(Regular POV)
Once I was able to keep Ino from bothering me during my time in the academy I made good progress with my taijutsu style. Sasuke being ever the grumpy try hard made an excellent practice dummy to test the effectiveness of what I came up with after the mimicry of each of my beasts was complete. For example I learned that my hawk form despite being a faithful recreation of the way my hawk moved was absolute garbage. See I used my arms like wings and my feet as the talons but in a spar this simply didn’t work.-
As a result I had to remove the form from the style entirely as using my hands as talons basically only accomplished the same thing my scorpion form did. I was only a little disappointed about this but chalked it up to simply how creating and refining a taijutsu style worked. It was only in my third year at the academy that I was forced to stop working on my taijutsu style and switch to learning ninjutsu as that was the focus of that point onward. First was the three basic jutsu that every ninja was supposed to know, substitution, clone and transformation jutsus.-
Substitution jutsu was the art of switching yourself out for something else nearby before you took damage. Clone jutsu was using chakra to create clones of yourself though the technique was highly flawed with the clones being unable to take hits or directly attack either. That jutsu in particular caught my attention as my snake could do something similar except the clones it created could both take hits and dish them out too. The final jutsu, transformation was a bit peculiar in that it used chakra to change ones appearance to anything roughly the same size as you were.-
This jutsu much like the clone jutsu was flawed in that if you took any damage it was canceled and had several other flaws as well such as needing to match ones chakra signature, the drain on the chakra reserves and even that it required absolute precision in the image you created. In other words it was basically useless against experienced ninjas unless you specialized in stealth and espionage. Still in order to graduate you needed to be able to use all three jutsu at minimum.-
‘I feel like I might have over trained my chakra control.’ I thought with a frown as I pulled off the jutsus on my first time without any issue.
The issue was that everyone in the class was staring at me in surprise since Iruka sensei had confirmed that nobody knew how to use it before he demonstrated it for us. The jutsu were all just that simple when it came to how you needed to mold your chakra.
“Very good Kenzo, you are already ready to graduate if you would like to apply for it.” Iruka said with a hopeful look.
“And good would that do me besides painting a target on my back during missions? Everyone knows that if you see a kid much younger than the rest of his squadmates they are a genius and should be killed before they can grow.” I said shaking my head.
Iruka sensei grimaced but clearly couldn’t argue with that logic as it was very much true. It might not be a written rule for any of the villages but it was one of those things that everyone did if they came in contact with such a situation. Early graduation was not a good idea at all unless I was only a year or two younger than my squadmates at which point I would likely not stand out in terms of age.-
It was one of those things I had over others my age in that I looked older than I was as I was tall and my body was deceptively muscular. By that I mean you couldn’t tell that I was pure refined muscle under my clothes with how lean I was. If I was on earth I would be considered a freak of nature as an eight year old should not have such a body but in this world it wasn’t that strange at all thanks to chakra making physical training not so detrimental at my age.-
A good example was Rock Lee who trained his own body relentlessly since he couldn’t mold his chakra. Not that he didn’t have any mind you, just that he couldn’t shape it into ninjutsu. This wasn’t a skill issue either but a sort of birth defect in a way that was rare but not unheard of. Anyways his way of training meant despite being about the same age his body was also very muscular and freakish by earth standards.-
Anyways I had basically already decided that I was going to graduate in two years rather than the four that it normally would have taken. The reason was very simple as well, restrictions. I was well aware that while I was in the academy the highest rank of jutsu I would be able to get access to would be the C rank ones. Not to mention I was starting to have issues improving my taijutsu style as despite mimicking my beasts perfectly none of my classmates were skilled enough to help me find any flaws in the style and as a result I was having trouble finding them myself.-
I imagined that the same would likely hold true for ninjutsu as well but thankfully there were a lot of those available at the lower ranks so I could always just move to another after I got stuck with one. My Idea was quite simple as far as learning ninjutsu was concerned, I wanted one of each. I had already tested my affinity by purchasing some chakra paper to test it and discovered my chakra was split equally between all seven natures with each being just as strong as the others.-
Obviously I hadn’t revealed this information since something told me that it was related to my sage mode constantly being active. After some reading up on chakra natures I patted myself on the back for my wisdom as most people have only a single dominant nature and a few have at most three but no one had all seven be dominant like me. An interesting thing I figured out was how to “lie” to the paper about my affinity by purposefully off balancing my chakra. Thanks to this I maintained the illusion of being a genius as my paper test showed earth, lightning and yang affinities.-
Basically my paper crinkled, crumbled and expanded when I ran chakra through it in front of my parents. I couldn’t keep my chakra off balance for long though or I started to stiffen from the nature energy rampaging in my body. I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if I left my chakra unbalanced but something told me I didn’t want to find out. Still thanks to showing my affinities to my parents they promised to try and find some low rank jutsus for me to learn.