"Take a ten-minute break." Shisui took a canteen from his ninja tool pouch and handed it to Qingyu. "You're improving fast—much faster than I expected."
Qingyu took the canteen and hesitated. Wasn't this the one you'd been drinking from?
Oh, well. Brotherhood! Bonds!
"Shisui-senpai, will other people in the clan learn this training method too? Like Itachi-senpai or Sasuke?"
"Itachi will." Shisui took a drink.
"And he picked it up faster than I did. As for Sasuke..." He smiled.
"He's still young. The Clan Head said to wait until he awakens his Sharingan before teaching him. This training method requires a high degree of mental focus, after all, and children can easily go about it the wrong way."
"Then..." Qingyu asked carefully, "why did the Clan Head have you teach me? I'm just an ordinary Genin..."
Shisui lowered his canteen and looked at Qingyu. Something complicated flickered in his eyes.
"Because the Clan Head thinks you have 'potential.'"
"Most of the younger generation of the Uchiha are too 'alike.'"
"The same training methods, the same way of thinking, the same plans for the future."
"But you're different. You use Fire Release and Water Release, and you know Ancient Style Shuriken, but you also dare to tinker with it on your own."
"There's an 'uncertainty' about you, and the Clan Head... might want to see what that uncertainty can bring."
Qingyu's heart tightened.
Naruto: Feels like my uncertainty is living in someone else's shadow...
So Clan Head Fugaku's interest in him really wasn't just because he'd performed well in the exam.
"Don't be nervous." Shisui smiled again.
"It's not a bad thing. In times like these, being a little 'different' can actually be an advantage."
He stood up and brushed the dust off his pants. "All right, break's over. Next, let's try combining Heart-Intent Style with your Water-Fire ninjutsu."
"Combine them?" Qingyu froze.
"Sure." Shisui said it as though it were obvious.
"That Steam Explosion technique of yours is essentially a change in the form and nature of chakra. If you can control it with 'heart-intent' while throwing, you might come up with something even more interesting."
Qingyu suddenly felt that having Shisui as a teacher might be both a lucky and a dangerous choice.
The lucky part was that Shisui was genuinely strong, and incredibly open-minded when it came to teaching.
The dangerous part was... he seemed even more willing to experiment than Qingyu himself.
Qingyu: Shisui-senpai, if we keep pretending to be clueless like this, will the story really let us learn it?
Shisui: We're going to win!
Over the next three days, Qingyu settled into a packed routine: intensive training with Shisui during the day, then a review with the two souls at night.
Shisui's training really was "unorthodox."
On the second day, he had Qingyu throw shuriken blindfolded, saying, "Sight gets in the way of instinct."
Qingyu threw thirty shuriken and hit the target three times... and all three only grazed past it.
"Not bad," Shisui actually praised him.
"At least you didn't miss every time. The first time I practiced blindfolded, all thirty of mine ended up stuck in a tree. The clan brother who trained with me laughed about it for a whole week."
On the third day, Shisui began teaching him Double Heart-Intent Lock.
That meant locking onto two targets at once, then making the shuriken change direction midair while still hitting the second target accurately.
Qingyu practiced until his head spun. He felt like his brain's CPU was about to burn out.
But the results were remarkable.
No way, the bullets really do curve!
By the end of the third day, Qingyu could reliably throw shuriken using Single Heart-Intent Lock under normal conditions, with an accuracy rate of around 70%.
Blindfolded, he could still hit the target 30% of the time... though most of those hits were sheer luck.
What surprised Qingyu even more was that he was actually making progress combining Water-Fire Rotation with shuriken.
Inspired by Shisui, Qingyu stopped trying to force his Water and Fire chakra into a single ball and instead tried "layering" them.
He coated the shuriken in an extremely thin film of Water Release chakra, then infused the core with Fire Release chakra.
Qingyu tried throwing one.
Just before it hit, he used "heart-intent" to ignite the Fire Release chakra inside, evaporating the outer water film and creating a small steam explosion.
