Tokei looked at me with a satisfied smile, now that I had been following his beck and call, he was starting to be pleasant to be around.

I was manipulating my Chakra, twirling thin strands away from my central pool and slowly circulating it through my body, this was slightly more complicated than the simple manipulation Tokei had shown me weeks ago and I was now able to do it with little effort.

Sometimes Tokei would ask me to inject a little Chakra into my surroundings, it wasn't anything complicated but it was a strange feeling to "lose" some of the energy, although it would quickly recover.

'Like noodles… just like noodles…' I reminded myself.

I had come up with an… unconventional way of moving my Chakra, when I imagined the pool of energy within me as strands that were layered on top of each other, they became a lot easier to move and manipulate.

Think of one of those balls made of rubber bands, then replace the rubber bands with thin noodles; that's how I imagined my Chakra.

When I first explained this to Tokei he never let me hear the end of it, the man was giggling like a schoolgirl in front of her crush, which made me wanna punch him again.

Regardless of how dumb he thought it was, it worked.

"Phoo…" I settled my Chakra back in the pool and let it come to rest, after ensuring that everything was as it should be I opened my eyes to see Tokei nodding at me.

"Good job Aoki. That is an acceptable level of Chakra control… for now."

"Awesome!" I said, jumping up with a grin on my face. Tokei had promised me that we would progress to the next level when he was satisfied with my level of control, I never imagined it would take so many weeks but the time has finally come!

I looked at him expectantly, "What next? Can you teach me a cool Jutsu?!" I asked.

Tokei scoffed, "Jutsu? You can barely call out thin strands of Chakra, a proper Jutsu won't be possible yet." he said, crushing my hopes.

I felt my heart sink, but it was ok! All I had to do was improve and I'd be throwing out Jutsus soon, I consoled myself.

Was it copium? Maybe a little.

But copium is needed in a world like this!

My face must've fallen because Tokei came in with a save, "But um… it's not like it's bad or anything…" he said, looking a little into the distance while scratching his cheek.

'…'

'This man's either a Tsundere, bipolar or has a slew of mental disorders. Actually, it's most likely a combination of the three.' I thought.

Before I could voice my thanks for his "compliment" he spoke, "I'm glad that you progressed to this level before the Academy started, now we can move onto something I'm sure you'll be excited about… but first…"

He brought out a tiny book and opened it, "I will teach you about natures!" he said with a scholarly smile.

My eyes grew wide at the revelation, 'Natures? No fucking way… does this man that we're gonna check my-'.

"The Five Basic Natures, also called the five elemental chakra natures are the foundation of all elemental ninjutsu. They are so vital to the shinobi lifestyle that each of the Five Great Shinobi Countries is named after one of the fiv-" he started his explanation.

'Holy shit…' I was immersed in my own world. Ideas, dreams, plans, all of them started to coalesce as Tokei's explanation continued.

"-if an elemental technique is put against another elemental technique of the same level, but of an advantageous nature, then the technique with that nature will prevail-" he continued his speech, while I did listen to what he was saying, I was mostly freaking out internally.

"-In general, every person's chakra has an affinity towards one of the five basic nature transformations. Affinity can at times be geneti-"

'Hurry up!'

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

I knew most of what he was saying already so it felt like an agonising wait for something immensely cool, like the loading screen of a video game you wanted to play right this instant.

He continued flapping his mouth for a few minutes before settling down and noticing my impatience, he seemed to revel in the fact that he had something I so dearly wanted but I couldn't do much else than hope that his tendency to be annoying didn't rear its ugly head.

Thankfully, it didn't.

"Now for the main course..." he said, reaching into one of his pockets.

*Swipe!*

With a showman's flair, Tokei held up a circular sheet of paper, it was as pliable as cardboard and lightly flapped in the air as the man brought it out.

I had expected him to bring out a Chakra paper like the one in the show… what the hell was this?

I looked at the circle, it was about 30 cm in diameter and had black lines that cut it into 5 equal slices, the object looked closer to a caricature of a pizza than the Chakra paper I was familiar with.

Noticing my confused expression Tokei gave a much-needed explanation, "This is a Chakra sheet! It's used for determining the natures that someone would be naturally attuned to, this is an extremely rare material that I received from the Hokage himself." Tokei said proudly.

'Chakra sheet?' I opened my eyes wide at the development… this wasn't in canon.

