Asset Spin

Back to normal it was.

The good old, boring, sometimes humiliating, and otherwise just pointless drudgery known as D-rank missions. Which was perfectly fine, because I could train in my free time again.

Most of the things we were doing I had done back before, anyhow. Painting fences, repairing roofs, finding lost pets, buying groceries, running deliveries, weeding gardens, shoveling manure, brushing horses, and shearing sheep... I had done most of that as summer jobs before and back then the pay had been significantly worse.

Also, no superpowers back then.

Sure, listening to Naruto complain and dealing with Sakura trying to get dates got old pretty fast... But I hadn't needed to take any hits from the old cocaine eyes to deal with everything since coming back to the village.

So...

Life was actually pretty good.

Especially since I knew the Chuunin Exams would be coming up soon and I saw no reason why Kakashi wouldn't sign us up this time around too. We'd essentially performed better than in canon, given that I hadn't gone and died against Haku, so unless the tardy jounin was still feeling sore about the bell test, I was sure I had this in the bag.

"Ah... time to head home, sweet home," I declared after a long day's work.

To the clan compound that is. I still didn't really think of it as home - just a place I liked to sleep and eat at.

I nodded at the proprietor of the new tea shop that had sprung up as I walked by, heading for the pond to do some more training. With missions over today, Kakashi had dismissed us, which was just as well since I had had to save Naruto from falling down a waterfall today while picking trash.

How he managed to get by without someone to keep him from breaking his own neck until now, I'd never know.

I think he was getting stand-offish due to my having had a bigger role in the Wave mission, but I couldn't remember what had exactly happened in canon, so it probably didn't matter. Naruto was Naruto. As a plus, he hadn't asked me to go out and eat ramen with him after that one time, even though he probably would have better chances of roping Sakura to come with us if he did. I think I must have said something to set him off again, but I couldn't figure out what.

Whatever. Wasn't that important, I figured.

Recently, I had started renting out some of the properties still in my clan's name. The old business locales and apartments on the fringes, nearer the center of the village. They were decent places and my keeping them empty but in decent condition for the past few years had allowed the prices to steadily rise. As always, owning property was the best way to make easy money.

For the amount of effort it took me to complete one D-rank mission, I could clean up one of the old apartments and get it looking good enough to start attracting tenants and businesses. Even with a few years disuse, the water pipes and electrical wiring were still mostly fine, and with the regular cleaning I had done on most of the places, there weren't any huge messes to clean up either. Not since I had immediately taken care of the blood splatters before they could set in and stain the wood.

So mostly just some dusting, touching up some of the wear and tear and then putting out notices. I'd keep the bigger mansions and inner clan houses empty, since it'd be a pain the ass to chase someone out of those if I ever needed the space again. For my own clan, whenever I got around to re-establishing it, that is.

I had also been looking at the big-ass shrine, now completely abandoned, though which had at some point been in pretty active use. It looked neat enough, like Japanese shrines tended to and it even had a big red torii gate, which was cool. But the insides looked pretty barren and useless. So seeing as how I wasn't the most religious or spiritual of people, I was trying to figure out what to do with the plot of land.

Knocking it all down and building something there seemed a little callous but at the same time it was just a money drain right now. Naka-fricking-whatever shrine. For now, like the mansions, I'd just leave it be. Even if I let the place fall into disrepair it would just raise the price, allowing me to do something more with it later if it seemed worth it.

And seeing as how I wasn't going to start hiring my own D-rank missions—as, given the quality of work most genin did being what it was—then I would just have to keep on maintaining them myself. Before that had been a bit of a chore, but now, with Shadow Clones...?

Easy-peasy, landlord-schmeasy.

And also a good way to test some of the things out that I had been wanting confirmation on.

Mainly, how well did my Shadow Clones retain memories, did the Sharingan affect them, and how to best increase my chakra capacity.

The first two were obviously connected. As I sent out clones to do whatever I needed done during the day while I performed my duties with team 7 in person, I had clones observe each other and carry small notebooks, writing down things they noticed and did. Some with the Sharingan, others without. Thus giving me three sets of records to compare at the end of the day: clone, photographic, and written.

Some I also sent out to borrow books from the library to read, though some books—like the rather expensive dictionary on lesser seal script symbols—I was forced to buy.

Surprisingly enough, time and distance did not seem to be any kind of factor for clone memory retention. Not at least as far as a few days or the immediate vicinity of Konoha went. I had even sent one off to Wave Country to check up on the people there and I didn't think it suffered from any memory issues when it finally dispelled. As far as I could tell, the memories transferred instantly back with the clone's remaining chakra. Or at least, near enough that I couldn't notice any propagation time.

The amount of information the clones could learn didn't seem to be particularly limited either. The length of randomly generated number strings that I could memorize didn't seem to differ between myself or my clones, nor did I have any trouble remembering what happened in something like a long novel when I had them read. A hobby I had been woefully neglecting, though with good reason: kanji.

Regardless, the more I experimented, the more mysterious it seemed. How perfectly something like chakra could transmit and record memories, emotions, and patterns of thought. Maybe it was related to how perfectly suited the Hidden Mist jutsu had been for Zabuza to broadcast his bloodlust and terrify people, or how genjutsu worked?

And the more I learned, the more dogged I became in my research into how exactly it worked.

Because if the memory retention was so perfect, what stopped someone from turning that against me? I had been practicing my genjutsu on my own clone back in Wave and when it had dispelled, for a moment I had been utterly disoriented. Similarly the clone I had had posing as Zabuza had left me with incredibly vivid recollections of everything.

Luckily it hadn't bothered me as much as I thought I might have been, but the worry still remained.

How would I prevent myself from being mindfucked if someone caught a clone of mine?

The only real lead I had seemed to be the amount of physical exercise the clones did and how long they stuck around, but the things they missed could just as well merely be something I might have personally missed because of the stress, rather than something the clones lost somewhere along the way.

Thus, I still had a long way to go. Especially since I didn't really have any literature to refer to and I was too paranoid to ask anyone about it.

The last thing I was trying to figure out was chakra capacity. That is, how to increase it as much as possible. Because to a ninja, their chakra was their most valuable resource. I had striven to minimize my reliance on it and be as efficient with it as possible, but even my basic combat ability depended on not getting stuck with chakra exhaustion as Kakashi had.

