A gemstone to shore

In hindsight, the ‘special’ training wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  The fabled ‘lucky ones’ were drilled in the basics of chakra manipulation.  It didn’t click until that evening as I’d seen more impressive examples from my peers in the mess hall.  Most of the kids there look like they’d bust a vein.  I felt sorry for whatever organ was on the receiving end of that abuse.

Chakra is not a boulder you can push around.  Granted, that is literally how some shinobi use it and I’ve used my fair share of leverage.  Ah, hold that thought.

Finding my person of interest was easy.  Contacting them, not even as a joke.  The little voice in my head was right.  Watchers started patrolling the area.  I had to pick my movements carefully and keep an eye out for simple hiding spots.

Raised bush, irregular patterns, rotten stumps.  Anything that could divert attention and or blur the details.  It was slow going, but I eventually made it to the offshoot clearing with the better part of an hour to spare.

I couldn’t break my cover though.  Half of the students in that group had seen my stealth on the way here, rendering my disguise useless.  The master was socially awkward, more focused on the topic of the lessons than their surroundings, but that didn’t fool me.

The eccentric ones are game changers, and every now and then a shadow passing overhead reminded me that I’d already seen patrols in the area.  

I couldn’t fool the students.  Hiding behind the equipment was a bust.  Sunshine never strayed that far.  Even breaking from the tree-line posed an unacceptable risk.  It was hard to swallow, but I had to admit defeat in this regard.

Disheartened, I meandered back toward the nearest path to clear my head.  Ironically, that was how I made contact.  The group finished their exercises shortly after I left, and they and I nearly bowled into each other on the road leading further away from my basecamp.

So focused on not getting caught as I was, I barely noticed the note as it escaped from my fingers, but I knew he saw it.  From the moment the piece of paper connected our hands, it was like someone was pouring molten metal behind my back.  A presence that shifted into the distance like a compass, and likewise my world spun in a mix of chagrin and relief.

Back to the matter of leverage.  My day wasn’t quite over yet.  As I made my way back toward the bunker, I felt something form from the back of my mind.  Sound as a hand resting on my shoulder.  I stopped and checked myself.

My arm rippled.  Shrinking and growing, with splotches of pale and tanned skin.  I tried to contain the fear that stoked in me, but it brought me to my knees all the same.

~What’s happening to me?~

~Relax.  Center yourself around the feeling from the other night.~

~What feeling?  What~

I blinked as something flowed into my system.  A cooling sensation laced my chakra.  I shivered.  Feeling like dirt was creeping over my skin while the summer sun tried to bore holes through the cracks.

~Relax Joseph, and breathe.~

Dubious, and out of spite, I swallowed a hiss and dragged the air down my throat.  Blending my frustration with it and blowing it out in a huff.  I planned to vent, to let arrogance bring words unfiltered, but to my surprise it softened.

The anguish inside softened like warming butter.  I could feel it responding to my attentions as intuitively as opening and closing a door.  So relax I did.  Breathe I did.  While my anger waned, I continued to whittle at the ‘mind butter’ in my spare time.  The shadows around me grew slightly.  Finally I drew myself up-

~you might want to-~

and nearly threw up in the process, as a torrent of chakra snaked through me.  I thrust my hands into the ground, catching myself and groaned as chakra thickened and swirled around inside.  I wanted to cry, but then I felt something forming between my hands.

An electric pull.  Curling lines flowed beneath the fallen leaves.  A pressure built, although I could not say where.  The ground?  The air?  My hands?  Regardless, a pyramid rose through it and filled the space between my palms.  Lifting them off the ground slightly and slowing to a stop with a drop in pressure.

I huffed for a moment or two, then parted my thumbs, “What is this?”

~Again.  It’s going to continue to dissolve otherwise.~

I wrapped my hands around the sublimating crystal and set it near my chest, taking a lotus position and letting my body go through the motions.

~What is this thing?~

~A focus.  A medium for cultivating chakra, and a reserve of it in case of emergencies.   You will need them in order to sustain and develop your transformations.~

I was skeptical, and raised a brow to punctuate that.  I could feel the crystal shrinking between my fingers.  My chakra flows into and wraps it, drawing it tighter.  I felt a bit of vapor flow across my fingers, but not enough to explain the rapid loss of volume.  The pale quarts grew bolder and bolder until it was around the same size and shape as a due-to-retire pencil.

I raised the thing up to eye level and reflected on the state of my skin.  I was myself again, but I could feel something within me stirring.

