Scrapped: Maddie takes a ninjutsu lesson with Uncle Hidan

[tozette]

"Horse, dragon, tiger, hare. Most fire stuff will end with tiger, but you put the hare seal there to make it weak."

Hidan was sitting on the ground with his legs stretched out. They were both basking in the warm sun and cool breeze of Wave's coastal climate.

He looked bored. Probably e-ranked elemental techniques didn't thrill him. But Maddie wanted to learn, and Hidan did like being the centre of her attention.

"Weak?" she repeated.

"Yeah... because fire's an easy element to make, but a hard one to control."

"So like... the opposite of water?"

"Uh-huh. So weak fire techniques usually have limiters like that, so dumbass kids don't kill themselves. And because, you know, do you want to light a cooking fire, or burn it to a crisp?"

"Cooking fire," she agreed dutifully. Although, despite this, the idea of a giant maelstrom of fiery death did flicker through her brain. It might be nice to feel like she could burn someone to a crisp if they scared her.

But that was kind of a dumb fantasy. Ninja weren't dangerous because of their stupid flashy techniques, and knowing one wouldn't necessarily help her. Ninja were dangerous because they were sneaky and tricksy as fuck. If you got to the stupid flashy technique phase, something had already gone catastrophically wrong.

"Here."

He ran through the seals in about one second and then the air around his fingers caught aflame with a whumph, flaring brightly. It was indeed weak: an orange flame, tall and flickering, which lasted only a few seconds. In short, perfect for lighting a fire.

"Can you show me those seals again?"

"Horse, dragon, tiger, hare," he said, showing them.

"Wait, wait, slow down. What's horse?"

"You're not usually this slow, come on," Hidan whined. But obligingly he held 'horse' until she got it.

"I've never used a seal before! Dragon now?"

"Are your fingers busted?"

She scowled. "No. You shinobi train for this shit."

"Hey, hey! I didn't train for shit. I barely remember being a kid. You're just bad at it. Do you have any idea how fast Kakuzu can do this?"

It really checked out that someone like Hidan, who had at some point decided that suffering was the most important human experience, didn't remember much of his childhood. Maddie thought this with sudden, crystal clarity. And then she shut her mouth and kept it to herself.

"Well, he's a ninjutsu guy, I guess," Maddie mumbled. Also he'd been making his fingers do this for like eighty years or something, hadn't he? Of course he could do it so fast...

The transition from horse to dragon to tiger was easy, as they all featured similarly interlocking fingers, but the sudden switch to hare was surprisingly tricky. She'd never felt so clumsy.

"You could say that," said Hidan, in an amused tone that suggested she'd made a profound understatement. Whatever. She didn't have a reference point to know how good or bad someone was at ninjutsu. "He'd be better at teaching you this shit."

"No he wouldn't," Maddie disagreed. "He might be better at ninjutsu but that doesn't mean he can teach it. He'd get mad and fuck off." Or, you know, kill someone.

"Oi, oi, oi, is it okay for a little girl to have such a foul mouth? Besides," he added, leaning over to manually, and not very gently, change her finger position, "I'm about to get mad and fuck off."

"Hang on," she went through the signs slowly. It took her about twelve seconds.

Hidan was smiling at her, but it was the kind of smile you wore when you watched a puppy try to open a door with its face. He was such a dick.

"Is that right?"

"Sure. As long as what you want to use it on is tied down, I guess."

Moving chakra around was surprisingly — and pleasantly — easy once Maddie had the seals down, though. She barely had to do anything. She just cycled some of her chakra to her hands, which was way easier than water walking, and the seals defined the shape it took.

She produced a flicker of fire. Unlike Hidan's version, this one was only about as large as the flame from a lighter.

"Huh," said Hidan. "First try! I guess your control's pretty good..." Well, she had a lot of practice. Ami had made her learn control exercises very young, and she had been water walking every day for years now. "You're still wasting heaps of chakra. You gotta practice shit like this to get it right."

"Right," she agreed, trying again. She could feel exactly what he meant when he said she was wasting chakra: it bled off when it was trying to convert to fire. Her affinities were for water and lightning, and a lot was being burnt up in the conversion. "I don't really understand how to change it into fire."

"Me neither," Hidan said, unhelpfully. "Elemental ninjutsu is Kakuzu's thing. My technique doesn't use any of that."

Maddie blinked. "What does it use instead then?"

"Uhh... all techniques are kind of based around the physical and the spiritual elements, I guess. Mine's all yang chakra stuff, making a sympathetic link with the blood and then sharing physical wounds."

"Should you be telling me that?"

"Eh? It's not a secret. Anyone who actually got a forehead protector could figure that much out. But most people are cowards and heathens. They wouldn't want to use my ritual."

"Huh," said Maddie. Then she thought: I could, though. She could cut her own throat, in a real pinch. She felt nervous just thinking about it. But she'd had her throat slit before. She could... she could do it. If she had to, to keep herself safe from actual death or like... ongoing harassment. "I don't know, it's a cool technique. You just have to be willing to get a bit hurt."

Hidan looked at her, mouth curling into a strangely soft little smile, which was when she realised exactly what she'd said.

"I don't want to get hurt!" Maddie amended in a rush, which on reflection was was also ill-considered.

But instead of hitting a berserk button, this just made Hidan's smile turn wry. "Ah. Don't look so worried. We'll fix that one day."

Grrreat.

"Anyway, of course it's cool," Hidan said, as though this was to be taken for granted. "I developed it myself."

"Really?" she said, starting again. A steady chakra stream, even and controlled.

Horse.

"What's that meant to mean?" Hidan scowled. "Do you think I can't make my own techniques?"

Dragon.

She really hadn't. Didn't that require, um, being smart? Was Hidan smart? She didn't... think so?

She licked her lips. "Obviously you can. I just thought it was connected to the greater... Jashinism... sect?"

"Oh. Nah. I'm the only one blessed like this."

Huh, that was interesting news.

Tiger.

She could feel her chakra doing the conversion, slowly and sluggishly. Burn, burn burn. She held if for a second.

This last bit was the hardest for her fingers. Hare, and then release.

She moved her hands at last. Har—

Hidan poked her in the ribs with two fingers.

Her fingers slipped, and an enormous gout of flame flashed to life above her hands, huge and blue-edged and flickering, eating up all of the chakra she'd fed into the technique in an instant.

Hidan whooped with delight and the smell of burning hair filled Maddie's nostrils.