The backyard of Miyako's modest home was a battlefield of scorch marks and cracked wood. Every evening, Renji's fireballs roared against the practice posts until smoke choked the air. Miyako, arms crossed, stood nearby correcting the smallest of details—his stance, the precision of his seals, the way he breathed chakra into his lungs.
"Again," she said, her tone sharp but never cruel.
Renji inhaled, wove the signs, and exhaled a ball of fire. It wavered, then burst forward, engulfing the target post. The flames sizzled against the rain-dampened wood. He coughed from the smoke but felt pride swelling in his chest.
"You're improving," Miyako said at last. She rested a hand on his shoulder, firm and grounding. "But fire is dangerous when it loses form. Control, Renji. Without control, fire consumes its master as easily as its enemy."
"Yes, Mother," Renji answered, lowering his head. But inside, he wondered: What if control meant more than fire? What if all the elements could be guided the same way?
When Miyako was away on missions—sometimes for a night, sometimes two—the backyard became Renji's private laboratory. He knew his mother would disapprove, but curiosity gnawed at him stronger than fear.
At first, he started with earth. Kneeling in the dirt, he pressed his palms to the ground and pushed chakra downward. The first few attempts ended in nothing but dizziness and scraped hands. The soil remained stubborn and heavy, as though mocking him. But Renji refused to quit.
One night, his chakra surged too sharply, and a hairline crack split beneath his hands. His eyes widened. He pushed harder, sweat dripping into the soil, and the ground lurched, lifting in an uneven mound. He fell back, panting, but laughter bubbled in his chest. It answered me.
The weeks that followed refined the shape. He learned to direct the chakra in a sharper spike instead of a clumsy lump. The first jagged pillar rose and toppled like an infant learning to walk, but soon he could call up rough earthen fangs from the soil—weak, brittle, and short-lived, but undeniably a jutsu.
Water proved trickier. He filled a wooden basin every night, hands hovering over the surface. He tried to mimic the same seals from Katon: Hōsenka no Jutsu, visualizing flame bullets but substituting the flow of water.
The basin only rippled at first. The second attempt left him drenched. On the tenth, the water shivered upward in a spout before collapsing back into the bowl. Renji clenched his fists. It's close.
The breakthrough came during a storm. The air was thick with humidity, rain dripping into the basin. When Renji shaped his chakra that night, the water obeyed more willingly, shooting upward in a narrow arc and splashing against the wall. His grin was wide despite being soaked to the bone.
Within a month, he had forged a crude technique: small jets of water spat out like fire bullets, soaking the fence in wild, uneven bursts. Soon after, he imitated the Great Fireball, forcing his chakra into the basin until a sphere of water ballooned outward. It collapsed after a few heartbeats, but for those moments, a Surging Water Orb hung in the air, proof of his ingenuity.
His experiments grew bolder. Combining earth with the Phoenix Fire template, he expelled hardened mud bullets that smacked against the training posts with dull cracks. They lacked precision, but Renji marveled at how the theories of fire could bend the other natures to his will.
Yet, the more he succeeded, the more questions gnawed at him. Why stop at imitation? Why not combine them?
One evening, after fire drills with his mother, he could no longer hold his tongue. "Mother," he asked as they rested, his hands still warm from flame, "if fire can be shaped by seals into so many forms… can two chakra natures be joined? Like fire and water, or fire and earth. Wouldn't they become something greater?"
Miyako froze, her back to him, the lantern light flickering on her face. Her answer came slow, weighed down with warning. "That path is not for you, Renji. Combining chakra natures is a bloodline gift, not something taught. Even those born with it live burdened lives. Do not waste your thoughts on dangerous fantasies."
Renji bowed his head. "Yes, Mother." But his eyes gleamed with quiet defiance.
The next night, when Miyako left for a mission, he crept back into the yard. He placed a bowl of water on one side and dug his fingers into soil on the other. Fire chakra pulsed in his core, battling to be released. He pushed it into both water and earth at once.
Steam hissed where flame struck water, dust lifted where earth seared. The forces repelled violently, knocking him back onto the ground, his chest heaving, his hands trembling. The yard smelled of smoke, wet dirt, and raw potential.
Renji wiped the mud from his face, coughing, but his lips curved into a grin. Failure was proof of possibility.
That night, beneath the pale moon, he whispered to himself, "If no one else can see it, then I'll make it mine."
His mother taught him fire and genjutsu, but Renji's secret nights birthed something else—a boy's defiance against limits, and the first sparks of a path no Uchiha or shinobi had ever walked.