Chapter 118: The Chakra Shortage & The Reason for Kakashi's "Talent"
The world lurched, reality rewrote itself in a dizzying snap, and Zabuza Momochi found himself standing not on the mist-shrouded bridge over crashing waves, but in front of a small, rickety wooden outhouse in a quiet coastal village. The scent of salt and industry was gone, replaced by damp earth, fish, and… something faintly, familiarly organic.
An illusion? A high-level one at that, Zabuza's mind, honed by decades of survival, instantly concluded. To displace my senses so completely… this Konoha brat is more dangerous than I thought. He dismissed the silver-haired man who stumbled out of the outhouse, pants half-hitched and face a mask of bewildered alarm. A figment. A distraction created by the genjutsu. He focused inward, his chakra surging as he formed the hand seals to break the illusion—Kai!
Nothing happened. The outhouse, the village, the faintly panicking copy-ninja, all remained stubbornly present.
It's a sophisticated one, Zabuza thought, his brow furrowing. He began a more complex, forceful sequence of release seals, pouring more chakra into the effort. Kai! Again. Kai!
"What… is he doing?" Kakashi muttered, his Sharingan now fully exposed and whirling. He saw no genjutsu overlay, no chakra distortion. He saw Zabuza Momochi, the Demon of the Hidden Mist, standing ten feet away, performing elaborate release seals over and over again, completely ignoring him. It was surreal.
[Pure Land Live Stream – Chat Log]
[VIP5, Admin: Tobirama Senju]: What is the belligerent imbecile doing? Having a seizure?
[VIP1: Uchiha Izuna]: Maybe he forgot his jutsu. Performance anxiety. Happens to the best of us.
[VIP1: Minato Namikaze]: Those hand seals… he's trying to break a genjutsu. He thinks he's still under one. He believes the sudden environmental shift is an illusion.
[Regular: Hyūga Hizashi]: It makes a twisted kind of sense. One moment he's on a bridge, the next he's in a village smelling of… well. It's a classic disorientation tactic.
[VIP5, Admin: Tobirama Senju]: FOOL! The Hiraishin is a spacetime ninjutsu, not a parlor trick! Has the modern ninja world grown so ignorant they've forgotten the legends?
[Regular: Hyūga Hizashi]: With all due respect, Second Hokage, after the Fourth's death, the Flying Thunder God became just that—a legend. A story to scare new recruits. No one has seen it in over a decade. It's not ignorance; it's extinction.
[Host: Ren Arakawa]: See? They're all useless. I learned it just fine.
[Regular: Hyūga Hizashi]: You have a system that shoves the knowledge directly into your brain, you little cheat!
[VIP1: Minato Namikaze]: Even if he knew of it, he'd never attribute it to Ren. In his eyes, Ren is just a precocious genin. The Hiraishin is the domain of Kage and monsters.
[VIP5, Admin: Tobirama Senju]: 'Precocious'? He deflowered a teammate in a lake! That's not precocious; that's professionally proactive!
[VIP1: Minato Namikaze]: …Can we focus on the tactical situation?
Ren, meanwhile, was not on the bridge. He was perched in the crook of a large tree overlooking the village lane, hidden by Sakumo's Silent Shadow Weave. His breathing was slightly ragged. The long-distance, mass-teleport of a resisting, chakra-dense target like Zabuza had drained him more than he'd anticipated. His reserves, while vast, weren't infinite. The bridge was kilometers away. A Hiraishin jump back was currently impossible. He needed a minute. Maybe two.
Hang on, old man, he thought towards the distant bridge, where Tazuna was likely having a very bad day. Just… don't die before I can get my pay.
[VIP1: Uchiha Izuna]: Kakashi's an idiot too! Zabuza's back is turned, doing interpretive dance! Stab him!
[Regular: Sakumo Hatake]: My son… is cautious. He prefers to assess, to understand. It's a survival trait.
[VIP1: Uchiha Izuna]: It's a 'getting killed' trait! ASSESS WITH A KUNAI IN HIS KIDNEY!
[Regular: Hyūga Hizashi]: Yeah, just… go for it!
[VIP5, Admin: Tobirama Senju]: Seconded! Stab the hallucinating fool!
[VIP2: Yagura Karatachi]: Oh, Zabuza… you poor, confused bastard.
[Regular: Hōzuki Mangetsu]: The Mist's roster is about to get shorter.
[Regular: Senju Hashirama]: Wait… if Ren is here… who is with the bridge builder?
A chilling silence fell over the chat.
[VIP5, Admin: Tobirama Senju]: …The ice-user.
[VIP1: Uchiha Fugaku]: HA! The kid abandoned his client! Glorious! Utterly shameless!
[Host: Ren Arakawa]: I didn't abandon him! I'm economizing! The Hiraishin has a chakra-to-distance ratio! I can't jump a marathon on empty!
