Crescent Crucible

I now had my first unique handseal.

Which, ugh, means I need to invent another name again...

The space-time movement ninjutsu turned out a bit finicky to figure out in free-form chakra control, so I just caved and made my own heuristic callback method to simplify the process for now. That is, I made my own string of handseals for the jutsu so my chakra could familiarize itself with the operation.

It was Ram, Dragon, and then my unique seal, for the basic version.

The unique seal took a while to figure out, basically requiring me to create half a dozen clones, all looking at each other with their sharingans and going 'how about now?' while throwing all kinds of funky gang-signs at each other until one got its chakra to do what I needed it to.

So basically trial and error until it worked, starting from the Bird-seal which had been the closest fit.

The new seal was the thumbs and index fingers against each other, forming a triangle, the rest of the fingers curling onto each other like hooks, so every fingerprint was against its opposite.

A bit complicated compared to the usual twelve handseals. Which were pretty natural, but it got my chakra to move the way I wanted it without needing to spend five minutes meditating and wrangling it into shape.

Oh yeah, meditating improves chakra control—probably by unifying the mind and body, since it calms the spirit—meaning I can't do Wood Release without at least half an hour of prep. It's pretty weird.

Anyhow, the idea for my space-time ninjutsu was pretty simple.

I wanted to move faster so I made the Alcubierre drive.

You know, that thing NASA had thought was maybe, kinda, probably not—but certainly theoretically if you squinted just right at Einstein's equations—possible to achieve Faster than Light speeds with, when the speed of light was supposedly, kinda sorta—no, really—the hardcoded limit for speed in the universe.

That thing.

I didn't really remember it beyond youtube videos, but I knew of it and the rough idea. And wasn't that all I needed? That, and I remembered all the requirements being something like 'So to create a sufficient spatial warp to make it work, we probably need a black hole and then this other thing which we are pretty sure doesn't exist, called negative mass...'

Ringing any bells?

No?

Well anyhow, since chakra could pretty casually warp space-time—as Naruto had demonstrated in canon—all of that went out the window, just leaving the part where you warped space-time to form the distortion in space-time that Alcubierre had described.

So, okay, imagine that space-time is a fabric on which you're standing.

Or a trampoline, the fabric stretchy and elastic.

Your weight creates a dip, pulling it down where you're standing. That's your mass causing it. The more mass, the bigger the warp and the bigger the effect like gravity. It is this thing that causes the dilation in black holes, stretching out time into infinity, or why time flows just a tiny bit faster on Jupiter than it does on Earth.

Err, back before-Earth. I hadn't actually measured the gravitational constant on this Earth.

I should, though. Or wait, I don't have a meter for reference. Fuck.

Guess for now I just had to assume it was the same.

Now imagine that something in front of you on that stretching fabric—like a bowling ball—causes it to dip down as well. You'd fall towards it, right? Like I had been slipping on the ocean waves while leaving that boat three days back. Or rather, you're both falling towards each other, meeting somewhere in the middle.

Your two space-time dips attract each other in a way we commonly know as gravity. Or time. I think those two were the same?

Anyhow, the one mass warp in front of you formed half of the Alcubierre drive.

Now imagine that something behind you was somehow causing the trampoline's fabric to rise up, as if someone was beneath it and pushing up with their feet, or as if there was a big helium balloon trying to fly up and away to freedom.

That's the negative mass thing.

It would theoretically have anti-gravity. Or where mass falls 'down' in space-time, negative mass goes 'up'.

That's the second half of the drive.

So you'd be pushed from behind and falling forward on the trampoline, since it's all kind of wonky around you. Now, hate to break it to you, but the fabric of space-time isn't actually a trampoline, it's a three-dimensional (I think? I don't remember if it was more than that. Maybe it was four-dimensional since time was the fourth dimension in space-time...?) thing with...

It's uh, a, manifold? Maniplex?

Manowar—No, that's a ship.

