Chapter 34: Genius (2)
The moon was high now, casting long, pale shadows across the Hatake garden. The only sound was the wet, rhythmic thud of the fountain and the ragged breathing of a four-year-old boy.
Naruto sat cross-legged on the porch. The fresh rubber ball was in his hand. His skin was raw, red and blistering where the chakra burns had torn through, but steam was already rising from the wounds. The Uzumaki vitality, boosted by the demon in his gut, was knitting the flesh back together before the blood could even dry.
He didn't look at his hand. He looked at the ball.
'Crack, not pop,' he thought, his mind replaying the failure on a loop. 'I treated it like a stone to be crushed. But the objective isn't destruction... It's expansion.'
[Analysis: Structural integrity of rubber requires uniform pressure. Previous attempt utilized directional force. Result: Rupture. Goal: Inflation.]
He needed to be everywhere inside the ball at once.
Jiraiya watched from the railing, a cup of sake in his hand. He hadn't moved for an hour. Kakashi had vanished into the house, perhaps to sleep, perhaps to watch from a darker corner.
"You're trying to drown it," Jiraiya said softly. "You're pouring so much chakra in that there's no room for the energy to move. It's just a solid block of power. You need to give it space to spin."
Naruto paused. Space.
He closed his eyes. He visualized the interior of the rubber ball not as a solid void to be filled, but as a room. He didn't need to pack the room with furniture. He needed to fill it with wind.
He drew on his chakra again. This time, he didn't compress it. He spun it thin. He created a web of high-velocity threads inside the rubber shell, thousands of them, spinning in a chaotic, multidirectional frenzy. He pushed them outward, painting the inside of the rubber with pure friction.
The ball vibrated. It didn't shake violently like before. It hummed. A low, dangerous sound like a hive of angry hornets.
{That is better,} Kurama's voice curled through his mind, {You are finally learning that power is not just weight...It is speed.}
Naruto gritted his teeth. The burn in his palm returned, sharper this time. The rubber was heating up, expanding. He felt the material stretching, thinning, reaching its yield point.
He didn't pull back. He pushed.
POP!
It wasn't a gunshot this time. It was a clean, sharp explosion. The rubber ball disintegrated, blasting shreds of hot material outward. A shockwave of air rippled through the garden, knocking the empty sake cup from the railing.
Jiraiya caught the cup before it hit the ground. He looked at the boy.
Naruto opened his hand. It was empty. Scorch marks traced his fingers, but the ball was gone.
"Phase two," Naruto said, his voice hoarse. "Complete."
He didn't wait for praise. He turned his head, his blue eyes locking onto Jiraiya. "The third step."
Jiraiya set the cup down. The playful glint was gone from his eyes. He looked tired, and wary.
"You've been at this for six hours," the Sage said. "Your hand looks like hamburger meat. Even jonin-level ninjas would take a week to master the power stage.... You did it in an evening."
"I am efficient," Naruto replied. He stood up, his legs trembling slightly with exhaustion. He ignored the weakness. "The third step, Jiraiya."
Jiraiya reached into his pouch. He pulled out a small, ordinary balloon. It wasn't filled with water. It was filled with air.
"This is the last one," Jiraiya said, holding it up. "And it's the hardest. You have the rotation. You have the power. Now you have to combine them."
He tossed the balloon to Naruto. It felt light as a feather.
"If you use the power you just used on the rubber ball," Jiraiya warned, "you'll pop this before you even start. If you use the rotation from the water balloon, it won't be strong enough to maintain shape. You have to create a shell of chakra to hold the typhoon in place. You have to be the balloon."
Naruto held the small object. It was fragile, weak.
Containment.
This was his specialty. He had lived his entire second life containing things. He contained Aiden's memories. He contained the System's cold logic. He contained the Nine-Tails' rage. He contained the village's hatred.
'I am a cage,' he thought, looking at the fragile skin of the balloon. 'Now I just have to build one out of air.'
He focused. He didn't need to experiment this time; he knew the feeling. He remembered the feeling of the suppression seal Danzō had used, the feeling of his own 'Intent-Ward.'
He began to spin the chakra in his palm. Fast. Violent. But around it, he wove a second layer. A dense, static skin of energy. A barrier.
The balloon wobbled and distorted as the air inside it churned.
It didn't pop.
Sweat ran down Naruto's nose. This was harder than the rubber ball. The rubber ball fought back. The air balloon just surrendered. He had to be the structure. He had to be the wall.
[Warning: Chakra control limits approaching. Neural strain at 85%.]
He pushed the warning aside into a partitioned room of his mind. He focused on the shape. A sphere. Perfect. Unbroken.
He poured more power in. The rotation screamed in his hand, a high-pitched whine. The air inside the balloon was spinning so fast it was creating a vacuum, pulling the skin inward while the centrifugal force pushed it out.
Balance.
"He's compressing it," Kakashi's voice came from the doorway. He was leaning there again, his eye wide. "He's not just maintaining the shape... He's compressing the density."
Jiraiya stepped forward, his eyes locked on Naruto's hand.
The balloon began to glow. A faint, swirling blue light emanated from inside the rubber.
Naruto felt the limit. The balloon was going to burst. The container was too weak for the contents.
So he removed the container.
With a sharp intake of breath, Naruto clawed his fingers and ripped the balloon away.
Logic dictated the air should dissipate. Physics dictated the energy should scatter.
But it didn't.
For one second, two seconds, three seconds, a swirling, violent sphere of blue chakra hung in Naruto's palm. It was rough. It was unstable. It looked less like a ball and more like a captured storm, jagged and wild.
But it held.
The wind in the garden died. The sound of the fountain seemed to stop. The only thing in the world was the roar of the chakra in the boy's hand.
Naruto looked at it. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. It was pure, unadulterated power, held in check by nothing but his will.
[Quest Complete: Mastery of Rotation.]
[Skill Acquired: Rasengan (Imperfect).]
[Proficiency: Level 1.]
He let the chakra fade. The sphere dissolved into a gust of wind that ruffled his bangs.
Naruto fell to his knees. His chakra reserves, usually bottomless, felt hollowed out. Not empty, but shocked. He had forced a river through a straw.
Jiraiya was there in an instant, catching him before he hit the wood. The large man lowered him gently, his hand checking Naruto's pulse.
"You idiot," Jiraiya breathed, but his voice was thick with awe. "You absolute, stubborn idiot."
Naruto looked up at his teacher. His vision was blurring at the edges. "Did I... pass?"
Jiraiya looked at the burned, trembling hand, then at Naruto's face. He looked at the boy who had learned an A-rank jutsu in a single day, a feat that defied every rule of ninja training.
"Yeah," Jiraiya whispered. "You passed. You passed too well."
Naruto closed his eyes, letting the darkness take him. He needed to sleep. He needed to file this data.
As his breathing leveled out, Jiraiya stood up. He looked at Kakashi. The Copy Ninja was staring at the spot where the Rasengan had been, his single eye cold and hard.
"That wasn't the Rasengan," Kakashi said quietly.
"It was," Jiraiya replied, his face grim. "But it was different. Minato's Rasengan was smooth. Perfect rotation."
He looked down at the sleeping boy.
"The kid's chakra... it's heavy. Dense. When he spun it, I saw it." Jiraiya looked at his own hand, remembering the feeling of the air vibrating. "He didn't just rotate the chakra, Kakashi. He was grinding it. Like millstones."
Kakashi looked at the boy, really looked at him. "A weapon that grinds," he murmured. "That fits him."
Jiraiya turned to look at the moon. "He's four years old. And he just mastered the shape manipulation that took the Fourth Hokage three years."
"He's a genius," Kakashi said.
"No," Jiraiya replied, a chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with the night air. "Genius is learning the rules faster than anyone else. This..."
He looked at the small, sleeping figure who clutched a comb in his sleep even now.
"This is someone who is rewriting the rules entirely. And I'm starting to wonder if we're raising a Hokage, or something that will eat the Kage for breakfast."
.
.
.
.
From the shadows of the garden wall, a single leaf fell, sliced cleanly in half by the lingering wind of the boy's jutsu.
And high above, in the darkness of the village, a single eye snapped open in a room full of roots.
He is ready.
*********A/N********
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