"I fucking hate you."

"Aww, love you too buddy!"

Julia didn't get to say anything else because her purple-haired friend had decided that sending one giant snake after here wasn't enough, so she promptly summoned another even bigger one. She was currently running for her life through the treelines, her eyes carefully darting around for any traps she knew Itachi and Shisui had laid.

Stimulation 17: Fighting multiple opponents while behind enemy lines. Shinobi Capture the flag wasn't fun.

A sudden white glow caught her attention. The fallen tree trunk she had just so carelessly hopped over was plastered with explosive tags. There was no time to defend herself before they sent her flying like a rag dog across the tree, her flight only stopped by a large boulder jutting out of the ground.

Before she got her bearings a dozen shurikens flew around her, the nearly invisible Ninja wires tied to them made sure she was wrapped up nice and tight.

"Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu!"

Although it was called a ball, Itachi had actually manipulated it into something akin to a flamethrower, it raced along the wires and ignited everything in its path with scorching heat. She was a split second from becoming a roast, but thanks to a quick Substitution Jutsu she managed to escape. For all of 5 seconds at least before the snake summons were back on her ass.

A glowing green palm was held over her right thigh, it seems she wasn't quite quick enough to completely escape the Jutsu because she was covered in light burns. No matter, as long as her legs were fine she could keep moving. A loud thud was head as Julia was sent flying backward on her ass. Where once was an open space, a large tree shimmered into existence.

Genjutsu.

She didn't have time to react when a scaled train crashed into her side, knocking her into the air, before coiling around her small frame with bone-crushing strength. Anko knew better than to try and have them eat her after she punched through her last summon.

Itachi walked out from the shadows while Anko hopped off her summon's head. They both waited for a moment before rumbling was heard from deeper within the forest. A bright crimson ball soon came into sight. As soon as it stopped it revealed Bao using Human Bullet Tank Jutsu but covered in thick red samurai armor, while Muta was behind him floating on a dense cloud of bugs.

"1 hour and 27 minutes this time, nice!"

"Yayyy new record, it now takes me slightly longer to get my ass kicked, whoopie!"

"Aww, cmon now, ya did great lasting this long! Remember when we started how you only lasted 10 minutes? Yeesh, talk about performance issues~! At least you aren't a guy, amirite?"

"You did very well, Julie. Unfortunately, I can't stay around any longer, I have a mission in another hour and need to prepare. I'll see you all later."

"Cya Itachi, thanks for the help today. Good luck with your mission!"

Everyone else had other matters to attend to, so it became a girl's night out. She was pretty sure that Anko's blood was mostly sugar after watching the girl demolish her 19th order of sweets and still waiting for the other half of her orders to come out. A vampire would surely become diabetic after just one sip of the craziness that was Anko. They were so going to win the eating competition next week.

I'm a fucking idiot. Why did I have to tempt Fate? Why couldn't I just keep my head down and my big fat mouth shut?!

Julia had spent most of her money on two things this past year. One of them was Ninja Gear such as Kunai, Shuriken, paper bombs, ninja wires, her nunchaku, and many many pairs of weights.

The other was a small house on mortgage and wasn't that a strange thought. As a 6-year-old mercenary for hire, she was already paying a mortgage on her own house while back on Earth as a 24-year-old medical student she only had a crippling debt. Her strange financial situation besides, as soon as Julia had become a Genin and could be considered an adult she had moved out. It wouldn't do to keep mooching off Mikoto and Fugaku, and she felt bad even if they insisted she could stay.

So, thanks to one idle conversation and joke with Gai after a training session which she deeply regretted, they combined the two. She had basically turned her house into a recreation of the Zoldyck family's from HunterxHunter. Everything in her house weighed an insane amount. Furniture, utensils, books, even her spoon she uses to eat cereal weighed more than 50 pounds! If it was in her house then it had to be heavy as fuck.

She didn't expect to go through this type of "anime" training, even if she was the one to suggest it and she was in fact technically in one. Gai had cried many tears and insisted on undergoing the harsh trial with her, and she found she couldn't back out in the face of his enthusiasm.

That was 2 months ago, and now that she had gotten used too it, they obviously had to ramp it up to another level. There was a limit to how much she could increase her weights without them becoming too blocky and getting in the way of her movement. Carrying boulders on your back and running around is fine and dandy, but trying to even walk with boulders that's bigger than you tied to all four limbs? Pretty redundant to say the least. There was also the fact that she'd need a quick method to take them off in a pinch. She doubted anyone in Mizu would be nice enough to wait for her to have a five-minute flashback and the however many odd minutes she needed to unstrap her weights. She'd rather not turn into a shish kabob in the village known for being murderous and loving their pointy sticks and swords.

"Fuinjutsu: Four Limbs Weighing Seal! Fuinjutsu: Gravity Press!"

