Another Boring Uchiha Power Fantasy.

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[Obtained: Ninja Art: Bare-Handed Blade Block!]

Name: Mikoto Uchiha

Age: 13

Rank: Chunin

Affinity: Lightning Affinity, Fire Affinity, Yin Affinity, Water Affinity

Unique: Immense Chakra Reserves, Sharingan (Two Tomoe), Advanced Growth Rate

Skills: Fire Style Mastery, Water Style Mastery, Lightning Style Mastery, Yin Style Mastery, Clone Jutsu, Substitution Jutsu, Transformation Jutsu, Shurikenjutsu, Advanced Taijutsu (Ninja Art: Bare-Handed Blade Block), Elite Genjutsu, Body Flicker, Perfect Chakra Control, Uchiha Style: Kenjutsu, Stealth, Survival Knowledge, Cooking, Medical Ninjutsu (Mystical Palm, Chakra Scalpel, Poison Extraction Jutsu), Fūinjutsu Affinity, Pedagogy Mastery, Space-Time Ninjutsu Affinity, Seven Heavens Breathing Method, Musical Talent, Craftsmanship Aptitude

Equipment: Kunai, Shuriken, Smoke Bomb, Explosive Tags, Poison Gas Bomb, Flash Bomb, Gas/Sleep Bomb, Food Pills x102, Wire Strings, Shark Skin, Giant Folding Fan, Bingo Book, Training Weights, Fūma Shuriken x100, Hero Water x10

Mikoto wasn’t quite sure about the new taijutsu technique she got. She didn’t know how often she would be caught without Shark Skin but maybe it could be useful. In her opinion, it was better to have a skill than to not have it and need it.

Besides that she found her boys behind the eastern supply depot, in a clearing that the boys had claimed as their own sometime during the week she'd been buried in the hospital.

They'd made it theirs. Training posts carved from fallen timber. A flat stone that served as a table. Three bedrolls arranged in a triangle around a fire pit that was cold but well-used. And in the center of the clearing, three eleven-year-old boys doing three completely different things.

Chōza was hitting a tree with his staff. The Adamantine Staff cracked against the trunk with a sound like an explosion and the tree shuddered and bark chips flew and Chōza grinned and hit it again. His feet were planted. His hips rotated into each swing. The basics Mikoto had forced into him had become instinct.

Inoichi was sitting cross-legged near the stream that ran along the clearing's edge, both chakra blades laid across his knees, water nature chakra flowing along the steel in a steady blue shimmer. His eyes were closed. He was concentrating on something, his brow furrowed, the water coating fluctuating between loose and sharp as he experimented with the form.

Shikaku was standing alone at the far end of the clearing with his umbrella open.

She watched him for a moment before announcing herself. He had the umbrella braced against his shoulder, the tool angled toward the ground, and his shadow stretched beneath it in a shape that didn't match his body. The shadow was wider than it should have been, reaching beyond the umbrella's edge, probing outward in thin tendrils that crept along the grass. He was channeling his Yin nature through the umbrella and using its shadow as an extension of his own.

She smiled.

"Mikoto-sensei!" Chōza saw her first. He dropped the staff mid-swing and ran toward her with a face full of light. "You're okay!"

Inoichi's eyes snapped open. He was on his feet in a second, blades sheathed, jogging over. "Sensei! We heard about the spy in the hospital. Are you hurt?"

Shikaku closed the umbrella. He walked over at his own pace, hands in his pockets, but the small smile on his face said everything his posture didn't.

Mikoto let Chōza hug her. She let Inoichi's hand land on her shoulder. She met Shikaku's eyes and nodded.

"I'm fine," she said. "Sorry I was a bit busy."

"You were saving lives," Chōza said. "That's not something to be sorry about, sensei."

"I still missed you." She looked at the clearing. At the training posts and the fire pit and the three distinct areas where each boy had been working. "Show me what you've been doing."

They showed her.

Shikaku went first. He formed three hand signs and pressed his palm to the ground. The earth shifted beneath his feet, rising into a wall about waist-high. Earth Style: Mud Wall.

"I picked it up from watching the reconstruction team at the outpost," he said. "And one of the earth style users here showed me the signs when I asked."

Chōza went next. Same jutsu, different result. His wall was taller, thicker, but cruder. The surface was lumpy and the top edge was jagged.

"Mine's bigger than yours." Chōza said.

"Mine's better than yours." Shikaku said.

Inoichi stepped forward. He formed signs and held his hand over the stream. Water rose from the surface in the form of a wall.

"Mine’s the best out of all of us!" Inoichi said.

Mikoto looked at all three of them.

They were growing. Now they were training on their own, seeking out other teachers when she wasn't available, adapting to what they had. The war was making them into shinobi faster than any normal.

