"It's better than good. You get how it all fits together." She set the paper down. "Activation is just chakra. The structure is the hard part." Her shoulder bumped his, casual and familiar. "Keep practicing the structure. Once you can do this in your sleep, we'll work on making it actually do something."
"And then explosive tags?"
"Barriers first. Then containment arrays, then explosive tags, then—" She paused, grinning. "Then we see how much of the training ground you can accidentally destroy."
"Speaking from experience?"
"The Third District grounds used to have more trees. That's all I'm saying."
Footsteps behind them. Tatsuya's sensing picked up the signature before he turned: familiar, warm, unhurried.
Minato appeared at the edge of the training area, two containers in his hands.
"Food delivery." He set the containers down and claimed a spot on the grass. "The stand near the hospital was doing the spicy pork you like. I asked for extra."
Kushina's head snapped around. "The really spicy one?"
She was already opening her container, chopsticks appearing from somewhere. She'd claimed the food before Tatsuya had even registered that lunch was happening.
Minato caught his eye and smiled slightly. "There's a third container in the bag, if you want it."
"Is this a bribe?"
"It's lunch. The bribe comes later." His expression didn't change, but his eyes were amused. "Kushina mentioned you're moving on to barrier seals."
"First structural completion. Didn't activate, but it didn't collapse either."
"That's significant. The coexistence problem alone usually takes weeks."
"His brushwork is still terrible," Kushina added around a mouthful of pork, "but he's getting the architecture. Which is the hard part."
"She's proud of you," Minato translated.
"Just eat your food before I eat it for you."
"That's her version of proud."
Kushina threw a piece of pork at his head. He caught it without looking and ate it.
Tatsuya grabbed the third container and settled in. The food was good, better than good actually. He'd been living on ration bars and hospital cafeteria food for too long.
"How's Section Seven?" Minato asked.
"Tedious but important. Tsunade hasn't yelled at me this week, which I think counts as approval."
"High praise from her."
"That's what Duy said about my taijutsu." Tatsuya shook his head. "I'm sensing a theme."
"The theme is that you're hard to compliment." Kushina pointed her chopsticks at him. "You make this face when people say nice things, like you're waiting for the catch."
"There's usually a catch."
"Not with us." She said it simply, like it was obvious. "We just think you're doing well. That's the whole thing."
He didn't know what to say to that. So he ate his lunch instead, and if his chest felt a little warmer than the spice could account for, well. That was probably just the peppers.
---
Wind jutsu practice was Minato's idea.
"You've been at twelve seconds for two weeks," he said, once the lunch containers were cleared away. "Time to push."
The training ground was empty except for the three of them. Kushina had claimed a shady spot to work on her own sealing projects, close enough to comment but far enough to pretend she wasn't watching.
Tatsuya settled into the stance he'd developed for sustained output. Different from his combat posture, looser in the shoulders, more focused on breath control than quick response.
"Ready?"
"Go."
He reached for his wind affinity. The technique was called Air Current Wild Dance in the scrolls, but what he was doing barely qualified: sustained chakra output, wind-natured, with none of the battlefield control that the technique was supposed to provide. Just raw duration practice.
The wind built around his hands, broader and rougher than his scalpel work. Like trying to hold a river instead of a stream.
"...eight... nine... ten..."
Minato was counting. Tatsuya tried to ignore him, focus on the output, but—
"...eleven... twelve..."
The wind stuttered. He pushed harder.
"...thirteen..."
The chakra flow destabilized. He lost it. "Shit."
"Thirteen seconds." Minato didn't sound disappointed, exactly. More like he was cataloging data. "Better than twelve."
"By one second."
"One second is one second." He moved to stand beside Tatsuya, demonstrating his own output. Wind flowed from his hands with an ease that looked almost insulting: steady, controlled, indefinite. "Watch my breathing pattern. I'm not pushing in bursts, it's continuous, like—"
"Like exhalation without inhalation."
"Exactly." Minato let his technique fade. "You're still thinking about it as discrete moments: start, sustain, end. But wind doesn't work that way, it's always moving. You have to move with it."
"You're being philosophical."
"It's physics. Try again."
