Back to Training 3/4

"Alright, times up!" Hatsuma called out to the sleeping boy.

"Huh?" he looked around before realizing where he was. He sighed and stood up.

"What are we going to do now, sensei?" he patted himself clean and looked up at her.

"Activate your speed release and hold out your hand." she commanded while holding a kunia in her hands.

Itama hesitated as he looked between her and the kunia, but ultimately did as he was told and held out his arm. Everything slowed down for the boy with the speed release activated, the water got slower, the trees swayed less. His senseis facial expressions were even easier to notice. But none of this helped his because before he could react he felt a sharp pain in his outstretched palm. He looked down to see his palm with a deep cut on it, and when he looked up, he saw his sensei holding a now bloody kunia.

The boy subconsciously deactivated his speed release, the world going back to normal for him.

"Ahh, what the hell, sensei!" Itama screamed while holding his bleeding palm. She had moved too fast for the boy to realize what was going on, even with his speed release. One second his palm was perfectly fine, the next second it was scarred.

"Shut up and hold your palm out again" she commanded, not caring about the tear that were building up in his eyes.

This time Itama did not do as told, instead he held his arms close to his chest. He began to back up from the woman, but before he could react, Hatsuma grabbed his cut hand and squeezed his hands in such a way that he couldn't close them.

"Sensei, please stop. It hurts. Don't cut me again." he pleaded with teary eyes. Although Itama was used to getting punched and kicked regularly, being cut by a kunai was something completely out of his bounds.

For both him and the previous Itama's memories, the previous Itama was more focused on elemental jutsu, and he had learned the basics of shuriken throwing but not much else besides that. And the current Itama hadn't yet started practicing with kunia yet. He could say for certain that being cut by the kunai was much worse than the punch to the stomach he received earlier.

"Stop complaining and look at your hand" she held his hand up for him to see.

Itama looked at the hand, and his jaw dropped to his chest when he saw what his sensei wanted him to see. His hand had completely healed itself. There is no blood coming from his palm anymore and even the deep cut had mostly healed, and the rest is visibly healing in front of his eyes.

"Umm, Sensei? What's going on?" he couldn't help but ask.

"Just like I thought, your speed release does heal you faster than normal." She said while wiping the blood off her kunai.

"What made you think that? Also, why did you have to cut me to find out!" he questioned

"It was easier to see if I was right if I just cut you. And I thought that way because of how easily you recovered each day. I've never seen someone recover as fast as you do from this type of training. I wanted to check if it had to do with one of your bloodline limits. And it looks like I was right." she shrugged at the angry child.

Itama just looked at his sensei before shaking his head. He couldn't be bothered to argue with her about the recklessness of her decisions. He was just happy it worked for the best.

"What now sensei?"

"We will test the upper limits of your speed. For this, you will be racing me. We will go from this end of the river to the other end just before it bends." She said, while preparing herself as well.

Itama looked in the distance to see where she was talking about and figured it was about 200 yards away from where they are now. He nodded and reactivated his speed release. The two got into racing position next to each other on the tree line. Hatsuma grabbed a rock from the ground and held it in her hands.

"When this rock hits the ground, we will go, ok?"

Itama couldn't tell what she said do to her voice being warped, but her got the general idea, so he nodded his head.

'I'm going to have to figure out how to have conversation in speed release' he thought to himself as he watched his sensei throw the rock into the air. Itama trained his eyes on the rock as it slowly fell to the ground and as soon as it touched the ground he took off from his position with his fastest speed.

He couldn't even feel the wind on his face as he rabidly approached the objective. In under half a second, he was half a step from the halfway to the end point. A small smirk formed on his face as he thought about finally beating his sensei is something. He couldn't wait to gloat about him benign faster than her. She might be able to keep up with his speed due to her insane reaction time, but she will never be able to out run him.

Just as his foot crossed the halfway mark, a blur past by Itama, who didn't notice.

