Chapter 10: The Latent Fire
Training Ground Gamma was a dark, silent expanse of manicured lawn and durable training dummies, bathed in the cold, silver light of a full moon. Sasuke stood in the center of the field, utterly alone. He had booked the space under the pretense of "late-night flexibility conditioning," an excuse no one would question given his obsessive training habits.
The air was cool, and his breath plumed in front of him. This was the test. Everything hinged on this moment. Was he just a boy with an unexplainable enhancement Quirk, or was he the inheritor of something more?
He closed his eyes, turning his focus inward. He reached for the feeling he'd had when he shattered the training post all those years ago. He dredged up the memories, letting the cold fury of that night wash over him. The image of his parents' bodies, the shadow of their killer, the contemptuous words that had become the bedrock of his existence.
He felt it. The cold, deep energy stirred in his core, a sleeping beast awakened by the familiar scent of his hatred. But it was a wild, churning thing. A raw power without direction. He needed to shape it.
He remembered the diagrams from the ancient text. He brought his hands up in front of his chest, his fingers feeling clumsy and foreign as he tried to form one of the hand seals he had memorized: Ram. His knuckles bumped, his fingers fumbled. It was awkward. The energy inside him roiled, like a river hitting a dam, and then subsided.
Frustration, sharp and bitter, flared in his chest. "This is useless," a voice in his head hissed. "Just a fairy tale. A dead-end." He was about to give up, to resort back to the brutal physical training he knew, when another, calmer voice surfaced from his memory. It was Itachi's, patient and kind, from a lifetime ago. "...You're holding it too tightly. You're trying to force it..."
Force. That was his mistake. He was trying to command the chakra, to enslave it with his rage. But the texts described it as a flow, a part of himself.
He took a slow, deep breath, releasing the tension in his shoulders. He pushed the chaotic, screaming inferno of his hatred to the back of his mind. Instead, he held onto a single, clear image. A flame. Not a raging wildfire, but the small, controlled flame of a candle. He visualized its shape, its color, its heat. He focused on a single, crystalline intention: Manifestation.
He raised his hands again. This time, his movements were slower, more deliberate. His fingers intertwined, forming the Ram seal perfectly. It felt... right. He inhaled, and this time he didn't just feel the chakra in his stomach; he guided it. He drew the cold energy up from his core, through his chest, and into his lungs, feeling a strange, unfamiliar heat begin to build in his throat.
He held the seal, focused on the image of the flame, and exhaled.
It wasn't a roar of fire. It was more like a smoky, sputtering cough. A small, pathetic ball of orange flame, no bigger than his fist, shot from his lips. It flew a mere three feet through the air, wobbling weakly, before landing on the damp grass with a faint hiss, extinguishing itself almost instantly.
Sasuke dropped his hands, his eyes wide, staring at the tiny, blackened patch of grass. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs.
It was small. It was weak. It was almost laughable.
And it was the most magnificent thing he had ever created.
It was real. The legends, the scrolls, the forgotten history—it was all real. His power wasn't just a physical boost. It was elemental. It was versatile. The old doctor, all those years ago, had been right. He didn't have a single trick. He had an entire repertoire waiting to be unlocked.
A wave of dizziness washed over him, and he put a hand on his knee to steady himself. His throat felt dry and raw. That tiny, pathetic flame had taken a surprising amount of energy. He now understood a crucial lesson. This power had a cost. A finite pool of fuel. Unlike Bakugo, who seemed to generate explosions from sweat with little effort, his own abilities were a resource to be managed. Every use had to be precise, efficient, and necessary.
He looked up at the moon, its light seeming brighter than before. A slow smile spread across his lips. It was not a smile of joy or happiness. It was a smile of dark, vicious satisfaction. The smile of a predator who had just discovered a new set of claws.
He now had two weapons in his arsenal: a body honed to perfection, and a latent, hungry fire. It was only a spark for now. But he would nurture it. He would feed it with his will, temper it with his discipline, and one day, he would grow it into an inferno that would burn his enemies to ash.
He whispered the words into the silent night, giving the technique a name, giving his power a voice.
"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu."