Naruto: Tango with Death

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Unsurprisingly, us girls had to meet at the flowery garden, as it was where we would learn how to be the greatest Kunoichi. Hmm, how excited I am, I am sure my classmates would be able to discern it amidst my deadpan face if they weren't threatening me with their glares.

As it turned out, becoming friends with the two 'hotties', and yes, I feel disgusted for saying that talking of basically toddlers, but I'm paraphrasing, was enough for all the girls in this class to treat me as the common enemy.

Damn, I feel like I'm taking the Emo Sasuke path, creating one common enemy for everyone to hate… I just don't remember giving my consent.

I would have to worry about this later though as it was time for our class to begin. Our sensei, a Chunin whose name I didn't even bother memorizing, started speaking, "Floral arrangement is an important tool for a Kunoichi, as it not only allows them to fit in any part of the world, it's teachings also deals with herbology."

Well, maybe it is a little better than I thought, if I can learn how to create poisons then it wouldn't be so bad.

Our sensei continued, "But for now, you will only learn about aesthetics, this is your first lesson after all. For today, I want all of you to create your own bouquet of flowers each, try to make it as good looking as you can. You have one hour to find and assemble them into a bouquet."

She pointed at the table next to her, on top of which were a bunch of ribbons. I quickly grabbed one and walked away, I didn't want to leave a chance to any of them to speak to me. Darth Emo Sasuke, I'm getting closer…

In my time I read many fanfictions, and I saw all those main characters who would befriend all the future important Shinobi, helping them grow and train them…

But I was no such person. It's already hard enough training by myself for me to care about others. Besides, they grew up just fine originally, so I don't see a need for my interference.

Lost in my thoughts, I walked through the flower fields, if that's a thing, and started looking for flowers that looked good.

I quickly gathered a bunch of flowers, but as I was done I realized all the flowers I took were of different colours that didn't really match, making them look a bit weird. After a moment, I discarded the flowers I plucked out before looking around.

Then, I realized I was standing in front of a tree, and looking at its leaves, an idea came to my mind. I set a foot onto the tree's bark, then the other, and started walking.

In the past week I had the occasion to learn a few things, some more important than others. For example, the average people didn't constantly feel their chakra, this was something called Chakra Hypersensitivity, which was a good thing. For me that is, normal kids apparently would get spooked out by their ever present chakra and have difficulty using it as they grow up. Don't ask me, irrational fears.

Another thing I learned was how rough I was in chakra manipulation. All I ever did was to take a chunk of my chakra and apply it to the area of my body where I wanted it to work. For precise works, I would take bigger or smaller chunks.

But this only worked for me because of my high sensitivity and talent apparently, and it was highly inefficient.

And it really was. In my first week I learned that I wasn't supposed to just take a chunk of my chakra and apply it. Instead, I have to make it flow toward the intended area, and regulate this flow.

Iruka's analogy was quite good. It was easier to divert a stream of water to create a new river than just move a chunk of the sea in the intended area. Well, same concept here.

And boy did it make a difference. Once I tried this technique, not only did I find sticking leaves to myself to be much easier, I could also use the technique for as long as I wanted. Well, as long as I still had chakra.

When I used chunks, once the chunk was consumed then the leaf would fall, unless I supplied it with another chunk, but the transition required a lot of concentration and exhausted more chakra than I intended for it to.

But now that I used it as a stream, it would continue flowing until there was no more chakra flowing in my body, which means death by the way, or I stopped it. That's how every ninja used Chakra.

This improvement also resulted in me finally learning tree walking, and with utter ease at that. Although I am still not able to walk on water, it shouldn't be that far either. I am quite proud of it, to be honest. Take that, Sakura, I'm the more talented of us two in the end.

Anyway, I reached one of the branches and walked along it to reach the leaves, and plucked a few of them. Then, keeping them in my hands, I created another stream of chakra towards my palms.

The leaves were soon coated in chakra, and I dropped them. As they fell on the branch I was on, instead of simply falling further down or laying flat, they actually performed small cuts on it. It wasn't really anything incredible, but it still pulled a wide smile on my face.

For some reason, I just had a flashback of Bleach, and perhaps it's most famous technique, Senbonsakura. It's coolness was only equalled by it's might, and so I tried to replicate it. Although I didn't use cherry blossoms, the pink leaves, nor could I control their fall and they barely cut into the branch, it still showed it was possible, and it excited me.

Without realizing it, I completely threw my current task over my shoulder as I focused all of my attention onto the task at hand.

