Chapter 4: The Will to Protect
At Training Ground 7 in the afternoon, the air was as thick and sticky as sap. Every breath tasted of dust and the scorched scent of grass baked repeatedly by the relentless sun.
The sun hung overhead like a red-hot branding iron, mercilessly shrinking the sparse tree shadows into pathetic little clumps.
"Gasp… pant… haa…"
Ragged, difficult breaths were the only melody in the dead silence.
Choji was splayed on the ground, his face buried in the hot dust, his body twitching violently like a fish out of water. Sweat and dirt caked his round cheeks and neck in dark brown streaks. He tried to push himself up, but each attempt only resulted in a more violent tremor and a muffled grunt of exhaustion. His chakra pathways felt like they were being repeatedly stabbed with a red-hot poker, the burning pain seeping deep into his marrow.
Three consecutive, precise uses of the Partial Expansion Jutsu, with the interval compressed to three seconds while maintaining his center of gravity—the demand had all but drained him dry.
A few meters away, Ino was in an even more alarming condition. She had slid down the trunk of a rough tree to sit on the ground, her face a deathly white. Her lips, drained of all color, parted slightly but couldn't form a complete sound. Her blonde hair was completely soaked in cold sweat, plastered to her forehead and cheeks. A few strands were stuck to her closed eyelids. Her slender hands lay limp by her sides, fingertips still twitching uncontrollably.
After forcibly gathering her spiritual energy for a seventh attempt on the panicked rabbit in the cage, her mind had finally snapped like an overdrawn bowstring. The sudden, sharp pain had made her vision go black, and she had passed out.
Right now, she looked like a porcelain doll emptied of its soul, the faint rise and fall of her chest the only proof she was still alive.
Alex—Nara Shikamaru—was the only one still standing. He stood with his back to them, facing the lone wooden post in the depths of the training ground.
His dark blue shirt was completely soaked through with sweat, the color so dark it looked black, clinging to his thin back and outlining the tense shape of his shoulder blades.
Sweat dripped from the tip of his chin, hitting the hot, dry earth and evaporating instantly, leaving behind tiny dark spots.
He held an extremely awkward hand seal, the joints of his fingers white from the prolonged strain, trembling slightly. The shadow at his feet was like a dying, ink-black viper, slithering forward with agonizing slowness.
Every tiny advance was accompanied by a violent tremor in his body, the veins on his forehead bulging.
With a ten-year-old's body and underdeveloped chakra reserves, forcibly using his shadow for this kind of extreme, fine-tuned extension was an overdraft on his very life force.
His brain was in overdrive, calculating every wisp of chakra flow and change in form, whining like a precision instrument on the verge of overload. His muscle fibers, stretched to their limit, sent signals of tearing pain. Every breath was a needle-like sting in his ribs.
"Cough..." A suppressed cough escaped his throat. He quickly pressed his lips together, forcing down the metallic, sweet taste that rose in his throat.
Deep within his mind, the lazy instincts of Nara Shikamaru were roaring, luring him with a siren's song to give up, to lie down, to enjoy the shade.
The voice was sweet and languid: Why bother? It's too much trouble. It was so nice before, watching the clouds, playing shogi, avoiding all the troublesome stuff... This body is too weak, it can't take it...
But that temptation was instantly drowned by a colder, more violent wave—the memory fragments belonging to Alex.
The blinding beams of light that tore the sky apart as Earth was destroyed, the desperate collapse of the ground, the annihilating pain... Those apocalyptic scenes were immediately overlaid by another, clearer, more heart-piercing image: Sarutobi Asuma staggering backward, blood gushing from his mouth, staining the cigarette perpetually hanging from his lips.
He tried to light it, but his fingertips only trembled in vain. A gurgling, leaking sound came from his throat.
Hidan's crazed, twisted face grinned maniacally in the bloody light. The sound of Ino and Choji's heart-wrenching screams seemed to explode right next to his ear, piercing his very soul...
"Ugh!" Alex's body swayed, and the shadow at his feet wavered violently, nearly dissipating.
He bit down hard on his lip, the taste of rust filling his mouth. Can't stop! I become a Genin in seven hundred and thirty days! Every second counts! He forcibly steadied himself, pouring his entire will into the struggling shadow at his feet.
He clumsily shoved his past life's crude understanding of fluid dynamics and energy transfer into his guidance of chakra.
No more rampaging like a bull. He tried to sense, to follow the invisible "resistance," to find a more efficient path...
The tip of his shadow was half a meter from the silent stake. Half a meter that felt like a chasm.
