Rasengan

"Once I learned of this, a seed was planted in my heart. I don't want others to lose their parents, their friends, and so on, just as I did. As long as my medical ninjutsu is strong enough, I can help more people and save more families."

Shimizu spoke eloquently, rattling off an eight-hundred-word justification in one breath.

He had drafted various versions of this at home to prepare for Hiruzen Sarutobi's questioning.

Now, as he spoke, there wasn't a single pause.

"Shimizu, you really remind me of an old friend of mine."

Hiruzen Sarutobi nodded, feeling satisfied with Shimizu's moral character.

"Who is it?"

Shimizu asked, feigning confusion.

"You should have heard his name; he was a member of the Uchiha Clan, Uchiha Kagami."

"Senior Kagami? I've heard a lot about him within the clan; he is practically my idol."

Shimizu spouted nonsense without a blush or a skip in his heartbeat.

"Then you two truly share a bond."

Hiruzen Sarutobi sighed with emotion.

He proceeded to ask a few more questions, all of which Shimizu answered perfectly.

Hiruzen Sarutobi was now certain that the information he had received from his son was correct.

Just as Asuma Sarutobi had said, Shimizu's Will of Fire was indeed pure.

"You may go. Your instructor and teammates are waiting downstairs."

"Yes, Lord Hokage."

Shimizu took his leave and closed the wooden door.

That old fox is truly cunning.

The sorrow on Shimizu's face vanished completely, leaving no trace of the emotion he had just displayed.

It was a good thing he had drafted his responses at home beforehand.

Otherwise, Hiruzen Sarutobi's barrage of questions today might have caused him to slip up and reveal his true political leanings.

Shimizu walked down the corridor, preparing to head downstairs to meet his assigned teammates.

"Hmm?"

After sending Shimizu away, Hiruzen Sarutobi continued to review scrolls.

Suddenly, he spotted two applications for early graduation.

One was for Shinku Yuhi's daughter, and the other was from a chunin instructor for a student named Hyuga Tetsu.

"The new generation of Konoha is becoming more and more prosperous."

Hiruzen Sarutobi hadn't expected so many people to apply for early graduation.

In previous years, this was quite rare, but in these troubled times, it was good for the village to have more strength.

After carefully reviewing them and finding no issues, Hiruzen Sarutobi stamped them with the red seal of approval.

Back home, Shimizu began practicing the Rasengan.

He had already met his newly assigned teammates—two civilian ninjas.

One of them had a weak foundation and was quite arrogant.

Regarding this, Shimizu could only respect their individual fates and abandon any urge to help them.

For those with weak strength, everything they did was dangerous.

Even as an ordinary villager, one could still die at any moment from the collateral damage of a large-scale ninjutsu.

"I'm afraid that even Minato Namikaze doesn't understand the Rasengan as deeply as I do right now."

Shimizu set down a wooden post, preparing to use it as a target for his practice.

Aside from the Simulator, the Rasengan was the fastest way to acquire a single-target attack method.

The Rasengan was one of the few ninjutsu in the original work that detailed the training process.

The reason Shimizu hadn't learned it earlier was that he had poured most of his energy into medical ninjutsu, as Nonou Yakushi was essentially a time-limited mission that wouldn't wait.

Now that he had more time, Shimizu could finally begin his training.

The Rasengan was a simple and brutal ninjutsu; it lacked nature transformation and was, frankly, just a large, swirling ball of chakra.

Mastering the flow of chakra in different directions and compressing it was all that was needed to form it.

According to the Book of Fighting, as long as one could produce chakra, they could basically learn it.

Of course, this "simplicity" was only relative.

The very next sentence in the Book of Fighting noted that even the Fourth Hokage had spent three or four years on it, making it a ninjutsu with a very high level of training difficulty.

The difficulty reached A-rank; theoretically, an ordinary ninja could learn it if they studied hard enough.

However, whether it would take thirty years or sixty years was a matter of opinion.

This was because the Rasengan required precise chakra control to compress chakra in the palm and shape it into a sphere.

The chakra within rotated at high speeds; if the control faltered, the sphere could not be maintained, causing the power to diminish or the jutsu to fail entirely.

It could be said that this was the greatest difficulty of the Rasengan.

But Shimizu had actually already met the prerequisites long ago.

What was the most important ability in medical ninjutsu?

It was precisely the ability to control chakra.

Shimizu might not be strong in other areas right now, but his chakra control was absolutely formidable.

He could shorten the training time to an astonishing degree.

Minato Namikaze had spent three years developing and learning this jutsu, but the key was that he was developing it, requiring constant experimentation and modification.

Standing on the shoulders of a giant, Shimizu did not need to develop it like Minato Namikaze; he only needed to follow the steps according to the memories in his mind.

Hum!

Shimizu skipped the preliminary stages of using water balloons and rubber balls, proceeding directly to the third stage: condensing chakra in his palm!

An oval-shaped sphere emitting a cerulean glow shifted and changed in Shimizu's hand.

Snap!

Shimizu struck the wooden post with the Rasengan; a sharp, piercing sound of cutting rang out, and a large, spiral-shaped pattern was deeply imprinted onto the surface of the post.

"Still not perfect."

A standard Rasengan would leave a deep, circular crater rather than just leaving marks like a pattern.

While this could certainly serve as a means to attack someone, the chakra compression was not concentrated enough, likely resulting in only one-third of the Rasengan's true power.

Shimizu continued to condense chakra in his palm, practicing the Rasengan.

He could learn a standard Rasengan in a short amount of time, but a standard Rasengan was not Shimizu's goal.

He valued the Fire Body Flicker more at this stage, but the Rasengan could be learned in an even shorter time.

The best way to use the Rasengan was in combination with the Flying Raijin Jutsu; instant casting with no hand signs allowed one to inflict massive damage on an enemy in an instant.

The way Naruto Uzumaki used the Rasengan was far too crude.

He would rub the Rasengan together by hand and then run over to attack the enemy.

How was that any different from engaging an enemy in melee combat with an enhanced Kunai?

If not for the Multi Shadow Clone, the power of the Rasengan would be greatly discounted.

It was only later that he developed the Wind Style: Rasenshuriken, which resolved this flaw, but that was an S-rank forbidden jutsu; merely releasing it placed immense strain on the body.

"Learning the Rasengan should be enough for now."

Shimizu looked at the cerulean sphere he had condensed once more and began a new round of training.

The Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu had damage that was too dispersed and a wind-up that was too long, making it not very compatible with Shimizu.

His Body Flicker Technique could itself be considered a youth version of the Flying Raijin Jutsu.

Once the Fire Body Flicker was developed, Shimizu's speed would be even greater.

Several days later.

At the home of Kakashi Hatake.

"Come in."

After Shimizu knocked on Kakashi's door, it opened a crack.

Shimizu took off his shoes in the entryway, put on wooden clogs, and stepped onto the floorboards with a tap-tap-tap.