Private Tutor

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He was pleased with her answer and she was glad for that. Now was moving on with the lesson into learning how to control ones chakra. How one is able to grasp it within themselves and mold it to their choosing. "No problem, Jirou." she stated as she would continue her lesson. "Now onto the matter at hand which is actually being able to control your own chakra. It's an ever long road being able to do such things, many don't end up mastering their control until years pass by. Now in order to get you started on such a path there is a training method that has been used a lot within Konoha for generations."

She would point to the headband that she wore on her head, specifically pointing to the Konoha symbol engraved upon it's center. "Basically it behind the whole idea of why our village's symbol looks the way it does. With it's circular rotation being the central focus of it all. The training method is very symbol, you would take a leaf and place it on the center of your forehead and you'd focus your attention on it. You keep your focus upon it and ignore everything else. And once you were capable of being able to keep your focus on that, then it would be the best opportunity to try molding your chakra. Focus is highly important when gathering your chakra and molding it the way you need it and if you can't focus on your chakra then you won't be able to use it properly."

Jirou lifted an eyebrow at the mentioning of the leaf momentarily, but the explanation made him lower it back down, nodding as the reasoning behind the concept was boring it's way into his skull. "So any leaf would do?" He asked, not really expecting an answer as he picked up one of the green leaves, a really generic leaf one would find anywhere in Konoha or any village with trees around, shaped like the symbol of Konoha. He placed it upon his forehead as instructed and began to close off everything else around him. The sounds were all there as he closed his eyes. But slowly... Steadily...
Eventually, he could hear nothing. The world was gone. Existence had been reduced to two entities. Only things that were, were him and the leaf. The leaf... With it's plant-like veins and green colour that he could not see, it was really beautiful in it's own way. The little ridges and the slight miscoloration of the leaf as it was dying, waiting to be reduced to mulch, so it could fuel the growth of more trees that would have their own leaves...

He could feel his heartbeat, the flow of his life-force as it travelled through his body to sustain the functions of the liver, the kidneys, the biceps, the arms, the lungs, the thighs. All of that was at the back of his mind. Only the leaf mattered.

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Akemi watched him as he went right into it. Without her even asking him to do it, it was nice to see such a diligent student, but there was indeed more she wanted to say before he started the leaf training method. She sat there and watched him a moment waiting for him to really get into it before she stuck a finger in her mouth, got it really, really wet, and then shoved it into his ear.

Jirou was really in the zone. Like the universe was him and the leaf and he and the leaf were the universe.
Then a wet sensation in his ear brought him back from his reverie, the fleshy appendage of his sensei bringing him back to the world of the living. "Ack!" He blurted alarmedly and stepping aside from the presence of the appendage, clutching his ear in order to prevent any more wet surprises coming at it.
"What what what!?" His eyes were wide open as he looked around for the origin of the finger before his eyes rested on Akemi's outstretched finger. "Oh! Gomenasai, sensei! I got ahead of myself!" He kneeled in front of his teacher and laid his hands to the sides, with his palms open.

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Watching his reaction caused her to chuckle and snicker at it. She would then shake her head when he got on his knees and apologized. "It's alright, just wait next time. I know you're excited and all, but I wasn't even done yet." she stated and patted the bench. "Now sit back down." once he sat back down she would go back to saying what it was she wanted to say. "That method of training is a rather old method and it's rarely used in trainings down a days. It's just a variation of meditation and finding your center, anyone can do it at anytime, the leaf itself was just a symbolism to the very village we live in today. What I had wanted for you to do is to actually try to circulate the chakra within you, to feel the energy within you and try to push it around through your body, you're still focusing upon yourself, but it's a step up from the simple leaf focus method of ages past."

Jirou sighed as he sat down next to Akemi, obeying her like he was her pet being told to sit. Which, incidentally, could have easily been the case.
His ears perked up when she spoke up again, however. But he was confused by the end of it. Circulate the chakra? Admittedly, he thought he felt some sort of energy within him but he thought it was just his blood... But blood didn't make sound not-too-dissimilar to a flowing river...
But he decided to wait in case there was anything else his sensei wanted to add.

