Ego Illuminatus

[Golnax]

Aimi's blond hair caused more of a stir throughout Kusagakure than he could have imagined. Not only was it a sudden change from how he had appeared a couple of hours ago (to the men and women who worked on and in the village of course), but when Aimi told them that it came as a result with an encounter with the Blind Idiot God, many of them couldn't stop gawking. The more local residents believed this physical change to be a blessing from their god and took it as a sign of good fortune. In a way, the gold hair of the Daimyo of the Land of Gold now energized the citizens of Gold and made them work harder! For Aimi, though, it was something new and unwanted, forced upon him against his will! A joke plain and simple to see that was anything but funny to the Kaguya.

And yet... he couldn't deny that it seemed to have a positive effect on those around him because of the portion of his tale that he had chosen to tell. He had not told his people about his experience in the spirit world, and why would he? Would they understand? Would they believe him? He was still grappling with being back in reality himself! Frankly, as he looked around at the make-shift grass huts and the busy network of people running back and forth building a village from the ground up with what resources that they had, Aimi felt like he was watching ghosts run by him. To him it had been so long since he had seen or thought about any of these faces and now here he was back among them. It was all so much... he pretty quickly decided he needed to go lay down and rest. His head was swimming.

Once he got back to the hut that was his he went inside and closed the door, sitting in the dark with the muffled sounds of industry beyond the grass walls. He sat down on the ground in preparation to sleep but ultimately he just sat there silently, staring down at the ground and contemplating. He reached up and grabbed a hold of his blond hair and pulled it in front of his eyes. It was shorter now by half of its' original length and it wasn't as easy to look at any more because of that. He didn't mind though; cutting his hair had been his own choice so there was no regrets about it. Still he pondered about how people had reacted to it and the news of his encounter. A blessing? Could it really be so?

Sighing, Aimi crossed his legs, sat up straight, and started to meditate. At first he expected to begin floating off of the ground as he had done in the spirit world, but as the minutes dragged on and he remained tethered to the earth, he pretty quickly realized that was no longer something he'd be able to do. In a way it saddened him; floating had somehow made him feel more connected to that world despite being quite literally separate from it at that point. Aimi wondered if he wasn't going to have to relearn how to meditate in this world, in his home reality...

It wasn't the only thing he had to learn. Aside from the change in his hair and chakra color, Aimi felt... different. Completely different! Before his ordeal he would have been outraged, frothing mad, looking to fight and kill just to sate his own wrath and lust for blood. Now...? He felt nothing of the sort. He thought back on how he had acted once he was brought back into this reality. He wasn't angry then either. Not even when that jackal headed spirit had forced a change upon him had he felt the familiar fire of anger! What he had felt and what he had expressed was conviction, a purpose filling him up where a lack thereof had once been in the wake of his isolation. It wasn't anger... had he truly changed so?

As Aimi continued to meditate he thought back further on what En Framförallt had said to him about how he had changed. His hair and chakra had changed colors, yes, the very nature of his chakra had been altered in some mysterious way that the great spirit had not elaborated on and... yes, the spirit had said that he could manipulate 'nature energy' now. He tried to recall what exactly that was and... well, Aimi was pretty infamous for not remembering the details of things he didn't care much about. He remembered a lesson years ago about sages and nature energy. If he recalled correctly, such individuals, "sages", were typically taught how to use nature energy from an external entity - a member of a summoning pact, an animal spirit or perhaps another sage. They were then able to use nature energy to augment their physical capabilities as well as jutsu and create jutsu that were unique to each individual sage that could not be performed with chakra alone. This was all he recalled of the lesson, so how did that apply to him?

Aimi had had no mentor to teach him about 'nature energy' or what being a 'sage' meant. He'd been trapped in another world for seventy years and hadn't talked to a spirit about such things, not even once out of passing! Yet he had somehow managed to figure out how to manipulate such energies naturally? It hardly made sense to the Kaguya. He didn't recall anything about just spontaneously being able to become a sage! Everything he remembered learning said that it had to be taught from one source or another! Had En Framförallt simply lied to him?

