Quick Fingers [p]

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

His month of intense training had been just as taxing as it implied, for a lot had to happen if a Uchiha wanted to improve the skills they already possessed. Luckily, it was inside of Hiruzen’s blood to never give up on trying to improve himself and the power he could wield. Having just put on his clothing, the young Chuunin walked out of his house, stepping into the Uchiha clan compound where he was greeted by several of his relatives. Even though he had lost the ones closest to him, it was good to know that he had family left that cared for him. No matter how hard things got, one should never forget that they have people back home that love them unconditionally, whether they are family or close friends. While mushy, it was something his uncle had once told him, a message he had to pass on to him from his mother who, at the time, was on her death bed. Since both of his parents had passed away, a lot of people felt the need to look after him, which was a good thing really, though they often took it too far. When people saw him during a training session, they would come to bring him thee or food or simply tell him to take a break when he was in fact far from needing one. The term overprotective often came to mind, and while the village often refered to him as a decent shinobi for surviving the encounter with the Prajñã group, his family did not see him as a hero, they saw him as a child that, while powerful in his own right, still needed to be protected from the dangers of the world.

It was for this reason that he had decided to head out to the forest of sanctuary in order to continue his training, away from the prying eyes of his fellow clan members and villagers. Due to this behavior, it was not that strange for people to start calling him the Monkey Warrior, seeing as most of his time was spent with monkeys as opposed to spending any quality time with people. While he was without a doubt one of the most kind hearted members of the clan, he had a hard time when it came to truly letting people back into his heart again. When one had gone through the things he had gone through, they would most likely be able to understand the reasons behind it, though only his uncle and his friend, or former friend Hakumei seemed to be the only people that felt the same way as him, showing the same behavior as him, just in a different manner. Hakumei had sealed herself inside of her home, only answering the door to the person that came to bring her food, this often being Hiruzen himself or a relative while his uncle Hikaku had given up on doing any field work, now acting only from the office of the KYOBU, away from the actual fighting. It went to show that everyone that went through such a thing had their own way of dealing with the pain that lingered after such an event had come to pass. Arriving at his destination, he could already feel the warm moisture that rose from the hot springs.

The good thing about spending time with primates was that he would get to study them more, getting more information as to how far their ability to copy him and his own antics went. Up until today, he had been able to teach a group of monkeys how to set up traps using nothing but steel wire, some shuriken, small stones and whatever else nature could offer in terms of camouflage. The things they had picked up were not limited to that though, learning how to set up a fairly effective ambush, accurately toss stones and shuriken and even teaching a single one how to meditate and control a small amount of it’s chakra, proving to him that human beings were not the only creatures born with chakra that could be harnessed and potentially weaponized. Before he managed to actually communicate with them like one communicated with another human being however, he did not want them to remotely learn anything along the lines of weaponizing chakra. Knowing these creatures to be the same as humans in many ways, teaching them how to create power without teaching them how to properly wield it and be responsible about it was something he had to teach them first, though he would only be able to do that once he perfected his skill at communicating with animals. Seeing as that was not yet the case, teaching them such things was a thing for the future.

Though he did not want them to be capable of weaponizing their chakra, he did want to use their eagerness to learn as a means of training himself. After all, these primates had shown the ability to be capable of copying almost everything they saw if they thought it looked remotely interesting. Whether they would experience this as that would be worth checking out, or so Hiruzen thought. His goal was obviously to have them try and copy the hand seals he performed, gradually speeding them up to the point where they would no longer be capable of keeping up with them, at which point he would be fairly certain that the vast majority of Shinobi would not be able to follow the execution of his seals either. Taking the exact same approach as he had done when he had been meditating with his tribe, he sat himself down in the grass, taking on a meditative seat. Wondering whether they would be getting to play with his colorful aura again, several of the more curious monkeys came up to check out what Hiruzen was up to. Performing hand seals at the pace of an elderly man, the growing group of macaques that sat in front of him started copying what he was doing. At first, it did not seem like much more than rude gestures and sign language, though it grew from that point on. After several minutes, they could all perform most of the generic hand seals, even though they had no idea what they meant, most likely finding it funny to just copy Hiruzen.

Performing the same series of hand seals in the same pattern of Monkey, Dragon, Rat, Bird, Snake, Ox, Dog, Horse, Tiger, Boar, Ram and finally Hare, the majority of the primates quickly picked up on the routine Hiruzen followed with the performing of seals, giving them a less hard time to form their seals and performing the same one as him at the same time. Maintaining the same slow pace for as long as was needed in order to get every single one of the macaques on board, it was finally time to start his own training. Increasing the pace behind the formation of his seals, he made sure to keep his eyes on the animals in front of them to see if they could keep up. It went without saying that the primates had no trouble at all in terms of keeping up with Hiruzen’s still relatively slow hand seal weaving pace. Moving faster and faster, the young Uchiha eventually moved quick enough to match that of a more skilled shinobi of at least Genin rank. No longer amazed by what the animals were capable of in terms of copying, it did not come as much of a shock to see that they had in fact been keeping up without any trouble at all. Moving ever faster, his speed soon exceeded that of a mere Chuunin, making it very hard for the primates to keep up with him, even though they knew the exact routine, this being what made it easier for them to stay in the race.

Now that they had managed to figure out his routine and learned how each seal was formed with relative ease as a result of repetitive execution. It was only normal for them to learn them this way, seeing as Hiruzen and his fellow academy students had learned them in the same manner when they were still training to be Shinobi. Keeping the fact that they had memorized the seals in mind, Hiruzen suddenly started mixing them up, much to the confusion of the primates that seemed less than pleased at this sudden change. While a few were utterly confused, the rest seemed to continue just as happily as they did before. At this point, it was finally time for Hiruzen to do what he had been working up to, to move at his maximum speed. Moving his hands as fast as he possibly could while still maintaining his accuracy and readiness to mold his chakra into a jutsu at any given time, it seemed that while they were capable of keeping up with random hand seals through watching and copying, they were not as capable when it came to following that which their eyes could not follow. Throwing a tantrum as a result of their inability to keep up, one of the monkeys picked up a stick and started chasing the others back to the hot springs, letting his group and Hiruzen know that the gig was up. Fairly satisfied with what the day had brought, he returned to the Hidden Cloud.

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

1500 words [1200 needed]
Finished Training