In another half a second, Itama was at the finished line and was shocked to see his sensei standing there waiting for him while cleaning the drift from her fingernails.

Itama stood stunned and looked at his sensei as if she was a monster.

"H-how!" he pointed at her.

"Your speed release makes you incredibly fast, for your age. But compared to an adult at my level, you are still too slow. But don't get discouraged as you get older I'm, sure you'll get much faster, to the point where I won't even be able to see you. Right now, your speed is about at the border of an elite Shinobi of the clan." she explained

"B-but, speed is my thing…" Itama's voice trailed off as he slouched down.

"Don't get too down about it. Like I said, your age is your biggest limiting factor. You'll get faster as you grow." She patted the disappointed boy's head.

Itama looked up at this Sensei, who was smiling down at him. Her smile reassured the boy, who nodded his head at her.

'She's right, I will only get faster and stronger. My body is only nine right now, I have plenty of time to improve. And if speed release can heal me faster, than it must do more than that for my body? Plus, Speed Release isn't the only thing I have.'

After seeing the boy's renewed determination, Hatsuma decided it was good to move on with their training.

"Alright, let's move on."

After the race, the two of them went on to do more test on Itama's speed release. They did a total of five test. The first one was his ability to change direction when running. From this test, they found out that he could change direction seamlessly and continue with his speed.

The same applied to his attacks, meaning he could stop his punches just before they connected and immediately change where they landed. To the outside world, it looked like he teleported, but Itama could see everything clearly. The last part of this test involved Itama's ability to dodge Kunia and punches thrown his way.

Hatsuma started off with attacks that would only his newly trained Shinobi before steadily moving up to stronger attacks. Itama eventually had to stop at Elite attacks, as he was unable to consistently dodge them. He could barely dodge one or two attacks, but as more came at him, his ability to dodge decreased significantly. Whether it was shuriken, punches or jutsu he had a hard time.

The next test they did was the was his ability to throw shuriken in this form. From this test, although his accuracy was terrible, Itama was able to throw shuriken almost three times as fast as he normally could. The few times he hit something that wasn't the dirt and hit a tree, the shuriken would lodge itself until only the very end of one of the spikes was sticking out. Hatsuma made a mental note to get his throwing technique up to part. It embarrassed her to see how bad he was.

With the shuriken test finished, they moved onto his ability to run on water without chakra. To both of their surprise, as long as Itama built up enough speed, he could easily run on water and change direction in it. But they quickly learned that this was only the case if one of his feet stayed connected to the water. If both of his feet left contact with the water, he will fall into the water.

At the same time, they also tested his ability to walk on trees. And like the water, he could run on the trees as long as his feet didn't leave the tree, and he didn't stop running. If he stood still or his feet left the tree, he would fall.

Hatsuma mad another mental not to teach the boy how to use chakra on his feet.

The next test they ran for his speed release was the ability he learned when racing his friends, an ability he simply named air dashing.

From this test they learned a few interesting things. The first was that even without building speed, Itama could jump pretty high into the air and do one air dash before he falls down. The second thing that they learned was that the more momentum he built on the ground, the more air dashes he could do, but the distance of the jumps decrease with each one he does.

The last thing that they learned is that Itama didn't have to be high off the ground to do the air dash, his feet only didn't have to be touching it. There are two downsides to this, though, one is that he couldn't do it without any built up momentum. The other is that it was harder to control the closer he was to the ground.

And finally, the last test the two of them did was to see how long Itama could stay in his speed release form before h had to leave it. For this one, Hatsuma gave him a thirty minutes brakes so that he could fully rest. It was during this rest that Itama realized that his speed release most likely helped with his stamina too, considering he fully recovered in just under ten minutes.

This test was the simplest of the bunch, with Itama only sitting while in his speed release. In the end, Hatsuma had to tell Itama to come out of the form so that they could work on his Kinetic release. He was in the form for an hour total. She informed his that they would finish the rest of the test tomorrow before they moved on to his Bloodline Selection.