88 Izanagi

1st POV

My name is Izanagi. Just Izanagi, nothing else. For as long as I can remember, I've always ever had that name.

Our family is unique, both the immediate and the extended. Grandpa Hagoromo, grandpa Hamura, Uncles Ashura, and Indra all have the same name but pap-, I mean father said ours isn't decided yet. I wonder why that is.

I once asked father h that is and he said that grandpas family was from a unique heritage while we were even more unique than them.

I couldn't tell if he was bragging or being truthful, but I later came to know why he said that.

Now, my childhood was, as father always says, 'Peculiar'. When I gained cognizance of my surrounding, I was barely a year old. My sister and I were said to have matured faster than children our age.

We could crawl before others, walk before they began to crawl, and talk when they developed enough muscle to support their bodies to barely stand.

We later got to know it was due to father. Father said that we inherited his genes as they pertained to the body but only inherited the color of his eyes.

Turns out our eye's appearance took after our mother's. Mother and father didn't tell us anymore and said when we activated our chakra we'd know.

We didn't know what chakra was, but as 3-year-olds, we didn't bother much about it, but when we found out about it, we also found that father sealed our chakra.

Sister was angry at father, but I managed to think about it logically and knew that father must have had his reasons. Father later made us know that we had an astonishing amount of spiritual energy and that we need to make our physical bodies catch up so that we won't develop any form of chakra sickness.

As we reached 5 years of age, father began drilling us with daily exercises, he said it was to lay a good foundation for our bodies early on.

According to father, the body has three peaks of development. The first one is when you are 5 years old, that was when to develop the body in any direction you desire.

The second is when you were between 12 - 14. According to father, this varies for both genders. This was when their already set foundation shows its effects. At this stage, be it spiritual energy, physical energy, or chakra, it increases exponentially. This continues till the age of 16 - 19.

At this point, whatever you specialize in would settle down. It was at this point that one would be required to perfect all their techniques and raise them to a substantial level.

The third peak would come before the age of 25 and end before they reach 30. This was when one is said to be in his prime. After this stage, they would either decline in terms of energy while perfecting their techniques or they would decline in both cases due to accumulated injuries.

When father explained this to me I was barely 7 so I didn't get what he was trying to say, but I got the gist which was that he was helping us lay a better foundation for our future.

Although sister always acts childish and cheeky, I knew she was as smart if not smarter than me.

Now I'm not downplaying my smartness but father always seems to fall into her plots, I don't know how she goes about it, but it always works.

Father is the smartest man I know of. Grandpa Hagoromo and Grandpa Hamura even pale in comparison to him. I always get the feeling father sees through everything and has a logical explanation for everything.

Once he asked me, "Nagi-chan, do you know what the greatest illusion of all is?"

Of course, I shook my head, he then said, "Time. Time was only the change of all things, an illusion of thoughts and consciousness. When the flow of time changed, that was only changing the conscious perception of the change in all things. And no matter who you are, you can't escape this illusion"

Now I didn't know what brought that about but when I thought about it, I found that it made sense.

Father always said that I looked too mature for my age but still can't match up to sister in terms of the philosophy of life.

Sometimes, pap-, father can be smart, but some other times, he just seems stupid.

At the age of 8, some children our age began training in hand-to-hand combat, sister and I went to check it out and someone made fun of sister's eyes.

Sister of course didn't pay him any mind which caused the boy to launch an attack on sister. At that moment, everything slowed down for me but before I could launch myself to protect sister, sister already attacked and the boy was defeated.

I chuckled at my dumb idea. I had thought sister required protection which was a blunder on my part. Due to her always cheerful attitude, I forget she's my sister. If I could do something, she could do it too.

After that experience, father heard of it and forbade us from fighting with children our age. Grandpa Hagoromo rebuked him saying that hand-to-hand combat helps in stabilizing the mind and body, of course, I didn't understand it.

Father agreed and when I asked what grandpa meant, father said, "Well, no matter how strong your body you get by doing exercises or your chakra and will get by meditating, you'd still need to experience things with your body and mind to get them both in sync."

I never understood fully until he suddenly decided to personally teach us how to fight.

I was aggrieved at first, after all, father does nothing but laze around all day if he's not teaching us something. I'd never seen him fight once, he doesn't even have the body of someone that fights like Uncle Ashura and Uncle Indra, but shortly after we began 'sparing' as he calls it, did I know how wrong I was.

Father was a monster, his physical body was as hard as the ground itself and it hurt like hell to punch him, though I also noticed something intriguing happen when we fight.

The more we fought the more my body adapted. I didn't know about sister but the more I punched father, the more I adapt to it.

Father then began taking us to watch whenever he begins 'sparing' with uncles, according to him, he was merely checking their progress, but from the look in uncle Indra's eyes, I would think otherwise.

One thing of note was that father always came out on top. He never seems to ne winded even after a long 'spar'.

After that, I took father's lessons seriously. Father always seems to be the kind that wants to finish things quickly or avoid them completely when it comes to fights.

I always notice that he smiled happily whenever he fights uncles but later he began ending their fights quickly. According to him, "they didn't have any more dance moves", but later, he began smiling brighter, much brighter than before.

When I asked, he said, "They've finally learned the move I thought them in the past. Things are now more interesting"

With us though, he'd always finish our fight in a flash while giving us tips on how to get better, but at times he'd just dodge throughout the entire apar till we get tired.

We became strong as time passed and I began to understand why he forbade us from fighting with kids our age. We seem to have an unlimited amount of stamina when compared to kids our age, even our cousins Rengoku and Kenjiro whose stamina was almost on par with ours couldn't keep up in the long run, plus our hits get heavier as time passed.

Today, m was our 12th birthday and although we've spent a substantial amount of time learning seals, the moment it feels like we've reached the limit, father proves us wrong by making us see an even more absurd usage of seals.

In short, we never got to unravel father's seal on our spiritual sea as he calls it, and on our chakra.

In attendance to see our seals removed were Grandpa Hagoromo and Hamura, grandma Hanami, uncle Ashura, Uncle Indra, and Uncle Hokuki.

After some encouragement from father, he patted our heads and released the seal.

The moment the seal was released, it felt like I was hit by a sea of flowing water. It was similar to fathers description of when a body of water in a dam was released.

At that moment, the only thing I managed to make out was father saying, "Oh, shit. Domain Expansion"

I felt my consciousness blurring as I thought, "Isn't that father's eye final ability?"

With that thought, I lost consciousness.

/////

It's your author here, I thought I should make a short POV on Izanagi and Izanami so we'd get a grasp on them.

In case you don't get the gist of this chapter, I made Izanagi the kind that reasons with his head at face value, with no deeper thoughts and emotions in the process, but still smart as it is. While Izanami will be shown in the next chapter.

Izanagi is the straightforward kind of guy who likes what he likes and hates what he hates no in-betweens. Just that.