Anyhow, the stretching trampoline is an intuitive example, so it's wrong—because it explains gravity with gravity, and by turning (at least) three dimensions into two—despite how much explaining I just did using that analogy.

Confused yet?

I sure am.

Because I'm not actually an expert on this subject or anything.

God, I miss the internet and not having to try and figure this all out from memory. The other day I forgot what pi was exactly and had to draw circles in the sand, measuring them with sticks across and around until I remembered what it was again.

And, this was all theoretical back before, too.

I never actually looked at the equations Einstein made, from which all this was derived by some wacky physicist by the name of Miguel Alcubierre for a seminal paper, just looked up dozens of videos while stuffing my face with potato chips and going: "That's so fucking cool..."

But with the ease of chakra, I had sort of proved it all true, surprisingly enough.

While barely understanding half of it.

I'm like a caveman banging rocks together and accidentally building death rays and teleporters here.

So rather than all that confusing stuff, imagine space-time is a wave and you're just riding on it: using chakra to expand the space behind you at the same time as you shrink it in front of you, causing you to move as it pushes you forward.

You're not creating any change in your own momentum by kicking off against the ground or trying to swim through the water, so you're not moving, but the wave carries you forward anyway, so you're still moving.

Sort of. I think?

That's what it felt like, but... Intuiting these things can be misleading.

Anyhow, imagine me on a surfboard riding down a wave of space-time.

Yeah, just like that, shirtless and grinning. But my biceps and shoulders are a bit bigger, my abs are a little more defined, and I've got cool shades and a fruity chilled drink in one hand.

Also, the tan is real now. Only need to keep the hair blond with the Chameleon jutsu, which is nice.

Actually, that mental image?

That's me literally right now. I had never surfed back before, so I'm learning how now on Moon Country's beautiful golden beaches, taking a break from all the hard training.

"Whoo, Sasuke, you're doing it!"

I throw the third daughter of Lightning Country's daimyo a big grin and a peace sign, returning towards the beach in front of a big wave's white crest

She's been buying me food, drinks, food, and lodgings for the past few days, wanting to play around and have fun.

...So technically yes, I am kind of being a gigolo right now, but she's twelve and just wants to get a hundred pictures of her playing around with 'that boy who's so much cuter than Yoshimi's butt-faced fiancee' to get one over on Yoshimi.

Her sister, by the way.

But, I mean, free food, drinks, lodgings, and surfing? I'm not gonna turn that down.

This is a vacation, don't you know?

Also, I've been using the water as a medium for practicing my space-time jutsu, so this is totally training, too.

See, I had a thought about the Rasengan a few days back. The Fourth Hokage was the big space-time ninja, wasn't he? That's the picture the history books painted at least, literally teleporting Kyuubi's DBZ power-blasts away from the village and stuff, like a badass.

And he created the Rasengan...

So maybe it's a sort of training exercise for the finer control necessary for that kind of stuff, the same way the Great Fireball was for Fire-chakra? Because I think I remember the Rasengan being the peak of shape control, meaning it wasn't elemental at all, so that kind of made sense.

Naruto trained that with water balloons first, so because I was seeing no progress I turned to that trick too. Swimming turned out to be an excellent way to learn to feel the flow of chakra and space-time warping, as it turned out.

While upright and walking through the water when I was treading on the sand and using the warping, it felt like the water in front of me was being pushed aside and the water behind me was pushing me forward through the water even faster than the foot treading against the bottom propelled me.

Kind of like how we swim normally, paddling to move away water in front of us and create a lower pressure in front of us, without the actual paddling by hand, or the momentum gained by pushing off the water with every stroke.

I hadn't been exactly sure, but going by my understanding of placing a gravity well in front of me and an anti-gravity well behind me—by shrinking and expanding space-time, respectively—I thought I would be conjuring momentum out of nowhere, but that didn't seem to be the case exactly.

I moved, but I wasn't moving. Weird stuff.

Going back to the surfing analogy, I was just sort of riding a wave I guess.