From behind him came Choji's suppressed, desperate whimpers and Ino's faint, pained moans. The sounds were like a whip cracking against Alex's nerves.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the last trace of a ten-year-old's confusion was gone, replaced by a tempered coldness and resolve. He slowly turned around, his movements carrying a weight far beyond his years.
His gaze swept over the broken Choji and the unconscious Ino. His voice was quiet, but it hit the scorching ground like a block of ice, carrying a suffocating force.
"Crying? You think crying will make the enemy's blade dull when it swings at Asuma-sensei?"
"Fainting? You pass out now, and you think you'll have the strength to drag Asuma-sensei back when he falls in front of you?"
He walked over to Ino and crouched down. The girl's pale face was stained with dust and sweat, her brow furrowed in pain even in unconsciousness.
He reached out. His calloused fingertips, surprisingly gentle, brushed a damp strand of hair from her cheek.
"Ino," his voice dropped, no longer scolding but heavier still, "Do you want him to see you like this? To see that you can't do anything but cry and pass out?"
As if an electric current passed through her, Ino's eyelashes trembled violently beneath her closed lids. A single tear slid silently from the corner of her eye.
He turned to Choji, his gaze as sharp as a blade. "Choji, get up! Do you want people pointing at you your whole life saying, 'Look, it's the fat kid who only knows how to eat,' or do you want to become a shinobi... that Asuma-sensei can trust with his back?"
"Trust... with his back..." Choji's body shuddered. He forced his head up, his face a mess of mud and tears, but in his small eyes, a flame he'd never known before suddenly flared to life, burning away all the pain and self-pity.
A beast-like roar rumbled in his throat. No longer trying to use his arms, he slammed his head against the ground and, with all his strength, arched his back like a bow, stubbornly "uprooting" himself from the hot earth in a clumsy, pathetic, yet incredibly defiant heave.
On the other side, Ino's eyelids fluttered wildly before snapping open! Her aquamarine pupils still swam with the pain of dizziness and unshed tears, but they were now lit with an almost ferocious flame.
She didn't even look at Shikamaru. Her eyes locked onto the rabbit cage as her trembling hands formed the Mind Body Switch seal once more, this time with a ferocity that looked like she was trying to crush her own bones. She clenched her jaw so hard that a trickle of blood seeped from the corner of her lip.
Alex didn't watch them any longer. He turned back to face the wooden stake that seemed a world away.
The last embers of the sunset fell on his face, one half in shadow, the other in a burning golden light.
He closed his eyes again, and squeezed out every last drop of his flickering chakra, pouring it, along with all the resentment, anger, and desperate will to protect from his past life, into the shadow at his feet.
This time, he wasn't chasing speed or forcing the extension. His entire consciousness was focused on "sensing"—sensing every subtle pulse of the shadow, every faint turbulence and drag as chakra flowed through it.
For a fleeting moment, the flood of data from the energy circuits of the device in his past life seemed to resonate with the flow of his chakra now.
His shadow, on the very brink of collapse, was suddenly infused with a strange resilience.
It was still slow, still a struggle, but the ink-black tip was no longer dissipating. With a newfound solidity, it crept, inch by stubborn inch, toward the silent wooden stake.
The sounds of dripping sweat, ragged gasps, and the faint hum of spiritual energy wove together on the blood-red training ground, silently heralding the beginning of a metamorphosis.
The days passed in a cycle of sweat, gasps, and teetering on the edge of collapse. The village of Konoha remained unchanged by the rising and setting of the sun, but the edge of Training Ground 7 was quietly recording the struggles of three small figures.
Choji's change was the most visible. His trademark roundness seemed to have firmed up a bit, and he no longer ran with such a heavy, dragging gait. He still loved to eat, but he devoured his chips much faster during breaks, his eyes constantly glancing toward their training targets. The Partial Expansion Jutsu became stable, and the bruises on his arms—the marks of chakra rampaging through his pathways—became a permanent fixture. At home, Akimichi Choza would watch his son devour his dinner and then pass out snoring, a flicker of confusion and gravity on his rugged face.
Ino's progress was more mental. A small cage with a sparrow in it now sat beside the flower racks at the Yamanaka Flower Shop. She would often stare at the fluttering bird, her fingers unconsciously fiddling with a petal, a sharp, focused light appearing more and more frequently in her eyes. The time it took her to lock onto the rabbit in the training ground shortened dramatically. The only side effect was a splitting headache after every session, one that only subsided after Shikamaru used his shadow to gently massage her temples for a while. Watching her, Yamanaka Inoichi would sometimes pause in his work, a deep concern in his eyes.
