WRIN - Chapter 19 - Lady Katsuyu (Patreon)

(Word Count: 3,452)

Over the course of the next week, Team 9 continued working on their water walking. It wasn't all just training. We were still kids after all, even if highly motivated kids. Sometimes the water walking practice devolved into just a splash war, or just swimming in the river to take a break.

In the evenings, we would then take a D ranked mission or two if we had the time before we called it a day and split up. After the work as a team, I would then go and join Dai and Guy. Their team went on training their taijutsu long into the evening if they didn't have a D rank mission. Even after their team splits up for the day, the Mights stayed behind.

I went to join them because I needed to train my taijutsu a lot more before I was ready to open my first gate. Guy had gotten a lot farther than I had in taijutsu, my focus being elsewhere. I wasn't too far from it, but it would take me another month of intense workouts before Dai would let me attempt it. As such, I was now back to wearing my weights again, though at a much higher weight than last time. I did improve after all, I didn't regress, just that it hadn't been my focus. I couldn't handle the bright orange leg warmers Dai and Guy were wearing over them, and instead had a more reasonable dark blue. It matched the standard ninja pants.

Then, at night when the three of us went home, I would continue studying the Byakugou Seal. I wanted to be ready to receive the seal in a week or two. The sooner I could start storing chakra, the better. I also needed a full understanding of the seal so I could make some derivatives.

For experimenting with chakra types, I did manage to create Light Chakra, using my positive emotions to confirm my theory. I took a lot more precaution with it and only created a little, so I didn’t go into an emotionless fugue state like I did the first time. I even managed to recreate the Gift of the Hermit Group chakra, using the mental energy from my Superego.

Still, with the tiny portions of these types of chakra I could safely manage, I couldn’t really do anything with them except move it around my body to get a feel for how they handle. Of the three chakras, Dark Chakra was the easiest to handle. Gift of the Hermit Group was the hardest.

It was on the morning of the 6th day that Tsunade appeared again. We were out on the river again, only this time we were in full shinobi gear and practicing fighting on top of the water. This was obviously a lot more difficult than doing it on its own, since they had to split their attention from their feet to what's happening around them. We weren't going anywhere near the speed as they had done on our first day, when Tsunade was chasing Kurenai and Shizune around the trees, and we kept to taijutsu only, since there was no way they would be able to do anything else with their chakra at the moment.

“Looks like you guys have been productive!” Tsunade commended, “I'm glad you didn't just slack off.”

“L-lady Tsunade!” Shizune squeaked in surprise, and promptly lost concentration on her footing. She fell down into the river with a splash. Kurenai wobbled for a moment from the surprise, but managed to not fall in.

“Nice of you to join us,” I drawled. “Finally got yourself free from the clutches of the hospital?”

Tsunade sighed. “Yeah. They held me up with patient after patient, then there were a bunch of meetings about structuring the Iryo-Nin in the hospital and out in the field. It was a pain. For some reason, they all want my opinion on everything.”

“Well, you’re sort of the mother of modern medicine and modern medical jutsus,” I reasoned. “You're kind of a big deal around here, if you haven't noticed.”

She just huffed at me. “Well, it's annoying. From now on, I'm going to be more present as your jonin instructor.” She walked out onto the water where Shizune was swimming towards the shore and pulled her up so she could stand on the surface of the water again.

“I'm glad you girls were able to get so good at water walking. Now that you've reached that step, we can move on directly to the basics of Iryojutsu! Come on, let’s head over to my office at the hospital.”

We all left the training grounds and went to Tsunade's office in the hospital. Tsunade's office was a similar sterile white as the rest of the hospital, but this room was full of bookshelves, a large desk, and a small sitting area for visitors. I had been here many times before, so I was very familiar with this room. I had taken many breaks here, lounging across the small couch to nap or just get off my feet.

I immediately flopped onto the same couch.

