Chapter 13: Body flicker
"Having trouble with the lightning release eh?" my dad asked with a smirk after seeing my hair standing on end and dark scorch marks on my arms.
"Nobody mentioned that they shock the user as well." I retorted irritably.
"We did that on purpose since you needed a reminder that it isn't so easy being a ninja. A set back every now and again is good for you." my mom said honestly.
"You say that but I have already mastered all three of the jutsu you gave me and don't need handsigns to use them anymore." I said and they both looked surprised and confused.
"If that's true then why are you so badly burnt?" my dad asked.
"I was experimenting to see if I could improve the jutsu even further and it went out of control." I said honestly.
"There is a reason academy students aren't allowed to have higher ranked jutsu you know." My mom scolded me.
"I was trying to improve the spark jutsu though." I complained.
"Ah! You were hoping to add the penetrative effect of lightning release to your taijutsu style right?" My dad asked with an understanding look.
That wasn't even remotely true but I wasn't going to correct him since it was a good cover story.
"We chose those two lines of jutsu because we were trying to get you away from taijutsu. For most shinobi taijutsu is a last resort type thing and ninjutsu is far safer. With your chakra volume it's downright wasteful for you not to use ninjutsu." my mom said with a frown.
"Which was the only reason I even bothered learning those jutsu at all. That doesn't mean they aren't way weaker than my taijutsu though. Crash jutsu barely destroys an inch in a tree while one good chop with chakra flow cuts it in half." I said to prove my point.
My mom sighs "Of course chakra flow is much stronger than crash jutsu, it's a B rank technique that you were only allowed to learn early because you had already figured it out on your own for the most part. But theres nothing we can do about it as the limit we are allowed to teach you is C rank while you are in the academy." she said helplessly.
"So what you are saying is that I should keep training my taijutsu then? Got it." I said with a smirk.
"You could just graduate and and learn stronger jutsu." My dad pointed out.
"Like I told Iruka sensei I would rather not have a target on my back every time my squad takes a mission out of the village. I will wait until I can pass for the average graduation age before graduating." I said seriously.
"As much as I would like to argue about it you do have a point about being targeted. Can you at least try and focus on ninjutsu?" she asked hopefully.
"What's to focus on? I have already mastered all three jutsu of each of the lines you gave me and unless you get me more I have nothing to focus on." I said honestly.
As it turned out that was precisely what they did as I got the E rank earth jutsu {earth move} and the C rank upgrade {earth wall}. I also got the C rank {body flicker jutsu} and the C rank lightning jutsu {flash kick}. Earth move and earth wall were staple defensive earth release jutsu and were useful even for Jonin thanks to the small amount of time they could buy to escape an attack.
Body flicker jutsu was very interesting however as it was actually a jutsu that could be used to make up for ones lack of speed in a taijutsu battle. Basically you molded your chakra before sending it to your feet and kicking off of something to move so fast you appear to teleport. It had one big flaw however that caused me to crash into a tree the first time I used it, you moved faster than your eyes could process if you were new to using it. I hadn't realized that until I was breaking my nose against the trunk of a tree.-
Even more fascinating was that it wasn't an inflexible amount of distance you covered either but with mastery you could move anywhere from a few meters away to nearly fifty yards almost instantly. According to my parents the person who was best at it was called Shisui Uchiha and he could even use the jutsu to create after images. Sadly like the rest of the Uchiha clan he was dead though he apparently killed himself before the massacre. Sounded a bit sketchy in my opinion but it was what it was.-
Flash kick was arguably the most suspicious jutsu my parents could have given me because it literally covered a single leg with lightning that you kicked at your target. You may as well have called it an elemental taijutsu move with how close to being a purely physical attack it was. As it turned out I was wrong, see the lightning you sent off exploded on contact with the target which meant if you were up close and personal you got hit too. The "kicking" involved was less an actual kick so much as it was you ejecting the projectile jutsu away from you, you could even use your hands for it if you wanted.-
The flash kick jutsu took me a month to master but the body flicker jutsu took me well into my fourth year to use it to travel the full fifty meters the jutsu allowed without handsigns. The really hard part of learning it was that I had to improve my reaction time by a lot so that I processed my surroundings and was able to move again the moment I came to a stop. I was convinced that whoever Shisui was though he cheated with the sharingan in order to pull of the after image trick.-
The only time I could create one was if I used body flicker without giving myself the brief moment to process my surroundings after the first use. In other words back to back body flickering was the only way to pull it off and that didn't exactly work if you were effectively blind and deaf the whole time. At MOST I could see a blur when I used the jutsu and while my reaction time was improving rapidly from hard long practice sessions that was nowhere good enough to create after images.-
My parents said that was an impressive enough achievement but I wasn't happy with it because being second best never feels right unless the difference was impossible to cover and I could feel that it wasn't. In a way I suppose that was how Sasuke felt constantly being under me in terms of strength and skill even if he was higher ranked in the class. Nothing for it though since academics simply didn't interest me any and I was too lazy to put in more effort in those subjects.