Chakra in theory was quite simple, as it was shared with us in the Academy.

Half yin energy, half yang energy. Spiritual and physical energies, mixed together within the body and then used through the tenketsu in various ways. And in theory, it was an even split. So to increase my chakra I needed to increase both. But with Naruto, it seemed like his boundless physical energy resulted in his immense pool of chakra, even without the Kyuubi's own well to draw upon, because he sure as hell wasn't the brainiest of sorts.

So... who knows how accurate the theory was, really.

For the moment, I wanted to figure out how to raise one and only then see if I needed to raise the other as well for results, since improving my physical energy seemed a lot simpler than raising my spiritual energy.

With the latter, I didn't even have any solid clues as to where I should start. I knew how to meditate sure, but I had always thought of it as a physical thing; controlling the autonomic nervous system and hormone balance through breathing and relaxation, using it to filter sensory data and focus on the internal signals that were usually drowned out by the exterior. A way to relax and find out what my body was trying to tell me.

Not some actually profound practice.

In comparison, even with some of the questions I still had about what constituted physical energy, it seemed like a much simpler affair to tackle.

Because if I was uncertain whether physical energy was related to cardiovascular capacity or muscular endurance, I could just test it out and compare the results. Though, given how the two were pretty solidly linked, there didn't seem to be much point in trying to just train one over the other. So long as I could keep running for a longer period of time, I figured my stamina, and thus also my physical energy, would be going up.

So...

Running laps it was. Even though I hated pointless running.

Another thing I had to test out—because I was solidly in puberty for a second time now and the thoughts were starting to become more than a little intrusive—was whether masturbation affected my chakra. Scientifically, I knew that it did a lot of things, like wasting nutrients and energy.

But chakra wasn't exactly something I was sure the biology and physics of back before could solidly explain. It had first occurred to me during a chance meeting with someone, but had since grown into something I actually wanted answers about.

"Hey, Shino."

"Yes?" the insect user asked, turning to me look at me.

We had met after work, both walking along the main market street, and had wordlessly decided to share a few minutes together as we did some light shopping.

"You start noticing girls yet?"

He nodded. "I have always been cognizant of them."

I turned to look at him, not sure if he understood me properly or if he was trying to play coy. Well, as the older and more mature of the two of us, it was my sworn duty now to embarrass the hell out of him.

"No, I mean have you started masturbating yet?"

Shino stopped, brows furrowed as he stared at me.

"I... must confess that I have not mastered baiting yet. Is this some facet of training you have adopted since the Academy?"

Is he playing dumb?

"No, I mean..." Shit, now I'm the one getting flustered. He better not be pulling one on me. "Auto-erotically pleasing yourself. Touching your genitals to simulate copulation."

Shino stared at me. Then he shook his head. "How frustrating. I was certain you would crack first, as Kiba did when he questioned my taste in the opposite sex."

Oh, thank fuck don't have to explain sex to him.

"No, well... Let's call this a tie."

"Excellent." A small smile graced his lips. It kind of worried me how much it seemed to please him. Dude needed hobbies. Though maybe I wasn't one to talk. "But did you bring this matter up with me for a reason? You very rarely initiate frivolous conversations."

I half-winced.

We both needed hobbies. I almost suggested we should try picking up chicks for laughs, until I remembered exactly who we were again.

"Just thinking... About chakra and growth, I mean. Should we practice abstinence? I know they talked a lot about diet in the academy and how to balance our hormones to ensure our energies didn't go out of whack..."

A lot of it had been practical, though.

Things such as pointers for eating times and how to manage a flexible sleeping rhythm without getting tired. While we didn't have jet lag, we did often spend several days awake and then be forced to sleep at the drop of a hat to maintain mission readiness. And a big part of that had to do with hormone regulation. Mainly sleep and hunger hormones, which worked in an opposition of sorts. In short, by fasting it became much easier to adjust the internal clock to a new daily rhythm.

It was one of the cited examples of the 'spiritual' half of chakra, whereby deliberately messing with our sleep and eating schedules, our chakra would become significantly enfeebled. Though personally I just thought it was all still physical stuff. They even knew what hormones were and called them such, so the blend of science and spiritualism still bothered me.

"Unfortunately, I may not be the best person to consult on this matter, Uchiha Sasuke. Why? For my kikaichu, among other things, can adjust my hormones directly."

My head swiveled to look at him, surprised.

"That's pretty cool."

He blinked, then smiled again.

We walked in silence for another bit, until we were to part ways and head to our respective abodes.

"I shall consult my father on this matter, he shall—"

"Please. Do not."

So I ended up taking a break from running to stabilize my energy consumption and just tested it out.

As rigorously and scientifically as I could.

Crank out six shots a day for a week straight, test how many full capacity Great Fireballs I could throw comfortably each day, mark results, and then the next week complete abstinence with the same test each day. It wasn't exactly a peer-reviewed, well-accredited study, nor did it truly give me any information about long-term effects, but it would give me a baseline to plan around...

And there was a difference, with my ability to spit two whole Fireballs more on the last day of the second week, but I wasn't sure if it was my chakra capacity expanding from constant use...

So I had another monkey-spanking marathon week, just to check it out.

I would have preferred having done a month each time and having a bigger sample size to work with, but I really didn't have that much time to spend on it, what with the Chuunin Exams coming. Or people I could simply walk up to and start asking about joining me for a study on how masturbation habits affected chakra capacity.

Well, maybe Shino wouldn't take it the wrong way... No, even he would probably start giving me funny looks.

Anyhow, it did seem like my reserves shrunk again when I lost myself in debauchery the second time.

So, no touchy the pee-pee for me in the name of obtaining ultimate power.

I guess that weird Chinese manual on swordsmanship I read one time was right. Though it talked about strange processes, converting one energy into another and then that energy into a third. Physical into mental, mental into heavenly, or something? It was that neidan, qigong, or i-ching stuff that didn't offer any specific techniques for how to wield a sword, just general advice about random things and a few very general exercises for using a sword.

Still, it was preferable to thinking that the nofappers were right.

Because between the two, it wasn't always easy discerning which one was a cult.