It was sort of like electricity, I think.

Because the electrons moving through an electrical wire is reeaally slow. But the 'electricity' itself is really fast, transferring that small motion pretty vast distances as soon as a current began. Like as fast as light, because it's literally electromagnetic fields and stuff.

Or intent transmission, since that was faster than the speed of sound, too. But I hadn't really figured that out yet.

Too occupied with all the space-time warp training.

Because outside of a strictly defined chakra construct—like inside a Transformation jutsu or a sealing scroll—spatial warping is kinda hard. If I hadn't seen Danzo go beyond casual space-time shenanigans into actual causality control when he refused to die, I would have been struggling a lot more with it.

But I had a couple thousand good looks for reference to pick it all apart, 272 deaths times anywhere between 2 and 15 pairs of sharingan, depending on how many clones were there for each death.

Anyhow, pretty sure I wouldn't be breaking the FTL-barrier with this just yet.

Which is just as good.

Relativistic speeds do funky things like super-heating you with friction, turning you superplastic and lose physical coherence, making you start emitting all kinds of radiation and such as you break down from the two other things...

Also I vaguely remember things exploding in front of you once you dropped out of Alcubierre FTL, theoretically. Which sounded fucking rad, but probably nothing I wanted to do inside a planet's atmosphere.

Unless I wanted to glass a continent.

So nothing I want to mess around with while vacationing.

"Hey, Sasuke, the water balloons are here! Come on, let's play with them already!" Sashimi—was that her name? I kind of forgot already—called out to me from the beach.

"Right, coming!" I shout back, turning the board towards the beach.

I wanted some water balloons to start training the Rasengan, since no one would care now and I still wanted to learn it.

But as it turned out, there were no water balloons in all the Crescent Kingdom. Not a single one. They had the crinkly helium kind, but not the rubbery types. So Bishimi—that's not right either...—whined to her minder, some long-suffering retainer of the feudal lord, and he managed to have an express transport bring them over from the continent.

Which must have cost tens of thousands on such short notice.

She was just so eager to impress me... but it felt different from Sakura.

More innocent, like when my younger cousins would come running up to me to show off their recent grades or their new phones, or how my little sister would come bug me whenever I went over for some holiday, every free hour of the day... and I still didn't miss that little pest, huh.

This was more like I was her first friend who didn't care about the trappings of station, I guess. Just, this girl had access to millions and zero understanding of how much money that actually was.

This was also giving me all kinds of insight into how this country actually worked, too.

I had usually kept one Shadow Clone running every day, doing other things like getting money or investigating whatever caught their fancy, and they had been concurring with those findings. We had a sort of agreement that there was no bossing around now, so we would just do whatever we each wanted.

It was that old contrarian instinct that had been causing me so much trouble with the Shadow Clones and the triskelion seal.

When I created one as I needed it, that was fine.

It shared my point of view and understanding, so I didn't need to tell it anything. But when I had to bring it out of the seal, I was confused and annoyed and needed to be told what to do. Which rubbed me the wrong way. Like the old shopping cart meme test; if I saw a shopping cart in the middle of a parking lot, I would go and push it back.

But only if it was close enough, like on my half of the lot. If it was somewhere like halfway across town in front of some bar... eh, fuck that.

And worst yet, if someone told me to take care of the shopping cart, instead of just doing it themselves... Not happening. Not only would I make it my life's mission to not take that fucking shopping cart anywhere, but I would also considering you lower than trash for even telling me to do it, instead of just doing it yourself.

You fucking hypocrite cunt. Fuck you, telling me what to do. No, I don't if you're doing something else.

That sort of thing.

I was a volatile, ornery, and self-contradictory asshole.

But I kinda had to live with myself, so it couldn't be helped.

So that was turning my relationship with my Shadow Clones and myself totally around, back to harmonious coexistence of us just ignoring each other until our interests aligned.

Effectively doubling my vacation, too.

