Chapter 3: Chapter 18
My parents were named Nodoka and Seishirou. Nodoka was a serious-looking woman with a sharp face, murderous eyes, and long red hair. Seishirou was a tall, feminine-looking man with black hair that framed his face. Unlike his wife, he was smiling in his picture. Both of them were wearing chunin vests and headbands in their pictures. I undoubtedly looked like their child.
I stared at their pictures for a long time. They had been on the same genin team growing up. Judging by the number of missions that were listed on their files, they seemed like ordinary ninja that had been tragically cut down in their prime by the Kyubi. There wasn't much about either of them in the folder the Hokage had given me. A little thin for two jounin, but the Hokage probably wasn't going to hand a kid detailed mission reports.
Contrary to my expectations, Seishirou was the kenjutsu expert with a decent genjutsu score. Nodoka had a focus in ninjutsu with a secondary talent in taijutsu. I wished there was more but their descriptions were woefully brief.
Seeing their faces made me finally realize that my existence here wasn't a mistake. It wasn't just a dream that would fade when I awoke. I had parents. I would have had a family, if it weren't for the Kyubi. I felt like I had lost something, even though I didn't even know it existed until now.
Training with Ebisu was miserable. According to him, my chakra control was completely backward and my taijutsu was a complete mess. It was about three weeks of tedious, daily hand seal drills before he finally called in a Hyuga to see what was going on with my chakra. Apparently I wasn't properly combining my physical and spiritual energies together to convert them to chakra. It was like oil and vinegar that I hadn't managed to shake well enough.
It had worked well enough for genjutsu simply because I had an uncannily large amount of spiritual energy, despite wasting a majority of it. What small amounts of chakra that I successfully managed to produce were enough for the simple chakra control exercises I had been doing, such as chakra threads, tree walking, and water walking. But anything more complex than just emitting chakra, such as ninjutsu that required handseals, was completely beyond my level of chakra control. It was also partially why my Rasengans were so weak and unstable. I had essentially been fueling my techniques with unrefined, crude oil that would clog the tenketsu in my hand seals and barely work for my other techniques.
Ebisu completely dismissed all of my taijutsu as worthless and started teaching me the basics of the standard Konoha style of taijutsu. And he told me that the way I would stare at my opponent's feet when fighting was ridiculous. From my spars with Naruto, I had developed some decent reflexes but apparently most of Ryozanpaku's techniques were useless against properly trained ninja. Whoops.
And when Ebisu learned that I had been using training weights for the last year, he looked at me like I was a space alien that had climbed out of a human suit. Apparently, the reason why more people didn't use training weights at a young age was that it interfered with the body's development. It was customary to use training weights only after managing a good amount of chakra control and after attaining one's full stature. But in my case, the damage had already been done. Double whoops.
By the time I had turned five, I had started to properly convert my energies into chakra. I still had trouble channeling my chakra through my chakra circulatory system, losing much of it simply sending it to the tenketsu in my hands. But it was enough to summon a dingy, inaccurate illusionary clone, suggesting that Ebisu might actually be a competent teacher.
I spent my birthday practicing the Bunshin no Jutsu in an empty training field. "April 19. It feels so familiar. Was that my birthday before too?" My mind wandered back to the thin folder that the Hokage had given me nearly a year ago. The only mention of myself in the report was a copy of my birth certificate. It meant that I was six months older than Naruto. The day Naruto was born, my parents had died. "Shouldn't I have some memories of my parents?" I had been six months old, after all. Why was everything so clear only after the Kyubi's attack?
"You'll never manage the Clone Technique with that level of focus," said a voice from above me.
"Sorry. I've had a lot on my mind lately," I muttered from underneath my hood, scanning the trees discreetly for the source of the voice.
"If you want to be a ninja, you'll have to work hard and not get distracted by every little thing," said the young ninja who landed behind me.
"That is true, Kabuto, but sometimes introspection is healthy for the soul."
I could feel the Four-Eyes peering at me behind my back. "How do you know my name?"
I shrugged. "I've seen you around. Now you tell me something. Do you know who I am?"
"Huh? What kind of question is that? Of course not. I've never met you before." Kabuto answered.
I looked up at the sky. It was foolish to mess with Kabuto like this. I hadn't even been sure it was Kabuto until he confirmed my wild guess. But somewhere inside me, I wished he had an answer to my question.
"Don't worry about it. I guess it's not something you could answer. Hey, Kabuto, you don't want to get some ramen, do you?" I offered, pulling off my hood and turning around with a smile on my face.
"Ah, sorry. I'm busy. Good luck with your training," he said as he disappeared, body flickering across the tree branches.
"Oh, well. His loss." I decided then that I deserved a break from training. Ramen sounded like a really good idea.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone