Sano walked out of the academy with two extra scrolls tucked into her bag. It appeared that Tanaka-sensei already knew the answers to his questions. Jogan wouldn’t, or even shouldn’t be the one responsible for her continued training resources. Sensei was right, Jogan had already done more than enough and it was time for either herself or others to pitch in to help.
During the meeting, Tanaka-sensei had given her a scroll for an earth style jutsu and water style jutsu. They were not special or unknown jutsus, but still powerful tools to add to her arsenal. The water style jutsu was named ‘Suiton: Teppodama’ Which roughly translated to ‘Water Release: Mouth Shot’. The jutsu itself shot a single sharp senbon-style spike of water from the user's mouth. It could do some damage, but wasn’t very lethal.
The earth style jutsu was slightly more impressive, ‘Doton: Mogurogakure-no-jutsu’ or ‘Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole Technique’. This jutsu would allow her to slip into the very earth beneath her feet by channeling chakra into it. It used a lot of chakra, considering you needed to infuse a lot of the ground beneath you with it, but had many benefits. She would be able to tell where she is within the ground and what was happening on the surface… somehow.
After her shift at the supply depot, she’d have to head to the training field to start learning them both.
When it came to taijutsu, Tanaka-sensei had at least given her some hope. He asked her to meet with uncle Jogan to see if he’d be willing to help her. If he couldn’t or didn’t have the time, then sensei would find someone to help her after class as she was obviously struggling and behind her peers. He said that even if it would never be her strength, that didn’t mean it should continue to be a weakness. She could agree with that sentiment. It all went well, she’d be average. +
After a quick trip home to make dinner, stuffing her freshly cooked food into a bento-box, Sano hurried off to the northern supply depot to start her work. Koji was waiting for her at the entrance like the day before, a glower set on his face as she approached. “You’re late.”
‘I’m right on time. Class was long.’ She signed back. It wasn’t her fault that they had a gauntlet match and then one on one meetings. There was no way she was going to get yelled at for that. It wasn’t even anything in her control!
Koji simply grunted, accepting her reasoning with way too much aloofness. “You know what to do. Six hours today instead of the easy four like yesterday.”
Not wanting to argue and more than willing to get this over with so she could go play—train with her new jutsu, Sano jogged over to her workstation, fully restocked by someone else, then got to work. First, she triple-checked that she didn’t have any of her chakra suppressing seals on, as that was a mistake she didn’t want to repeat. Then, she got to work.
After making ten explosive tags, which took roughly an hour, her chakra began to flag. Chakra, to her, felt like a sixth sense. The books from the library were quite accurate when describing the sensation of using your chakra. Her chakra felt like a jar. When you looked inside yourself, you essentially shook or ‘wiggled’ the jar, feeling how much was left. Of course, this wasn’t an active process, more instinctually knowing how much you were using or had left.
She’d exhausted her chakra many times already on the training field when learning water and tree walking. The effects weren’t too noticeable until she dropped to what she estimated was around twenty percent of her reserves.
Still, it was fairly odd to register though. If her math was correct, making an explosive tag used around seven to eight percent of her chakra reserves. Using this as a benchmark, she could test whether or not she was improving. Even if her speed of creation remained the same, if it used less chakra to create, or she wasted less during the creation, then she’d be improving!
Having your improvements be something you could feel or see made them feel better. Everybody knew that!
The next five hours passed as she created explosive tags, took breaks, and did math to see if she was improving. By the end of the day, right after the sun had set, casting the village into darkness, she determined that instead of seven to eight percent of her chakra being used for each explosive tag, she was now using seven to seven and half! Progress! She was probably just off with her rough guestimates of her reserves as a variable, but it was more enjoyable to think that she’d actually made significant progress.
Before heading off to the training field, she took her ‘suspect’ tags off to the safe room for testing.
They all blew up gloriously.
Heh.
—-------------------------------
Sano sat on the soft grass of training field thirty-seven (she knew the name of it now!) and read her brand new ninjutsu scrolls under the light of the moon. Deciding that the water jutsu, Mouth Shot, would be easier to learn, she started with that.
The scroll was simply written and described the hand seals required and what each one did for channeling chakra. There were also plain pictures inside, similar to an instruction manual for some ancient Ikea furniture. For this jutsu, the hand seals were Dog, Ram, and Boar. Unlike the ninjutsu she learned in the academy or her paralysis genjutsu, elemental ninjutsu required her to mold her chakra into the elemental affinity she was going to use before channeling the chakra to a location. In this case and for this jutsu, she would need to mold her chakra—similar to when she molded the chakra to her hands and feet for tree or water walking—to her mouth.