Anyhow, in this case, one had been snooping around the city and in the king's mansion, listening in to the prime minister—Shabadaba or something—and king arguing about the country's future.

See, the locals actually didn't own shit. The only really rich people were the king and his closest advisors. Most of the other locals were actually just employed by the king to keep all the fancy stuff running for the continentals coming over for vacations.

It wasn't a state-owned casino, no, it just paid rent on the land and wages to local workers.

Most of the fancy apartments in town were built to accommodate the guests and their retainers and servants, not actual citizens.

So it wasn't that this place was rich, as much as the rich came here and paid one guy—the 'king'—to keep things running to their liking, and then the locals had to play along or the king got replaced with someone willing to do it instead. Which, really, was actually a pretty raw deal for the Land of the Moon.

No wonder the old fisherman hated foreigners so much.

It was like the Easter Islands back before, but turned into a holiday resort on top of all the normal shit that had been imposed on the inhabitants.

According to the movies—which I had only very faint recollections of—the fat prince was the good guy so that probably meant the old king was a good guy, too. Or at least the little grandson princeling was supposed to be a good guy.

According to the movie's logic, anyhow.

I wasn't really seeing it, beyond the current king trying to keep the locals fed and from open revolt – knowing that it wouldn't end well. Most of the menfolk worked as a sort of security force, armed in modern-looking riot gear, just with swords and square shields, and they seemed to get paid well enough to keep their families fed, while some of the women were handling the other service-related jobs where a pretty face was preferable.

For the customers, that is.

Yeah... Not exactly the paradise I had first thought.

There were some arguments about diversifying investment portfolios and whether or not to utilize some of the woodlands to expand their cities, but...

Nothing really I would categorize as evil.

I mean Yabba-dabba-doo sure fit the part of the evil chancellor in appearance, but when his evil plot is to cut down a few hectares of forest to make space for more housing complexes, I dunno what I'm supposed to do here.

I'm not gonna bump off a guy for his choice in mustache.

Even if I was a little envious of it.

When he would hire the three stooges working casino security right now—probably on referral from the owner, some Earth Country noble—then he'd obviously step over a line I could condemn, but this was just sorta bland.

"Here, Sasuke!" Bulimi—no, no... this would be so much easier if she said her own name half as often as she complained about her sister Yoshimi—said, grinning impishly as she tossed a water balloon at my face.

"Ah!" I affected surprise and barely dodged, kicking up sand as I rolled and turned around to grab it. "Hah, as if, you little imp!"

She shrieked avoiding my retaliatory throw, running away while giggling madly.

It was kind of reminding me of how old I actually was again.

Ninja were weird, mentally. So remembering that I'm actually in my late twenties despite my teenaged body isn't always easy. But it's not like I'm now mentally in my thirties now, either. The years don't just accumulate like that – it's about how far you've gone in life, not how many years you've been around, I guess...?

Anyhow, it did kind of impress upon me again that I would have to wait a few years or then date up, if I ever wanted to.

After waterball fight we had some shaved ice.

The melon one was disappointing, but the strawberry one was really good. We took a bunch of pictures of that, too, throwing double peace signs and grinning widely.

The best part about all of this was going to be when Yanami—that was her name, remember it for fuck's sake, Sasuke, she's a good kid despite being a little spoiled—returned back home and whoever was on her father's security detail, who had access to the newer bingo books, would realize just who the daimyo's daughter had been playing around with all this time.

Because that was going to be a shitstorm and a half.

Uchiha Sasuke – S-rank platonic playdates for reasonable rates!

The three casino stooges were starting to catch on to something being afoot a few days later.

Not because they'd actually caught a whiff of me—they were rank amateurs compared to the ANBU back in Konoha—but the casino people had been noticing a big dip in their profit margins.

Because I had been walking out with fat stacks of cash for almost a week now.

So maybe it was time to stop.

Because contrary to the apparent buying power of the local dollar, nobody really wanted to exchange it at any reasonable conversion rates to other currencies. This was basically the only place where it was accepted, making it little more than an island kingdom's funny money.