Of course, this opened the door for further research... Like what about actual sex? Which, ah, I wasn't too keen on trying out, given how delicate the whole 'rebuild my clan'-situation was. I currently effectively had a monopoly on future Sharingan users in Konoha, meaning I would have to be pretty careful about who I slept with. Maybe once I ended up getting married and got to working on the whole clan rebuilding thing more seriously, I could slip the research in there during the honeymoon or something.

Great, now I sound like Jiraiya.

Like, I had read something— probably a translated Chinese cultivation webnovel—where by combining or supplementing the male and female energies, yin and yang, both or one could increase their spiritual energy manyfold...

I shook my head, kneeling by the pond and washing my hands.

"Just keep running in the mornings, Sasuke. Work on your stamina the honest way." Of course, my raging hormones didn't make it easy. "No crazy sex cults or tantric rituals, just good old honest roadwork..."

I wasn't dumb enough to think I could do something like pressure my fanclub into becoming my sex slaves, or petition the Konoha Council to give me women, but I knew for a fact that the Sharingan could. I had seen what it could do to someone like Gatou and that had been accomplished without all the physical operant conditioning that you could do with someone continuously long-term.

So while I wasn't consciously that interested in the idea, I was aware that it was possible, and thus subconsciously—hormone-charged and in the middle of puberty as I was, mind—I had more than one, ah, 'vivid dream' on the subject matter.

I blame the Sharingan's perfect recollection for giving my brain so much material to work with. Though the self-inflicted genjutsu I went through with a Shadow Clone practicing with the Sharingan on me was entirely my fault during the spank-weeks. Ten out of ten, hottest goddamn shit I have ever seen or imagine; I could probably make a living as a one-man brothel if I ever decided to give up being a ninja, and just fulfilling people's wildest wet dreams.

It's also with some pride that I could say that I hadn't banged my own clone.

...Yet.

Sure, as a shameless anti-social weirdo, the old 'My own clone! Now neither of us will be virgins!'-approach was more than a little tempting, but I sure as hell wasn't going to stick it in until I had figured out some kind of counter for memetic hazards from Shadow Clone memory retention. I had read enough bad hentai to recognize an 'I woke up to a new kind of pleasure'-pitfall without stepping into it.

For fucks sake, I had one evening just woken up in Naruto for reasons and causes completely unknown.

So I wasn't going to push my damn luck and accidentally series-and-genre-shift it to La Blue Girl or Taimanin, or something even worse. Because ninjas and morally, ethically, and socially questionable porn go way too damn well together for me to take any goddamn risks.

Though... I probably wouldn't mind being in Karakuri Ninja Girl... I thought, standing up and shaking my hands dry from the water. That was set in like the 90's Japan or something. And the ninjas were pretty chill, too. Looking down at my reflection in the water, I realized I had kind of started looking like the main male character in that hentai by now.

Well, if you compensated for the style differences.

It was the dark messy hair that did it. Scruffy, I suppose you could call it if you were uncharitable. With sharper features, though. Did he have a beard? I don't think he did. I couldn't remember his name... But I did remember that he did a Sailor Moon joke in the first episode when he came home to find his wife cheating on him with another ninja girl before pouncing in and making it a threesome, which made me laugh so hard that I spat cola on my old laptop the first time I saw it.

And thinking about it, the main ninja girl there had the twin-tail blonde look going for her, too. Like Naruto's sexy jutsu... Again I had to curse my fate. Why couldn't I get a cute and girly Naruko-chan...? Though, my own Sexy clone was a goddamn minx, too. That pale skin and dark hair, those sharp svelte features with just the right amount of definition, and, god, those sultry eyes...

Fucking hormones.

I dunked my entire head into the water to cool off.

Pulling my head out of the water, I clenched my fist, forcefully changing my train of thought: "Yeah, I need to tie my hair up at the back—messy ponytails always look cool on anime characters."

"Hmm?"

I jumped, yelping at the sound behind me. "Kakashi!"

He looked up from his orange book, as if he hadn't stalked up on me again just to mess with me. I had so far managed to catch him twice, but given that we were up to 23 times by now...

"Maa, your hair has started getting a little out of control. Sure you don't want me to cut it for you?"

I felt an eye twitch. "No, but thanks for the offer."

Standing up, I turn my back to him. By now I had learned that trying to make him go away wouldn't lead to anything other than a headache, so it was just best that I trained while ignoring him.

"So cold, Sasuke. Are you sure you're not training too hard?" he asked, two steps behind me, his voice muffled only the slightest bit, telling me that he had his nose back in the book.

I sighed; the twitch was getting worse.

"I enjoy training. And I'm not overworking myself either—I'm keeping careful track of what I can manage, so you don't need to hover over me all the damn time."

I'm not defensive about my lack of hobbies, fuck you very much.

"Hmm?" Kakashi asked, completely ignoring my annoyed tone of voice. "Sorry, I was just getting to the good part."

I sighed again.

Trust Kakashi to deflect anything he didn't want to hear by using porn. Though... Everything I had heard about Icha Icha suggested that it was a light-hearted and romantic comedy kind of porn series. Just like Karakuri Ninja Girl. I hadn't been a huge fan of that by any stretch of the imagination...

But I had had a hobby of reading porn doujins and hentai manga when bored. Specifically for the plot. The only reason I knew the Naruto manga had ended was because a normally rather hardcore and sadistic artist suddenly decided to make two, 40-plus-page long super duper ultra vanilla love love doujins about Naruto and Hinata getting together at a hot spring for their honeymoon.

It was jarring how heartwarming it was with his style. I kept expecting hard domination, bullying, and ball-busting.

Though following that his stuff got a lot more vanilla and wholesome as a whole. Did canon Ninja Jesus Naruto actually heal his soul, too? That one story he made after that, about the boy seeking out a man-eating fox demon for power and offering himself to it in exchange for help with revenge was straight fucking gold, even if it was only like four or five pages long.

Ah, I'm never going to get to read Nagatoro again. Fuck.

I turn around, decision made.

"Does the corner store by the main street have it in stock?" I ask, suddenly desperate for something to replace the many little things I've lost.

"Have what in stock, Sasuke?" Kakashi looked up again, a lazy eye meeting mine.

I point at his book. "Icha Icha."

Kakashi blinked. Blinked again. A third time.