... Then again, Aimi thought, there had to be an original sage, right? Some genesis somewhere along the line that figured it all out first? Whether animal or spirit or human, something figured it out first and then passed the knowledge down to others in some long forgotten distant past. He had spent seventy years in isolation... could it be that En Framförallt had not lied? Had he stumbled upon some ancient, mystic secret while imprisoned? He thought on this further and stumbled across a different question entirely; had En Framförallt ever actually lied to him? Beyond all the babble and nonsense, had the blind spirit actually been... truthful? This whole time?

If that was the case, then... he was a sage. He could manipulate nature energy which was a strange fate indeed considering his primary memory of all of this was the casual discarding of sages and nature energy as something that was both out of his reach and a thing he did not want to reach for in the first place. Aimi's strength had always been from an individual source; himself. Thus it followed that he would be reluctant at best to have to gain a new strength from another when he could not gain it for himself. This was what he remembered more than the lessons, but now... Could it have been? Could it be?

Unbeknownst to Aimi as he sat and meditated on these things, the grass on the ground around him in an immediate circle had began to bend towards and away from him in a rhythmic sway that was timed with his breathing. Even now, as he was grappling with the possibility of what the Blind Idiot God had said was truth, he was manipulating the natural energy around him.


Enlightenment training:
1261/1000

[Golnax]

So there was a distinct possibility that Aimi was actually a sage now. Ok, he could live with that he supposed... or at least get used to it... that is... once he understood what a sage was supposed to be. There was nothing and no one to teach him about this sort of thing, so he was left to figure it out on his own. It occurred to him that he could ask his nemesis for guidance, but this was out of the question. The very thought of it was offensive to him! He would never seek out a spirit for as long as he lived for anything. In this he was convicted.

Aimi let out a deep sigh before taking in a huge breath, puffing out his chest and getting to the meat of his meditation so to speak. Thoughts and considerations were all well and good, but to meditate was not to simply sit and think on things. One could do that at any point. No, meditation was the practice, he found, of clearing the mind, to empty it and think of nothing. That was exactly what he began to do. Letting his breath out of his mouth slowly, the wind outside would pick up and blow around his hut and the buildings around it, moving beyond the confines of the infant village and blowing through the grass sea beyond. He had no way of knowing yet that he was the cause of this.

Aimi began to clear his mind step by step, erasing all thought and sensory input from his consciousness in a process he had become quite good at. When he had been trapped for decades there was little else to do after all. Quickly the world around him fell away; the sound of the men and women working outside, the wind, the feeling of the ground underneath him, the shade he sat in, the bits of sunlight that cracked through the imperfect building, the grass that tickled his skin: he dismissed all of it first and did so quickly. Next he repeated in his mind over and over again, 'Think of nothing... think of nothing... think of nothing...'

Gradually, his thoughts, worries and concerns fell away from him. Any questions he had were pushed aside to fall into a void he was creating within himself and the volume of his thoughts were lowered. The repetitious 'Think of nothing,' grew quieter and quieter until it was hardly there at all. He surrendered himself to the void, let go, and merely existed in the moment physically while remaining to as close to absolution as he could mentally. This was a skill he had picked up during his imprisonment and it now brought him comfort. The last thought that came to his mind was that of the realization that meditating like this reminded him of his prison, of the spirit world, and a dull ache that he wanted to return there...

Then there was truly nothing. The toll of the day was simply too much for Aimi and he found himself drifting off into sleep where he sat. Bad meditation practice to be sure, but necessary for his recovery.

When he awoke it was hours later and all was dark. He opened his eyes and thought at first that they were still closed until the feeling of blinking overcame him. All of the sounds of working had ceased and only the occasional faint hoot of people still up in the night and socializing remained of the world outside. It was dark and Aimi didn't feel like sitting in complete darkness, so he channeled katon chakra into the palm of his right hand and created a layer of dull burning blue flame that he reached down and smeared over the ground in front of him, illuminating his dark hut with the gentle blue light of his Foxfire jutsu.

