Canon Side-Story: Necromancy 3 - Studying the Dead and Trouble in Class

This doesn't necessarily finish up the Necromancy tree, but I want to do most of what's left of it in the main story. So this'll be the finale for the Necromancy tree for a while at least. Everything else is the kind of hard hitting, important stuff you don't want in a side story, especially since the grand majority of readers don't read them.

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Necromancy is unique in a few ways, at least as far as her skills go. It’s the first skill she’s run into that has a prerequisite for learning. It’s not the only skill, after learning that was even possible she asked Kakashi to get her some Jonin technique scrolls, and despite her assumption that she’d get flicked in the forehead and told no, her crazy sensei actually did it. It wasn’t even a conversation, he just left and came back a few minutes later with a bundle of scrolls. She’s pretty sure she’s not even allowed to learn Jonin techniques, so that was kind of confusing.

She could learn none of them, and that sucks, but that was also very different. The weakest scroll he gave her required a mind of 151, everything else was higher. This is implicative of a multitude of things. First, it means that stat requirements seem to universally be attached to difficult and powerful skills, and aren’t normally applied to skills that have lower requirements like what she would naturally try to learn with her lower chakra reserves.

Necromancy is the only thing in this range she can find that she can’t learn, and that implies something huge. Specifically, it implies that it’s not Necromancy itself that has the requirement, it’s mana usage. If mana is entirely related to the mind stat, will she boost mind by learning and mastering mana? Should she be actively trying to find ways to interact with mana for a better stat boosting method?

The second thing Kakashi getting her the scrolls implies is that if there’s ever a technique she wants to learn, Kakashi’s just on board. He’ll move the earth itself if it means he can pass off teaching her onto something like a scroll or Guy. She gets the feeling if she starts trying to learn Genjutsu he might just up and transfer her to another team with a clap of his hands and a stoic ‘fuck that shit.’ He’ll break the rules faster than she can blink if it means getting out of work. She can use that.

The second way Necromancy is unique is that she’s learning it in parts. As it progresses towards the requirements to learn it she’s able to understand more and more of the scroll, which does give her unique insights. It turns out necromancy is about taking hold of a soul and redefining its purpose. The more similar to the soul’s original purpose, the less resistance it has, which means she’ll have a higher success rate on trying to reanimate a corpse with its own soul than she will putting that corpse into something else. This means when she finally does gain the skill she should practice on trying to resurrect those that have just died and- “Sakura, are you listening?”

“Huh?” Sakura blinks herself out of her own thoughts, looking up at the board at the front of the room. A woman with long glossy blue hair is pushing up her glasses while huffing at her in barely held back rage. Civilians dress very differently from ninjas, she can’t imagine seeing a ninja in a dress that goes down to their ankles, but this woman considers that a part of her daily uniform. It’s so long, and restrictive, and all of her movements are distractingly poor. Maybe it’s that she grew up in a family of ninjas? Do all ninjas have this issue? “I am paying attention.”

“Can you repeat what I just said?” The teacher’s stern stare from behind those glasses doesn’t do her any favors. She’s a hardass without any of the power and skill to back it up. She used to respect teachers so much - and she still does to some extent - but it’s so hard to take them seriously when there is zero chance whatsoever that they pull a Kakashi and punish her. Sure she feels a little guilty deep inside for annoying someone taking their time to teach her, but what’s the woman going to do, kick her out of class? Her tuition for this class is paid for by the Inuzuka clan, good luck teach. She much prefers the more lax teachers that understand she’s a ninja and stay out of her business.

That’s not a reason to be disrespectful though, it’s just a sad factor to all of this for her that she didn’t used to have. She loves class, but it’s so slow and boring and they’ve been going over the same thing for over an hour. “I wasn’t listening, but I do know what you were saying, do you want me to take this loss or embarrass you?”