"Maa... You might be a little too young for this kind of literature."

Was... Was he blushing?

"Old enough to die but not old enough to read porn?" I ask with a raised brow, smugly glad that the twitch was gone now.

He avoided looking me in the eye, closing the book and stowing it away, as if that would make me forget the matter. Maybe he was just afraid of what the Hokage would say if I started copying Kakashi's manners in public?

Heeeey, there's an idea. For the Chuunin Exams. Definitely for the Chuunin Exams.

"Weren't you looking to train, Sasuke?"

"Are you offering to help?"

"...Perhaps."

Okay, enough messing around... Is there something I really want his help on? The answer was obvious.

"What determines whether the memories of a dispelled Shadow Clone return to the user?" I asked, serious.

Kakashi, sensing that this was actually something I wanted to know, looked up and made a sound somewhere between a hum and a grunt.

"That's an unusual thing to worry about. Most people who begin training with Shadow Clones usually focus on simply training as much and as hard as possible with it as quickly as they can..."

I shrug.

"The Sharingan serves me well enough without trying to cram a hundred days' worth of memories into every afternoon. Though, at the moment..." I gesture towards the clan compound. "They spend more time renovating and performing maintenance on the houses around here..."

Kakashi nodded, looking at the houses, though obviously, he must have already known I was doing that. "Maa, well, if you tell me why this is important to you, I don't mind telling you what I know."

I weighed my options.

I hadn't needed to use any genjutsu in Wave to trick the locals or my team, so revealing that I had been practicing my genjutsu wouldn't hurt, right? It wasn't like they could tie it to my cooperation with Zabuza and Haku. Not any more than my copying Zabuza's skills theoretically already did.

Sighing, I nodded and started explaining.

"During my first fight against Zabuza, I had a perfect moment of eye contact. But I didn't push it, since I hadn't had a chance to try any genjutsu out yet..."

"Ah..." Kakashi nodded. "You've been practicing on yourself, then? And you're worried about the feedback from it?"

"Not so much from my training, since I know better than to try messing up my own mind, but..." I paused, chewing on my lip. "Itachi is a master of genjutsu. If I use Shadow Clones against him, I don't want to end up catatonic just because he turned a clone of mine into some kind of brain-bomb."

The jounin looked at me, then scratched at his chin through the mask.

"Ah... I had never even considered something like that. But that's not really a worry. There is a point of critical damage, where the memories become too disconnected and cease mattering. A Shadow Clone's memories can be no more dangerous to you than a nightmare. At least in my experience."

Well, that was sort of reassuring, but night terrors and the like could be plenty dangerous.

"But I see you're not satisfied with just that." He eye-smiled at me. "It's the amount of chakra that returns to you that matters. If the clone is aware enough that it knows something too dangerous, then it can perform a powerful jutsu and expend all of itself, leaving very little that can return to you."

I nodded.

"Ah... The chakra itself is the medium of propagation?" I hadn't even considered that, which... In hindsight was pretty dumb of me. It was so obvious; wasn't that exactly what the Hidden Mist jutsu did? "That still relies on it being able to dispel itself that way, but... It's a start." I could probably figure something out and modify it to work as a unique genjutsu trigger as well, so that I could quickly disable a clone. And an emergency signal so that even without the memories I'd know there's a memetic hazard of some kind to worry about.

Another thought occurred, the information making various possibilities spring up in my mind.

"But that also means that if you can drain a Shadow Clone, you can keep it from informing its original... Can you do something like that to all clones?"

"Maa... The standard tactic for stealthy approaches is to put a clone to sleep with genjutsu," he explained, neither confirming nor denying the possibility. Maybe he just didn't know. Chakra draining abilities were probably rare—no, wait, wasn't there some guy in the Chuunin Exams on Kabuto's team who could do that?

My Sharingan whirled to life to match my bared teeth at the thought of meeting—and stealing—that jutsu in the future. Right now chakra was my most annoying bottleneck.

The jounin looked at me lazily, apparently not bothered by the sudden bit of bloodlust in the air.

Well, that's for later. Kakashi hasn't even brought the exams up, yet.

Letting the copy wheel eyes vanish, I exhale and calm down. What did I have on the agenda today, anyhow...?

"Was that all you were curious about? Sensei doesn't know if he should feel hurt..." Kakashi whined as I ignored him again. "Not the least bit interested in any ninjutsu I could teach you?"

I raise my hand and make a shoo-ing motion at him. "Go teach Naruto or Sakura, if you're looking for someone to tutor. I've plenty on my plate as is. Adding some strange new jutsu at this point wouldn't help me at all."

"Hmm... Then what are you training?" he asked, not listening at all.

"...Well," I began. It wouldn't exactly hurt, and explaining it would put some of my thoughts in order. So why not? "I'm trying to combine the Body Flicker with my Midnight Nameless jutsu."

Seeing his cocked head, I explained.

"The raven transformation."

"Ah... A very impressive name," he said. Probably meaning for the continuation of for a very unimpressive jutsu to be obvious as a follow-up, even without him saying it.

"It's a work in progress," I defended.

Though I wasn't sure where to go with it. At this point it probably wasn't much better than a D-rank supplementary technique; barely one rank above the basic Transformation jutsu and only due to the challenge of compressing my body so much inside of it.

The plan was to observe Kiba and Akamaru around the Chuunin Exams and see how their combination clone thingy worked and see if I could incorporate some of that into my own jutsu to improve it. They could both take a bunch in their transformed states, without even getting into the double-headed wolf form they had later on.

"Maa... You've combined the two already, haven't you? Using the excess chakra from the Flicker for the Transformation certainly wasn't a bad idea," the jounin mused, probably remembering the bell test again.

"Yeah, I can do change directions pretty quickly with that, but I think I can do one better still." I smirked. "I was thinking that why not Transform immediately in the Flicker and then create the chakra bubble around the smaller bird-form, before returning back to normal and stopping, all in the space of a normal Flicker?"

He looked up, thoughtful as he pondered the idea.

"The Transformation Jutsu does use less chakra than the Body Flicker... And with a smaller body, you could go further and faster, certainly..."

It's what I had concluded as well.