Thus lit, Aimi would look down at his palm and flex his fingers. He sat that way for a moment and allowed himself to wake up, not yawning or stretching as he did not feel the need. His sleep had been more like a trance really, a simple transition from one point in time to the next. When he was more alert he channeled his chakra into his right hand and, sure enough, there it was; a golden glow of light that mingled with the soft blue light of the fire and danced across his face like the shimmer of shining metal. It was surreal to see his chakra, always an ethereal but still very much intrinsic part of his being, which had always been a light blue like the fire before his legs, now shine with a brilliant gold.

Yet... it wasn't entirely unpleasant for him to look at. Far from it. The more he looked at his own chakra the more it felt... right. It reminded him of when he had assaulted the major city-fortress in what was once the original Gold Country, how items of golden opulence decorated much of the place. Gold was the name of his country, the symbol of wealth that his people all shared, a source of untapped economic power, and now the color of his, the Daimyo of Gold Country, chakra. It really was fitting in a way. His hair, his chakra - he was now a living symbol of his nation in color scheme if nothing else. En Framförallt was once again proven to be a truthful entity after all... he decided it did look good on him.

Aimi clenched his fist and ceased channeling his chakra. He still felt quite tired and knew that he needed more rest, but before he would lay down again he would place his hand in his lap and his gaze would fall on his feet. They were wrapped in bandages that were never meant for wounds but rather as a source of protection for his feet as an alternative to any sort of shoe or sandal. He thought to himself, 'How silly that I should have gone all this time wearing these. What have I to fear from a stone or anything else of the earth?'

Calmly and slowly he would reach down and unwrap his legs from the bandages, releasing his feet into the open air. He sat for a moment and wiggled his toes, relishing in the feeling of freedom he suddenly felt. It was as if the last vestiges of Kirigakure were removed from him in that moment and he smiled at the feeling. He tossed the bandages onto the impotent blue fire and laid down on the ground, stretching out and turning his back away from the light of the flames. He would fall back asleep, and in the morning, he would further tackle this conundrum of being a sage.


Enlightenment Training:
1139/1000

[Golnax]

When next Aimi awoke the sun had already risen fairly high into the sky and the men and women of Gold were already hard at work for the day. It was the sound of people communicating and materials being built that woke him from his slumber. He laid on his on his side, one arm tucked underneath his head while the other was laid resting against his upturned side, head pointed north and feet pointed south. He laid blinking for a minute or two before sitting up inside of his hut. He did not stretch. He was already relaxed!

The first thing he set his eyes on to focus were the wrappings that he had taken off the night before. They had remained unburned as his blue ghost-light-based jutsu did not burn unless he intervened. As it stood they still remained a last vestige of his attachment to Kirigakure and thus, he deemed that they should be gotten rid of. After all, his past as a ninja of Kirigakure was no longer a dominant part of who he was. With a snap of his fingers as he stood up the rags caught fire and before he moved out of his hut for the day he stepped on the ashes to make sure that they did not spread a fire unnecessarily. It was done. His last link to his old village was burned and gone. Time to devote himself wholly to his new village.

Stepping out into the warm light of the day Aimi would squint and shield his eyes for a moment as they adjusted before stepping out and heading into the flow of people. Time to observe the progress of his village. At least, that was his first thought as for a plan of action. He was only a few steps away from his hut before he remembered the state of his hair and the events that had proceeded it the day before. There came that word again - sage. He still didn't know what that meant and he knew he needed to find out. He needed to understand himself fully if he was going to be leading a nation, after all.

After a quick glance around at the people and their work and deciding that they could survive another day without his guidance in building streets, huts and forges and such, Aimi turned and walked in a different direction with the intention of heading just outside of the bounds of the village. As he walked he couldn't help but marvel at the feeling of the grass and ground underneath his feet. He was so used to there being a thin layer between himself and the world on which he walked that he had forgotten how warm the ground could be, how soft the grass felt. He decided he liked the way it felt and he smiled as he walked. The simple joy of feeling the ground beneath his feet was new to him. He liked the feeling as much as he enjoyed the sensation!

