Chapter 4: Taijustu
One week later, aside from minor improvement in my stats, nothing much had changed. If you didn't count the company finally opening. They had managed to cut lumber from nearby forests, outside the village, and had constructed a building on the edge of the wall, on free land, and finally inaugurated today.
My own first test was today, where we would be doing a taijutsu spar to make a list of initial rankings and then a bi-weekly spar every week, shuffling the ranking accordingly over the three years, intensity increasing slowly over time.
It was a good idea, honestly. The ranking list would motivate people to work harder, to be better, to push themselves harder. They would also somewhat gauge the strength of the children, and give them combat experience.
For the first spar, I had to be careful about Naruto and Sasuke. Maybe Kiba. Kiba and Sasuke had their clan techniques and thus were a new factor, so I wasn't sure how much I would have to adapt the basic style and how to counter them. Naruto because my occasional advice had helped him out somewhat.
He had his monstrous stamina, and after I had mentioned the leaking chakra and chakra control, he seemed to have someway managed to push some of it back into his body, in his muscles and bones. Actively, it gave him a burst, like overclock, but passively it increased his physical abilities, permanently reinforcing his body. This made him, stronger, faster, and much more durable.
That would up the competition, certainly, but it was a good outcome. If he grasps the concept of chakra control and had a physical boost from the start, he would change a lot of things in the future. Of course, the butterfly effect was something I couldn't control, and it was really not something I was trying.
I could see the changes. I was very young, at least compared to the show, and the academy was for three years instead of one. My presence dictated that nothing would remain same, but a lot of major things would happen. My prediction, Pain/Nagato would attack, but not exactly when he did in the show. It could be early, so I would need to ensure that everyone was strong enough or it could be later, giving us more time.
Coming back to the topic, the company was doing better than I had hoped. The clones had tried their best and made another clone every 6 hours, so the final count of clones working right now was around 25-30. Since they were all clones, I had no need to pay salary, they were more secure that most non-ninja couriers, and were faster since they didn't need to eat or rest. The reputation build up would take around a month, and then a couple more for the Hokage and the others to take their eyes off it. Then, finally, the uses would come to play.
I breathed carefully and relaxed my muscles, trying, and mostly failing, to control my fidgeting. Whoever I was in my past life, whatever I did, I couldn't stop the excitement. The idea of duking it out against someone even in a spar, was appealing to my very bones. Even though my soul came from somewhere else, my body was literally designed to best augment a ninja lifestyle, and it sung at the call of battle.
My heart thudding in my chest, I took another deep breath and burned some energy by stretching and a few warm-up exercises. I hyper-focused for a single moment, and in the time it took to blink, Boosted Intelligence presented to me a quick look of all the taijutsu katas, and their adaptations I had made in the past few weeks that would let me counter various styles. I had realized this a few days ago, that I could combine skills to do things that would not appear in the skill list. Hyper-focus was the product.
It basically used both meditation and boosted intelligence to give me a faster processing speed. Meditation would allow my brain to, for a moment, stop receiving all signals from my body and concentrate completely on presented information. Boosted intelligence would go and increase this processing speed even further, and all I would need is one moment to process everything I would need to. I hoped that I some point I would have built up my reflexes and muscle memory to the extent that doing this for a second or two wouldn't leave me helpless and my body would dodge by itself.
Back to the spar. The first battle was Kiba versus Naruto. Naruto would win, because Kiba, though strong, was a new kid at school and Naruto was better than he had been in the anime. The second was me against Sasuke. As predicted, my luck was bad. No problem. Making it to the top of the list would ensure that Sasuke had another goal other than Itachi, and would allow me to ensure his loyalty to the village.
The first match was as expected. Naruto and Kiba were evenly matched. Kiba initially had the upper hand but Naruto could keep up. Then his hidden potential showed. Not everyone noticed, practically almost no one did, but he adapted slowly in front of everyone, his strikes getting more precise every time he reached out. At one point- they were practically on stalemate, when Naruto boosted his strength and speed and finished the match.
It wasn't as long as it had looked to be, only lasting a little over a minute, but the spar and opened my eyes. I had known that they were, in some manner or the other, prodigies, but the presence of the system had made me feel that I could compete against them. I doubted I could, without the use of every cheat I had. The knowledge, a completely new view on chakra and its uses and my brain would help me keep up, but at the base, I could see the difference.
I had the skill for Taijutsu and it could level up during a fight, but not at the rate Naruto had improved in skill. But this made me more excited. I shivered, and to burn some energy, flipped onto the stage, giving Naruto a thumbs-up mid-air. Sasuke stood in front of me, a smirk on his face and his had held out in the ready stance of his Taijutsu style. I smiled back. This smile was different. It was blood-thirsty, and crazy. The devil smile, if you would. I bowed, the way we were supposed to, took the basic stance, adjusted my footing slightly to provide a more explosive push and leaned forward.
Activated meditation, ignoring everything except Sasuke and the stage. The sounds lulled, my heart thudded as if the beat of some music, my stance stayed relaxed yet alert and I finally was ready.
Holding out my hand towards him, I beckoned.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Asterius_Daemon
Asterius_Daemon Tjis is taking time cuz my exams started, and I got selected for a couple of comeptitions, and a lot of shit is happeing at once and suddenly I don't have time. It'll probably be the same entire September, I'll try and be more frequent the next month. Oh, and let's see if I can get another chapter out today. If I don't, see you guys next week... probably. ):
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