When Kameko opened her eyes on a bed in the medical house, she found Takuma sitting at her bedside, reading a scroll. He looked up from his scroll at her.

“You’re awake and fairly quickly at that. How are you feeling?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes, showing her displeasure. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you to wake up so we can have a chat.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Well, I do, and you will listen because I will only say this here,” said Takuma; something in his demeanor told her that she should listen. “I won, so according to the bet, we will be working on the same team…”

Kameko bit the inside of her cheek and clenched her fists. She sat up on her bed to be on the same level as Takuma.

“So, what? You’re here to gloat about it?” she spat.

“… but I don’t want there to be bad blood between us, so I’m here to dispel the animosity between us for the sake of the team. I don’t want to spend my time here locking horns with you. Therefore, I suggest we make peace. And as a token of my intention, I will forgo the two months of my tasks we decided for your punishment.”

Kameko stayed silent. It was clear from the look in her eyes that she was suspicious of Takuma.

Takuma stood up and bowed to Kameko. “I apologize for bad mouthing you and your clan during the fight. I didn’t mean any of that; it was simply a tactic to throw you off your calm. Your sword was dangerous enough that I had to resort to other tactics.”

“So, we are just supposed to become friends now?” asked Kameko, scoffing.

“Not really,” Takuma shrugged. “Honestly speaking, I’m not interested in becoming friends with you. All I’m proposing is that we treat each other as professionally as we can. We don’t need to be friends to functionally operate as teammates. I simply don’t wish for unnecessary hostility.”

Takuma stood up and rolled up his scroll.

“I have said my piece. It’s up to you if you wish to be civil with me; my peace offering will hold even either way. Rest well, I will see you tomorrow,” he said before taking his leave.

Kameko dropped back to the bed and sighed as she stared at the ceiling, thinking.

———

.

“Huh, I thought she would give me a reply,” Takuma muttered as he exited the building.

Barely an hour had passed since the fight. It was a strange feeling—the fight was akin to a Ring fight, and he usually had those in the late evening, but today, the day had barely started.

“I should go talk to Anko,” he muttered.

“I’m here.”

Takuma flinched and looked to the side to see Anko leaning against the wall. She waved to him as she walked to him. “Yo, that was a good fight. Chakra Augmentation, Taijutsu, Genjutsu, Water Release, Earth Release—that’s a good amount of stuff in your repertoire. I must say I’m liking you more and more as a member of my team.”

Takuma smiled. “So, what do you think? How did I do?”

“Well, if you are asking,” Anko hummed. “You wasted too much time at the start. If you had planned it better, you could’ve ended the fight without using the genjutsu. You only hit her with a couple of augmented strikes, and those hurt her enough to make her not risk being close to you, even with a sword in hand. You heavily underutilized those and let her get in the cuts and knicks she did.”

Takuma lifted his hand and looked at his fist.

“It’s more like I can’t utilize the chakra augmentation,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I made this chakra augmentation on my own—”

“You created it on your own!?”

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Takuma laughed and waved Anko’s surprise down. “It’s not that impressive.” He explained the base concept of how he used to overload the chakra adhesion (used for wall-sticking) to create power by expunging the chakra outwards. “Because I don’t have any experience in jutsu creation, and I was told once by someone that the base concept itself was flawed from an augmentation perspective, the use-case is quite restrictive.

“My augmentation has multiple variables I have to consider with every strike. Whenever I hit someone with an augmented strike, I experience a knockback recoil. I have long gotten used to it, but each recoil makes me slow down just a bit, but it’s enough that I have to be mindful, or I can put myself at a disadvantage. I have to consider if I’m using a punch, a palm strike, a kick, what kind of kick, or if I’m using my elbow or knee; then I have to consider my opponent, where am I hitting them, how much force can they shrug off, and because of the recoil I have to think about the follow-up—if I want a quick successive attack then I need a lower recoil to make the transition seamless, but if I can afford a moment of pause, I can go for a heavy hit.

“Moreover, the techniques’ demand of control itself is a problem. In the start, I used to break the bones in my arms whenever I used the augmentation recklessly.” He looked at his hand. “I have fractured my knuckles, wrist, and fingers more times than I can remember. I have gotten better through experience, but the flaws in the technique that caused the injuries in the first place still remain. I can’t go above a certain power limit, or I would injure myself.”

