Chapter 8 - Philosophy of earth and Introspection

Early morning twilight hours, the next day.

Shinjo sat on a boulder in a meditative posture and tried to comprehend what he had learned the previous day from the man, the myth, the legend himself.

.....

"Before we start your training in the earth element, we need to have an understanding of the element itself. Tell me, what do you understand about the earth, the ground, the soil upon which you walk?"

Not expecting the first hokage to throw a curve ball right off the bat, he thought for a moment about his outings in the wild and tentatively replied,

"Earth is everything, everywhere. It encompasses all life. Any life wouldn't be in existence without the soil as a foundation. Life comes from the soil, and will return to the soil after it has done its time. So soil, or Earth is mother nature herself."

Hashirama's eyes widened at the level of comprehension of the 7 year old young boy. In a world that was filled with violence, one would expect someone to have an elemental comprehension based on its advantages to the Shinobi profession. For example, a fire elemental shinobi would generally comprehend the element as destructive, corrosive, damaging, burning everything. They would seemingly fuel it with their anger and resentment to their percieved enemies. Very few would comprehend the fire element, as the giver of life itself. Same as everyone, he expected the boy to say something similar along those lines, its uses in how to deal with enemies and how much damage it could cause.

Never expected the heir of the greatest assassin clan, the epitome of violence, to have such a refreshing and profound view on his element and the life in general. If only he was born into his Senju clan, he could just leave everything to him and die with a peace of mind. Nonetheless.

Hashirama sat down on the ground, not minding the dirt at all and asked him to sit in front with much enthusiasm.

"That's right. But you see, it's much more than that, on a fundamental level. Earth is the only element that can take on the properties of other elements, none of the other elements can do that."

Shinjo's eyes widened at the preposterous claim the god of shinobi was making. So with excitement in his eyes, he listened with a curiosity that matched his age for once.

"Say nothing about the immaterial elements, they cannot be made to imitate the properties of material elements. Lets consider fire, earth can become lava, transforming into Lava release. Earth can flow like water, transforming into Mud release. Earth can have destructive properties of lightning, since it's a good conductor of thunder release, you can achieve a similar effect by creating two opposite polar charges. And finally the most intriguing, Earth can also become light as a feather and flow like the wind. The prime example being the first Tsuchikage, Ishikawa himself. Though many of the applicationa branch off to kekkei genkais, the major element is always the earth element."

Hashirama paused for a moment, gauging the attention of his temporary disciple and continued,

"Now I am not saying a person can develop all these properties at once. It takes a momentous amount of time, to take one aspect to its highest level. What more, all these properties of the earth element cannot exist at once. So you have to choose one and take it to its highest level possible by your standard. While Tsuchikage chose the 'wind' aspect of the earth element, taking it to the highest level, now he can change the weight of rocks on demand, I chose the very fundamental, baseline aspect of it, namely the Life aspect. That resulted in my Kekkei Tota, wood release, a combination of Water+Earth+Yang release. So tell me, young Shinjo, which aspect do you want to enhance in the earth element? The sooner you set your mindset, the sooner you can start training in the earth element. While you can start on it right away, mindlessly training without mental comprehension, will result in a mediocre control over your element."

.....

'I want my earth element to encompass my very being, it should match the kind of mentality I have, for a greater effect. But what is my mentality? What am I? Who am I?'

Somehow, Shinjo felt tired just thinking of all these esoteric subjects. He was but a child, he hadn't seen the world at large. Hadn't suffered enough or at all. How could he have any idea of what his mentality was? One never knows what kind of person he is, until he stares death right in its eyes.

So he simply stopped. Now hoping for the trancelike state he occasionally went into, so that he could sit back and relax.

.....

Soon, days passed like loose sand through fingers. It had been a few months since Shinjo had the talk with the first hokage.

He had all but stopped his training in order to find his way. Except for the daily minimum training to keep fit and maintain his reflexes and battle IQ, he spent all his time wandering through the village, the forest, sometimes going for a swim in the Naka river that passed through the west side of the village.

Despite the amount of time passed, he wasn't disheartened at the utter lack of results. He called it his 'spiritual journey'.

As his father once said,

"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's."

And he realised it first hand in his journey to find his element. Literally.

His peers had started training in their respective elements, without much thought. Their clan had some records on how to train each element to its prime, so as to get better results in their kekkei genkais when the children hit puberty. All except the earth element of course.

Let's face the facts. The Earth element is the farthest thing from words like 'subtle', 'secretive' and 'stealth'. Would you use earth escape that has the least chances of being subtle and secretive in an assassination job? It kind of defeats the whole purpose of being an assassin. So Hattoris' never saw someone with the earth element appear in their clan history, by genetics.

Now in order to bind the whole clan to Senju, in turn to Konoha, the addition of a senju bride now gave birth to an anomaly among them.

.....

Konoha had seen many changes in the time he spent immersed in his 'spiritual journey', some big, some small.

The celibate Hokage spent all his waking hours to enhance the way of life of Konoha residents and to pave the path for his successor.

Anbu was officially formed, with his father at its helm, along with a number of youths from his clan. It was worth mentioning that his clan hadn't taken any jobs since they joined the village two decades ago. Mainly to integrate well into the village and secondly to hide from the eyes of the populace. Prior to the village system, their clan situation was slowly moving towards a mass genocide. Now that they had an official job, though of a secretive nature, it ensured their livelihood. With his senses, he could vaguely see a lot of ninjas lingering in the shadows, from what he guessed, to ensure the safety of the villagers and minimize the local crime rates.

The Ninja academy had officially started, with the aim to attract clan children and through targeted education, reduce their clan identity and better integration of the clans for the betterment of the village and by the way, giving the meager population of civilians a chance to stand out and weaning off the influence of the said clans. Truly many birds with one stone, the wisdom of the second hokage knew no bound. During one of his aimless wandering through the village streets, he saw many clan children and some civilians on their way to a fairly large building that would serve as the Ninja academy for many years to come. He heard the second hokage, in a moment of generosity donated his clan's signature jutsus, some of his own creation to the academy, for the civilians to stand a chance against the clans.

He could see many uchiha shinobis with their red and white fan shaped symbol proudly displayed on their garments, patrolling through the streets. They supposedly had the duty of the Konoha Police force, maintaining order among the villagers.

The village had now started taking on tasks from employers across the fire nation and a few small neighbouring nations. Genin, chunin and jonin were busy, going to and fro the hokage building, likely taking or submitting tasks.

As a whole, slowly, Konoha had started to become what the founders, Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara had envisioned.

And his peers were assigned their respective teams, a squad with 3 genins and a guiding jonin and had been doing multitude of C level tasks of bandit extermination and escort missions, buffing up their resumé, having formally started their journey to be true ninjas.

There were no wars anymore. No children had to go out to fight. They could enjoy the peace and go to the ninja academy jovially. Things were looking up and the adults were beginning to relax their tensed nerves, no longer worried about surviving just another day, no longer worried about their children dying an unknown death.

Shinjo looked at the lively scene in the village, for a moment felt heavy in his heart. How long would the peace last? Would he have the strength to protect this peace with his own hand, one day?

.....