The steam burst out at the moment of impact. A localized shockwave shattered the wooden training post, sending splinters flying. The air filled with the scorched, steamy smell of high-temperature vapor.
"It worked!" Qingyu's eyes lit up.
Its power, stealth, speed, and surprise factor had all improved!
Whoa, and it even had an elemental reaction. This had to deal 1.5 times the damage, right?!
Its power was still far less than simply throwing a Water-Fire ball, but its stealth, speed, and surprise factor had all improved dramatically.
Shisui called it "Steam-Kill Shuriken" and said, with a straight face, "That's a pretty cool name."
Qingyu: "..." Senpai, your naming sense could use some work.
Minato: I've got a great name! Water-Fire Rotation: Extreme-Temperature Flashing Explosive Formation Shuriken!
On the afternoon of the fourth day of special training, Shisui didn't have Qingyu continue practicing shuriken.
"Let's switch things up today." He led Qingyu to the woods at the edge of the training ground. "We'll work on footwork."
"Footwork?" Qingyu was a little surprised.
"Right." Shisui said,
"I looked over your battle tactics in the exam records. You used scouting, traps, and ninjutsu clashes, but you're missing the most crucial element of all: 'the art of movement.'"
He walked up to a huge tree and leaped lightly. His entire body seemed weightless as he landed silently on a branch five meters off the ground, without even making the leaves sway.
"The three basic ninja skills are ninjutsu, Taijutsu, and genjutsu." Shisui stood on the branch and looked down at Qingyu.
"Above all three, there's something even more fundamental: how to move."
"How to run faster, jump higher, land more quietly, and move across difficult terrain as though it were level ground."
Qingyu tilted his head back and suddenly remembered the Uchiha Style footwork Izuna had taught him, as well as the Senju Style chakra-control footwork Tobirama had taught him.
"What school of footwork are you going to teach me, Shisui-senpai?" he asked.
"No school." Shisui jumped down from the tree, landing like a feather.
"Or you could say it's a style I came up with myself. I call it 'Body Flicker Basics.'"
Qingyu's eyes lit up. The Body Flicker Technique! It was Shisui's signature move!
"Don't get ahead of yourself." Shisui saw right through him.
"I'm not teaching you the full Body Flicker Technique. It requires too much chakra control and mental focus for you to learn right now.
"I'm teaching you the most basic of basics: how to get the most out of every movement while using as little chakra as possible."
Tch~
But it was Shisui himself teaching him, so he supposed he could make do with Body Flicker.
Shisui began the day's lesson.
Just like his "Heart-Intent Style" shuriken training, Shisui's footwork lessons were also "abstract."
"Feel the ground beneath your feet."
"Not with your feet. Use chakra to 'listen'—to the ground's firmness, its slope, whether there are loose rocks or moss...
"Every little detail affects how you push off."
"Imagine your body is a spring. Every time you land, you aren't 'stopping'; you're 'gathering power for your next leap.'"
"When you move, don't look at your feet. Look at the 'direction' you want to go. Your body will find the best place to land on its own."
Science Theater.
A dramatization (when Minato sees this technique):
Minato (eyes shining): "Oh! He's controlling Fire and Water chakra of opposing natures with incredible precision!
"Instead of canceling each other out on impact, they transform into a high-temperature, high-pressure steam explosion, with visual cover, a wide-area shockwave, and scalding burns...
"This has gone beyond ordinary Combination Ninjutsu! It should be called—Water-Fire Rotation: Extreme-Temperature Flashing Explosive Formation Shuriken! What do you think? It fits perfectly, right?"
Kakashi, standing beside him (deadpan): "...Sensei, couldn't we just call it 'Steam Shuriken'?"
Minato (beaming): "Kakashi, a ninjutsu's name is its soul! It should embody its principles, its aesthetics, and the creator's heart!"
Izuna, inside Qingyu's head: "...Why does this blond guy give things even more over-the-top names than Tobirama?"
Tobirama (adjusting his glasses): "...But in terms of accurately describing the technique's principles, it is indeed more precise than 'Steam-Kill.'"
Before you continue