The chakra bubble cut drag down to something like 5% of your normal air resistance. But that was still a big shape to create and uphold during the Flicker, requiring and frankly wasting a lot of chakra in the process. Hence the need for smoke and leaves and sand. So if I used Midnight Flicker Version 2.0 and had a smaller body, which then required a much smaller chakra bubble, which then minimized that smaller body's air resistance down to a mere 5%...

It might just be worth it.

"Though... Perhaps something other than a raven might be more suitable for you...? I doubt you will be able to push off against the ground, transform, create the bubble in the right shape, un-transform and then stick the landing so easily in the space of less than a second..." Kakashi pointed out, not unreasonably.

There was a hint of something else in his voice, too—something I couldn't quite place.

But I had decided on this form already long ago. Giving up now just seemed like a waste, even if there were some kinks that had to be worked out.

The timing for transforming immediately after using the chakra propulsion step alone was iffy. I had to be fast enough that I didn't lose all my acceleration instantly to air resistance, since I wouldn't have the chakra bubble before I transformed. It would be like trying to run into the wind with an open parachute behind you. Or, I could, but that would just be doubling the chakra cost and missing the entire point of the improvement.

"The idea behind the Midnight Flicker Version 2.0, is that—"

"Ah..." Kakashi looked at me, and for a moment I wasn't sure if he was amused or pained, losing his previous seriousness. "Your naming sense is, well..."

I glared at him. The name was perfectly fine. I would just call the finished product the Midnight Flicker jutsu, since it would contain whatever improvements I had done along the way. When I was finished with the Midnight Nameless and Midnight Flicker, they'd be straight-up B-ranked jutsu.

At the very least.

"Anyhow, the point is to minimize chakra costs and external build-up so that it can't be sensed in a fight by chakra sensors."

The biggest weakness of the Body Flicker was that it was just so damn obvious. I didn't mean the regular chakra propulsion step—I meant the complete version.

It was like in DBZ when they started shouting at the top of their lungs and making light shows and all the weaker fighters go 'I-impossible, h-he's so strong!' at their auras. Just, instead of the peanut gallery commenting on the powerlevels on display, your enemy dodged you and countered your bullrush with a kunai to the throat or a well-timed jutsu.

Or then you got a Flicker Chase, which for most people didn't end well.

Anyhow, if I could remove the need for the massive external chakra bubble, I could probably fine-tune the chakra flare down so much that the Flicker could be useful in a fight. At least for ambushing people out of their immediate sensory range.

"Maa... I doubt it will be that easy. That kind of improvement will mostly show itself in long-range jumps. Over a hundred meters or more, I would say..."

That...

Was a very real possibility.

Due to the energy requirements rising exponentially with distance—since in a jump all the energy had to be invested right at the beginning, and the faster you went at the start the more drag stole from you along the way (though the relative amount decreased as your velocity did)—it was pretty much guaranteed that Midnight Nameless v2.0 would outperform the regular Body Flicker at long-range travel.

It might even be a relatively chakra economic mode of travel. Though Midnight Flicker v1.0 was still probably better, since just gliding on the initial energy investment was really efficient at 'slower' speeds. Birds fly that way, if you didn't know.

But I wanted it for mid-range combat. Turning into a black streak and teleporting back and forth rapidly in the middle of a fight, moving from one foe to the next. If I could make it fast enough and prepare chained steps, I could sort of 'program' a set of moves faster than anyone could react.

The Sharingan was already making me react in that way sometimes, so it seemed like a logical step forward.

I shrugged.

"Well, maybe. Maybe not. Can't be a pioneer without fucking up a lot." That's why it was called trial and error, even if the concept seemed like a dirty one to a lot of people.

Kakashi looked at me oddly, but I ignored him.

For now, I would just focus on making the transition from chakra repulsion step to Midnight Nameless form as fast as possible. By cutting out the big chakra bubble, I'd be saving a heck of a lot of chakra, meaning I could practice it that much longer.

But first...

Hands crossed: "Shadow Clone jutsu," I said out loud for once.

"Oh, you're going to practice with a clone after all?" Kakashi asked, amused.

"Nah," I replied, knowing what he was expecting to happen. "A clone can't handle the movement and pops in the middle of the Flicker. I already tried it before. He's just here to watch."

On cue, the clone's eyes flashed red and he smirked as he moved back to give me some space. He would just be looking at what I was doing and gathering data.

Kakashi looked mildly disappointed that he wouldn't see my reaction to the clone failing. Which only got me a little bit excited for his reaction to what I had in store for Naruto. Jumping headfirst with a Flicker, all Kamikaze-style at enemies is pretty suicidal, but what if you could get clones to do it for you?

The problem, as far as I had been able to determine, was that with the chakra bubble and chakra construct both being such shaky things, without an actual body to draw positional reference from, they would end up all entangled and essentially go through the blender in the jump after a certain as-yet-unknown threshold was exceeded. It was pretty similar to why normal clones ended up looking dead and deflated without a physical anchor like with the Replacement jutsu. The Shadow Clone jutsu solved the problem of the chakra construct collapsing by instead using the user's body as a base and projecting a perfect copy—essentially casting a shadow and imprinting it with your chakra in addition to the construct itself.

I had tried to layer the Shadow Clone around an object, like an amalgamation of the two jutsu, but with little luck since apparently having a piece of steel or wood lodged inside of you wasn't conducive to moving around and living.

Who knew?

With that failure leading nowhere, I had instead focused on why the Shadow Clone couldn't handle the rapid movement and so far it simply seemed like going too fast simply broke it down.

Not so much in terms of a limit in absolute velocity or change-in-acceleration, but rather in how hard the clone had to perform. It was like asking someone to put in a 120% effort and ending up with a muscle tearing itself loose from the tendons and bones, or pushing the rpm of a machine so high that it ripped itself apart. It didn't seem like it was strictly speaking a chakra control issue either, so I really had no idea where to get working on it to solve the issue.

The best bet was just to start as slow as possible and have the clones work their way up and push their limits, blindly working on it until there was some progress. Given the little bit of benchmarking I had done with my own clones, I thought that it might take years and hundreds and thousands of leaps before any hint of progress even revealed itself...

But if anyone could get a Shadow Clones to be able to survive a Body Flicker, it would be Naruto.