Tsunade didn’t say anything, already used to the sight of me lounging here, and went to the bookshelf on one end of the room and pulled off two sets of books. It was the two medical books Tsunade had given me when I was 2 years old: “The Clinical Examination of the Human Anatomy and Physiology,” volumes 1 and 2, written by Senju Tsunade. She gave both girls a set of the two books. 

“You'll be reading on your own time, it's not really necessary to be fully read up on it to begin learning the Mystic Hand jutsu.”

I looked at her accusingly. “You said I needed to read and understand both volumes before I began.”

She scoffed at me. “Yeah, but you were only 2 years old. I didn't even think you could read, so it was only appropriate to give you a little test, don't you think?”

I grumbled, but didn't argue. I would probably do the same. 

The way that the Mystic Hand worked was that you would inject yang attuned chakra into the patient’s body which would allow the user to “feel” around inside. It became much easier to feel where something was wrong. Then they can stimulate the localized area to heal rapidly. As long as the girls were able to do that, they could pull off the jutsu. What made it special was that there was a large range of effectiveness. As the user's medical knowledge of the body's systems improved, so did the user’s ability to guide the body in healing, becoming more efficient.

So, Kurenai and Shizune can learn the healing jutsu now, and improve it alongside their research.

It was the pills and diagnosis of diseases that required extensive medical knowledge.

I looked at my teammates. “Don't worry, I've got a lot of notes to go along with those books. You can both come over any time to borrow them.”

“Thank you!” They both looked pale at the thought of so much studying.

“Alright. You two, you'll be practicing the Mystic Hand. Here's the scroll on it. Read through it, and once you can get the green glow around your hands, we can move on to practicing it on fish,” she handed both girls a scroll. Then, she walked behind her desk and pulled out a massive scroll. The only scrolls that big contained a lot of fuinjutsu inside. She unraveled a small portion across her desk, revealing large signatures signed in blood. It was a summoning scroll!

“Sakai, I've already talked to Lady Katsuyu. She's more than happy to accept you as a summoner. So, sign your name and give your fingerprints in blood and practice summoning her. I'm sure you've already realized that the Byakugou seal requires a contract with her?”

I nodded. “It's so you can use her as a medium for long range healing, right?”

“Exactly. One of the main weaknesses of healing is the need to touch the patient. Oftentimes, I would be running around the entire battlefield healing anyone I can. It will leave you exhausted before anyone else. I developed this add-on to the seal together with my grandmother and Lady Katsuyu to fix this problem,” she explained.

“I did notice that it was added later. But who made the original seal? It's amazing,” I couldn't help but ask.

Tsunade smiled softly, “It was made by my grandmother, Uzumaki Mito. She passed it on to my mother, who passed it on to me. Grandma helped both my mother and I draw out the seal.”

“So it's a family legacy? Why pass it on to me? Wouldn't you want to pass it on to any children you might have with Jiraiya?” I asked.

She blushed a bit, but answered calmly. “There's no rule saying I can't teach both you and my children. If I do have children, I'll just have to make you her jonin instructor, so we can both help her learn my techniques.”

I smirked, “Her, huh? I see you're already planning it all out.”

“S-shut up and get to practicing,” she lightly chopped my head.

I rolled off the couch and examined the bloody signatures of the summoners before me. Senju Tsunade, Senju Hashirama, Ototsuki Hagoromo. 

Instead of biting my thumbpad, I used a small senbon from my pouch to draw a bit of blood. It was much cleaner and easier to heal than crushing the entire thumbpad between my teeth to break the skin, as I've seen often done in Naruto.

I signed my name, then put my finger prints. With that, I was now linked to the summoning fuinjutsu. I would definitely need to examine this system more in depth when I got the chance. It was greatly under used and valued in the show. It was a space-time jutsu! It transported living creatures to and from whatever beast clan you’ve signed with.

Kakashi even used it with some ninja dogs he’s raised, which made me wonder why the Inuzuka clan didn’t use this summoning jutsu with their dog companions. Just the reverse summoning alone would make it invaluable.