So I would have to spend it all here, buying the things I wanted, I guess. Meaning there was no point in stacking extra stacks of fat cash in reserve for later, unless I was coming back here someday.

Which I saw no real point in.

So I'd eat, drink, and clothe myself up and then, I dunno, drop off the rest at old man fisher's house or something.

There was a fairly big problem with civilian clothes though, in that they were way too flimsy. I barely even exerted myself and then would just rip and fall to pieces. It was like wearing paper, after how I had gotten used to Aburame silks.

Infuriating.

And creating clothes out of chakra with the Transformation jutsu got old fast.

It wasn't that chakra-intensive, but honestly, I just didn't want to be constantly careful about what I wore or have to design every little detail every time I made it; I didn't want to be a tailor on top of everything damn else on my to-do list right now.

I mean, have you ever been mad about forgetting to make pockets?

Because I have.

But well, that's kind of not a problem for me anymore. Space-time jutsu rule.

My current 'best' outfit was made of a fine indigo silk scarf I had nicked from some noble lady who had given me the stink-eye, that I could then reference and use as the basis for a silk outfit by way of the imprinting I had learned from Inuzuka Transformation techniques.

The most difficult piece of my outfit to create was a kimono, since it had to have sleeves.

But since their dimensions are pretty forgiving, it remained pretty simple for me to construct out of chakra. I only needed to keep the proportions of the sleeves and collar roughly right since the way it was folded at the front kept it really damn adjustable after the fact.

If I didn't feel like it, I skipped the sleeves altogether!

Kimono are pretty simple to make if you don't go the whole 'Oooh twelve layers of cloth that require a team of professional dressers' assistance to get into'-level of complexity.

The rest of my clothes?

Bandages.

Because bandages? They're easy.

Just make a long kinda rectangular—doesn't even need to be rectangular, just long is good, too—thing and then wrap it around yourself. A belt around my waist to close my kimono? Bandage. Arms or legs cold? Bandage. Head feeling windy? Bandage. Feet, individual fingers and toes? Heck, bandage those up too, why not! Fuck belts, fuck sleeves, fuck pants—especially, the inseam—fuck shirts – we're rolling in a loose kimono with bandages for everything else from here on until I find a good tailor.

I almost said fuck underwear initially, too, until I remembered that I did in fact know how fundoshi work.

Spoiler alert, that's a bandage—kind of—too.

So, I'm sorry bandages.

I'm sorry every ninja who I ever badmouthed in my head over their over-use of bandages – not you, Danzo, you can still burn in hell.

I'm sorry everyone who told me about them before and whom I callously ignored.

I'm especially sorry to every sword I—inappropriately and just plain immaturely—thought less of for being swathed in bandages.

I know it's no excuse, but I was in a bad place at that time in my life and I just didn't know better. I was spoilt by wealth and riches and personal tailors, not understanding the simplicity, versatility, protective value and sheer comfort you could provide.

I'm sorry bandages, I have seen the light now. You are glory, you are truth, you are the light and the Way.

Praise the bandages! Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!

Anyhow, I wasn't wearing any right now, the fundoshi aside. They were too obviously ninja, while I was keeping a semi-low profile.

So I kind of looked like a Bleach character now, except I wasn't going to fuck around with trying to make hakama pants anytime this side of a century. I knew the pain in the ass it was to fold those creases just from watching some kendo buddies do it back before.

Pants are good, but not that good.

Still needed better sandals, since the touristy flip-flops I had bought were just terrible. So barefoot it was for now. Even if a lot of finer establishments didn't let me in without putting on the flip-flops.

Actually, Bleach was all wrong. I looked like Demon Eyes Kyo, or Kaguro from Kekkaishi, or Shishio from Rurouni Kenshin, once I got my bandages on. Just not the full mummy-look for my face and torso.