“...” The woman’s face flares into a hot volcano, Sakura can almost see the steam come out of her ears, and not in that cute way Ino manages sometimes.

“I am realizing I should have said ‘no Teacher, I’m sorry.’ Can I take back my answer?” Her hand reacts instinctively before she even realizes it, catching a piece of chalk out of mid-air a second before it would have impacted her forehead. Staring at it for a second, she realizes something. She crashes it against her forehead and falls over out of her seat. “Oh no, you got me!”

She chooses to take figuring it out as a win. It’s not like any of them are ninjas, they probably didn’t even notice her catching it. She’ll send the woman some fruit, teachers love fruit right?

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“Why is there a dead squirrel on your desk?” The man unfortunate enough to be seated next to her eyes her with a bit of a deadpan. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to bring dead things into class, Little Red.”

“Well, through rigorous testing I recently figured out that classrooms actively giving a lecture give an extra hundred percent exp progress rate towards analytical skills and statistics, it doesn’t have to actually be what the lecture is about. What this means is I can work on something that gives a greater Mind exp rate while in class instead, and it’ll still work.” She cuts into the fuzzy creature. She caught it this morning, fed it a good meal with some sleepy pills, and killed it instantly with a quick stab a few minutes before class so it wouldn’t rot before lectures. She’ll admit killing an animal just for intellectual training bothers her, so Haku’s cooking squirrel stew tonight. She’ll have to catch a few more before heading home, which works just fine for her purposes.

“Errr, what?” The man squeaks at her, watching her knife cut into the deceased with wide eyes.

“Oh right. It’s a game thing, don’t worry about it.” One of the cool things about civilian classes is that you can kind of say literally anything and people will forget it ten seconds later. It’s a game thing, it’s a ninja thing, it’s a crazy person thing. They don’t know, they don’t care, and aside from one guy that she now does the occasional raid with, they don’t follow up.

A shrill voice catches her ears, and she looks up just in time to see sharp eyes behind glasses, focused right on her from the front of the room. “Sakura, are you dissecting a squirrel during my lecture?”

“Am I not allowed to do that?” She asks, reaching up and scratching her cheek, only to realize she’s smearing blood along her face a moment later. “The rules didn’t say I couldn’t do-ack!”

This time she puts in the extra effort to get hit by the chalk in the first place.

She’s not sure what she did wrong, she wasn’t disrespectful this time she swears!

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“Sakura you look like death.” The stuck up and quite mean teacher interrupts her before she can even get past the door of the classroom, looking her over with concerned eyes and a full lipped frown. Most of the class is looking at her, so all she can do is sigh. She can feel the bags under her eyes, and she can see from her arm that she’s very pale, so she doesn’t have to make many guesses as to what the teacher means.

“I failed.” Sakura admits, reaching up and rubbing her eyes. Holding back tears is something she’s never gotten that good at, because very little hits her that hard emotionally. She’s learned how to distance herself from problems for years in the academy, and that has served her well. Not the last few days though, it’s a struggle not to break out into tears with every other breath.

“Not my class, you’re doing pretty well… Did you mean something else?” She asks, looking to the students to see if they have any idea. There’s a lot of shrugs, but Sakura doesn’t notice them. She hasn’t paid attention to anything in a few days, she even missed last class.

“It’s not important to classes, forget it.” She trudges to the back of the room, thanking the stars that no one decides to sit next to her today. She didn’t just get to 110 mind, the immediate research and necromantic attempts, some of which even successful, got her to 111. It was so fast and powerful.

But she failed the first real test, and she’s not sure when she’ll be okay again. Next week, the week after? Will it ever be okay? For once the teacher says nothing when she zones out of the lesson and stares out at the fields. She’s already read this lesson in the book anyway, what’s it matter? What’s anything matter if those she gets close to stay dead when it’s important? What good is Necromancy when she can fail?

She’s taken a step forward in the world, and found the ground beneath her feet collapsed to punish her for her hubris.