Of course, the part that came after his clones started surviving the jump and began accruing experience fighting with and in Body Flickers was where things got re-hehe-aally interesting. Because the point where he started having enough experience from all the hundreds and thousands of Flickers in and out of combat, where he could start doing it with his real body, fighting in a state of near-constant Flickers, operating normally at speeds no one else could keep up with, was where everybody else would start panicking.

Yellow Flash who? Meet the Orange Flash Mob.

With the Kyuubi healing, he even had built-in training wheels for the inevitable fuck ups which along with his massive chakra pool spelled out a perfect match if there ever was one. Of course, I can't allow that broth brain to be the only one. So, I need to get this shit working, too.

It wasn't like I was salty about not having woken up as Naruto with a fluffy konner waifu in my mind. Not at all. The Sharingan was totally just as cool. Not bitter at all.

With a half-tiger seal, I shoved all of my emotions through my foot into the ground and Flickered with a loud crack, the first of many in a long evening. It was a good thing I lived on the edge of Konoha, or I would get a lot more noise complaints.

That and the property values would go down, too...

"You have any needles around here?"

"Hmm?"

The older brown-haired man—who I presume is the proprietor and the smith of this weapon's shop due to his right arm being nearly twice as thick as his left, sitting behind the counter and performing some sort of notation in a notebook—looks up at the question, setting aside the pencil and closing his notebook.

He eyes me from head to toe, still silent.

Apparently just wearing a headband isn't enough to impress everyone in this village.

But I'm in no real hurry, so I wait to see how he will reply. Finally, he grunts and looks back to his notebook, though he doesn't return to his notations.

"All needles are custom work—no such thing as a standard one, s'all specialist tools."

I guess that made sense, since they lacked the weight and versatility of kunai. Medics might want specific suturing tools or injection needles, while trap specialists would want something completely different instead.

Or something.

"Alright, can I give you specifications for an order, or are you right out of my price class?" I asked, figuring that my lack of a vest was what he had noted first.

He snorted, giving me another lazy, side-eye look.

"'S'not a matter of money, though I reckon tha'd not be a problem for you. But why not? S'pose you might have something inneresting in mind," he slurred a bit strangely. He didn't seem inebriated, though. Some kind of injury?

Making a motion with his hand to go on, he looked at me with all the attention of a man knowing that he was setting himself up for disappointment, but still going through with it just to see what flavor of disappointment he would find.

"Well... kunai are what, 20 cm long...?"

"Twenny-one'n'a-half's the standard for what they hand out at the Academy."

Implying most real shinobi had their own preferences, which weren't the same as the Academy ones. Which, I supposed made sense as well. Different sized handles for different sized hands, different preferences for technqiqu and strength in throwing, different points of balance and moments of inertia, and the like...

Well, length didn't really matter, now that I thought about it.

"So, throwing needles in the mist style. Between 15 and 25 centimeters long, uniform shape with a convex taper like this..." I draw the general shape in the air. "And so, point of balance and moment of inertia should be in the exact middle."

He blinks.

"Moment of wha, now?"

Hmm, had they ever used that word in the Academy? I should have asked Sakura today before Kakashi dismissed us. She would have remembered.

"The point of balance in motion. You know, so when you move it on either tip the pivot point is in the middle."

"Aaaah... You're talking about the live feel of the steel," he nodded, though his body language had shifted from jez-geddit-over-wid to aight-now-keep-talkin'. "N'yeah, obviously it'll be in the middle, unless we start folding in hollow pockets. Which, mind, I can do, but would be a real bitch to keep from popping with somethin' as small as a needle. Be'er to just tube draw it."

Now there was an idea... Make it hollow in one end and put in some poison and stopped with like wax or something. I shake my head. No, let's just keep it simple for now.

"No, that's fine. Just uniform body. The shape really is the most important part. You know the Body Flicker jutsu?"

The smith blinked, nodding once with only a minute moment of recollection.

"So, I want the senbon to be shaped like the chakra bubble there. Optimized for faster-than-sound movement." Seeing his expression, I continued. "I can draw the optimal charka bubble shape out for you, since I've seen it with my Sharingan."

Most people I imagine had to figure it out by feel when they learned the jutsu, starting from making it a teardrop shape and then elongating and sharpening the point of it as they went from subsonic to supersonic jumps, blindly figuring it out as it were.

It was one of those things which most people might not realize; that just because you could describe something with one sense didn't mean you could translate that into another sense. There had been some blind people back before who had become able to see, and hadn't been able to recognize certain geometric or three-dimensional shapes with their eyes, despite having known them kinesthetically before.

"You're gonna be throwing these that fast? Don't think you've quite got the arms for it, boy."

I raised a hand in a shaky so-so gesture. "Eh, I can throw pretty hard. Though I've got more, still. You got a range around here? I kinda want to test a technique with normal steel and some chakra steel, if you got any?"

He grunts, standing up and grabbing a pair of kunai. "You break 'em, you buy 'em."

"Of course."

"Righ', this way then." He gestured with a thumb before turning around. "Tenten! Mind the shop for five!"

There was a moment of silence and then a "Sure, dad!" could be heard from the door leading to the back. I had kind of expected it—since his eyes and hair kind of reminded me of her—but it was still a little surprising that the first shop I visited was actually her place.

Still, cool beans for later.

Cause Tenten is megacute.

Behind the weapon's shop, there was a well-worn backyard with half a dozen posts at various distances, all deeply marked and gouged with hundreds and hundreds of marks from where pointy bits of steel had been embedded in them over the years.

"Go through a lot of posts?"

He grunted. "Just got new ones last month."

Eh? Seriously?

Right. Tenten was just as much a maniac as Lee and Gai were, just for being able to keep up with them.

"S'right. Here's the normal kunai. Here's a chakra steel one."

I didn't ask where it was imported. Supposedly Water Country had the best chakra steel—something about the underwater volcanoes or something—but the Hidden Mist gobbled all of that up for its own use. Probably from some other island nation, south of the Fire Country, then.

I accepted both kunai and then judged their weights and balances.

Slightly longer and heavier than my current ones. Though that wasn't bad; the heavier it was, the better it retained its energy against air resistance. And with just this much weight added, it wasn't exactly unresponsive in melee either. I gave them both a good flip and twirl just to see if they behaved how I expected them to.