Without further ado, and with a little too much excitement for learning, Sano blasted through the hand seals and followed the instructions. ‘Suiton: Teppodama!’
The warm feeling chakra focused in and around her mouth cooled instantly in a pleasant sensation of conversion, creating water… which then rapidly expanded. Her cheeks ballooned outwards as crystal clear water pushed itself forcefully from her lips and out her nose. Her lungs became lead as the water forming within her took any possible path given to it to flee from its origin—her mouth.
Sano fell to her knees as she tried to stop her chakra from creating water. With wide and panicked eyes, the eerily silent sound of wet slashes pouring from her mouth and nose echoed out under the moon lit night. Her lungs began burning as she silently hacked and instinctively coughed, chest seizing as she drowned on solid ground creating the sounds of a babbling brook.
Sano gurgled as air and water met in her throat as she tried to breathe. She landed face first on the ground, hands wrapped around her neck as she struggled and spasmed. Water now also poured from her terrified wide eyes as she cried in a silent panic.
She was drowning.
The cool pleasant feeling of water had only lasted a single second before it became liquid fire within her lungs. The water had stopped appearing, but the damage was already done. Her vision swam as encroaching darkness etched its way slowly and inevitably across her vision. She writhed on the ground within the soaked grass as she gurgled, wheezed and coughed.
The last thing she saw before losing consciousness was a pair of sandals splashing water next to her.
—---------------------------
—Jogan Aburame—
His eyes opened, wide and alert before the knock on the door even arrived. The warning buzz from beneath his skin, the same honed through sleeping through the horrors of war, stilled as the threat was assessed. One of his Kochu stationed outside shared its sight with him, letting him know what to expect.
Slipping out of bed, he got dressed and opened his door. Standing at attention was one of the Chunin helpers of the academy. The lanky teen might have appeared harmless to the students, but he’d seen this particular boy in the past on the fields of battle. Roki—no surname due to being an orphan.
“Your niece had an accident while training. Training field thirty seven—you’ll need to comfort her. She’ll wake up soon.” The young man listed off the facts of the situation with a caring tone. “She tried learning a water release and nearly drowned herself… It was quite a bad reaction.”
“Come.” Jogan ordered, then Body Flickered out and away towards his destination. Roki followed alongside him as his insects scattered into the air, combing the area. In no time at all, his insects informed him of Sano’s location. Within moments, he was there.
Sano was crumpled against the tree she used to train, soaked and disheveled. Her facemask was pulled down around her bruised neck, bunched up and wet. The coat she wore was opened wide, revealing her undershirt and the results from Roki who purged the water from her lungs. Yet, Sano was alive and well.
“Go. We will speak in the morning.”
Roki nodded, then flickered away just as Sano jolted, eyes flying wide and pooling with tears. Her chest heaved in panicked breaths as she came too. When her bright orange eyes, so much like her mothers, landed on him…
She broke down.
Her face crumpled in an ugly cry as thick tears were hidden by her already wet face. Her mouth opened to wail, but only the barest whisper of whisked air escaped. Her arms stretched out, grasping for him for comfort.
Before he knew it, she was clinging to his chest, her arms wrapped around his waist. Her entire body shuddered and made what little sounds it could as she let out all of her worries and fear. His Kochu and Kikaichu seethed at her touch, but he battered them back with a force of will and silent warning.
A minute later, she was hiccuping silently, done with her emotional outburst. He ran his hand along her back soothingly and leaned his head onto hers. “You’re okay.”
Completely physically and emotionally drained, she stilled and fell asleep within his arms. Her ragged breaths tapered off into a steady rhythm.
Gently, he placed her next to the tree and looked around the area. The ground was soaked and coated in water, drenching her placed aside bag and a loose scroll. His footsteps rippled the puddles beneath his feet as he walked over and picked up her things. The scroll was for Suiton: Teppodama, the Mouth Shot It was a beginners ninjutsu, which could build into many others; a perfect jutsu for a young kunoichi like her to learn.
The scroll had the markings of the academy placed on it, and these scrolls were not for children of clans. It was a common misconception that clan ninja were stronger than those of a civilian background. While yes, they did not have many of the resources or opportunities that clan members had, it did not mean that they were lesser. The academy often supplied common jutsu and guidance to non-clan children to balance the scales.
Clans had their own jutsu to teach their young members. The Akimichi had their expansion jutsus. The Nara their shadow possession. The Hyuga focus on their gentle fists and Byakugon.
And the Aburame had their insect jutsus… which Sano could not learn.
The Aburame did not forsake Sano. Clan head Shikuro Aburame had been very helpful with talking to the Hokage about his current work. He was on leave, only having the rare mission either inside the village or close enough to be back at the end of the day when emergencies happened until Sano was situated and out of the academy.
The issue with the Aburame, which all of them would admit, was their emotions. They loved, they laughed, they lived… but they did not show it well. For ninja, their mindsets were also often overly structured and less flexible than many of their peers. So, when it came to Sano and her unique circumstances, they… were slow to find ways to help.
The village shouldn’t have been the ones to help her learn ninjutsu. It was their job, and they had failed.
Jogan stuffed Sano’s scroll into her bag.While doing so, he saw her belongings. Her small bag had several notebooks, another jutsu scroll, a bento-box, brushes and ink, and an envelope. The jutsu was the earth release, Hiding like a Mole. He himself knew this jutsu, and vowed to spend the time to help his niece with it soon. The notebooks had notes from her classes, filled with questions and observations. Just by reading through a short few pages, he knew that Sano had a bright mind and drive to better herself.
In the margins, the weird script she had used in the hospital filled nearly every inch of blank space. They were not scribbles or drawings, but structured in a way of language. What language, he did not know. Where did she learn it? He did not know, and he did not care. He was not his brother. He was not Sano’s father, who would have the right to pry.
Next, he opened the slightly damp envelope…
“Oh, Sano…” The sorrowful words came unabidden. Inside the slim beige envelope were seventeen chakra suppressing seals. “What have you been doing to yourself…”
He stood and made his way over to her sleeping form, then gently checked her over her small sleeping form to make sure she hadn’t had a seal on herself when attempting to use Mouth Shot. Thankfully, she hadn’t. Sano was only eight, but wasn't dumb or overly childish. No child who’d seen war and death could be so; coma, amnesia, or not.
Inspecting the seals themselves showed a slight variance in between them all. Not being skilled in fuinjutsu, he didn't know what those differences entailed either. As much as he wanted to destroy the seals, he put them back into her envelope and put it back into her bag. She had some loose papers as well, mostly practice drawings of some sort of seals, but one of them had a one-sided conversation.
—--------------------------‘I am learning a lot in our ninjutsu classes. I am still very far behind in spars. I do not think I will catch up in taijutsu.’‘I don’t really talk to them much. Murakuma Kurama is nice. He talks to me sometimes and I'm interested in his experience with genjutsu. Joji Akimichi is kind in class as well.’
‘I can’t talk to them and they don’t try to talk to me. I don’t mind. I like focusing on improving myself.’
‘No. My uncle will help me. I am sure of it.’
‘I hope he can.’—------------------------
“I will.” He said aloud, placing the paper that caused his heart to ache back into the bag. He picked up Sano’s belongings and threw it over his shoulder before gently picking Sano herself up into a princess carry.
Sano didn’t have many friends and hardly any of her classmates were willing to bridge the gap of communication. He knew that this would happen, but when he saw her writing it out, it felt worse than he imagined. She was only eight…
It was easy to fill in the blanks at the end of that conversation. Someone, probably her sensei, had most likely asked if she was getting the help she needed. This explains where the jutsu scrolls came from. Her adamant, hopeful reply that he would help her filled him with a mix of pride, shame, and regret.
Knowing that she could trust him gave him pride. He hadn’t completely failed his niece. He knew that at least. Shame, as obviously the end of the conversation had caused her to doubt him. And regret, as he could see where he had.
The quiet walk back to Sano’s home through the night felt longer than normal. Thoughts traced with both guilt and shame ate at him. He’d not done enough for her. His brother would be furious if he knew the challenges Sano faced and how the clan was stumbling blindly in their… lack of attempts to help her. They’d lost too many during the war and those who were left were having challenges of their own.
But they should have made more of an effort. That was just an excuse. No child should be out and about at a training field so late at night struggling aimlessly; learning by herself because nobody put in the effort to guide her along her path. Out of everyone in the world, it was he who had that duty. She was family.
Using her keys, he unlocked her apartment and settled Sano into her futon, taking care while undressing her to get her out of her wet clothes. Now dressed in the pajamas that had been placed neatly and ready by her futon, he tucked her into bed.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, watching her sleep, but eventually his feet dragged him outside and along the path back to the clan compound.