~Did something change?~

~Nothing we can control.  Desperation and a danger to your health caused your pressure points to open.   You stored a large amount of chakra in order to weather potential hardships.  That reserve is mostly gone now, as are the impressions of trained ninja.~

I squinted at the little jewel, trying to fit it to the puzzle in my mind.  My features slackened as an overwhelming skepticism makes itself known.

“What does this little thing have to do with how I look?  Actually, how does that transformation thing work?  It’s all magic to me at this point.”

I feel something sag within.

~Honestly, we’ve neither the time nor resources to dedicate to unboxing that particular skill set.  Just know that for the time being, you’re going to have to pick your battles carefully.~

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

~I actually do.  Take it to heart please?  I don’t enjoy seeing you put in harm’s way.~

My strides slow by half and then to a full stop.  My shoulders sag as months of hasty persistence catch up with me.  I turn to the side and open my heart to the one who has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that she will help me grow.

“What is your name?”

~You still don’t remember?~

I smile self-deprecatingly and turn my gaze to the sky, “No, but I trust you completely.  If you’d rather not tell me, if you’d rather wait, it’s all the same to me.”

I rise to my feet and place the crystal inside my pocket.  Then freeze and narrow my eyes.  The medics would have had them removed wouldn’t they?  If I was really me as I was, where did I get my outfit?  It couldn’t be the same one either.  The area above my navel was undamaged and clean.  ...Relatively.

~Sally~

~Eh?~

~The name you gave me a lifetime ago.  Sally~

I smiled and winced as powerful emotions sheared through my chest.  I don’t have the words.

“Thank you, Sally.”

---

When I arrived back at the bunker the sun was setting.  I used what chakra I could to shift the color of my skin and clothes to more closely resemble the woods.  Stressful as it was to do so, it was only a precaution.  If I was seen at all I would be in trouble.

My hackles raised and I felt something building in the back of my mind.

~They’re searching for us~

~what!?  Why!~ I schooled my features and sighed, ~I guess I should have expected as much.  It’s not like I left my body where they should find it.~

~Maybe…  All the same, try to get inside.~

With all the patience of a sloth, I made my way toward the rocky slope.  My heart stilled as I found a guard scanning the ground.

~Just like that.  Keep moving.~

~Does it matter?  That’s a ninja right there.  If I can see them, they can see me.~

~You have the advantage of the attacker, choosing when to reveal yourself.  You also know where to look.   It might not be possible to reach the vents unnoticed, but we don’t have to cross that bridge just yet.  I’m beginning to believe they don’t know who they’re looking for~

~How do you figure?~

~Don’t get your hopes up.  I could be wrong about that yet.  Avoid the entrance.  Be where no student has been before.~

~You make it sound easier to run~

~That would be an exceptionally bad idea.  The traces of outsider chakra are faint on the guards by the time they arrive.  The further you get from other humans, the more distinct your trail will become.  Any doubt of who or where you are will evaporate.~

I winced at the blow to my ego and worried my arm.  Here I’d thought I’d had a breakthrough.  I hadn’t let my inner thoughts keep me idle.  End to end, I crept over stones and roots and around bushes. Closing the distance between myself and the slope.

~Would the crystal thingy help with that?~

~One day, maybe, but that would be like setting off a flare.  Those crystals are based off of your chakra.  You would be effectively signing your name across multiple acres.~

I bit back a curse and reined in every ounce of my chakra, purging the thought.

~They’re moving.  They’re tracking us somehow.~

*I glanced toward the main path and prepared myself to run.  I could not afford to let myself be seen.  The idea that they knew where I was already stoked my senses.  Adrenaline surged through my veins.  My breathing and stance conspired to raise my blood flow, and my heart thundered like a war drum.

In the silence beneath the twilight sky, I pivoted and fled.  My leg rose with the weight of a mountain.  For a moment I watched as the shadow of persons from my past overtook me.  My leg reached the apex of its arc and I vowed to myself.

~I will not be caught tonight~

A forced calm flowed over my mind and the world around me tilted.  Lurching to the left, lurching to the right.  I closed my mind’s eye and willed my body to be brave.  From deep within, a feeling came alive.

A thought.

A dream.

A memory.

I stood in a field.  The report of clashing steel echoed around me.  The forest was green and alive, but as I looked to the sky I could feel its presence fading.  Warriors burned through chakra like flames to a map.  I reached out and wished that this war would never reach me.  I reached back and knew that the destruction of this place was imminent.  A year, ten years, a hundred years.

