Lightning Strikes

Natsume arrived at the training grounds, her hair in a mess and the bags under her eyes as deep as ever. "I came... as soon as I... got the note, Zyxis-senpai!" Her breath came in fast pants as she tried to get enough air into her lungs. His note had been vary vague. 'Come to the training grounds.' Well, here she was; she had sprinted the whole way from her home to the training grounds. "What... did you... want?"

She groaned slightly and straightened up, offering a slight, confused smile.

She frowned (because it was most certainly not a pout) up at him, but eventually decided to accept his apology, mutely taking the head pats. He was lucky it had been about teaching her new things. He might not have gotten away with being so vague in his notes had it been anything less.

As he talked about what techniques he knew, Natsume grew more and more excited. She was so lucky to know such capable shinobi! She shifted with a slight impatience, waiting for him to finish listing what he knew—and he knew quite a bit—so that she could answer him. "Teach me everything." Her eyes seemed to glimmer with a predatory hint. She leaned closer. "Jibashi. Body flicker. Flicker movement. Soul expulsion. Genjutsu. Taijutsu." She grinned up at him, though her smile seemed sharper than usual. "I want to know it all."

If Zyxis did nothing to stop her, Natsume would eventually blink and shake herself out of it, her hands half-way to grabbing him by the collar. "Ah." She blinked a few more times, and then quietly, almost shyly, would add: "Please."

Though she did not exactly like to admit it, Natsume supposed that Zyxis had a point when he mentioned Taijutsu, and the learning of techniques in that field, being a possible waste of time for somebody of her skillset. She did not have the strength for most Taijutsu techniques. It'd be about as intimidating as a baby kitten trying to roar. Still... "While I might not be able to do the more advanced techniques, or even be proficient at the basics, knowing and understanding the basics of something makes it, thus after, possible to properly combat something relating to it, even if you do not know that precise jutsu." She leaned back slightly as she tried to put her thoughts into words—they sometimes went too fast, slipping out of reach before she could verbalize them. "If you know any basic taijutsu moves... it'd be nice if you could teach them to me sometime. Maybe now, maybe later."

Her lips smacked shut together, putting an end to her rambling, as he began to demonstrate one of the techniques: Flicker Movement. To the untrained eye, or to one less curious and observant than Natsume, it would seem they were simply moving faster—but she knew better than that. From before he had brought his hands together into those seals—Rat and then Boar—to his faster than usual punches, she had noticed a visible increase in the speed of everything he did. The usual rhythm of his breathing, slightly faster. The twitches of his eyes, lightning quick. It wasn't just that he moved faster, it was that everything was faster for him.

She managed to catch his explanation, one that was faster and slightly higher in sound, but it was not very... informative. She furrowed her brows and concentrated on the space around her, as he had explained. "When you say the space around me, you mean the wind?" She closed her eyes and slowly lifted her hands, feeling gravity pushing down on her and her general existence. She did the seals. Rat, then boar. "The forces at play?" Mould her chakra and the space around her. Make it hers.

She tried to go beyond what he had described, tried to take the space around her and speed it up. That was what was happening, after all, something was speeding up.

Her eyes flicked open. She did not feel any marked change even after a minute of concentrating; perhaps it was not something you would notice if you did not try moving?

She tried throwing a punch. It seemed to be normal speed. She did not feel any sudden increase to her body's movements, did not feel like she was physically faster or able to react any quicker than before. She frowned and looked up to tell him exactly that.

She felt normal. But when she looked up, looked around her, she realized that the rest of the world... didn't. A leaf in the distance fell, excruciatingly slow, to the ground. The slight rustle of the breeze seemed to play in slow motion, as if fighting against the world to make its natural movement. "You were not speeding yourself up," she gasped in realization. "but slowing the world down."

She grinned at him. "What will be next, Zyxis-senpai?"

She felt as if she were vibrating, what with her excitement. If she had been any faster, her vibrations might even make noise.

She had to calm down. Centre herself. She focused on breathing slowly through her nose, then breathing out with her mouth. It was hard to keep her excitement contained, however, as he demonstrated the famous Body Flicker—she had spent so much time envying the ultra fast movements of the shinobi that would flash by as nothing more than a blur. Now it was her turn to learn it!

