It was touch and go for a few moments and I had to force down the premium beef a couple of times, but I got home with over half an hour to spare. After a quick shower and a change of clothes, I was off, no longer under disguise, and raced across the rooftops back to the east side of the village.

I looked at my wrist and frowned. “Damn. I might end up being late.”

After making sure there was no one nearby, I mixed my chakra and made a few hand signs, bracing myself. The world wrenched behind me and my eyes flooded with so many tears that I couldn’t see anything. It slammed to a stop, lurching me forward. My arms flailed about in search of any objects to stop myself from falling, grasping only air, so I tipped forward until I caught myself using my palms.

I twisted my neck to look back and grinned—and why wouldn’t I? With one jutsu, I cleared roughly 15 metres in a single step.

That said, the Body Flicker Jutsu wasn’t as impressive as I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong, it was definitely a speed enhancement, but in my opinion, it wasn’t a good one. The jutsu was static; it didn’t let you change directions while moving, so if an opponent caught onto where you were going, it was curtains because of the jutsu’s second flaw.

Well, it wasn’t a universal flaw, and could be fixed relatively easily—I just couldn’t do it yet.

The Body Flicker Jutsu was a standard D-rank speed technique; one so fast that the human eye couldn’t keep up with it—and that included its user. For people lucky enough to have dojutsu or weird bloodline limits, this was a non-issue since their sight was better in general. For the rest of us, the prerequisite to overcoming the second flaw was enhancing your sight using chakra and in the middle of battle, this wasn’t exactly ideal.

It was listed as an escape technique, so its focus was never on battle in the first place. If there was a way to overcome the issue by slightly lowering its speed, I didn’t know how to do that either. The Body Flicker Jutsu was one we were going to learn closer to the end of the year, but Iruka-sensei taught it to Sasuke and me a little earlier because we were further ahead than he thought.

To be fair, all of my conclusions had come from about a week’s worth of experimentation, so maybe there was something I hadn’t figured out yet.

I arrived at the clearing just barely on time. Asuma was wandering about as usual and finished smoking before he came over.

“You’re going to have to teach me that trick sometime,” I said.

He grinned. “You sure you want to start smoking, kid? I doubt you have any hair on your chest.”

“What, no?” I made a face. “But manipulating wind chakra like that seems useful. You blew away all the cigarette smoke on and around you without a single hand sign.”

“Huh. Be clearer next time.” Asuma ruffled my hair—he knew I hated it, but that was exactly why he did it in the first place. “Sure, I’ll teach you, but only when you’re good enough for it. Right now, all you know is one D-rank wind-release jutsu and a few things you learned in the Academy and you haven’t even learned everything they’ve got to offer—have some patience.”

I swatted him away and fixed my hair. “So, what are we doing today?”

His easygoing smile turned slightly bloodthirsty and I felt the usual pressure of his killing intent on my skin. Instead of shutting down like I did the first time we fought, I grinned and sprung back from him, pulling out both my kunai and brandishing them. Asuma drew his trench knives and did the same, our stances mirroring one another’s.

These last few months with the man had let me pick up a lot of useful skills—and his bukijutsu style was one of them. It was just better than the basic weapon forms I learned in the Academy, which made sense. As childish as he could be, the guy was an A-ranked jonin for a reason.

He tilted his head sideways. “For a kid who hasn’t even seen first blood, you’ve got a decent presence. I can’t call it killing intent because… well, you haven’t killed anyone.”

The “yet” went unsaid between us.

“At this level, you’ll at least throw off the other brats you’re sparring with.”

I shrugged. “There’s no reason to use it against them.”

“Oh, really?” Asuma grinned. “So, you beat the Uchiha kid and think you’re hot shit, do you? Don’t think you’ll be able to win the same way. Not when he knows you can use wind-release jutsu.”

He stared pointedly at me as the rest of his intended meaning went unsaid. Sasuke was adept at fire-release ninjutsu, and fire countered wind. However, it wasn’t anything I wasn’t aware of. I knew I needed to up my skills rather than get my hands on new jutsu, otherwise, Sasuke would beat me pretty handily in our next encounter.

He didn’t need to hear me say it, though. “Are we gonna talk, or are we gonna fight?”

I blinked and Asuma was gone.

“Kids these days. Suit yourself.” He sighed, the hot air from the exhale tickling my right ear.

I pivoted so fast the world was a blur, going for a slashing hook aimed at his belly. He skipped out of the way but I chased after him, stabbing and slashing with increasing ferocity. He blocked each attack easily, all with the usual smile on his face. I planted my feet, sliding the rings of each kunai around the index and ring fingers of my right hand, freeing my left to gather chakra via the Confrontation Seal.

The majority of it went right down, allowing me to spring ahead and quickly close the gap before it even had the chance to widen. I stretched out my left hand while spreading whatever moulded chakra I had left across my palm. It made contact with Asuma’s flak jacket and the momentum from my sprint and Asuma’s combined, dragging me along with him.

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He looked down and I twirled my fingers, spinning both kunai around until I had them layered atop each other and pointed straight at him. I clenched tightly and lunged, dragging him towards me at the same time.

Asuma grinned, breaking the link between us and making one hand seal. “ How about… no.”

The next thing I knew, something had slammed into me—and it slammed into me hard, ripping both kunai out of my hands.

It was like I’d been thrown into a tumble dryer; I felt myself crash through several branches, twigs nicked every inch of exposed skin, and I took several mouthfuls of leaves. I spat them out and cracked my eyes open, seeing the world hurtling away. In no time, I burst out of the canopy and, as I started to slow down, looked around the clearing.