As he walked he tried to remember what that cackling spirit had said to him. What he ended up focusing on were the words about nature energy and his supposed ability to control it. 'What did that jackal say to me?' he thought. 'All that time in the spirit world I was learning how to manipulate nature energy without realizing it? So my meditating, my gardening, pulling myself together, my emotions shaping the world... where exactly does it start? Or where does it end?'

He was afraid that he had no real answer to the question, so all that remained was trial and error; trying to figure out what was and what wasn't unintentionally manipulating nature energy within the spirit world. He knew already that his levitating couldn't be because he had not levitated the day before... although he accepted the possibility that it could happen with a more direct application of nature chakra, when and if he figured out how to use it. For the moment though it was off the list. What else? Reconstituting his body? After a bit of thinking he felt safe in assuming that that had just been the nature of the reality he found himself in rather than any subconscious utilization of some kind of foreign chakra. After all, in the real world, no one was at risk of simply falling apart at any moment if they lost concentration.

So that was two things. Gardening then? Had he perhaps been unknowingly increasing the yield of his garden through nature chakra? Could he do such a thing in reality? He thought about this as he walked and concluded that it might have been possible, but it was difficult to say. He certainly didn't want to take the time to garden and find out. Gardens took weeks of work to produce anything substantial! He needed something a little more immediate. So what else had there been?

By this point Aimi was walking in circles outside of the village in the taller grass that grew beyond. His long, oval shaped path lead him back and forth over the space of five meters or so. As he continued to think he began to notice the grass - at first as a distraction to keep his thoughts from going too far around in circles on themselves, but then for it's peculiar behavior. He noticed that, as he walked, the tall grass followed him. Not as in it got up and followed his every step, no, but instead it was more subtle than that. The grass was simply bending and swaying in the same direction that he was walking, forming a moving circular companion around him. To confirm this he would simply stop his pace and then start it up again in.

How very curious! How strange! Now that he thought about it, he had managed to do such things in the spirit world while meditating or gardening, calling vegetation towards him or having it bend towards or away from him in time with his breath or hearth beat. He had believed, though, that this had just been a consequence of his physical presence in a world that functioned off of intention and emotion. Was this evidence that he was wrong?

He sighed deeply, bringing a hand up to his forehead and planting his palm on it. "If only I actually knew what nature energy was...!" he lamented quietly. Running his hand down his face and over his eyes, he could tell that this was going to be a long process of trial and error, figuring out what was what and going from there. He supposed that he could seek out a book or scroll on the subject... but then again, he only recalled learning about sages in passing during all of his career as a ninja. Odds were, he felt safe in assuming, that knowledge on sagehood was limited. He was more than likely going to have to figure this all out on his own...

... But then again, he realized, hadn't he been here before? He thought back to a time, not so long ago, when he was developing his very own elemental ninjutsu all by himself - napalm! It had taken him years of hard work and fine tuning while he was still maturing as a person and as a ninja, but he had done it! How truly different could figuring out how to manipulate nature's chakra be compared to inventing a whole new style of jutsu? All he needed to do was discover what it was about one step at a time!

And the first step, it seemed, was noticing the sway of grass that followed him as he walked. A silent, subtle, green companion to follow him where he went. Grass. He could work with that.


Enlightenment training:

1307/1000

[Golnax]

With the advent of having grass as a companion in his journey of self discovery, Aimi decided that the best thing to do was to meditate on the matter. He'd meditated quite often in the spirit world and so now he had developed a habit. Sitting down on the ground, he crossed his legs over themselves, placed his hands in his lap with his finger tips lightly pressed together so his hands were in a circular shape, took in a deep breath and began to empty his mind. He had thinking to do and he didn't need the world around him distracting him from that thinking. The warm embrace of the sunlight was going to be enough to keep him going.

'Nature chakra... nature chakra...' he repeated to himself quietly. 'What exactly could nature chakra be...?' With this question in mind he began to think, to extrapolate, and work backwards. What was nature chakra? Well, to answer that question, perhaps he had better answer the question - what is chakra?

