Kusari no Naruto

Third Link

Naruto grinned like shark as he back-flipped across a small training field, chains erupting from his body to deflect the sword slashes of his opponent. A few shot into the ground, anchoring him and allowing him to use the newfound leverage to suddenly plummet towards the earth. Over the past few months he had refined his chain use to a second-nature. No matter how many he produced they continued to feel like extensions of his body, a thousand spindly arms and legs. It helped that, whenever he used them, there was a strange sense of familiarity he could never place; it was like he had been using them for years.

It had been non-stop training for him amongst his teammates, as they quickly brought him up to a suitable level for the missions they would be taking. Mostly that involved stamina, strength and speed training; however playing to his strength they also spent a great deal of time working with his chains. He had quickly found the Chakra constructs to be almost infinite in their versatility and was still just now working to expand what he knew about them. He would spend hours thickening them, sharpening them, making them as thin as he could and seeing just how long he could make one before he succumbed to pure Chakra exhaustion. The answer? Very, very long.

He had a lot of Chakra.

On that note though, his abundance of the fundamental shinobi energy also proved an annoyance as an important factor for every ANBU operative was stealth. Right now, Naruto was a literal beacon for any potential sensors; his so-called comrades on the other had could suppress their Chakra so it appeared as nothing more than a civilians. When he asked why they didn't suppress it completely, they told him that a spot with no Chakra was just as suspicious to a sensor as one with an abundance. So another large swathe of his training was getting him to reduce his Chakra levels, or at least how they appeared, to less blinding levels.

He darted back, his body spinning and causing his chains to spin about him. Where a few months ago they would have flailed randomly, they now moved in synch with his body, creating a thin, buzzsaw-like effect. There was the grinding sound of metal clashing and suddenly Naruto was jerked to the side as his chains became tangled up around the Naginata his sparring partner had produced. His eyes narrowed as he dodged back, creating two chains that just sat in the palm of his hands like kunai so that he could continue to bat away his attacker's sword swipes as his chains moved to disentangle themselves.

One major downside he had found to his chains was that they were enormously Chakra draining, however not in the conventional sense. When outside his body they only radiated, or leaked, a small amount of Chakra, and as his control improved that amount decreased. Most of the time he could retract them and not feel even the slightest change to his reserves. However, if he had even a section of the dense chains cut off from him completely, or he forcefully dissipated them, he would feel the massive drop in his reserves almost instantly. It wasn't often a problem as the chains themselves were tough, but that never seemed to stop his Kenjutsu trainer.

Nezumi was the most enigmatic of his new squad-mates; Saru was a mystery but only because he said strange, sagely things all the time. Naruto was lucky if he heard Nezumi say more than a sentence in one day. On the other hand, her skill with weapons was undeniable; even a common wooden spoon became a deadly tool in her hands. She favoured the long, simple-looking katana she always carried, although Naruto couldn't figure out why. The blade was painfully plain, with a simple linen cloth wrapped around where the hilt would be and not even a tsuba for decoration. Then again, it was longer than he was tall and Nezumi could swing it faster than he could even follow if she wanted, so who was he to complain?

Again he leant back as a line of white appeared across his vision and for a rare moment he thought he saw an opening in Nezumi's guard. Immediately he rolled forward, the chains in his hands extending as he forced the individual links to become rigid so it was almost like he was holding a sword. He lunged forward, aiming for her hip, but it was for naught; in a fluid motion Nezumi circled around him, long dark hair in her trademark pony-tail whipping out as she cleanly severed through the chains emerging from the blond's back.