"Hmm..."

Regular first.

I raised my arm, infusing my chakra into the kunai, deciding to forego the chakra bubble entirely and simply pumping the kunai's hilt and ring with enough chakra that it would violently repel my hand's charge.

And with the familiar boom-thwack it sunk almost all the way to the hilt in the post, the sound of the sonic barrier echoing back from the buildings around us.

The smith whistled.

"First time I see anyone do that with regular chakra."

I raised a brow. "Wind and Lightning, I'm guessing?"

He nodded. "Can't really see how adding water, earth, or fire would work, but yeah. Tho, both of those are kinda rare around here."

I knew I was good with fire chakra, but I was pretty sure I'd be decent with lighting, too. I mean, canon Sasuke had learned Chidori, so there had to be some compatibility there. Something to consider looking into later.

"But you're definitely gon want to buy the chakra steel. Regular stuff doesn't last long if you're gonna keep doing that kind of stuff with them needles you want. Well, just try it."

I nodded and raised the kunai and almost repeated my previous actions, only to hesitate at just how smoothly my chakra flowed into this kunai. I had to lower it and actually take a closer look at it, eyes spinning into crimson as I felt for exactly how little chakra I'd need with this one.

Once I felt confident, I tried it.

The chakra steel kunai sank all the way to the ring, the sound of it exploding from my hand so loud that we both actually winced.

Oh yeah, I want some of these babies.

My old kunai were getting pretty worn down already, since I'd had them for as long as I could remember. I didn't even know where the original Sasuke had gotten them.

"Right. So definitely chakra steel for needles. Oh, and I want five of those chakra steel kunai, too. They're nice."

"Aren't they just?" The older man grinned at me. "I'll give you a discount on the one ya just threw, so bring it back inside. We'll finish the talk about your order there and then draw up your fee."

I went and got the kunai—negotiating them loose with both feet planted against the post and gritting my teeth as I did—before returning back to the shop. And immediately I was hit in the face with a fresh notepad.

Not sure if I should feel insulted or chastised for having been taken so off guard, I caught it only by pure instinct as it fell.

"Draw your design there. Write down any other specifications you want—oh'n write down what you said already too."

Eh, then what did I tell it all to you for?

He laughed at my expression.

"This job ain't exactly worth my time—so you'll have to just make do with my girl's work. She's plenty good, tho, so no worries about the quality either." He grinned, slapping the aforementioned daughter on the back.

Tenten looked a little lost, but her business smile was impeccable nonetheless.

"Ah, yeah. I'm not as good as dad, but I can make anything you want, no problem!"

Ah—damn it.

I forgot that they spoke English here. I really, really liked her Japanese voice actress. And the same with Temari, and Tayuya, and... And hey all their names start with T—is that some kind of coincidence or a fetish...?

Well, fuck. Fine, whatever. I could deal.

"So, yeah. Something like this." I quickly drew a picture, the needles actually a bit thicker in the middle than regular senbon, to achieve the optimal supersonic air profile, which had a two-word name that I could never remember. Sears-Hack, or something?

Beside the drawing, I jotted down notes what I wanted, before handing the notepad over.

Tenten accepted the notepad, still all smiles. But as she looked it over, I could see the disappointment in her eyes at how easy the job seemed. Immediately, I wanted to commission something more extravagant—what a fearsome salesmanship technique!

"I was actually looking to buy some arrows, too. Would you be able to make some custom arrowheads?"

She looked up, interested but still not looking particularly impressed.

"Something like a spiraling triple-bladed broadhead, perhaps?"

That got a reaction; she laughed gaily. "That sounds nasty! Wouldn't want to get hit by something like that."

I smirked.

"Well, that'll depend on whether you can get it done by the Chuunin Exams."

She blinked, her eyes sharpening at once as she looked me over.

"You must be from the class below mine—one of the rookies, right?" She matched my smirk, putting a hand on her hip and fanning her face with the notepad she had been looking at earlier. "You really think you'll get nominated right out of the Academy?"

I scoffed and shrugged.

"I've got a pretty crazy sensei. He'll probably throw us in just for the experience. Of course, I plan to make it worth my time, so I don't exactly mind."

She laughed.

"At least you're confident. But I'll tell you right now, if we meet up somewhere along the exams, you're not going to make it. We've got a pretty crazy sensei of our own, you know?"

"'lright, 'lright. Enough flirting with my daughter while I'm in the room," the smith—still unnamed—grumbled, giving her a look. "At least jot it down as a consultation an' charge 'im for it."

"Daaad..." Tenten whined, rolling her eyes, but getting back to business anyhow. "The arrowheads will take longer, but I'm pretty sure I could get the senbon done before the exams. How many do you want?"

I grunted. "For starters, I guess 20 would be good for a first batch?"

It would be enough for me to make use of them without having to worry about having to go scavenging after every fight, but not so many that I would regret the order if they turned out to be complete trash.

The bun-haired girl nodded, chirping a reply: "I can get that done in a jiffy, easy. Here's a quick estimate on the cost, but we can talk payment when you pick them up. Come by in a couple of days and I should have them ready for you."

I looked at the slip of paper on which she'd scribbled her estimated material and labor costs, grimacing slightly at the sum. Sure, I wasn't exactly ordering cheap nails or something, but this wasn't cheap. I looked to the older man, now standing by the back with his arms crossed as he watched us.

"Is there a family discount I could apply for?"

Both gave me their very best nonplussed look, not quite getting where I was going with this.

So I turned to Tenten, getting on my knee and pressing one hand to my chest, and reaching for her with the other. "Oh, wondrous maiden of arms, woulds't thou bless me with thine company for dinn—Ow."

She smacked me with the notepad, right on the nose. It didn't actually hurt, but I still dutifully made it sound as if I had been wounded anyhow. Her dad was laughing by the back, shoulders shaking like rumbling mountains with his mirth.

"Out," she said with a fearsome scowl, a little bit more flushed in the face that she would have liked me to see. "And I don't want to see you here until a couple of days, alright?"

I rose from my genuflection, keeping my hands visible as if surrendering to her. "Alright, alright. Don't have to break out the sharps just to chase me off. Guess we'll play when we meet in the exams, then."

She just pointed at the door again, so I hastily made my exit, grinning the whole way.

