Hokage: Ryo’s Path

 “Kid, you can’t do it?” After learning about the prophecy of the Great Sage Toad, Jiraya made a vow to train Ryo and guide him.

However, Ryo never thought that this “guidance” would revolve around him doing Pushups in Mount Myoboku.Ryo never actually did strength training at such intensity. In his 1st time, he didn’t even manage to do 200 push-ups. That’s a number topped even by many of this world’s non Ninja trained kids, let alone the ones from big families who started to train at age 3.

The Yamanaka are a family known for their spiritual power. To do their signature techniques, they work a lot on refining Chakra, spiritual practice, and Ninjutsu training. They don’t have much time for physical training.

Most of Ryo’s training is based on speed, and even his Lightning Chakra mode is focused around that. Same goes for Chidori and its derivates.

After that, came Rasengan, a technique that also revolves around fast rotation.

And then there was his work on his ice techniques. He focused on differentiating between physical, spiritual and natural energy. That’s how he became able to make Ice without consuming Chakra, something previously thought was impossible.

Just looking at Ryo’s previous experiences makes it easy to know his main deficiencies. What he needs the most right now is physical exercise.

He could also benefit later on from learning more Water release and Wind release techniques. But now the more urgent thing is improving his physical qualities.

“Faster kid, run!” Lying on his back, Jiraya watched Ryo run back and forth. In order to help Ryo with his physical shape, they often went back to Konoha to get more food and food pills.

With this, during the following 6 months, Ryo’s physical strength and endurance improved substantially under Jiraya’s guidance. The most important impact of this improvement that he found out was that the amount of Chakra he had was drastically increased.

Ryo’s Chakra finally reached the level of a Jonin. In the Manga, the 12-year-old Naruto had a 100 times more Chakra than Kakashi. Ryo has finally reached a 1% of his Chakra at that age.

Year 41, Ryo spent half of it training his physique, and now he’s now starting to learn water release techniques under the guidance of Jiraya.

So far, Ryo has already learned several water release techniques. Water Trumpet, Water Waves, and Water Wall are all techniques taught to him by his mother, Yamanaka Chinse.

Being one of the legendary Sannin, and having Ninjutsu as his forte, Jiraya couldn’t actually count how Justus he’s learned over the years on the battlefields.

“So kid, has anyone taught you about the characteristics of water release?”

“No, the water Justus I’ve learned are one that my mother taught me.”

“Okay. So what characteristics to you think one should focus on when using water based attack?”

“Well I think they are its state, charge, and pressure.” Ryo answered him after thinking a bit.

“Well, what states are there to water?”

Jiraya’s question was nothing hard to answer in Ryo previous world. Even school-children knew that water has three states: solid, liquid and gaseous. With the 1st being ice, the second being regular water, and the 3rd being vapor or fog.

Ryo told Jiraya what he knew from his previous world, and Jiraya listened to his explanation.

“Cough”… “You’re good kid! Now tell me what do you know about the pressure and the charge of the water?”

Ryo shook his head. Although he has leaned physics in his past life, he knew that in this world pressure could be looked at in a totally different way. He wanted to hear what Jiraya would have to say about it from a Ninja’s perspective.

“Well water pressure is essentially defined by how much water is going through a certain space, relative to how compact that space is.  Think of it like a high pressure water pump. The tighter the pump, the stronger the force generated by the passage of water, and the more lethal it is. It’s like the relationship between how sharp a knife is and how lethal it is. That’s how the 2nd Hokage made his [Water Severing Wave].”

Hearing Jiraya’s explanation, Ryo understood how the Hozuki Clan’s Water Gun Jutsu worked, and how Fakasaku killed Pain’s chameleon.

“Great Jiraya San, how about the charge’s role?”

“The benefits of mastering charge are best manifested in the [Great Waterfall] Jutsu. It simply refers to how much water is created with Chakra.”

After understanding what he should look for when working on water release, the 1st Jutsu Ryo worked on with Jiraya was the B-grade [Water Dragon Whip]. This Jutsu’s mastery revolved around maximizing pressure. The water should be focused in one area and shot around.

Ryo opened his Sharingan. After Jiraya demonstrated the technique just once, he was able to capture it.

Over the next month, and relying on his Sharingan, Ryo learned about 87 of Jiraya’s water release Jutsus.

Jiraya’s repertoire of Jutsus was huge, and Ryo has learned most of the water release ones with the exception of some S rank Jutsus developed by the 2nd Hokage and some others that he had no interest in.

The most important addition to Ryo’s collection of water Justus was Haku’s [Secret Art of Water: The Thousand Stinging Needles of Death].

Although water and Ice techniques are different in essence, learning the Yuki clan’s water release techniques should provide inspiration to him with Ice Release.

“Kid, I’ve almost taught you all I know about water release. You have been training here for almost a year now. I haven’t worked on Senjustu for far too long. So now, you need to rely on yourself to further evolve; and I’ll be back to working on my sage mode.”

It’s been over half a year since he’s started training with Jiraya. Over the course of that period, he acquired a much better level of physical fitness, gained a lot of Chakra, and learned many water release Jutsus. For all of that, Ryo was so grateful to Jiraya for his guidance.

During the following month, Ryo experimented with the effects of several Water Release Justus, witnessing the correlation between the amount of pressure and the amount of devastation that a Jutsu could bring.

An obvious example was Tobirama’s Water Severing wave. When Ryo tried to freeze that Jutsu while casting it, it turned to a sharp Ice Blade that could slice through rocks with ease.

But after trying to freeze water release Jutsus relying on charge, the huge relatively slow amounts of frozen water were brought down by gravity. So Ryo decided to give up on freezing such Jutsus.

Of course, he didn’t learn how to take water shape transformation to the limit. And learning that is, for now, out of his reach.

During these 6 months, Ryo also witnessed the growth of Gamahiro. His growth rate was really out of this world.

In the Manga, Naruto didn’t see Gamakichi for a few months, and he grew to the size of Gamabunta.

Same could be said for Gamahiro, and Ryo witnessed this growth with his own eyes. From a size that’s smaller than Gamakishi’s size when pain struck Konoha, to the enormous size of Gamabunta in just half a year.

Ryo can only wish him well.