"I'm proud of all of you." She told them.

Then she got to work.

"Shikaku, Chōza. Earth style." She paused. Took a breath. "I have to be honest with you both. I don't know any earth style jutsu. I've mastered fire, water, lightning, and yin, and I'm currently working on wind. Earth isn't in my skillset yet." She bowed her head slightly. "I'm sorry. I wish I could teach you more."

"It's fine. We don’t expect you to know everything." Shikaku said.

"But I want you to keep developing it. There are earth style users all over this camp. Ask around. Find someone willing to show you techniques. Most shinobi will teach a genin who asks politely, especially during downtime. If you can't find anyone, I'll figure something out."

Shikaku nodded. Chōza nodded.

"What I can teach you," she continued, "is how to integrate what you already have with what you carry."

She turned to Shikaku.

"Your umbrella is chakra-conductive. You've already figured out the shadow extension, I saw it when I walked up. But earth nature through the umbrella's frame will harden it beyond what the material already offers. Channel earth chakra into it and you're carrying something that can break swords and protect yourself. And your Yin nature." She paused. "You’ll have to figure that part out for yourself. I’m not too sure how your clan’s jutsu works specifically."

Shikaku nodded. He looked at the umbrella in his hand.

"I’ve already been thinking of stuff, I got it." he said quietly.

"I knew you would." Mikoto smiled.

Inoichi was next.

"Water nature through your blades," Mikoto said. "You've been using it as a coating. Defensive. That's good. But water has other forms." She drew a kunai and held it up. "Watch."

She coated the kunai in water chakra, the same coating Inoichi had been practicing. Then she changed the shape. The water condensed, hardened, crystallized along the blade's edge into something sharp and rigid. The kunai's cutting edge extended by two inches, translucent, gleaming.

"Solidified water," she said. "Harder to form, harder to maintain, but it gives you reach and cutting power. You can also shape it into a high-pressure stream along the blade's edge. Sharp enough to cut through most materials."

She released the shape and the water fell away.

"And there's one more thing," she said. "Your clan's technique."

Inoichi straightened.

"I don’t know exactly how it works, but you should be able to channel it through the blades just like Shikaku is able to use his umbrella with his clan’s jutsu."

Inoichi stared at her.

"I can do that?" he said.

"Probably. If you start by channeling Yin chakra through the blades during practice, you might be able to figure something out."

Chōza raised his hand.

"What about me?"

Mikoto looked at the Adamantine Staff.

"Your staff isn't chakra-conductive like their weapons," she said. "Earth coating would harden it, but it's already harder than diamond. That's a waste of chakra for you. What your staff can do is grow with you."

She tapped the staff with her knuckle.

"I noticed when you use your clan’s jutsu your clothes also grow big alongside you. I figured that this means your weapon can scale with your jutsu. An unbreakable staff the size of a tree trunk, swung by arms the size of a normal person's torso. That's something you can use. Nobody else on this team has a weapon that grows."

Chōza looked at the staff. He looked at his hands. He grinned.

"But," Mikoto said, "using your clan’s jutsu with a non-conductive weapon is more draining than without. The staff doesn't channel your chakra, so the expansion costs more stamina. You'll need to build your reserves and continue to work on your chakra control. Which means more training."

"More training is fine. More training means more food breaks." Chōza said.

"It means more food breaks for you." Shikaku muttered.

…

The days settled into a pattern.

Mikoto trained the boys before dawn. Physical conditioning, sparring, breathing exercises. She sparred them three-on-one with her Sharingan active, correcting their flaws, elevating their foundations. They were better together now. Shikaku lead their movements. Inoichi corrected any flaws. Chōza hit whatever needed hitting. The Ino-Shika-Cho formation was nearing perfection considering what they were working with.

After morning training, they split.

Mikoto went to the hospital. She was back on patient duty, her hands perfectly healed, the food pill crash fully behind her. She healed through the morning and taught through the afternoon. The medical corps around her was growing stronger. Medics who had struggled with the Mystical Palm a week ago were now using it on real patients under supervision. Two of them had functional Chakra Scalpels. The overall quality of care at Kaminari Pass had risen noticeably since she'd started teaching, and Arata made sure that fact went into his reports.

Inoichi went to the hospital too.

He showed up on the second day and found Arata.

"I want to learn medical ninjutsu," he said.

Arata looked at him. Then he looked at Mikoto, who was working three cots away and pretending not to listen.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I watched someone die in front of me and I couldn't do anything except hold pressure on her chest." Inoichi's voice was steady. His eyes were not. "I don't want that to happen again."

Arata handed him a scroll. "Anatomy. Start with chapter one. When you can name every bone in the human body, every major organ, and every primary blood vessel, come back and I'll let you touch a fish. If you’re fast enough, you might be able to get in on your of your captain’s lessons."

