{"id":144,"date":"2010-06-16T14:13:32","date_gmt":"2010-06-16T18:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/?p=144"},"modified":"2020-05-27T14:50:45","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T18:50:45","slug":"chapter-8-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/?p=144","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 8 Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter 8 – Struggles and Triumphs, Part 1<\/strong>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Chapter Notes:<\/b><\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/i><\/span>One clone crawled out from underneath the dogpile and raised his fist at Katsuro. “Come on! I can take you! Don’t underestimate\u2014” But he didn’t get to finish. <\/i>\u2014 More unruly clones that are facets of Katsuro\u2019s personality. And this one is even trying to use Naruto\u2019s one line against him.<\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/i><\/span>“Good,” he said again. “Now take all of that light and line your fingers with it. You know, the way you focus it into your fingertips? But this time, curl it over the backs of your fingers.” She turned her hands over, and they both watched as the pale green light amassed over her knuckles, turning a shade deeper as it coalesced. <\/i>\u2014 Katsuro isn\u2019t showing her something she doesn\u2019t already know. In theory, she knows that infusing her chakra into anything is more powerful than nothing at all. But she\u2019s never spent time training at it. Katsuro \u2014 the scrappy survivor and out-of-the-box thinker \u2014 is the one encourages her to get creative and level-up her skill. It didn\u2019t come from her Team 7 training. Neither here nor in the original manga.<\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/span>“Pretty little pink-haired girls should never leave their safe, little villages.\u201d He stayed close as he completed the circle, face next to hers, voice low and intimate. “Isn’t that what your teammates think…um…Ino-chan?”<\/i> \u2014 Katsuro\u2019s use of the -chan suffix (here with Sakura\u2019s fake name) will be a twist on the manga. It won\u2019t always be a sign of affection. Sometimes he\u2019ll use it to press her buttons and reliably stoke her anger.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 “But what about you? You’re with them,” she said, thumbing up to the floors upstairs. “So why are you different?” He blinked a few times, thinking about it. He shrugged finally. “Well, I guess I’m like you then,” he said with a half-smile. “I don’t want to kill someone if I don’t have to, either.”<\/i> \u2014 Here, he admits he recognizes himself in her. He has been slowly identifying with her the whole time. This is an important facet of their relationship in the manga, so it gets a spotlight here too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Spoiler Notes:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Beside her Katsuro was rocking one of the curved fragments with his toe, when he realized what it was. “Oh! It’s a bell,” he declared, and squatted to examine the remains of an intricate floral design etched into the outside of the bell shape. “It must have been huge,” he said finally.<\/i> \u2014 Later on, Katsuro will help out someone and recognize the pattern of the bells. His kind deed will have a little connection to Sakura.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/i><\/span>The wall was full of empty cubby holes, like the kind used for storing scrolls in the Kage\u2019s tower. She looked down the line of rack into the room behind it. In the darkness there were more racks, all empty. She looked back at the sad pile of left-behind scrolls. \u201cGuess the music ones weren\u2019t worth taking,\u201d she said with a soft laugh.<\/i> \u2014 So this little detail fills in a larger backstory. This was a temple of some kind of spiritual knowledge about the sage who brought chakra to the world. But at some point, all the knowledge was taken away. This theme will recur \u2014 people dealing with great power, but without any knowledge of how to handle it. And this imagery \u2014 empty racks missing the documents they were meant to hold \u2014 will be brought up again, in some very different places.<\/p>\n

\u2022 It was alluring to think of her as someone equal with him, someone to train with, he thought. He wanted to continue.<\/i> \u2014 He’s training her, but it’s not as someone more advanced as she is. This is a shift in their relationship. They are working together as teammates.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0When she didn\u2019t answer right away, and Katsuro realized she may be tired or overwhelmed, or maybe just not as much like him as he wished she was. \u201cOr are you too tired. I mean, we could stop, you know, if you don\u2019t want to keep going. That\u2019s fine too\u2014\u201c She gulped a breath. \u201cYeah! Of course I want to keep going! Do you want to keep going?\u201d He laughed at her, and she laughed too at her own enthusiasm. \u201cOh yeah! Bring it on!\u201d<\/i>\u2014 This is little scene represents him recognizing himself in her. It\u2019s a bit like the scene from the manga where he begins to understand why he likes her. But it\u2019s more complex. It isn\u2019t a crush\/love scene, instead it\u2019s about being teammates.<\/p>\n

\u2022 They sparred continuously, filling the days with training, evenings with talking.<\/i> \u2014 When he returns to Konoha as Naruto, he will know a lot about the people and place because of her stories.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 He laughed and watched her back, thinking how nice this was. It was like seeing the dragonfly on the window ledge. This felt special\u2026and fleeting. He wanted to hold onto this strange little harmony they had for as long as he could.<\/i> \u2014 Reference to the dragonfly again, but with a touch of sadness from Katsuro\u2019s perspective. There is a shadow to all these experiences. He is already thinking he will miss it when it leaves him.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cThey know who they are. They know what they want. And they are going to tear you apart.\u201d His tone chilled her to the core. “No one is coming to save you. You have to save yourself.”<\/i> \u2014 These words will stay with Sakura as she moves through the different changes in her life.<\/p>\n

\u2022 She nodded her head against the dusty floor. “Fake it,” she repeated quietly. She understood.<\/i> \u2014 This little bit of advice will pay off for Sakura when she returns to her village.<\/p>\n

\n

<< Return to Chapter 8<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 \u00a0Go to Chapter 9 >><\/a><\/p>\n

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Chapter 8 – Struggles and Triumphs, Part 1 Chapter Notes: \u2022 One clone crawled out from underneath the dogpile and raised his fist at Katsuro. “Come on! I can take you! Don’t underestimate\u2014” But he didn’t get to finish. \u2014 More unruly clones that are facets of Katsuro\u2019s personality. And this one is even trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-notes","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5hctF-2k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3394,"href":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/3394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swirlingpetals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}