Tatsuya tried again.
"...ten... eleven... twelve... thirteen..."
He held it. The wind danced around his hands, rough but present.
"...fourteen..."
Lost it.
"Fourteen seconds." Minato was working through the data, that analytical look he got when he was processing data.
"You're counting wrong."
"I'm counting exactly right. Fourteen seconds." He paused. "That's two more than your baseline."
Tatsuya shook out his hands, feeling the residual chakra burn. "Time me again. Properly this time."
"I am timing you properly."
"Then the wind shifted."
Minato gestured at the open sky. "We're outdoors, but that's not—wind nature transformation doesn't work like that."
"It does when you're standing too close. You're throwing off the ambient flow."
A pause. Minato's mouth curved, briefly. He looked at Tatsuya, then at Kushina (who was very obviously pretending not to listen), then back.
"Fine. I'll stand further away."
Tatsuya went again.
Fifteen seconds.
"The distance helped," Minato admitted, running a hand through his hair. "That doesn't — I mean, wind nature transformation is internal. Your chakra, your conversion. Another person's presence shouldn't affect output duration unless..." He trailed off, staring at nothing for a moment. "Unless the issue isn't conversion at all. If your sustained output is limited by ambient interference rather than chakra efficiency, that would mean your actual conversion rate is higher than the duration suggests, and you're losing it to — hm." He caught himself. "Sorry. Thinking out loud. Fifteen seconds. That's progress."
But he was smiling now, genuine and warm. "Same time tomorrow?"
"If I survive Duy."
"You'll survive." A beat. "Probably. That's what Kushina said about your sealing practice, right?"
"We're consistent."
Minato gathered his things and paused, his tone shifting slightly. "The hospital visiting hours end at six, if you wanted to stop by. He's been complaining about the food, and the nurses, and the fact that Tsunade confiscated his manuscript."
The shift was casual, but Tatsuya heard what wasn't being said. Jiraiya's awake. He'd probably like to see you.
"That last one might be justified."
Minato's smile flickered. "Probably. But don't tell him I said that."
---
The hospital smelled, same as it had a week ago.
Tatsuya found Jiraiya's room without asking for directions. He'd spent enough time in this wing during the surgery, waiting, counting ceiling tiles. The Sannin had been moved from intensive care to a standard recovery room, which was progress. The fact that he was sitting up, arguing with a nurse, was more progress.
"—don't see why I can't—"
"Tsunade-sama's orders. No chakra use for another week."
"I'm not using chakra, I'm writing."
"You're writing with chakra-infused ink."
"It's barely infused. Trace amounts. Homeopathic chakra."
The nurse was unimpressed. "Tsunade-sama said no chakra use. She didn't specify amounts."
"She's being unreasonable."
"She's being your doctor. There's a difference." The nurse noticed Tatsuya in the doorway, nodded once, and made her escape with the kind of efficiency that suggested she'd had this conversation before.
Jiraiya watched her go, then turned his attention to his visitor. His eyes swept over Tatsuya with the kind of assessment that hadn't dimmed despite the injury.
"You look like someone who's been sleeping four hours a night and calling it rest. Sit down—you're making me tired just looking at you."
Tatsuya sat.
The room was sparse, hospital standard, nothing personal except for a few scrolls on the bedside table and a stack of blank paper that the nurse had probably just confiscated the special ink from.
"How's the recovery?"
"Boring." Jiraiya's voice was flat, but there was genuine frustration underneath. "I've been conscious for five days and they still won't let me do anything useful: no training, no missions, no writing. Apparently getting my chakra coils shredded means I need to 'rest' and 'heal' and 'stop trying to work around the medical restrictions.'"
"Tsunade's orders?"
"Tsunade's orders. Five days, and she's got me on — I can't train, I can't write, I can't even do the breathing exercises because apparently those count as 'chakra use' now, which — have you ever tried to sit still for five days? I wrote three chapters of my manuscript on napkins and she confiscated the napkins. The napkins." He paused. "The woman has no appreciation for the creative process."
"The manuscript that caused a minor scandal?"
Jiraiya huffed a half-laugh. "The nurses told you about that?"