I first tried to make them sharper, and in theory it wasn't all that hard, all I had to do was to shape my chakra, to cover the leaf and make the edges thinner, just like a blade.

But in practice, this was a lot harder, because shape manipulation was actually quite hard. Until now, none of my exercises asked me to shape my chakra, whatever exercise I did I only had to use my chakra. Actually, I remember Iruka telling us that shape manipulation was for D and higher ranked Jutsus.

That didn't make my current task a D Rank Jutsu, but it spoke of it's difficulty.

However, Sasuke was able to perform the C Rank Great Fireball Technique without having even mastered Tree Walking, so after some time I managed to make the leaf I held as sharp as a knife, allowing it to cut into the tree. I knew that to make it any sharper I would either have to improve my shape manipulation or add an element, preferably wind if I wanted it to cut.

Then, another obstacle that came to me was to apply this cutting effect to all the leaves. I could do it with one leaf, but to use it on multiple at the same time required an even better control over my chakra.

Unfortunately, as I began working on it, I heard my sensei's voice from the bottom of the tree "Sukaina, what are you doing up there?"

My eyes widened as I realized I completely forgot preparing my bouquet. Feeling a little awkward, I looked down at her and lied, "A squirrel bit my hand and I chased it up here, but I can't find my bouquet anymore…"

My sensei sighed, and although I'm not sure I bet she saw through my lie. Still, she didn't expose me and instead swung another elastic over as she said, "I see. Why don't you come down here and I help you?"

I was surprised at her kindness, shouldn't she go and help the larger group? Less efficient, but better effects overall.

Despite my surprise, I still walked down the tree, and yes, I showed off my Tree Walking. I don't see a reason to hide my talent, the only threat would be Danzo but I doubt they could force me to join his Root. It's Minato leading the village now, not Hiruzen.

My Nameless Sensei was shocked, and this once again surprised me. Teachers talked together, and I thought she came to help me because of my talent. Thinking about it, it was kind of pretentious of me to think so, but at least I'm relieved I was wrong.

She quickly overcame her shock and asked, "Do you think this class is useless?"

For a moment I thought about straight out lying to her again, but then I felt some guilt. I didn't even bother remembering her name and yet she is so kind, I didn't want to add lying to that. More of it that is.

So I said, "I'm not yet sure of what Kunoichi Classes are made of, but if there is only Flower Arrangement then I have to confess… well, I don't really find it useless, more… disappointing. Except the herbology part, I don't think flower arrangement is the best way to look like an average person."

My sensei smiled at what I believe to be my honesty and replied "If that relieves you then no, Kunoichi Classes isn't all about Flower Arrangement. Ladies aren't just good at arranging flowers, even the worst macho in the elemental nations would have to admit we have other qualities, such as cooking, for example," she joked with a smile, before adding a little more seriously, "Another lesson would be seduction."

I was… shocked, to say the least, by my teacher. Her words weren't incredible, groundbreaking or inconceivable, especially for someone from a world where women had more and more rights.

I actually took a few seconds to understand why I was shocked. Until now, I never really integrated into this world, I always were kind of an outsider, in my perspective at least. I barely interacted with anyone, spending most of my time training, and even those I interacted with, such as Naruto, Sasuke and the likes, I already more or less knew how our conversation would go from the beginning because of my knowledge of their character.

The matron barely counted as an exception too as I never had a real exchange with her.

But here, now, for the first time, I actually spoke to someone. I heard their opinion, and felt like I was talking to a person, not a character from some anime. This wasn't to say my interactions with people so far were actually fake, it was more of an… epiphany.

I gulped out of my shock as to not appear too weird, and said, "That sounds good. Thank you for the help."

She nodded with a bright smile, and together we looked around for the right flowers to use. She didn't just tell me which colours went well with which colours, but also told me where I could find them, as every flower had more chances to grow in certain places.

This was our last class of the day, and so as we submitted out bouquets to our sensei, whom I finally learned was called Sagaki, and she was a Chunin. She was nice.

The next day, was my second special class, and the one I was the most interested in, Medical Class. The teacher was an old man, his class was quite boring but my enthusiasm for the class made up for it.

Then, the day after was another Kunoichi Class, followed by another Medical Class, and finally my first Seal Class. And so my routine was created, I would go on to Kunoichi Classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, on Medical Classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and finally on Seal Class on Fridays.

I didn't have any special class on Saturdays, and Sunday was my rest day.