Between my fingers, my heart fluttered.  A flow of green chakra burst from my hands and trailed toward the sky.  In my mind, my desires were childish, immature, but in my heart I knew I needed them.

The sky shattered.  My breath caught, drawing in a sea of wonder.  Thick veins of green branches out across the heavens.  The air thickened and wrapped around me, grounding me, yet driving my hopes into the sky.

Burst by burst, I tore my hands free and pressed towards the sky.  The ground trembled beneath my feet.

The sky split open.  Massive bolts struck down from the sky.  An electric current flowed around my heart as a lens formed overhead.  For a moment I thought I was seeing stars, but then the motes of light formed into shapes that rose into the sky.  A rift split the sky open and shook the heavens.

Shards of stone and dirt and splinter peppered me.  I grit my teeth and hissed in anticipation of pain.  It was like the fist of the world closed around to claim my voice as a chorus of former selves flared beneath my skin.

It burned.  My tears like oceans hammered down on trenches carves around my very soul.  My body shook like shattering glass and yet with the chakra flowing through me I had never seen myself stand so tall.

Buildings sized chunks of opaque stone slammed themselves into the rift, sealing the nail of light beneath a pipe of slag.  More and more piled onto the melting mass, until the light of the burning center could be seen no more.  A pillar of mineral crystal hovering hundreds of meters in the air.

I clapped my hands together and voiced:

“Creation of all things: Pillar of heaven - Dungeon core.”

The flow of chakra ceased and for a moment all was still.  High above, the wind howled as the monolith began its descent.

---

I tapped my hand against the nearest tree as I sprinted forward.  Despite the perceived weight in my leg, my speed was explosive.  I struck sod, root and stone as I would an anvil and drove the wind like good steel.  My heart thundered and my stomach formed into knots and as I neared limits I twisted my features in concentration.

And then I started all over again.  A single slow meticulous breath.  Agonizing fatigue collapsed into my veins and my chakra glowed with twice its usual intensity.

A sheen of sweat coated my skin and dried along shallow veins.  The voice of trees shouted at me as I passed and the earth spoke of lands ahead.  I felt the light of my skin mold to the canopy.  The beating of my own heart threatened to betray me if I turned back.

Taken by the world around me, I ran, even as waves of sweat poured out into the forest around me.

~You do remember~

Sally’s voice was meek, and I let the enthusiasm show on my face.

~This feeling?  How could I ever forget?  This is what I live for.~

I drag my fingers through the presence in my mind.  My physical arm trailed uselessly behind me.  All but necrotized buy the amount of focus swirling between my torso and legs.  My face burned and as I felt the cold of night air piercing the meat of my will I ceased.

The world around me froze.  A split second burned into my memory.  A handful or yards away, The shinobi bearing down on me stood as sound as two strangers with their hands on my shoulders.

I felt my cheeks relax and my features soften.  I tilt my shoulders forward and fling a chink of stone forward.  

~Fire style: Tide of blue flames~

The gemstone cracked and a soft blue flame swallowed the forest ahead of me.

Meanwhile, a river of chakra flowed through me.  My footprints glowed as I passed over them.  After several heartbeats I reached out and braced myself against a familiar tree.

~Swift release: Recall blink - Rite of the torchbearer.~

I glanced toward the natural well and found the guard absent.  Expected, but reassuring all the same.  I moved from the shadow of one tree to the next and climbed the slope, making faces as my hands gathered rotting moss and algae.

I reached the top and glanced at the vent overhead and groaned.

~This isn’t going to be a pleasant process is it?~

~It will not.~

It took hours.  Hours of collapsing and reconstructing my body between ducts.   Hours of navigating awkward and cramped spaces.  Hours of irregular and tedious stops to bootstrap my way around bolts and soft sections of ductwork.  Hours of cultivating my chakra and purging the evidence left behind.

I was halfway through the ceiling vent before I recognized the ward.

Calling it a medical bed had been too generous.  The white paneled room was sparsely furnished.  By that I mean there was an industrial sink and a cafeteria trolly with padding on it.  The latter was centered in the room.  Tools and vials I really did not want to read into were stored beneath the ‘cot’.  I rolled myself onto the padding and almost immediately something slithered beneath my brow and dragged me to sleep.

===Redacted scene===

*I froze on the spot.

Fear is a powerful thing.  It can stop grown men in their tracks and route armies with a lesser force.  Animals live their lives by it, and through it sense beyond the rule of five.

Being run down by people bigger, faster and more experienced.  In the face of overwhelming odds I knew only one feeling.