That's probably just a super generic murderhobo-design in Japan from historical rounin and bandits. But undeniably fitting for me right now.

Which means I need to get a katana.

A good one.

Which wasn't going to be easy. I hadn't even managed to find any replacements for my kunai. Normal knives really weren't as good as kunai for anything I was used to. The trowel-like thickness of kunai was to ensure the metal could withstand the sheer punishment they would go through in ninja use.

But that wasn't turning out to be as big of a problem as I initially expected it to be, though.

I had gotten back into the habit of using my triskelion seal, but I had discovered a neat little workaround for some of my earlier problems.

Namely, the Shuriken Shadow Clone jutsu, a variant that switched the Shadow Clone jutsu's reference to an inanimate object—a shuriken—to create solid projectile constructs instead of the user, and because of that they took a lot less chakra to create, by cutting back immensely on that amount which would not return to me upon dispelling compared to normal solid clones.

Shadow Clones needed to be able to do a lot of things, and reproduce something as complex as a human body, to be able to do everything it took to pass off muster as a real person. Shuriken just needed to be shuriken, so obviously they were pretty easy to do – normally the clones came with their own set of shuriken and kunai, right?

Normally no one thought to give them any extra chakra, I guess, since they couldn't really use jutsu or do anything with it.

But they could still be 'supercharged' this way to give back a portion of their stored chakra when popped. And more importantly, they could also be modified to be able to see and observe things, allowing it to relay information back to me. I did this by way of adding my Sharingan's chakra pattern to them, making it so the instant they popped they took a 'screenshot' of their surroundings which returned to me along with the stored little bit of chakra.

I could do stuff like toss them around a corner and get a ping of what was there, which was going to be super useful.

Because it turned out—upon further inspection—that Shadow Clones essentially worked on the same Inuzuka imprinting principle, allowing them to copy my Sharingan to them. Meaning if I ever lost my eyes, my clones would also lose that ability, too.

Probably.

Something I probably wouldn't have realized unless I copied Kiba's jutsu in the Chuunin Exams.

God, why is Kiba turning out so useful now? Do I need to send him a thank-you basket?

No, no. It was actually Akamaru who did the jutsu when he turned into a clone of Kiba, so it wasn't that Kiba was helping me, it was big dog Akamaru.

Yeah, that's better for my sanity.

I did kind of want to check if I could pull out my eyeballs and use a clone's Sharingan as a basis for creating new ones for myself, but I was a little too smart to try it on my own.

Because, you know, if it didn't work, then I didn't actually know how to put my normal eyes back into their sockets. Danzo's shenanigans aside, Sharingan weren't like USB sticks that you could slot and un-slot at will.

Anyhow, I called my new Shuriken Shadow Clone jutsu variants...

Sharingan Shuriclones! And kunai.

Clonai? Clokunai?

Ugh, that sounds like cloaca.

Okay, I'm still workshopping the second name. At this point, I have too many new techniques, and I need to just start rolling a die on some name-making chart. Vortex Spiral Remembrance Death Projectile mark V, or something.

Did other ninjas who invented too many jutsu have this problem, too?

Anyhow, I could now toss a shuriclone and then it could Coach me when it popped. It wasn't as complex as proper Coaching and its chakra-input-to-output ratio was slightly worse than for regular Shadow Clone Shuriken, but it was still a better return on investment than regular Shadow Clones were, meaning they were a very viable chakra storage medium.

They behaved like shuriken when I threw them, and like clones when I sealed them in my triskelion seal, meaning I wouldn't have to go out of my way to ration my projectiles in future fights, or be unable to seal them away in my triskelion. They were also based on the few top-of-the-line shurikens I still had from Konoha—I probably wouldn't ever again get my hands on anything as good if I lost those—with the imprinting method, keeping their quality pretty darn high.

Their mental load upon popping was also minimal.

So, an overall upgrade.

The kunai I had made had higher specs all around, capable of self-reflection and looking around properly for Shadow Coaching, but I wanted to be more sparing with them.

