime. Unfortunately, it seemed that either wind release worked differently, or there was something I was missing. The chakra flowing into the arrows cut out almost immediately I fired them from my bow. Good for an initial boost in speed, but nothing more.

It was the whole reason I wanted to study the Raijin No Ken. Maybe if I could channel lightning natured chakra instead, then it would work better. So far, there had been no luck with deciphering my Uncle’s sealing technique, but I had hope that it would come together sooner rather than later. On the other end of the clearing, Toshiro balanced upside down on the stream with a single finger as he sought to sharpen his chakra control to a knife’s edge. It would improve his genjutsu definitely, but I wasn’t sure that was the best use of his time.

To be completely honest, I wasn’t the biggest fan of genjutsu as an art. Sure, it was powerful now, but I knew what was coming. Otsutsuki did not fall for genjutsu. That was why every spare minute not shoved into fuinjutsu practice was spent working on my taijutsu. I had to make sure it was the one skill I never neglected. But that was besides the point, I turned to the clone beside me and noted that he was weaving seals almost nonstop. That was another thing that came with the upcoming exhibition. The shadow clone jutsu. I was already using it as a training aide and it had doubled the speed at which I could work on certain skills. One clone worked on ninjutsu in the training ground. Another clone worked on fuinjutsu with Grandmother back at home, and I spent all my time either doing physical training and taijutsu or trying to puzzle out new jutsu on my mind. The former was because it was the only thing I couldn’t get a clone to do for me, and the latter because it was one aspect of ninja training that I legitimately enjoyed.

Right now, the scroll on chakra control through every tenketsu was proving to be less helpful than expected. That was generous. It was mostly to useless to me. It wasn’t the fault of anyone in particular, however. Who could have foreseen someone born with one of the Hyuga kekkei genkai but not the other? Definitely not the author of this particular scroll. He placed a lot of emphasis on using the byakugan to monitor the flow of chakra through the tenketsu. The Byakugan that I didn’t quite have. Fun times were ahead of me. Especially since I couldn’t see any other way to figure out Kakuzu’s Doton: Domu before the exams.

“Maybe focus on something else for the time being and come back with a fresh head.” A voice said from my side, leaning over the scroll. I hastily snapped it shut and turned to the intruder with a scowl. My eyes met my sensei’s and I just sighed before standing up. He was right. I’d gain nothing from banging my head against the problem over and over again.

“Taijutsu spar?” I asked him, trying to work out some of my frustrations, and he answered with a snap kick to my head that I barely moved out of the way of.

A/N; Coming, coming, coming.