[VIP1: Uchiha Fugaku]: Chakra cost? What are you talking about? Since when does ninjutsu have a cost?
[Host: Ren Arakawa]: …Are you serious? Every jutsu uses chakra. Every. Single. One. How did you think you powered your fireballs? Hope and dreams? No wonder your clan got wiped out.
[VIP1: Uchiha Fugaku]: …Minato, back me up here!
[VIP1: Minato Namikaze]: …He's correct, Fugaku. The Hiraishin's chakra cost scales with mass and distance. Teleporting a full-grown, resistant ninja several kilometers is a significant expenditure. Ren is likely tapped out for the moment.
[VIP5, Admin: Tobirama Senju]: So the bridge builder is, in fact, currently alone with a master of Ice Release. Excellent prioritization, host.
On the lane, Zabuza's frustration was mounting. "Why won't it break?!" he snarled, trying yet another variant of the release seal. The "illusion" was stubbornly, annoyingly persistent.
Kakashi had seen enough. This wasn't a trick. This was an opportunity served on a silver platter, and even his ingrained caution had its limits. A flicker of irritation crossed his visible eye. To be ignored, while mid… personal administrative duty… by a target of this caliber, was an insult.
"Zabuza," Kakashi said, his voice low and deadly serious. "I am standing right here. And you are ignoring me. That is… a mistake."
His hands came up.
What happened next was not so much a sequence of hand seals as it was a blur of motion. His fingers danced through the intricate signs for Chidori with a speed that defied the eye. It wasn't just fast; it was a fluid, practiced, almost artistic flurry that left afterimages hanging in the air. The sheer, unnecessary dexterity of it was shocking.
[VIP5, Admin: Tobirama Senju]: …Impressive manual velocity. The kinetic efficiency is noteworthy.
[VIP1: Uchiha Izuna]: What in the hell are his hands made of? Springs?
[VIP1: Minato Namikaze]: As expected of my student. His hand seal speed has always been among the top in the village.
[VIP1: Uchiha Madara]: Hn. Among the living I've observed, his manual celerity is indeed notable.
[VIP2: Third Raikage]: To earn praise from Uchiha Madara for speed… terrifying!
[Regular: Sakumo Hatake]: (A proud, tearful smile). Heh… he really did inherit something after all.
In the tree, Ren watched Kakashi's display and couldn't help the dry, knowing smirk that spread across his face. He opened the chat.
[Host: Ren Arakawa]: You all want to know the secret to hand seal speed like that? It's simple. Practice. Specific, dedicated, repetitive practice.
[Regular: Hyūga Hizashi]: What kind of practice?
[Host: Ren Arakawa]: The kind you do with one hand, while the other holds a very specific type of literature. For hours. Every day. For years. It builds incredible finger strength, dexterity, and muscle memory for rapid, repetitive motions. I'd bet my last ryo that if you examined the pages of his Icha Icha books, you'd find the greasiest, most worn-down sections correspond perfectly to the hand seals for Chidori, Raikiri, and maybe the Body Flicker. He's not just reading; he's cross-training.
A profound, deafening silence blanketed the Pure Land. The truth, once spoken, was blindingly obvious.
Sakumo Hatake's proud smile froze, then shattered like glass.
[Regular: Sakumo Hatake]: …
[VIP5, Admin: Tobirama Senju]: …By the Sage. He's… he's been using pornographic literature as a hand-seal training aid. The sheer… utilitarian degeneracy. I am… perversely impressed.
[VIP1: Uchiha Izuna]: PFFT— HAHAHAHA! So that's his 'inheritance'! Not the White Flash, but the White Knuckle! I'm dying!
[VIP1: Uchiha Fugaku]: From the legendary White Fang to… that. What a glorious fall from grace!
[VIP1: Minato Namikaze]: …Kakashi… I… I don't know what to say.
[Regular: Rin Nohara]: (Facepalming spectrally). Oh, Kakashi…
[Regular: Might Dai]: THE POWER OF YOUTHFUL PASSION TAKES MANY FORMS! EVEN THE PASSION FOR LITERATURE!
On the ground, Kakashi, utterly unaware that the secret to his legendary prowess had just been exposed to the entire afterlife, finished his seals. A screeching, thousand-birds cacophony erupted around his hand, lightning chakra coalescing into the iconic Chidori.
Zabuza, finally snapping out of his genjutsu theory at the sound of imminent death, spun around, his eyes wide. He saw the lightning, saw Kakashi's Sharingan, and reality crashed down on him. This was no illusion.
The chapter ended with Kakashi's lightning-clad hand thrust forward, Zabuza desperately bringing up his Executioner's Blade in a too-slow block, and Ren, from his tree, shaking his head with a sigh.
And people wonder why I want the Mangekyō. At least those powers come from trauma, not… sticky pages.
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