Chakra, he knew without doubt, was the energy that naturally coursed through the body of every living thing. It was comprised of two parts, physical and spiritual energy, that came from two different sources. The physical came from the body itself and the various systems of checks and balances that it organically had to keep itself going. The food one ate was absorbed into the body and converted into nutrients, bodily fuel that is sent and converted into kinetic energy, electricity and all else that the body needed to function. These various energies, which allowed a body to move, exist and live, were half of what made up chakra.

The other half was the spiritual component. Despite it's name, Aimi believed, it had nothing to do with any actual spirits of a 'soul' that might reside inside of you. No one (ordinary) shared a body with a spirit and siphoned energy off of them. No, spiritual energy came from a place of intangibility: from the mind. Thoughts, emotions, memories, your state of mind in the moment, the mental training that one puts themselves through in order to grow stronger - that was the source of spiritual energy. Every thought a person has or point of view they consider is the fuel, like the food and drink the body ingests, that makes up spiritual energy and thus half of chakra.

These two things together, the body and spiritual mind, come together to form chakra proper. This was the case for every living being in the Real, from the smallest insect to the mightiest shinobi. He knew this not just from his life experiences but from the lessons that had been drilled into his head to the point of being unforgettable when he attended the ninja academy of Kirigakure. What, then, was nature chakra, and how did the flow of grass that followed him come into this? What did this understanding of chakra mean for being a sage?

As he thought on these things he noticed that the grass was moving again, this time almost dancing as he pulled towards him and then pushed away as if in time with his breathing. He wondered if grass counted as a living thing the same way that he did. Did grass have chakra? Grass was food for animals though, the fuel that their bodies used in order to make part of their own chakra. The process of digestion needed to convert the plant matter into chakra when combined with an animal's spiritual energy, so that had to mean that grass had no chakra, right?

As he stared at the bending grass he followed this train of thought. Grass didn't eat like how animals did... but it did grow. It could drink water and the sunlight helped it to grow as well. Did that mean that plants like grass could make the energy needed to grow without consuming food? Where did that energy come from then? The sun? The rain? It was all just parts of nature, things that happened in the world independent of humanity or animals or anything else. If every human on the face of the earth were to vanish in that instant, nature would go on without them. Autonomous. Like the processes of the body that provided the physical energy necessary for chakra...

Then it hit him. The realization was sudden and with it came a gust of wind that whipped the long blades of grass back and forth in a frenzy. It was all connected, all of it! Of course he had already known this but he'd never looked at it from this perspective before - the food chain, that simple model that so summed up the cycle of life and death and what nature was all about, that was the key! The food that he ate came from plants and animals, natural things that would go on without him and every other human being. His body processed them into chakra that he himself could use, but the system, the cycle, the chain - was this nature's own way of producing chakra?

Suddenly Aimi Kaguya was looking at the world around him in a completely different way. Rather than seeing individual blades of grass, the hills, the horizon, the sky he was viewing it all together as one, a single being, an organism with systems of checks and balances designed to keep it going. Exactly the same as the human body! This self generating nature facilitates a transfer of energy that is so harmonious and all encompassing that he could not help but feel in awe of this realization! The wind whipped his hair and he knew that this wind had travelled hundreds if not thousands of miles, giving and taking kinetic energy as it went, just to pass over his head and through his hair and would keep going forever in one way or another! The rest of nature was exactly the same! A cycle! A system!

A chakra network.

Very different from that of an animal or human, but a chakra network all the same. Being in tune with this truth as well as himself allowed him to see and understand this and as the wind passed the grass around him all bent away from him as though he were pushing it away with the weight of this discovery weighing on his mind. Yes, nature itself was like a chakra network within a living being with channels and chakra points that were vital for keeping the system going. The chakra it produced was different from that made by living things, but not inaccessible to them!

This discovered, Aimi was one step closer to true enlightenment.


Enlightenment Training:

1000/1000