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Akemi could tell that Jirou was confused by the end of it. "Basically long story short, I am going to want you to go straight into trying to gather the chakra within you simply because the focusing of the leaf method goes along with this, so separating it out into two different training is a waste of time, plus you don't need to learn how to focus. You already know how to since this is a one-on-one teaching session." Hopefully that made it much easier for him to understand. She would then stand up and stand before him as she made the ram hand sign and held it there. "A lot of shinobi's tend to use the ram seal as their focal point when gathering their chakra within themselves. Any seal or none at all can work, it's just a matter of finding what's best for you. In order to gather your chakra you just need to feel for it, your chakra systems are tied in very closely with your body system so it may feel like your trying to control your own blood, but it's more so like floating in water and trying to get the water to move around you, while you keep still." She would then close her eyes and gather her own chakra, her's was more evident as she had a much larger chakra pool than he did and the wind around them both began to pick up and even swirl about her just a bit more.

Jirou nodded as Akemi explained the gist of the whole ordeal. When she stood up though, he looked at her quizzically until he saw the ram sign and his sensei explained how that sign was the most used focal point for shinobi. He remembered something that his father, Hideo, had told him. That the clan went by their own secret seal. He would ask about that sign later, but for now, he decided to cave in to popularity and choose the ram seal. He didn't manage to think that much about it though, as he felt the air around his teacher pick up and swirl. It was subtle, but it was there.
The reference to floating in water and getting it to move around you was something that he figured would be an impossible thing, but the way the air moved... seemed to make the impossible possible.

"And when I manage to do that, what do I do?" He asked. He didn't want to assume anything, but he still entertained the idea of using the jutsu he had long waited to use. And that would be the first of many skills and jutsus he would learn while under her tutelage!

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Akemi would stop collecting her chakra and letting it surge through her body and as she relaxed her focus the air had died back down to it's original breeze. "It's an exercise like working out a muscle. Doing this helps you learn to control it, and move it through your body the way you need to whenever you get around to doing techniques. So as you practice it would should just learn to move it through yourself without losing that focus. It becomes more difficult the more accurate and precise you try to make your control over your chakra." She would sit back down and motion to the space in front of her. "Why don't you give it a try, focus for a big and try to gather the energy within you and move it around within your belly."

Like working out a muscle, huh? Couldn't hurt to try. Worst that could happen is that he doesn't manage it. Best case scenario, Jirou could move it with great precision. At least, that's what he was thinking anyway. But he wasn't about to show weakness to his teacher! A pupil must be strong and do as the sensei says!
"Hai!" He said with excitement (And, secretly, a bit of dread) as he closed his eyes and closed out everything else once again, forming the ram hand sign as he did.
Slowly, almost painfully so, he began to hear the river-like sounds again. The stream of power that he would use to succeed in his missions once he becomes an official ninja.
Not being quite sure what to do, he began to think... He had to move the chakra around in his belly. Such a simple command, yet so hard to actually carry out. Like trying to find safe harbor in the middle of a tsunami.
Tsunami... Whirlpools! That's it!
Jirou's expression hardened as he began to think of a whirlpool in his belly, with his belly button being the eye of the storm.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to perceive the change in the flow... It was not nearly as significant as he wanted it to be, but with his chakra control it was to be expected. It was like a calm breeze affected the tide around him.

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Akemi sat on the bench and watched as Jirou got right to work. She was rather pleased to have such an enthusiastic student. Someone excited and willing to work, it made her happy, but at the same time made her a little sad because it felt like she was destroying some naive existence by introducing them to the shinobi world, but at the least she would be able to see them through it and help them increase their chances at surviving in the long run.

She would sit there and watched carefully. She would give him some time to work on it and sat there in silence keeping an eye on him.

Jirou could feel the river of chakra flowing stronger, bit by bit, in his belly region. It was extremely exhilarating, to grasp at a source of power he only had read about in scrolls. Those scrolls did no justice to chakra in terms of descriptions, however. They paled in comparison to the actual thing. Jirou felt like he could do anything as long as he knew how to use this chakra.

Being lost in his fantasy, however, he failed to notice one thing. The chakra was flowing rather strong. Too strong. He was losing control of it. As soon as he realized it, he tried to wrest his control back, gritting his teeth. But while he was doing that, he still found the time to ask something from his sensei. "W-what do I do now, sensei?" He asked, with a slightly exhausted tone. It wasn't easy holding his chakra together like this. He'd have to practice a lot in order to master it.

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Akemi would keep an eye on him watching hi as he gathered his chakra and felt how it began to pool his chakra within himself, but then began to pool too much and began to 'burn' it away. She didn't appear worried at all. She just sat there watching how he would handle it, well until he asked a question. "Just stop gathering, you're pooling too much at once and unconsciously you are burning away at your own chakra. Wasting it for nothing. You're going to be quite tired, so take a moment and sit stop trying to gather your chakra. Sit down and breath." she said to him as she crossed her legs. A smile on her face.

