Fighting With One's Self

Chapter 22 - Undivided Attention

"Ok, so how exactly does this work?" Yume-chan asks.

We're sitting with crossed legs in one of the smaller training rooms, facing each other, our hands on our knees. This particular training room seldom gets used because of its size, but it's perfect for an hour's meditation every day: it's right in the corner of the building where barely any sound reaches, and it's small, but not too small.

Dei-kun and Kisame-sensei are both standing in the far corner, to help wherever they can, but also because the two of them are the only two who are really curious about the Tsukino clan's secret technique. I am sitting across from Yume-chan, facing the direction of the door with my back to the wall with the windows, and she is sitting across from me.

I nearly slap my hand to my forehead. She has asked this very same question three times now.

"I'm going to explain it to you one more time," I say, annoyed, "It's just like performing any other jutsu. You form the chakra-"

"How do you do that again?"

"What?!" I exclaim.

"I just wanna make sure I'm doing it right!"

"Now I know why Itachi-san always avoids you. You're a nightmare when it comes to anything other than Taijutsu," I say dejectedly, "To form chakra, you just become conscious of the two energies inside you, body and mind energy. You will them to balance each other out in even quantities, and then you push it out in the form of your jutsu by forming the hand seals and saying the - for lack of a better word - incantation. Got it?"

"Yeah, I got it."

"Great, so what we're gonna do, is we're gonna use that energy to create thin threads. We'll be surrounded by them. When they're formed, I'm going to let my chakra threads touch yours so that they can connect, ok?"

"That sounds kinda kinky, don't you think?"

"Yume-chan, concentrate!" I exclaim.

"Sorry, geez! I got it!" she says defensively, "I'm just trying to lighten the mood a little."

"Yeah, well, this is supposed to be a serious mood, because we've got less than two weeks to get this right. If we don't, we'll be ripped to shreds by that two-tailed chick. Do you remember that?" I am trembling from panic. Secretly I am thinking 'why Yume-chan? Why not someone with a greater attention span?" I love her, but this is the one thing I wish she was not a part of.

"Ok, so let's do it," she says.

Both of us take a deep breath, and close our eyes. The first part comes to me like a second nature. In a few seconds, my chakra is ready. I let it fill my entire body, and I feel the warmth of it. Slowly, I channel the chakra into the air around me. My heart takes a fearful leap. For a moment, I couldn't control it, and it swung around violently in waves, but I open my eyes and gain control.

Yume-chan seems to struggle with pushing the chakra out of her body. She only starts when I am already forcing my chakra into the form of threads. It flows out of her slowly, but after a few moments a thin silhouette of blue light surrounds her.

Dei-kun coughs from the corner.

It breaks both of our concentration.

All the chakra I controlled so carefully gushes back inside me and explodes out of me again. The same happens to Yume-chan. Suddenly, a great blast of powerful chakra shoots me and Yume-chan in opposite directions. A few shards of glass cut me as I fly through the window and onto the cold, wet grass, sliding a few feet and finally stopping when I hit my head against a tree. At least it's not snowing anymore.