Which was why she'd gotten Gai to introduce her to one of the rare few stores which dealt in Fuinjutsu goods. Something incredibly useful but she couldn't learn how to do herself. She'd attempted to learn a bit but quickly figured that she neither had the time nor talent to even begin scratching the surface of it. Imagine trying to learn the hardest thing you could think of and multiply that by a thousand folds.

Fuinjutsu was ridiculously complicated, like trying to Art, poetry, computer coding, circuitry, science, math, and another language at all once, and messing up tended to end up with you blowing the fuck up. It was simply too complex and vast, encompassing too many possibilities. In theory, if you could figure out the formula, you could reproduce any Jutsu with Seals, even Bloodline limits.

Julia was always proud of her good grades in school, a result of equal part effort and talent, but never did she feel so dumb and stupid as when she attempted to read a sealing formula.

It was also why she just paid the cost of a sports car to have someone send her crashing into the floor, the stone cratering beneath her chin. Four limbs weighting seals were used by placing a pair praying beads for the wrists and ankles onto the target before forming a complex series of hand signs along withdrawing a certain Sealing Formula around them. After completing the sequence it would activate and exponentially increase the weights of the white beads, and as the person gets used to the current weight it would change color and adjust itself accordingly through multiple levels.

While Gravity Press was pretty self-explanatory. She's starting out at 1.3x normal gravity for now.

The best part of it all was that she only needed to send a quick burst of chakra to release it anytime she wanted. She was a bit sad at how there'll be no epic weight drop moment for her, but maybe she'll go back to them in the future and use both? Heck, she might do it just for kicks and see the look on other's face later.

"Yosh! Thank you for your services, Inku-san. Now we can further temper our body in Flames of Youth! There's not a moment to lose, Julie, we must hurry and prepare you for the Chunin Exam!"

"Tfhmank fyuu."

The Fuinjutsu specialist simply stared at the duo running off with a sweat drop running down his head. Well, one of them was running at least, the other was too busy with her face in the ground eating dirt and making a long ditch with her head from the weight of her body as she was literally dragged away. He simply went back inside his store, questioning Gai and his methods would only lead to headaches.

"Leaf Hurricane!"

"You call that a hurricane? It's more like a gentle breeze to me, let me show you what a real hurricane looks like! Leaf Hurricane!"

Master Chen knocked Julia flying into the lake of the training ground they were in for the 13th time that day. He waited patiently for the girl to drag her way out of the water, her considerable weight ensured that she had sunk like a stone to the bottom of the lake and had to walk out from underneath every time. Within a minute or two the girl's head finally poked back out from beneath the water, coughing violently as she did.

"Done with your swim so soon? Why, I barely managed to finish my meal~"

"I hope you choke on those rice balls."

"Heh, you need to watch that temper of yours my dear girl. Now come here and let's take a quick break and we'll go over why you lost."

Julia sat down on the grass with her other Taijutsu master, accepting the offered rice ball and eating it ravenously. She reached into her pouch and also munched on some seeds. They were quite hard and bitter, but she wasn't eating them for the taste anyway.

"Do you know why you lost so quickly? And before you say anything, I did not go harder than you just now than before."

"Because I'm wearing more weight...?"

"Yes, and..?"

"and I'm slower because of it? Because it's draining my stamina faster? Just tell me already."

She gave up after seeing the old man repeated shake his head while having a shit-eating grin the entire time.

"The problem isn't your strength, speed, nor stamina, but rather your coordination." Seeing the deadpan look in the little girl's eyes and a palpable feeling of what his disciple likes to call her "No shit Sherlock" stare the man cleared his throat to continue. "Yes, you're unused to the additional weight, but the main issue is you're fighting against the weight instead of with it. Leverage that addition power behind your blows, relax your movements and don't be so stiff. Your unnatural momentum for your size and reach is a weapon to use again your opponents. Their ignorance is your advantage."

Blue eyes narrowed in concentration as she considered what she heard. Yes, the weights strapped to her now is just another aspect of her body, just like how a master swordsman would consider his blade an extension of his arms. However, words were cheap, and knowing something and actually being able to do it was a completely different beast.

"Let's go again."

"Sure thing, but we can wait until you've finished eating. By the way, I've been curious about this for a while, but what are you actually eating? It sounds like you're cracking your teeth everything you eat one of those things."

Julia tossed another handful into her mouth even as Chen watched, he wasn't wrong, it felt as if she was chewing on rocks.

"Cherry pits."

"Cherry... Pits? What? Why?"

What a strange girl to not eat the sweet flesh but to chew on the hard seeds instead.

"To build up my poison immunity. Cherry pits are a good source of amygdalin, a common substance in plant seeds, and is turned into cyanide after being broken by enzymes in the intestines."

... What a strange girl indeed, and perhaps her strangeness was contagious because when did he start to feel it's such a perfectly normal answer to hear from his newest student that she was casually poisoning herself to build up an immunity?