I placed my hand on the ground and activated the summoning. Fuinjutsu scrawlings burst out from my hand in an instant, forming lines and circles of the seal. It was only visible for a brief moment before a cloud of white smoke poofed from underneath my hand. When the smoke quickly faded away, a small white slug with blue stripes down its back was there. A small portion of Lady Katsuyu.

I didn't put a lot of chakra into it, so she was only the size of my hand at the moment.

“Lady Katsuyu, thank you for letting me sign a contract with you.”

“Hello, little Sakai. It was my pleasure. I look forward to working with you,” Lady Katsuyu said in a soft voice.

Despite how often I met with Tsunade and worked with her, it wasn't often that I got the chance to meet with Lady Katsuyu. She was the unspoken queen of the Shikkotsu Forest, one of the three famous “sage lands” along with Mount Myoboku and the Ryuchi Cave. However, there was no “slug clan.” It was just Lady Katsuyu on her own that could rival the entire toad and snake clans on her own. We never could see her true size in the anime. Even in the final battle, when Tsunade and Sakura summoned her together, it was only one tenth of her total mass.

Kurenai and Shizune both put down the scrolls that they were reading and came over to see the summons. “Who's this?” Shizune asked. I reached down and offered a hand for the small slug. She climbed onto my palm, and I held her up closer to eye level.

“Shizune, Kurenai, this is Lady Katsuyu of the Shikkotsu Forest. Lady Katsuyu, these are my teammates, Dan Shizune and Yuhi Kurenai.”

Lady Katsuyu gave a small bow. “Hello. It's nice to meet you.”

The two girls gave a small bow in return. “Hello, Lady Katsuyu!” Shizune greeted her.

“Hello, it's nice to meet you too,” Kurenai said softly.

Lady Katsuyu turned back towards me. “Sakai, why don't you practice the summoning some more? This was a good first time, but it would be better for you to get the hang of it, so you can summon more of me.”

I nodded. I had noticed that the summoning technique wasn't just the amount of chakra, though that was a part of it, but the better control I have, the more fuinjutsu scrawlings can come out, and the larger summoning “circle” I can produce. There's only a split second of time to set it up, so practice was necessary. The reason Naruto had such a hard time with it was because he was brute forcing it, forcing as much chakra as he could to get the size of the summoning circle that he needed.

One thing to note was that this was not a pure chakra seal. It was a part of the much larger fuinjutsu system that makes up the summoning jutsu. I knew that much about it at least.

I reversed the summoning, sending the tiny slug back to the forest. “Tsunade, I’ll head outside, just to see how big I can summon her.”

“Just a moment, Sakai. I wanted to ask how your study of the Byakugou Seal is coming along? Now that you're contracted to Katsuyu, it will be better if we apply the seal to you as soon as we can,” Tsunade said.

“I've read through most of it. Now I'm just trying to wrap my mind around it and understand it. I’d like to draw it out to help, but I'd rather not draw out such an important seal where someone can copy it.”

Normally, I'd just go over to the Uzumaki compound. It's where I drew out many of the more complicated seals that I've studied in the past, but they'd for sure get a grasp on it if they saw it. I don't want to reveal Tsunade's techniques like that.

“You're free to come over to the Senju compound, you know? In fact, all three of you can. We have a library of jutsus the Senju's have gotten from around the lands. You three can always look through it in your free time,” Tsunade said.

“Then, I'll do that.” Ninjutsu was my biggest weakness after all, I might as well learn some things to make use of my ability to make most chakra natures.

I left them all at the office, and went to the Senju compound. I made my way through to Tsunade's house, which had a large courtyard. It was Lady Mito's home, so the courtyard was nice and flat, and large enough to draw any seal I wanted.

Though, I was here to summon Lady Katsuyu at the moment.

I slammed my hand down onto the ground in the center of the courtyard, and controlled my chakra to follow the fuinjutsu script. I used the same amount of chakra as before, but this time Lady Katsuyu was summoned as large as a house cat.

She moved her eyestalks around to get a good look at herself before angling them up to look at me. “I see you’re quickly getting the hang of it, Sakai. This is good!”

“Thank you, Lady Katsuyu. I just have one more test to do.” 