Inoichi took the book. He sat in the corner of the hospital and read for four hours. He came back the next day and read for four more. On the third day, he named every bone in the human body without looking at the page. Arata handed him a fish.

Chōza trained.

He practiced the Expansion Jutsu in the clearing, expanding his body and swinging the staff with it. The expansion was rough. His body ballooned to two times its normal size, the muscle and bone growing in a way that looked painful, and the staff grew with it, the black metal stretching and thickening until it was the size of a young tree. He swung it once. The impact cratered the ground and knocked over two of the training posts.

The reversion was harder. His arm snapped back to normal size and Chōza sat down heavily, breathing hard, his chakra noticeably drained. The technique was demanding even for an Akimichi, and doing it while holding a non-conductive weapon made it worse.

He did it again anyway. And again.

Between training sessions, he ate. He found the mess tent and became a familiar face there. The cooks liked him because he complimented everything and ate everything and never left food on his plate. He liked the cooks because they gave him seconds. Sometimes thirds.

Shikaku trained with the umbrella.

Alone. In the mornings and the evenings when the others were occupied. He opened it and closed it and channeled chakra through it and experimented. He found the senbon mechanism on the second day, a spring-loaded release hidden in the ribs that launched hundreds of needles in a radial pattern when triggered. He stared at the scattered senbon on the ground for a full minute.

Then the wire launchers. Thin, strong, chakra-conductive wire that spooled from compartments in the frame and could be deployed with a flick. He shot a wire into a tree, channeled shadow chakra through it, and watched his shadow technique travel along the wire and connect to the tree's shadow on the other side. The paralysis wouldn't do anything to a tree. But it would do plenty to a person standing in that shadow.

He closed the umbrella.

He opened it again and held it above his head and channeled earth chakra into the top. The fabric hardened. He stabbed a kunai at it. The kunai bounced off.

He closed the umbrella and tucked it under his arm and walked back to camp with a satisfied grin on his face. He didn't tell them what he'd found. Not yet. He wanted to see their faces when they found out on their own.

…

The shogi board appeared on the fourth evening.

Shikaku had found it in the supply depot, tucked behind a stack of map cases. A folding board with a full set of pieces, worn from use, left behind by someone who'd either gone home or hadn't. He set it up on a crate near the cook fires and played against himself while he ate his dinner.

A chunin challenged him on the first night. Shikaku won in twenty-three moves. The chunin shook his head and walked away.

A genin challenged him on the second night. Shikaku won in fourteen moves and felt bad about it.

On the third night, Fūma Daigo sat down across from him.

Daigo was a special jonin. Mid-thirties. Lean build, sharp features, with a pair of giant Fūma Shuriken strapped to his back in an X-pattern that made him look like he was carrying two windmills. He had a forward lean even when seated.

"I heard a brat's been beating everyone at shogi," he said. He picked up a piece and examined it. "That true?"

"Two people isn't everyone." Shikaku corrected him.

"Two people who came back whining about losing to a kid." Daigo set the piece back down. "I don't lose to kids."

"Wanna bet, old man?" Shikaku smirked.

"Let's get it going, brat!"

They played.

Daigo was good. He had an aggressive opening, pushing pieces forward fast, creating pressure, forcing Shikaku to react. The Fūma Clan’s known aggression translated directly to the board. He attacked from multiple angles, sacrificed pieces to create openings, and pressed every advantage he found.

Shikaku let him press. He took the aggression, gave ground where it didn't matter, held where it did. By the midgame, Daigo's attacking pieces were extended and unsupported and Shikaku's defensive structure had quietly turned into a cage.

Daigo saw it on move thirty-one. His face changed.

"What the hell…" He looked at the board. Then at Shikaku. Then at the board again.

"Checkmate in four," Shikaku said.

Daigo stared at the board for a full minute. He traced the lines. He counted the moves. His jaw tightened.

"That was bullshit, kid. Let’s go again!" he said.

"Sure."

They played again. Daigo adjusted his strategy. Slower opening. More defensive. Shikaku adjusted too. He won in twenty-eight moves.

Daigo's eye twitched.

"I’m not done yet!"

"It's getting late."

"I said again!"

"Tomorrow."

"Fine! Tomorrow then! Same time. Don't chicken out, brat."

Shikaku packed up the board. "I won’t."

Daigo came back the next evening. And the next. And the next.

He tried everything. Aggressive openings, passive openings, unorthodox strategies, gambits he'd learned from other people smarter than himself. Shikaku beat him every time. Not easily, not always quickly, but always. The boy could read a board and see what was underneath the underneath.

By the fourth game, Daigo had stopped being angry about losing and started being curious about why.

"How old are you, kid?" he asked, mid-game.

"Eleven."