"Eh? I go through all this just to stop halfway!?" Jirou questioned in disbelief, looking at Akemi. Her smile made him look at his stomach and back at her.
"I should just try to use the jutsu now! That would impress her! But... I only know how to gather chakra, not use it..." He thought, closing his eyes for a moment. "On the other hand, that is more than I could have said for myself some hours ago. She has already taught me so much. I probably should just follow her instructions." He thought as he began to see how tired he actually felt. She was right. He was burning his chakra away on an attempt to try and impress his sensei. All he ended up doing was tiring himself out. And what good is a student who doesn't listen to their teacher?

With a sigh, he let his hands fall limp to his sides, letting out a breath of relief as his body finally realized he had stopped exerting it needlessly. He fell on his bum, breathing heavily as he felt the flow of energy in his stomach ease and ebb. Eventually he felt his heartbeat return to normal and his breathing becoming less frantic and more calm.

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And just like that he had felt the immediate effects of burning away ones own chakra. "Well at least you now are familiar with the feeling of how your body feels when your chakra is mostly drained. That is particularly why shinobi's practice everything they do, to increase the amount of chakra within their body. The more training, the more practice, the larger pool of chakra we have and the least likely the chances we get placed in such a position. You're body feels like stone, heavy and rough, breathing becomes difficult and doing anything is all the more harder." She would state as she sat there. "That is the start of everything you will do as a shinobi, Jirou. From there once your chakra is gathered, you just perform the hand seals you require, think about the jutsu you want to do, and your chakra will mold into it as you need, but at the same time, you need to make sure you put in the right amount of chakra, too much and the jutsu would end up backfiring on your or exploding, or not coming out correctly, depending on the jutsu, and too little and the jutsu won't even come out, or it would be extremely weak."

As he slowly regained his breath, Jirou looked at Akemi, taking in this information. "So doing this can help me increase my chakra pool?" He asked, wheezing halfway before he began to feel like he can breathe normally. The information about how to do jutsus once he has the chakra gathered was also something that perked his ears, but he figured he was too tired to try it right now. But he did want to know something.
"Will I have to try the jutsu several times in order to get a feeling on how much chakra I should put into it? Or will I just know immediately?" He asked. He figured it would be the former, but he wasn't taking any chances.

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"Yes, It will help, alongside with training your body and your mind. You're chakra is composed of physical energy and spiritual energy, and as both are trained the greater your pool of chakra becomes." She would smile gently. "It's a trial and error kind of thing as I said before there is no exact amount, you will just have to practice it and you will get the hang of how much you'll need to spend on the jutsu and as your control gets better you start to find better ways to perform the jutsu's you already knew and find out you didn't need as much as you needed before just to throw out the same output."

Jirou nodded as he stood up and wiped the dirt off his clothes before wiping the sweat from his brow. Sitting on one's bum for the better half of a minute did not usually mean well for one's clothes, especially in the sandy backyard that the student and teacher were in. In fact, he had an ant crawling on his arm, though he didn't notice it at first because it was on his clothing and not his actual skin, but he did notice it eventually, which he then wiped away, deciding to give all his clothes a good rustle. All that training didn't help either. The pillars were a tough one and he still hadn't mastered them - likely wouldn't for a fair bit. A few weeks at best. Gathering chakra like Akemi did? Months. Being a successful ninja like his father? Years.

But he'd get there. He'd come this far, he wasn't gonna quit now. "What next?" He asked.

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Akemi would cross her arms in front of her as she would smirk. "Well right now at this very moment, let's have a quick review." she stated. "Though I want the review to come from you, in your own words tell me what you have learned from this day so far." She wanted to test his attentiveness really and get a figure for how his thought processing works depending on how he said his words and how he reacts to her question.

Jirou gave a couple of blinks before realizing the reasoning behind it.
"Oh! Uhmm... I learned about the hand seals, how to practice these hand seals while multitasking, I learned about chakra, chakra control, the tenketsus of the body, how chakra is created, the importance of ninjas to their respective hidden villages and to their countries as a whole, the arsenal of the shinobi, the effects of genjutsu, how to use jutsus and about how this village was born." He said, tapping his head a bit as he recalled everything he could remember up until that point without consulting his notebook.