I had read about how Chakra paper wasn't being distributed to the academy anymore in the newspaper recently, apparently, it was due to the war wrapping up and it being an unnecessary expenditure, as such I knew I had enough of an alibi to ask him a question.

"Is that like Chakra paper?" I questioned Tokei.

Tokei raised an eyebrow inquisitively and asked, "Yes, similar to Chakra paper yet more advanced… where did you learn about Chakra paper Aoki?" he asked.

I told him about the newspaper article, Tokei was pleasantly surprised that I would keep up with current events and started blabbing about how knowledge was a key weapon for every ninja to take advantage of.

'I made him start yapping again… curse my curiosity…' I bashed myself internally.

It took some time for him to get to my actual question, "And as you asked, yes they are similar, similar in the sense that a Chakra sheet is made of different variants of Chakra paper." Tokei explained.

Tokei gave a brief explanation of how different natures cause the Chakra paper to react differently, how a lightning nature would cause it to crinkle or how wind would split it in two for example.

He continued to say, "Chakra paper serves as a way to find your primary nature, the nature that you are most attuned to naturally." Tokei brought the circular sheet closer so I could examine it.

Looking closer, I noticed that each wedge of the circle were of different hues, there was red, blue, brown, purple and grey.

"With the Chakra sheet, each slice relates to one of the five primary natures, when you inject Chakra into it, all the wedges that you have talent in will be activated", he pointed at the grey-hued slice, "if this slice gets split in two when you inject your Chakra, it signifies a wind element just like the Chakra paper, only that the Chakra also travels to the other slices and react appropriately if you are attuned to that nature."

'Woah, that sounds awesome!' I thought, looking at the Chakra sheet with renewed awe, it was basically Chakra paper on steroids, why wasn't this in the original show?

If my memory isn't failing me, the only time we saw Chakra paper in action was prior to Naruto's training for Rasenshuriken…

'Kakashi himself failed to add nature transformation into the Rasengan, using a Chakra sheet to find all of Naruto's possible natures might've distracted him from creating the elemental Rasengan; using Chakra paper and going with Naruto's strongest nature makes sense…' I thought, figuring out the reason why this wasn't shown.

I gained a newfound appreciation for the ninja's ingenuity, whoever came up with this must've been a genius of some sort.

"Of course, for you, Chakra paper would be enough but considering your circumstances, Lord Third decided that we would use a Chakra sheet to determine your capabilities. These sheets are usually reserved for ninjas who have already mastered one nature transformation, or in some cases, clan heirs to determine their potential" said Tokei.

I understood, eagerly nodding to give it a try.

Tokei smiled wryly at my excitement and handed me the "Sheet", although its name suggested a paper-like texture it was more similar to cardboard… maybe even plastic.

I had more questions for Tokei but I put them away and focused on the mission at hand, this was probably the reason why he had me manipulating Chakra so much! Although I'm sure that I could've done something as simple as injecting Chakra ages ago, I wouldn't have been able to do it as efficiently as I can now.

Pushing all other thoughts aside, I focused on the multicoloured circle I held in my hand and injected my Chakra into it slowly, manipulating strands of it into the paper. I peeled my eyes open to study the changes that the paper was about to go through at a moment's notice.

Within less than 5 seconds since I started injecting my Chakra, the sheet reacted violently.

The blue-hued wedge got drenched in water, turning flimsy and floppy, almost tearing under gravity.

The brown hue seemed to disintegrate, darkening in shade and crumbling away into the air.

But those two were not what my eyes were trained on, in fact, I barely noticed them out of the corner of my eye as my vision was overtaken by something else… something hotter.

The red hue instantly grew ablaze, increasing in size to become a voluminous inferno that shocked me into dropping the Chakra sheet, the flame grew and enveloped the rest of the circle, tainting it in deep grey ash.

My jaw hung open as I noticed the massive scorch marks on the ground, the blaze was dying out but the ferocity of its flames scarred the ground. I jerked my neck up to look at Tokei to see an expression even more shocked than I staring at me…

"…"

"..."

A moment passed where none of us spoke, the ember still crackling away as if laughing at us.

'Is this... normal?' I thought, looking at the ground which was now discoloured by the intense heat.

Tokei hung his shoulders low and spoke with a defeated tone while looking at me with an accusatory glare.

"You're gonna be the death of me, Aoki..."