He looked at Anko.

“Every augmentation is a risk. I have to mentally and instinctually calculate all of it to land a proper punch. If I didn’t need to, every attack of mine would’ve been augmented—I have the chakra for it. I know that if I tried, I could’ve shattered Kameko’s jaw in one shot or caused heavy internal injuries in her abdomen, or killed her if I placed my hits properly on a vital—in return, however, I would’ve lost my arm. From a certain standpoint, a kill for a broken arm doesn’t sound bad, but that trade-off is immensely risky.”

Iryo-jutsu was miraculous, but it couldn’t solve everything. A broken arm not treated quickly could get complicated enough that amputation was the only choice.

“Sounds dangerous,” Anko said as they walked through the camp. “If it’s so dangerous, why do you still use it?”

Takuma had only one answer to the question. “Because it makes me dangerous. When they realize that I can hit that hard, they become hyper-conscious of it. There’s fear in their eyes, caution in their movement, hesitation in their intentions.” Takuma didn’t realize that there was a grin on his face. “And flawed doesn’t mean useless; I figured a couple of things that work around it.”

He removed two kunai from his pouch and pointed at a nearby tree.

“Watch,” he said.

Takuma threw the two kunai one-at-a-time at the tree trunk.

“The second one was faster?” Anko commented.

“Let’s see, shall we?”

They walked to the tree and saw that the first kunai was barely a quarter of its length into the thick tree bark, but the second kunai was more than halfway into the tree.

“It’s brutish, but everything has its uses,” he said.

Takuma had figured out that he could propel the kunai faster and stronger by expunging chakra behind the kunai a moment before it left his hand. Force was a product of mass and acceleration; Takuma increased the acceleration with his augmentation technique and created a sharp jump in force. In return, he sacrificed accuracy, so he could only use it at close range or when he had extra time to aim.

“You used it against Kameko, didn’t you,” asked Anko, unsure if her guess was correct.

Takuma nodded.

“I don’t think it’s particularly impressive, but I can see it having its uses,” she said. “Would improving chakra control improve your augmentations?”

“Improving chakra control improves everything, ma’am,” Takuma chuckled.

“Anko,” she reminded him.

“Yes, my apologies,” he replied. “But it’s not like I haven’t worked on chakra control.” He trained chakra control on a regular basis. But it was also true that he hadn’t seen improvement in his control recently.

“I don’t know what method you used, but you haven’t used mine,” she said.

“Your methods?”

Takuma didn’t know why, but seeing the glint in Anko’s eyes as she coyly smiled sent alarm bells in his mind. Something in him told him otherwise, but he still asked, “Will they help improve my chakra control?” If it improved his chakra control, his abilities all-round would improve.

“Of course, but it might be tough; if you agree now, I won’t accept complaints later.”

Takuma’s fingers twitched. He was wondering what kind of training Anko was talking about. Her behavior was tingling his instincts; the last time he had felt like this was with Maruboshi, who had put him through his ‘basic training’ during the academy. He had hated every second of the training because of how tough it was.

Takuma trained every day, but he didn’t particularly enjoy it. Training was a way to grow stronger; as such, he did it every day.

‘Maybe I should decline...’

“My methods are actually my teacher’s special methods,” she said.

Anko’s eyes gained a particular look as though she was testing him, observing his every expression.

Usually, Takuma would notice the change, but the moment he heard that Anko’s methods were her teacher’s methods, his answer was decided, and he replied as enthusiastically as possible.

“I will take your offer, thank you!”

Takuma, of course, knew who her teacher was. Even if he hadn’t read the source material, after living in the Hidden Leaf for as long as he had, he knew Mitarashi Anko and her teacher, Orochimaru of the Snake, one of the Legendary Sannin. One of Hidden Leaf’s most wanted, currently rogue missing-nin, one of the shinobi with the highest bounty on their heads.

The man was terrible— terrible, but great. Anko was a chunin, so he figured she would have some more advanced training methods, but Orochimaru simply gave her more credibility.

Anko looked stunned for a moment before she laughed and slapped Takuma on his shoulder a couple of times.

“You’re an interesting guy!” she said. “I will teach you, and I will teach you good!”

Takuma felt good. He had showcased his ability to the entire camp and had managed to build a good rapport with his chunin lead. It was not bad for a day’s work.