"Eleven." Daigo moved his lance. "Who taught you?"

"My dad."

"Shikato Nara?"

"You know him?"

"I know of him. The Nara clan head. They say he's the best strategist in Konoha." Daigo watched Shikaku counter his lance with a silver general. "I'm starting to believe it."

"He's better than me," Shikaku said.

"You're eleven. Give it time." Daigo leaned back and looked at the board. He was losing again. He knew it. He'd known it eight moves ago. "You're that Uchiha girl’s comrade, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"The medical-nin."

"She's more than a healer."

"Is she? Oh yeah, she did kill that spy and save the hospital I heard." Daigo moved his knight. It was a desperate move and they both knew it. "There's a planning session tomorrow morning in the command tent. I want you there."

Shikaku looked up from the board.

"You're not going to talk," Daigo said. "You're going to sit in the corner and listen. You're going to watch how decisions get made at the high level. And you're going to keep your mouth shut unless someone speaks to you directly. Can you do that?"

"I can do that."

"Good." Daigo looked at the board one more time. He tipped his king. "I surrender. See you tomorrow."

The command tent was larger than Shikaku had expected.

A long table dominated the center, covered in maps of the pass and the surrounding terrain. Markers indicated positions, troop concentrations, supply routes, known enemy emplacements. Seven shinobi stood around the table. Five jonin. Two special jonin, one of whom was Daigo, who had positioned himself near the entrance with his arms folded and his giant shuriken still strapped to his back.

The Aburame commander stood at the head of the table. He was tall, wearing the high-collared coat typical of his clan, dark glasses covering his eyes despite the tent's dim interior. His voice, when he spoke, was calm and quiet.

Shikaku sat on a stool in the corner. He'd been given a cup of water and nothing else. No notebook. No pen. No map of his own.

The commander's glasses turned toward him for a moment when he'd entered. The dark lenses gave nothing away.

"Fūma," the commander said. "That’s one of Mikoto Uchiha's genin, is it not?"

"He's here to learn." Daigo said.

The commander regarded Shikaku for another moment. Then he turned back to the map.

"The ceasefire expires in thirty-six hours," he said. "Intelligence reports indicate that Ame has repositioned their forces along the secondary ridge line. Their eastern flank has thinned, possibly to reinforce the center. We need to discuss our approach for when fighting resumes."

The planning began. The jonin spoke in terms that Shikaku understood and terms that he didn't. Unit deployments. Squad rotations. Flanking approaches through the mountain's eastern gully. Supply line reinforcement schedules. Medical evacuation routes. Contingency plans for if the eastern flank was a feint designed to draw Konoha's strength away from the center.

Shikaku listened. He didn't speak. He watched the markers move on the map and he watched the faces of the people moving them and he simply learned.

One of the jonin proposed a concentrated push through the center of the pass, overwhelming the Ame position with numbers.

"We tried that on day three," another jonin said. "We lost fourteen people and gained twenty meters."

"We have reinforcements now. Different numbers."

"Different numbers, same terrain. The pass is a chokepoint. Numbers don't matter if we can only send ten people through at a time."

The argument went back and forth. Shikaku watched the map. He saw the chokepoint. He saw the eastern flank's thinning. He saw the supply routes and the medical evacuation paths and the terrain markers that showed elevation changes. He saw something that nobody at the table was talking about.

He kept his mouth shut.

He'd been told to listen. So he listened.

But his eyes stayed on the map, and his mind kept working, and when the planning session ended an hour later and Daigo walked him out, the Fūma special jonin looked at him and said, "Well?"

"You told me not to talk."

"I told you not to talk in there. We're out here now."

Shikaku put his hands in his pockets.

"The eastern flank probably isn't a feint," he said. "It's a retreat. They're pulling back to create space for something else. If you look at the terrain markers, there's a dry riverbed that runs behind their secondary position. It's not on the main map but the elevation markers show the depression. If they've repositioned their eastern forces into that riverbed, they're not reinforcing their center. They're preparing a flanking route of their own."

Daigo stared at him.

"I could be wrong," Shikaku said. "I've never commanded a battle. But that's just what I saw..."

Daigo stared at him for a while longer.

"You really are a freak, huh? Just like your captain." he said.

"I think I’m pretty normal actually." Shikaku did not like being called that.

Daigo turned and walked back toward the command tent.

Shikaku watched him go. Then he put his hands in his pockets and walked back to the clearing where Chōza was eating rice and Inoichi was reading an anatomy book and nobody asked him where he'd been because Shikaku was always wandering off somewhere and he always came back.

He sat down and picked up the shogi board and started setting up pieces.

"Who are you playing?" Inoichi asked without looking up from his book.

"Myself," Shikaku said. "Trying something."

He set the pieces in the same configuration as the command tent's map and started moving them.