Ah, I had forgotten how much fun flirting could be. Self-inflicted hermitage was fine and all, but keeping the social circuits in the brain in working order with a little bit of fun never hurt. Guess I had been right about that, earlier. Alright, what next...?

I guess...

I still needed to commission all the arrows for the invasion. With the A-rank mission pay bolstering my budget and the steady trickle coming in from all my new tenants, I felt pretty confident in getting enough supplies for the invasion before the month-long period before the finals.

It would probably be best if I got a bunch of the weapons shops involved, just buying cheap arrowheads in bulk then putting them on suitable shafts myself. With clones now at my disposal, I wasn't exactly hurting for manpower anymore.

"Oh, right. New sandals."

I had already pretty much accepted that boots were no good given the climate, but I had gotten more than sick and tired of walking around in the common sandals all the ninja wore. The Wave mission and actually having to run around constantly with them had convinced me that getting some bespoke stuff wasn't going to be a pointless luxury—it would be an investment.

And during one of our D-rank missions by the main shopping street, I had actually seen a shoe shop.

Sure, it was primarily for women... But footwear was footwear, right? And this was a ninja village, so there was bound to be some practical stuff there too. And if not, then maybe they could point me in the right direction.

I raised my hand in the half-tiger seal—more to ensure I wasted as little chakra as possible and kept the sound to a minimum inside city walls—and then Flickered across the village in a single bound.

Landing on top of a water tank next to the shopping street, I easily hopped down right in front of the store in question, startling a woman walking by with her child in the process. Offering them a smile and a bow of the head as an apology, I entered the shop.

Yeah... Doesn't matter where you are, shoe shops all look the same. Hmm, that was a weird thought again. I wonder, did Naruto have an Al Bundy?

I shook my head as the saleswoman—a civilian girl who only looked a couple of years older than me, with brown hair and a build that was just a touch too sedentary for her to be a ninja—approached me. She looked slightly surprised to see me, though whether that was due to my gender or my ninja headband, I still couldn't tell.

"Yo. Do you have sandals for someone like me?"

"Ahh... Umm, of course, sir," she nodded, smiling a touch too understandingly, nodding just a little bit too excitedly.

She thought I had strange proclivities, huh. Well, this was a ninja village and we were, as a rule, more than a little bit touched in the head.

"I mean as in, do you have practical footwear which doesn't look like these hideous things, that won't fall apart fifteen minutes into my first mission? Actually, first up, is there some men's shoe store I don't know about which would serve me better?"

"Umm... I don't think so? To the last thing, the last thing, sir." the saleswoman replied hastily, now looking thoughtful as well. "Mm, men usually don't seem to mind wearing, well... those things."

Ah, so I wasn't the only one who thought they were hideous. Good.

"Right. Then, I assume you have something in my size? If not, can you point me to cobbler—or whoever makes sandals?"

The business smile was back in play, and while it lacked Tenten's charm it still pulled ahead by sheer experience. "Of course, sir! Right this way. We offer a perfect fit—no chafing or blisters after a fitting, or your money back, guaranteed!"

"Ho—ooh, that sounds promising. Alright, lead the way."

She sat me down and then measured my foot very quickly. And apparently, since socks weren't a thing in this country, a foot wash was a standard part of the service to ensure proper hygiene when trying out the various shoes and sandals. Which I didn't particularly mind, until she started suggesting that I visit a spa to have my feet and toenails taken care of professionally, sounding almost like my mother back before.

Yeah, I had pretty rough feet. But that was because I walked barefoot on my own property, eschewing the use of those damn sandals as much as I could.

"Do you have any particular preferences, sir? For example, the materials for soles or straps? We have wood, leather, Lightning country rubber, and three different kinds of straw and reed weave for waraji," she said, listing off materials.

Straw sounded kind of interesting; hadn't they had those in Bleach?

"I think... Leather soles would probably be best. Actually leather all around, I think." I had had leather shoes before. As soles, they didn't have the best grip but with tree walking, that wasn't exactly a huge issue for me. Though I was suddenly reminded of Roman caligae - the military boot-sandals with nails through the soles. Those things could be pretty wicked with my kicks. Tear off a guy's face wicked.

Though they would be impossible to sneak around with, so they were no good.

"If they're not too fragile, on the softer end would be better. And no heel."

I wasn't going to be riding a horse, so I really had zero practical use for a heel on my soles. Hated what they did to my gait anyway. She bustled about, fetching several suitable pairs for show, and in response I said: "Actually, no geta or zori... I think I'd like waraji-style, but without the strap between the toes."

Those things had always chafed back before when I had worn flip-flops.

"These have traditionally been quite popular with the larger clans, sir."

She presented me with a pair of black sandals, rather delicate to look at but solidly constructed out of leather. The stitching at the soles was obviously very good work, almost like they had been done by a sewing machine. Did they have sewing machines here? Probably not. The only adjustable part was around the ankle, where the back of the sandal was tied, leaving most of the foot uncovered.

It looked like something out of a ladies' summer fashion magazine... But it was comfortable when I tried it and it didn't look awful.

"I'll take two pairs. And a third in a size bigger, if you have any. I'll probably wear them out before then, though."

"Of course, sir. Would you like me to wrap them up for you?" she asked me with a large smile.

"No, that's fine. I'll just seal them in my supply scroll. Do I need to apply any oils to the leather to keep it from drying up, or anything like that? I'll buy a set of that if you do, too..."

"Yes, of course, I shall bring you a bottle of our own blend of oil to keep the leather supple and strong. And, if I may say so, sir, your feet are most delicate and well-shaped, do take better care of them from now on. We hope to see you in the future for any of your footwear needs again!"

"...Hn."

Shit. Was she a pervert of some kind?

Now I was getting conscious of my feet. Were they too small? I had big old canoe's back before and that had never been a problem...

I might be regretting this already. No. No, I wasn't. I'd be burning the old sandals the instant I got back home. These are damn comfortable. As they damn well should be, I thought, once I saw my check. God damn, I need to get me some more A-ranks at this rate. No wonder women are all crazy if they had to worry about finding the money to pay for these things all the time.

What was next...

"Oh right. Kakashi's book."

The gleam in my eye was enough to worry even the energetic saleswoman then.