7 The basics behind Taijutsu!

{Konoha Academy, Konohagakure}

...

"-as established by the Second Hokage. The academy's main purpose is to train Konoha Shinobi. Before the establishment of the academy, all of Konoha's power came from clan members. The clans undertook the missions that came to the village, and the revenue was shared with the village. Even though two of the largest clans came forward with the concept of a shinobi village, most of the clans were a little hesitant in allowing someone else to train their young ones, their future." Ko-sensei spoke. He was the homeroom sensei in charge of our class.

This was the very first lesson we were being subjected to. While the history and lore of Konoha were interesting at the start, they became a bit boring as the lecture progressed. It has been almost an hour, and Sensei has just reached the point when Tobirama Senju, the advisor to the then Hokgae Hashirama Senju, proposed the creation of the Academy.

"...during a council meeting, a treaty between the various clans was signed that defined and restricted who could be a sensei in the academy. A student-teacher system of a chunin sensei in charge of a class was deemed appropriate, as Jonin's personal mentoring was deemed the next best step. At the same time, all the clans signed to stay away from the more interactive-focused jobs in the academy, and till this day, there hasn't been a clan shinobi hasn't been allowed to take over the responsibility of being an academy teacher."

"At the same time, all the heirs of the clan are required to go through the academy, a show of cooperation and trust in the academy's capabilities so that the rest of the civilian population could trust what was being taught. In addition..." 

...

'Civilians likely didn't trust shinobi clans back then. The times of the warring states period were tough for everyone.' I thought. While the lecture was all good, I was hoping that the elite class would have a more practical schedule, but most of my lectures today had been theoretical.

I took a leaf and stuck it to my wrist. The leaf remained stuck there for 40 seconds before I stopped doing the exercise and put my head down. The droning voice of Ko-sensei was an excellent motivator for me to rest.

'How long will this forced greatness of Konoha speech last, since Itachi was able to graduate within a year? Surely there must be some combat-focused classes.' The idea that I had to waste my time with the theory lectures was depressing, so I closed my eyes and focused on my chakra.

I felt my body relax as I immersed my senses in the chakra rushing through it. Yesterday, I increased the number of tenketsu I could sense from 72 to 75. My progress had slowed down considerably after the first 50. Now, it takes a lot of time for me to sense a new spot, as I have already searched through the available view of my chakra.

In hindsight, I should have known it would not be so easy. Of the 75 tenketsu that I have found, each of which was spread throughout my body and, without fail, located at the intersection of major chakra joints, only 59 are located just underneath the surface of the skin. So, out of the 75, only 59 are usable to release jutsus. The rest are more hidden connections that stabilize the whole network.

'Which kind of makes sense, even if there are more than three hundred tenketsu in our chakra network, why would the Hyuga clan stop after creating a technique called Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms? Surely, if there were more tenketsu available to a shinobi, they could use them to perform a jutsu. The most likely reason there is no 128 version of that technique is that the number of tenketsu that are available at the surface of any shinobi, the tenketsu that could be used to perform ninjutsu, is limited to 64.' I thought.

My knowledge of chakras and chakra networks is based on my own observations. I did get some scrolls from the academy before this class started so that I could double-check my insights with the official documents later. Still, while my theory seemed solid to me, Neji's observations with the Byakugan once again contradicted this view.

'In the show, after he struck Naruto with the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms, according to the Byakugan, there was no chakra running through his body. But that doesn't make sense because even if I use all of my chakra reserves, there are still some amounts of chakra flowing through my network.'

From what I can tell, our bodies and major organs need both blood and chakra to work, unlike in my past life when chakra wasn't a thing. So even if I use all of my chakra reserves, they are, in fact, just reserves, excess chakra that my body doesn't need to stay alive. 

...

"...Beside the Academy, Tobirama Senju also brought forward the proposal for-" Ko-Sensei was interrupted by a bell ringing, which was synonymous with time's up. He looked at everyone and continued, "We'll continue this lecture tomorrow-" Groans filled the class, but everyone got excited when he raised his voice and continued, "-right now, everyone, follow me. It's time for your first Taijutsu class."

'Right Taijutsu,' another reason I was dreading the following class. I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that sparring and learning to fight would be a thing, but for someone who had just occasionally mock brawled in college, that too had primarily been a strength contest, I do not look forward to being punched and kicked.

This time I was sitting alone, so there was no time crunch for me to move, so I waited until almost everyone was gone before joining the file at the end.

'Sensei knows that I don't know how to fight right. Going up against Itachi or, heck, any moderately trained clan kid would be embarrassing.'

The thought didn't fill me with confidence as I dragged my feet through the same corridor. The training ground was quite close to our class, so it was a short walk. I scanned the mood of the class. Already, most of them were a lot more enthusiastic about the taijutsu spars than anything else.

My class had quite a variety of kids. Almost all of the major clans had a representation of at least 1 or 2 kids. Some of them were non-clan kids, but they at least had shinobi parents, so I kind of stood out as Ko-sensei motioned for me to come closer.