I reverse summoned her again, then tried summoning her again. This time, I used as much chakra as a B ranked jutsu. The rate that the fuinjutsu script burst out from was much quicker than before. When Lady Katsuyu appeared again, she was as big as I was.

Repeating the process, using about the same amount of chakra as an A ranked jutsu. This time Katsuyu was about half the size of a house. I didn't have enough chakra to use it at S rank, but this was probably the size we see her in the anime. Of course, it wasn't just these exact sizes as the only options, it was a whole gradient depending on the degree of control and the amount of chakra. I could get any size I wanted from a tiny thumbnail to the large size I was currently looking at. This was why it was so important to practice, to get a feel for how large of a summoning circle you can get, with the amount of power you can power it with. It wouldn't do to summon something that doesn't work for the situation.

Of course, this wasn't as much of an issue with Lady Katsuyu, since she can always divide, but I could see it becoming a problem with the toads or snakes.

“Thank you for the help, Lady Katsuyu, I think I've got the hang of it now,” I said, wiping away some sweat off my face.

“It was my pleasure, Sakai. It's nice to see you working so hard to master this,” Lady Katsuyu said.

“Now that I have this down, what are some things I need to know as one of your summoners?”

“Hmmm… I've worked with Tsunade a lot with her healing techniques. If you channel your chakra through me, I can then use it from any of my bodies to heal people.”

That got me thinking. “So you’re not channeling the healing jutsu that I do, just the chakra and you then use a healing jutsu through all your bodies at once.”

“Yes, that is correct.”

That was a bit disappointing, but it made more sense. If she could duplicate a jutsu that I did throughout all her bodies, it would be too much of a cheat. Still, sharing chakra between clones is still amazing. If I can replicate that somehow with my own clones, that would be great. I wouldn’t have to burst a shadow clone to refuel like Naruto did with his Senjutsu

“Is it possible to learn this?”

Lady Katsuyu shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sakai. This ability is unique to my body. If there is a way to learn it, I do not know it.”

“Can you do this with Senjutsu chakra as well?”

“I can.” Well, that would give me the same effect, I would just have to rely on Katsuyu for it.

“Can I learn Senjutsu?”

“I’m sorry. You’re not ready yet. Don’t worry, you’re still young. I’m sure you’ll be ready someday.”

I wasn’t too disappointed. I knew Senjutsu required a lot of chakra to be safe to attempt it. I still had quite a bit to go before that. Hopefully, I could reach that level sometime in my teen years.

“Hey, Lady Katsuyu? I’ve been thinking about chakra theory, and I managed to use my emotions to create different types of chakra. I used my negative emotions to form what I call Dark Chakra and positive emotions to form Light Chakra. I even used my mental discipline to recreate the special chakra from the monks. But these different types of chakra feel like they’re only using mental energy, and not spiritual energy. Do you know if it’s possible to use actual spirit energy with my chakra?”

Lady Katsuyu was an ancient being. If anyone was to know about these hidden mysteries of chakra, it was her.

Hearing my question, she leaned down to look me in the eye. “You must take great care with this, Sakai. If you take a single misstep with these things, you could kill your mind.”

I sighed. “Yeah. I found that out the hard way the first time I tried making Dark Chakra. I was left in an emotionless fugue state for about an hour or two before I recovered.”

“Then you’re very lucky that you’re naturally gifted with Yin and have a strong spirit. Many have tried what you’re doing before and never recover from that. It’s the general consensus that it’s just not worth looking into, with the normal chakra being so readily available. Still, certain groups like the fire monks have managed to do it successfully. It’s why the entire type of chakra is named after them.

“As for using spirit energy, there are ways to use it safely. Some special persons are born automatically mixing in some of their spirit energy with their chakra, like the priestess. Some jutsus already use it in some ways. For example, here in Konoha, both the Edo Tensei jutsu and Dan Kato’s Spirit Transformation jutsu use it,” Lady Katsuyu explained.

I grinned. All of my theories of chakras were proving to be correct!