For a moment, everything stopped, and I was weightless… and then gravity kicked in to drag me right back down to reality. My eyes darted about and I pulled out another two kunai aiming my descent at a particularly big tree. I plunged the blades into the bark but the whiplash was so bad I almost lost my grip.

It didn’t hurt, though—after years of training, most parts of my hands were rough and calloused; the worst I felt was an uncomfortable tugging in my shoulders. Readjusting, I stretched them about before yanking one out of the tree and sending it straight down to Asuma.

He caught it easily and looked up, his voice oozing betrayal. “Hey! What was that for?”

“You’re asking me that after blasting me away!”

He folded his arms and squinted, nodding several times. “Yep. As expected, you’re throwing a temper tantrum over it. Typical.”

I snorted, returning my focus to the only kunai I had left.

While I was slightly annoyed that he’d done all that, there was more to my behaviour than childishness or irritation. I needed to buy myself some time, and buy it I did. The world shifted as I let go of the kunai, standing on my feet. I bent over, pulled it out of the tree, and walked to the ground.

“Here.” Asuma tossed me the kunai and sprung away, on guard. “Let’s go again.”

I caught it, taking up the same stance, and nodded.

This time, he was the one going on the offensive. His attacks were twofold: punches using his trench knives’ knuckleduster-like ridges and swinging cuts with the weapon’s edge. He threw in weird mixups every so often, like uppercuts that turned into sideways-aiming stabs, but so long as I stayed calm, I could react accordingly.

Switching my lead hand into a forward grip, I exploited the gaps between his attacks to slip past his guard and stab him. I leaned forward, driving the point forward. Asuma leaned to the side and brought his elbow over the kunai, trapping my wrist between his torso and arm. I had maybe a few seconds before he’d win so I let go of the kunai, relaxing my wrist enough that I could wriggle free, and immediately jumped out of range.

Asuma raised his guard with a smirk. “Okay then. How are you going to deal with this?”

Chakra danced across his blades, blue energy trailing their length and width. They buzzed to life, lengthening into two serrated chakra swords. He held them vertically in a different stance—one I’d seen only once before.

“Last time, you dislocated your shoulder.”

“Well, that’s not happening today.”

He snorted. “We’ll see about that.”

After flying through my hand seals, I dragged in a deep lungful and jumped into the air.

Wind-Release: Breakthrough was the weaker, D-rank cousin of Wind-Release: Great Breakthrough, a C-rank wind jutsu. It required less hand signs, less chakra control, and less chakra. Unfortunately, that meant it also had less power, but I could always overload its activation requirement to make up for that loss.

Overloading jutsu had a limit, though. Too much and it would self-destruct, making it more likely to blow up in your face than harm your opponent.

So to be safe, I overloaded it within reason—even if part of me wanted to see how far I could push it. Asuma could definitely take it, but it was an overall stupid thing to do when I could just experiment with him later.

I opened my mouth and aimed, releasing a violent gust. Asuma sliced upwards, cutting right through my jutsu with a wind blade so powerful I could make out its shape. I twisted in mid-air and fell into a crouch in the grass, immediately turning around to watch the wind blade cut through the top half of two trees, sending them crashing to the ground.

I looked back with my jaw hanging open in shock. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Asuma blinked, as if he only realised what he’d done, and sheathed his knives immediately. “I…got a bit too fired up… my bad.”

“I accidentally shish kebabed you, but my bad!”

“What’s shish kebab?”

I swallowed my heart back down and looked around for my kunai from earlier. “Goddamn. You're a lunatic, Asuma.”

“In your defence, you did a lot better than when I last used my chakra sabres.”

I fixed him with a withering stare.

“Right.” He coughed. “Seriously, well done.”

“Thanks,” I replied, calming down as the adrenaline started to fade. “What now?”

Asuma sighed. “Now, I make an announcement: our training’s going to go on a brief hiatus.”

I sprung to my feet. “What, why?”

“...One question at a time please.”

I took a breath. “Okay, why are we stopping?”

“Because I’ve finally got a mission.”

“Really?” I grinned. “That’s amazing! You’ve been wanting to get on one for months now, right?”

“Yeah. I was digging into my savings to get by.” He muttered something under his breath that I didn't catch. “I can’t tell you much about it, but it’s long-term. The estimated mission period is two months, but it could take longer.”

“That’s basically all of the summer!” I spluttered. “What am I meant to do for that long? I thought you were going to teach me more wind jutsu.”

Asuma sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Didn’t I tell you that you'll need more than ninjutsu to beat little Uchiha.”

“Forget Sasuke! I need to diversify my skill set. Right now, everything I have is offensive: Breakthrough, enhanced blows, and your bukijutsu. I need something different to at least make me harder to catch.”

“...I was hoping you'd say that.” The exasperation melted off his face, replaced by a bright grin as he pulled out a small scroll from his flak jacket. I reached out to take it but he pulled back. “Not yet.”

I furrowed my brow. “Is there some kind of challenge I've got to complete first?”

“Nothing like that.” He tucked the scroll back into the jacket and turned around. “We’ve got to do something first—come on.”

Without waiting for my answer, Asuma jumped into the canopy, giving me little choice but to follow. He led me deeper into the park in silence, not uttering a single joke the entire way— that's how I knew something was wrong—but I followed him without question.

He'd earned that much trust and more.