Five elemental natures, a request for the Shadow Clone and even the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique…
Might Guy trudged along behind Konome Taketori with the weighted straps in hand, silently filing away everything about her. At dawn he would turn these notes into a written report for the Third Hokage, and quietly shatter whatever unknown scheme Konome had in motion.
"Guy, you already know, don't you?"
"Y yehhh… huh?!"
Startled out of his thoughts, he blurted a reflexive answer, then snapped his head up.
"I… know what?"
Konome did not quicken or slow. Her calm voice burst like a tag in his ear. "That depends on what exactly Kakashi or the Third told you."
Their footsteps clicked across the street. No one spoke.
Late sun poured a honey gold over an almost empty road, as if only the two of them were left in the village.
"I did not…"
"You are not suited to espionage, and you are even worse at lying."
She ignored his attempt at composure. Behind the soft cloth, the Byakugan watched his powerful heart hammer, watched the sweat glands flood. Every reflex shouted tension.
She had noticed his change at the tool shop. The man of Youth had gone suddenly quiet. He had not asked a thing about the new weights. When the chakra paper revealed five natures, he was surprised but not happy.
Plainly, Kakashi or the Third had already shared their suspicions. If she was not wrong, Guy had also been ordered to watch her and to keep the Eight Gates away from her at any cost.
"You were waiting for me on that street on purpose, weren't you?"
Guy's heartbeat settled. He had never been good at intel work. Being seen through by a child was almost a relief.
"Yes. I waited there all afternoon."
Konome's answer was perfectly frank. It hardly mattered. Kakashi had watched the entire encounter from a tree.
"All for the Eight Gates?"
His voice dropped, eyes banked with anger. However brief their time together, the joy of having a daughter had been real. In his heart, family was sacred. If she had used family as a pretense to angle for a secret art, it stained his last clean place.
"And for admission to the academy."
She corrected him, and the evenness of her tone only fanned his anger.
"I will never let you obtain the Eight Gates."
"Today in class, Iruka explained the limits of a shinobi. Chakra is capped by vitality. The stronger your life force, the more chakra you can produce. Because vitality is finite, chakra cannot grow without end. An ordinary person cannot surpass someone born with towering life force."
She spoke without heat. "That is what finally made the Eight Gates clear to me.
"The human body has eight gates: Kai, Rest, Life, Wound, Closure, View, Shock, and Death. You can also call them eight shackles. The instinct to survive forged these shackles to lock our vitality inside the cells and forbid its waste.
"The essence of the Eight Gates is to torture the flesh with training until each shackle can be forced open.
"Burn your life to create chakra far beyond the norm. If you do not spend that chakra in battle, it seeps into your bones and blood during training and becomes fuel to break your body's limits."
She ignored the look on Guy's face, as if he had just seen a ghost, and went on.
"A user of the Eight Gates keeps breaking the body's limit by tapping life itself. So long as the well of vitality does not run dry, the body can be strengthened almost without end. A stronger body can carry even more chakra. The two feed one another until, at the very end, all eight gates open and you reach the Eight Gates Released Formation that tramples everything."
"You… how do you even… was it while I was showering last night?"
Guy's eyes went wide. What she had recited was the core preface of the Eight Gates scroll.
"Guy, please do not tell me you thought hiding the scroll under your bed was a masterstroke of security," Konome said with a small smile.
The moment she entered his home she had used the Byakugan to pin down the scroll's location. While he was in the bath she memorized every word.
For all its power, the Eight Gates was not complex. It charted the gates and taught how to push the body to its edge and open them one by one. The difficulty lay in relentless training and in the will to trade tomorrow for strength today, to squeeze life itself for power.
The Eight Gates was fighting style and cultivation method both. Reach your limit, open a gate, vent vitality, and break the limit again.
Every session consumes your life. Every opening shortens your span. The cycle repeats until your body is like pulp after the oil is pressed out.
You might be ox strong today and gasp on the verge of death tomorrow. You live each hour beneath the shadow that the next heartbeat might be the last.
Once decline begins, death has already arrived.
Only after reading the scroll did Konome truly understand why father and son lived with Youth on their lips, and why so few in the Leaf dared to walk this path.
Burning youth is the final meaning of the Eight Gates.
"You got what you wanted."
Guy's voice rasped. He had even thought himself clever for moving the scroll to Kakashi's house. He had not imagined that on the very first night in his home, Konome had already stolen it, faster than a thief in a tale.
"More or less."
Konome stopped and turned. Guy, mired in regret, realized that without noticing he had followed her off the main street into a sparse stand of trees.
"Are you going to kill me?"
He glanced around at the empty grove. It would be a perfect place to silence someone.
Her blind staff dropped with a clatter.
Konome slipped off her white cloak, revealing the black close fitting training clothes beneath.
"Guy, my parents and everyone I had are already dead. Yes, I planned our meeting. Even so, the fact that you are my only family is beyond dispute."
"Revenge, escape, whatever hunt lies behind me, and whatever disaster may come, I need strength for all of it."
As she spoke she loosened the dark band over her eyes, then tied it again. The delicate face, the slight ridge of brow, took on a sharper line against the black.
Beneath the skin the periosteum thickened.
"I am not a spy from another village. I have no unspeakable plot against the Leaf. I am only a stray soul who needs power. And yes, I deceived you. I am sorry.
"I am sorry I played with your feelings. I am sorry I read the secret scroll.
"If you still cannot forgive me…"
She raised both arms out at her sides, like a figure nailed upon a cross, and faced him. Guy's expression had already begun to soften.
"You can hit me until your anger is gone. I will not strike back."
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