Thankfully, Zyxis explained it in its entirety before showing Natsume the seals, or she would have most certainly shattered born or torn skin in her haste to try the jutsu. Due to his warning, however, Natsume approached the technique with a newfound caution. She had never known that there was such a limitation to the Body Flicker. "Has that ever happened to you?" she asked absent-mindedly. "Shattering your bones, or tearing your skin, that is." Her morbid mind was curious about what such injuries might look like or feel like. It would probably be best if she did not try to find out for herself.

She brought her hands together into a textbook perfect Ram sign. Her chakra swirled inside of her, drawn to her seal, and coiled into a tight ball at her core. "An instantaneous burst? Maybe like... this?" She tried various things. She tried releasing that ball from her core, and it simply dissipated back into its natural flow, lacking the shebang of a burst. Then, she tried coiling the chakra as tight as possible, then forcing it to burst by mentally popping it like a balloon—she had felt a rush, but had not moved anywhere.

"I'm going about it wrong. How would I move myself with chakra?" It was as if a lightbulb went off above her head. "Aha!" She imagined the ball of chakra bursting out from her back, as if propelling her forward.

Propel forward she did—a solid 50 meters straight into one of the many trees surrounding them. "Ow." Still wrapped around the tree, Natsume slowly slid down until her bottom touched the ground, and then let her torso fall backwards with a flop. It was quite the comical sight. "That was... not what I was expecting," she said with a groan as she looked over at Zyxis. From her position, he was upside down. "Do I always go that fast?" She rubbed her face. "And that far?"

If Zyxis told her how to finetune those two factors, she would spend the next half hour practicing the body flicker. She would try short distances and longer distances, try it mid-jump and on the ground. She would try bursting the ball with it facing in the other direction, launching herself in various directions. She would even try it while standing atop water—she would learn quickly how to instantaneously start and stop the water walking technique to make sure she did not get whiplash upon trying to move while stuck or fall into the water upon arrival.

She had not realized just how much energy it took to perform body flickers one after the other until Zyxis told her to take a break. It was good that he had been looking out for her—she felt slightly drained but still capable of learning a few more jutsu.

She watched carefully as he went through the five hand seals and then released a powerful wave of electricity from his hands. She threw her arms up to protect her face from the torn bits of dirt flying everywhere. "Amazing..." After he gestured for her to try her hand at it, Natsume would bring her hands together into the first seal. Boar. Ram. Snake. Horse. Dragon. She felt her chakra gathering to her palms, remembered the feeling of Sparks and tried to intensify it.

She thrust her hands, palms out, to the ground, as Zyxis had. The lightning sparked violently and shot straight into the ground, but did not travel like Zyxis' web had.

She frowned and went through the hand seals again, slowing down slightly to really focus on the chakra she was gathering. She tried once more, but this time, it fizzled out before her, not even striking the ground. She tried again, but it did not have the destructive power that Zyxis' had. She was doing it wrong. She was failing.

She clapped her hands together aggressively and rapidly went through the seals. She needed to do this right. She needed... More power. More chakra! Everything she had, it would go in to this. She snarled as she landed on the last seal: Dragon, then threw her hands out. The lightning exploded between her hands, bursting like a finicky grenade while she still held it. She turned her head away and closed her eyes to protect them, but that did little to help her hands that had been exposed directly to the lightning.

Her hands fell to either side of her, numb and covered in thin, fractal patterned scarring. She swallowed, red with shame. Had he not just warned her about being careful with jutsu, to avoid getting harmed? "Zyxis, I..." She chewed on her lip and tried to clench her hands, but she could not feel them. They did nothing but hang uselessly on either side of her.

She avoided his eyes. "I must go."

Surely, there was nothing wrong with making a mistake. Knowing that did nothing to ease the pressure in her chest, the tears forming in her eyes. She had made another mistake. Messed up. She should have been more careful, taken it a bit more slowly. But she had been so eager. So certain. "See you." She took a step back, then another, and then turned on her heel and sprinted back the way she had come from.