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Akemi would nod her head as she listened to him. "We managed to cover a lot today." she would smile as she thought about how much further she wanted to push this lesson today and then glanced up towards the sky to gauge just how much more time they had and around what time of day it was. It was probably getting closer to lunch time by this point in the day. "We may be able to call it a early day today, at least for your first day. I wouldn't want to overload you with too much information, but...I think we can possibly end on a high note." she would state as she stood up. "We can make an attempt at, at least one technique today." she would nod her head. "I like that idea, yes, we shall do just that. How are you feeling at this moment? Do you think you can keep going just a bit longer?"

Jirou glanced up at the sky as well, noticing that it was indeed getting close to lunch time. His mother was making sashimi and kanpyo maki today.
"Mmm, kanpyo maki..." He thought, before shaking his head as he heard Akemi talking as she stood up. She finally suggested that he'd try to actually perform a jutsu and take an important step on his road to becoming a ninja. "Nani!? Are you kidding, sensei!? Of course I can if it's something like this!" He said as he smiled widely. He did worry slightly about him overdoing it with his first jutsu, but he didn't let it show. He would succeed, he reassured himself. His family would be proud.

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Now that she had his full attention and he seemed to be beaming with energy, it was the matter of what jutsu should she have him learn first? It can't be something too difficult given that he was pretty tired and she was fully aware of it. She could be mean, but she's not that mean to purposely drain her students of all their chakra. "We can go with a really simple one. It may take a few practices to get it right, but the execution is whats important right now. The technique I will teach you is the bunshin no jutsu." Looking him over once more. "The clone technique can take a couple practices to get it right, but it's pretty basic in that most shinobis know this technique. The purpose of this technique is to serve as a distraction against your opponent. There is a limited range that these clones can be at, plus while they may appear as real and as solid as anything else they are intangible. Meaning that there are some signs that one can tell they aren't the real deal, but used properly and timed correctly it wouldn't matter if someone knew the tells that these aren't the real deal. The seals needed to perform this one is the ram, snake, and tiger seal. As you perform the seals think of yourself, your appearance and imagine your chakra leaving your body and taking upon that form." Akemi would perform the handseals and shortly afterwards, two clones appeared on either side of her, looking about as real as the real one in the middle.

Jirou watched as two clones of his sensei appeared to her sides in puffs of smoke. Their demeanor, their stance, their eyes, their clothing, all of them were exact copies.
But considering what he had gone through already, he felt like he could take it in stride instead of just watching in awe like he had until now. He watched each of them for a moment before he started to gather his chakra like he did before, only this time he decided he'd try without using a hand seal as a focal point. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The darkness engulfed his vision as he closed out everything else. Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to see some sort of light-blue prick in the center of his vision. It was hard to actually keep his sight on it, but once he got close enough, the prick turned out to have the shape of a man, with a whirling pool in his middle region. His hands began to move as he realized he was ready. He thought of himself and his clothes and saw as the man began to mimic these features, then imagined it being ripped from within him.

Ram. Snake. Tiger.

"Ninpou! Bunshin No Jutsu!"

A puff of smoke next to him happened, along with a poof-like noise as Jirou felt his chakra having been depleted, like it had been forced out. But not by much, he felt like he could do that again if needed, as long as he didn't take too long and burn himself out. He opened his eyes and looked to his left, only to see his reflection.
Wait... That was not a reflection... There's no mirror.
He raised his hand, waved it in front of him for a moment and then poked the clone, watching if the lookalike did anything to react. It pushed the clone back a bit before it poked back in return, giving an annoyed grunt. But he didn't even feel the clone's hand on him. Even weirder, he didn't feel anything when he was poking it. It was like there was nothing more than air where the clone was.
It was at that moment that he realized he had succeeded.
"I succeeded on the first try!" He thought gleefully.
"Yatta!" He proclaimed happily. After all, why wouldn't he be? He succeeded in using a jutsu, on his first try, no less. The clone echoed his sentiment, hopping in place for a few seconds before it disappeared in the same puff of smoke that it was accompanied by upon it's creation.

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Akemi watched him carefully as he performed the technique. Feeling how his chakra surged through his body, she gave a light smirk as she watched the results. It was pretty nice to be able to see that he had gotten the technique correct on the first go. She looked over the clone and watched the interaction between the two. she didn't really see any real differences between the two and nodded her head in approval. "You did a good job today. If you notice very well, you got the details down pretty well, but if you take a look you'l also come to notice these clones don't cast a shadow, which let's you know they are intangible. On top of that, they don't interact with the environment as they are not really there, but used correctly in a tight spot, you'll likely fool someone long enough to turn the tide in battle. Well that is all for today, You did well for your first day. You're free to go now. Be sure to head on straight home."