"Everyone else, begin warming up and then do 25 rounds around the training ground," Ko-sensei shouted at the rest of the class, and just like that, all the excitement was snuffed out.

After snuffing the happiness of the kids, he turned back to me and spoke, "Kohaku Uchiha was it?"

I nodded at the rhetorical question. He kept staring at me for a bit and then asked, "You never received any training from the Uchiha clan?"

"Hai," I replied. His face was set in a stoic tone, so I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

He sighed and looked up at the rest of the class, "The rest of your class has been trained by a shinobi in most of the basic concepts for at least a year. There was a lot of opposition to your inclusion in this class because you are behind in several aspects. The class is supposed to learn things at an accelerated pace, with 2-3 years being the targeted course. If you don't work hard in your spare time to build up on stuff that we teach you, you'll quickly fall behind."

"Understood, sensei," I replied. The 2 to 3-year time limit was already too much for me. Even if I didn't want to replicate Itachi's feat of blowing through the academy curriculum in a year, wasting 2 years of my already short 6-year expiry date in the academy would just not do.

The chunin stared at my face for a bit before he nodded, "Good. There is one thing that might work in your favor, though. In the initial six months, the academy teaches everyone the basics of Leaf-Style Taijutsu. It helps build teamwork and teaches you guys how to counter a known style. While it may not be the most suited style for everyone, it covers all the basics and could be used as a good starting point to learn any specialized taijutsu style."

He waited for a moment before he continued, "The children of most shinobi clans would have their own taijutsu style, but for the first six months, all spars would be restricted to only Leaf-Style Taijutsu. So focus and learn... Did you get your leg healed?"

"Hai," I replied, getting a nod from sensei.

"Good... Now, while your class gets ready and warmed up, I'll teach you the basics of attack and defense, and you'll learn the katas related to the Leaf-Style Taijutsu along with the rest of them. Do you have any questions?" Ko-sensei asked.

I shook my head, not getting a nod, as he began speaking, "Good. Now stand straight and focus on my legs." 

I looked down at his legs as he continued, "A resting stance is one of the most important parts of taijutsu. The main aim of most taijutsu styles is to destroy this balance. When you learn taijutsu, most of the katas and stances will be slowly ingrained in your muscle memory, and you move as you have been taught and adapt on the fly. What you consciously do is probe for opportunities and do feints and attacks."

I looked as he moved slowly. His feet did a slight hop as he shifted from a normal standing position into what I could only assume was a resting stance like he was talking about. The main point I could discern was the position of his feet: his left foot was slightly forward, just an inch, and his right one was similarly slightly behind. At the same time, his knees were bent slightly, and his body was slightly lowered.

"Your resting stance is the transition step between each of your attacking and defensive moves. It's the piece around which you build your whole taijutsu style. After that comes the second step, your center of mass. It needs to be lower so that you can absorb blows and momentum and accelerate when needed. During a defensive move, your dominant leg would go backward as you blocked, or if you evaded, then you would push with your dominant leg and dash..." A slight shifting of his legs accompanied each of his points.

The change in his stance was clear, as his legs moved slightly forward or backward depending on the move he was talking about.

"Now, each of the taijutsu styles has its own stances, but they all operate on these standard principles. Do you understand? Do you have any questions?" Ko-sensei asked.

To be honest, although I could sense what he was implying, the whole conversation slipped past me. I didn't have a problem understanding what he was saying, but implementing it in my mind felt like a complex problem that I had never seen.

"I understand what you are saying. I just don't know if I'm going to think about everything like this every time?" I asked. There was no point in saying he understood something when he didn't. All of his lies would be revealed at a glance once he started sparring anyway.

"Don't worry about that. Just keep these things in mind, and as you get used to it, you will start doing most of these actions without thinking. I just want you to make sure that you have the right idea in mind, because correcting wrong stances and movements is a lot harder when your habits are already set. I would point out your errors from time to time, so don't be discouraged during the class," Ko-sensei spoke. He looked at the rest of the class as they had started running laps around the training ground.

"Go on, join your classmates for now. You'll learn the stances with the rest of your class." With one final instruction, he waved me away. I nodded at him before I started jobbing behind the rest of the class. Since I hadn't done any warmup, I was going to take it a little easier for a couple of laps to get my body warm before I started speeding up.

As I stared at the backs of my classmates, my thoughts went back to Ko-sensei's words.

'So people were opposed to me joining the elite class. Was it because of the resentment that would slowly start building up against the Uchiha clan, or was it because of something else?' The thought lingered in my mind as I sped up. I was waiting yesterday to see if Fugaku or someone from the Uchiha clan would offer me something so that I wouldn't embarrass the clan in front of others. But all my hopes were for naught when nothing of that sort happened. 

For now, I was without support, and I needed to gather every chance that I could, even if that meant pushing my body beyond its limits.

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AN - The next chapter will focus on a couple of lessons in Taijutsu and Shurikenjutsu before I speed the story up a little. I don't want to fly through months of time during these time skips so that each chapter would be reasonably spaced apart. Most probably 2-3 days ahead at a time!