Certainty.  With a clear and imminent goal to focus my thoughts, those thoughts turned to survival.  The doubt that’d clung to me fell to earth in a heap, and I felt clairvoyant beneath my own skin.  My fingers tapped the bark of trees and it was like watching rippled form over a tranquil lake.

Waves expanded outward through the forest while the moving humans bore and shredded through it like cliffs on a map.  I danced through trees, making split second turns.  My muscles itched and I only became faster with time.  I watched as ninja swept through the forest, leaping past like salmon.  I shifted in the shadow of a tree and reversed my course. 

Palms of excited chakra reaching out from the trees around me and slamming into my chest.  My dantian - the backbone of the network and gate of death - Erupted like a fireball and lifted my limbs like an updraft would a bird.

I flew as the crow flew.  Tossing trees behind and beneath and hurdling over stone with the blast of a meteorite.  As I neared the borders of familiar territory, ribbons of chakra flowed around me.

“Aaaa~suuu~raaaa~” I crossed my hands over my chest and listened to the butterfly wing beat.  Floating across a bubble of weightlessness and watching as ninja passed nearby, chakra trailing behind them.

I found my feet and looked up to find a familiar vent overhead.  I leapt up and smashed through the frame.  First upper than lower and rolled away from the opening.  It was tight.  The crawlspace pressed at my back and chest at the same time, and it took a ridiculous mix of finesse and relaxation to shift myself around.  My body felt like warm clay.

I scanned the duct ahead and counted the intersections I could see, then went over in my head all the different purpose built areas I’d been through.  It wasn’t until I was catching flies in my mouth that I realized that I was asleep on my feet…

Dang.  Wouldn’t it be nice if I skipped that part?  Tugging myself from the grip of lethargy, I shimmied my way toward the medical area.  My breathing slowed and I stopped when I found the stretch of my jaw to be borderline vocal.

I blinked and found a light cutting through the ducts.  I brought one knee to my chest and found daylight streaming in from the outside.  There were noises.  Footsteps and lamps peeking around the ductwork.  Gingerly, I slid my leg forward and started the lengthy crawl towards the medical ward.

Through a mix of arduous chakra manipulation and physical care, I managed to squeeze between the ducts without angering the mother of all steel pans.  I found the medical ward just as I left it.  Eerily so.

As soon as my head hit the cot, I was out like a light.  I blinked.  I looked up to see a sky of red and the silhouette of a barren forest.  Six ghouls lurched toward me.  And I fought the urge to scream.

Well… no.  Not really.  I couldn’t make any sound at all.  It was like my face was set in stone.  Every now and then, warbled voices and strobing colors pulsed across the landscape.  It feel too… forced to be a dream.  Like someone was trying too hard to compensate for bad props.

Then I caught a few words.

~Really?  This again?~

I would have laughed if I could.  Like I had the energy to fight my way out of a dreamworld.

---

I - “And you’re sure he’s contained?”

“Yes.  The boy is under a powerful sharingan illusion.” A raspy voice replied, “A guard is posted at the door, and the seal is warded against tampering.”

---

“Sir, an intruder was detected spying on one of the training grounds.”

I - “Detected?  They haven’t been contained?”

“Local patrols failed to turn up anything, although the sensors agree they were still present.”

I - “Sensors did?  I find it hard to believe that a spy has outmaneuvered a Root shinobi.  Who helped them?”  While the first question was rhetorical, the second was not.  The camp manager fully expected a name.

“The enforcer was summoned for an interrogation.  Ongoing as of~vvv”

The manager lifted him by the collar, fingers bracing against his throat, “I should kill you.  Why are you here without that information?”

“Pgur- Protoc-col sir,” the messenger choked out without a hint of fear or resentment in his voice, “The commanding officer to be informed of security concerns short of immediate resolution.  A copy of the timestamps are on your desk.”

The manager’s eye twitched, but the loyal soldier was transparent.  The only question was on whose neck it would fall.  It would be a pity to die and leave the camp exposed.  Fortunately the messenger knew his number.  That shortened the chance of leaks significantly.

I - “Make your way to cell three.  I have a report to write.”

There could be no sugar coating or hidden meanings.  Every detail and condition of the camp had to be put into place.  Every step and pillar of command referred to and every lot accounted for to the last.  Even if- nay, especially if it meant he would die for oversight, the eye of lord Danzo would see everything.  With a sigh, the manager placed down his quill and left the draft to dry.  Preparing a falcon.  Redundancy was key, even if important details would only come later.

---

The bird took to the skies and beat a line toward an outpost near Konoha.  “Glory to the master.”