Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Well...Hey @eaglejarl, @Velorien, and @OliWhail? Chakra has a lot of effects on animals, and seems to change them in a wide variety of ways. Are there any chakra beasts or beings that have human or human-like intelligence? To the point where communication might be possible, that is... aside from Summons?
"Can [the snow golem] understand human language?"
"Nobody knows," Yukino shouted back, using a carefully-angled ice shield to redirect a horizontal sweep away from her. "Can you hurry up and kill it, please? Zabuza? Sir?"
He couldn't just give Yukino a series of instructions. He remembered one of his early missions, back when he was still an incompetent chūnin, watching his team get taken apart by a rendclaw pack after discussing their plan in front of the enemy. Another reason why real shinobi made themselves strong enough to work alone.
Edit: Ohh, we've actually met those:
I would be interested in visiting them again at some point.The sun was getting low in the horizon, and they were still in Rendclaw Forest, having got themselves turned around several times while fighting off various interestingly-coloured (and thus probably extremely venomous) snakes. The trees were thick, the sounds of the wildlife alternately intimidating and eerily quiet, and occasionally there were clumps of bones which definitely belonged to local animals.
"You know," Hazō began, "I'm starting to think that when Inoue-sensei designed this training, she—"
"Shh!" Mori hissed.
She was right. Now Hazō listened, there was definitely something moving behind them.
A second later, a roughly human-sized, grey-furred creature resembling a hunched-over rat stalked into view. It made no sound, and did not move to attack or flee, instead merely staring at them with hollow black eyes.
"Why is it just standing there?" Wakahisa whispered to Hazō.
"I don't know. Be careful—we don't know what it's capable of."
The creature raised its paws. Without a sound, black three-foot claws emerged from them.
"OK, I guess we do."
"What's the plan?" Hazō asked.
"Uh… OK," Wakahisa said. "I'm going to lock down its movement with ninjutsu. Mori, soften it up from range, then Kurosawa can finish it off while it's reeling."
There was a rustling sound, and then a second creature emerged from behind them. It, too, produced its claws, and then did nothing but stare. Its gaze seemed cold, almost lifeless.
"Change of plan. I'm going to keep this one busy. You two take the other one out and back me up as fast as you can."
Three more creatures emerged, positioned unambiguously to surround the group.
"Change of plan," Wakahisa began.
"Run!" Hazō yelled.
Hazō ran at a gap in the circle of monsters, but without chakra-enhanced speed he couldn't quite make it in time before their ranks closed with an eerie smoothness. The others weren't doing any better, leaving the group in a gradually tightening circle. More creatures were arriving by the second.
Hazō thought fast. He hadn't brought any exploding tags—he'd used up his individual supply while training with Kagome-sensei. But what he did have was a few practice blanks that Kagome-sensei had said looked like "they might not blow your head off unless you screw up". Of course, he'd also been very clear that Hazō was not to try infusing them until he'd had more training, at least not within ten miles of Kagome-sensei.
But desperate times…
Hazō slowly pulled out a blank, not noticing that the creatures immediately stopped moving, and concentrated as hard as he could as he slowly ran his finger across the surface of the seal.
In Hazō's mind, the blank was a labyrinthine landscape of impossible geometry, the flat drawing of the seal a compression of several intertwined dimensions that only loosely corresponded to conventional space and time. A single line out of place could signify time being told to run backwards, or matter twisting in on itself as a circle without beginning or end, or a channel pointing not up or down or left or right or towards or away but out, and if you were unlucky enough, something on the other end of that out might notice and decide to come in.
But when the blank was right, and Hazō's exploding tag blanks had recently become always right, it felt like he was the creator of his own miniaturised world. His chakra filled in the paths prepared for it, breathing divergent laws of physics and spatial relationships into what had once been a simple piece of paper. An exploding tag wasn't a firebomb—it was a command to the universe in the universe's own language, and the universe should consider itself lucky that Hazō wanted nothing more of it than a managed spherical energy release.
The moment of euphoria faded. Hazō gazed at his new exploding tag for the merest instant, then stuck it to a kunai and threw.
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