The biggest change, without a doubt, was in Nara Shikamaru himself. The lights in the study of the Nara clan compound burned later and later into the night. More than once, Nara Shikaku woke to see light seeping from under his son's door. One night, he quietly pushed it open and froze.
The desk was covered in papers filled with dense calculations. Ten-year-old Shikamaru was hunched over them, his brow furrowed. His fingers, white-knuckled around his pen, were busy annotating a complex geometric diagram. Beside it were scores of calculations using strange symbols Shikaku had never seen before.
Scattered at the edge of the desk were several kunai stained with dark red blood—clearly, he had cut his fingers while practicing some kind of incredibly precise chakra control. Shikamaru seemed completely unaware, his blood-stained fingertips tracing the complex formulas as he muttered to himself, his eyes burning with a focus that bordered on fanatical. He was a world away from the lazy, trouble-averse son he knew.
Shikaku's gaze lingered on the blood-stained papers and kunai before settling on his son's tired but fiercely bright face. He backed out of the room without a sound and gently closed the door. In the moonlight, the head of the Nara clan stood with his brow deeply furrowed, his eyes filled with an unprecedented mix of shock and profound worry.
The training intensified. Alex was no longer satisfied with basic drills and began to introduce complex, combat-oriented scenarios.
"Choji! Left arm expansion! Target—three o'clock, fifteen meters, simulating an enemy behind an earth wall!" Shikamaru's voice was cold and clipped, like a battlefield command.
Boom! Choji's left fist slammed into the designated spot.
"Retract! Immediately! Right arm, high-arc target!" Shikamaru's voice was relentless as he flicked a pebble into the air.
Choji's right hand expanded just in time to snatch the falling pebble, the impact nearly knocking him over.
"Ino! Mind Body Switch! Target—Choji's right arm! Disrupt his chakra flow for one second!"
Ino's face paled, but she didn't hesitate. Her spiritual energy shot out like an invisible needle, stabbing at the chakra node in Choji's expanded arm.
"Gah!" Choji cried out as his jutsu collapsed.
"Shikamaru! What are you doing?!" Ino demanded, her face grim. Disrupting an ally's chakra was incredibly dangerous.
"The enemy doesn't play by the rules!" Alex snapped, his eyes as sharp as a hawk's. "Does Hidan give you a warning before his scythe comes swinging? Choji, what was your defensive reaction the moment your chakra was disrupted, besides yelling? Is your Expansion Jutsu made of paper?"
He jumped down and crouched in front of the stunned Choji. "Remember that feeling," he said, his voice low but powerful. "Remember the pain and helplessness of having your chakra cut off. Next time some cold chakra tries to invade your body, when someone tries to control you with a dark jutsu, you will guard your chakra core like it's your last bag of chips! Make it your final fortress!"
Choji stared into the bottomless depth in Shikamaru's eyes, and the hurt on his face was replaced by a dawning understanding and fear. He nodded hard, his expression more serious than it had ever been.
Alex stood up, taking a deep breath to quell the metallic taste in his throat, and began to lay out even more complex drills.
The air in the training ground grew thick with the brutal, realistic simulations. Every failure was met with the pain of chakra backlash or the dizziness of mental exhaustion. Choji's arms were a canvas of old and new injuries. Ino's face was often frighteningly pale. Shikamaru coughed more frequently, the blood on his fingers a common sight.
At the end of another day, the sunset bled across the sky.
Choji was sprawled on the ground like a melted puddle. Ino leaned against a tree, eyes closed, fighting a splitting headache.
Alex was just as exhausted, his body screaming in protest. He stood with his back to them when a violent cough seized him. He bent over, pressing a hand to his mouth.
"Cough-cough... cough..."
He couldn't hold it back this time. Warm, rust-tasting liquid burst through his fingers. Dark red flecks of blood spattered the dust at his feet, shockingly bright in the dying light.
His body's warning sirens blared. His vision blurred, and his ears rang.
But he didn't fall. He wiped the blood from his lips, took a deep breath, and forced his spine straight.
He looked up, his gaze seeming to pierce through the trees, toward the heart of the village, toward a man who was not yet their teacher, who was probably playing shogi with his father right now.
His voice was a barely audible whisper, a vow spoken across time.
"Asuma-sensei... Just you wait... This time... it'll be our turn... We'll be there to catch you."
The wind scattered the words into the scorched air. But on the ground, Choji's ear twitched. Leaning against the tree, Ino's long eyelashes trembled.
The sun slipped below the horizon, its last ray catching the corner of the boy's blood-stained mouth, illuminating the stubborn, unyielding flame in his eyes.