Partly because they were closer to regular Shadow Clones in chakra cost, and their mental load and potential memory divergence was higher due to their lack of a humanoid form, but also because the sharingan popped out in the end-ring, moving around on its own like some cursed demon weapon.

It was pretty creepy to look at.

I had resolved not to keep any in the seal for more than a few days at a time, but I was still working out a schedule for how many I would create and dispel each day.

Coachnai? No that's terrible, too. Eh, fuck it, Shadow Kunai, because I have to throw them into places where people won't notice the Sharingan on them when I use them for Coaching.

Anyhow, it all meant I now had permanent access to those supplies without having to spend money or find suppliers, at least until I lost my remaining few real shuriken and last kunai or something.

So, hurray for Miyamoto Musashi's ideal of independence from all others coming through for me yet again.

All of that aside, I couldn't really compensate for good sealing equipment on my own – another one of those things that I hadn't even realized back in Konoha, that really made the programming similarities and dependencies stand out.

I had thought it was just ink and paper, but apparently not. Normal paper and ink really didn't like getting chakra showed into them.

So I was moving a little bit away from that, now.

I mean, I could already store things without scrolls now and I could redirect light around me to cut off any shadow tendrils, which had been my original idea for radiance tags. I was kind of annoyed at not getting more use out of my origami shuritags, but it couldn't be helped.

Luckily, I had designed my triskelion seal from the beginning to just accept the Shadow Clones and expand on its own, without the need for more ink, having sort of foreseen something like this situation happening. Just, I had been thinking of long-term missions in deep cover, rather than running away...

A tall man in a business suit sat down opposite me in the cafe I had chosen for a lunch break. I looked up, giving him a nod of greeting as I recognize his chakra this close.

"How'd it go?"

"Prime Minister Ooga-chaka will be coming down with a case of food poisoning soon. Eating spoilt crab, tsk, tsk..."

I snorted.

"Understand any of the local politics yet?"

"Nope," he says, popping the p. "Not a damn clue."

I drink the last of my coffee and leave a generous tip.

"Then let's blow this joint."

"But I did see something interesting, though," my suited clone says, with a knowing look. "They're filming some movie over by the southern cape. Trailers, lighting equipment, big fans for wind and sprinklers for rain and all..."

I blink, sitting back down.

"...Did they bring their own batteries, too?"

My clones and I had been trying to figure out how exactly everything here was powered. The electric lights, the air conditioning, the fridges and freezers, the whole thing.

In Konoha, on the smaller end of the scale we had wireless radio headsets, and if I opened them up there were small batteries inside to power them. But for our houses we had power-lines coming in to the houses, so I had never questioned where that power was coming from, given all the other tech we had. We also had TVs, computers, cameras, and all kinds of other gizmos, so I had just assumed that electrical generators were a thing.

But here it was all battery-powered.

Somehow.

Was it like that back in Konoha, too?

When I tracked them down here, I found storehouses full of imported batteries from Lightning Country, sealed and marked with serial numbers, labeled for different uses to match their shapes. Some looked like cans of spray paint, others like landmines.

And checking some logs, I found that they had indeed been bought from the Lightning Country over on a ship that regularly made the trip.

So was Lightning Country an economic superpower—since everyone did use electricity—by exporting canned power? Did they really have ninja just sitting around and cramming electricity into cans all day or something?

But anyhow...

My clones was smiling indulgently at me, no doubt amused by getting me distracted so easily.

"Yeah, I got a sneak-peek. I think they've got Fire Country batteries with them," he said, noting that I was back again in the real world.

I nod, interest tickled.

Also, my clone had been thoughtful enough to inform me instead of just doing it by himself. That was progress: I was making friends with myself and sharing the things I loved again. See, I wasn't an anti-social maniac beyond all hope of redemption and re-socialization!

"Let's go."

We left the cafe and headed for the beach out of sight, taking off in flight towards the southern cape as he'd mentioned, him using a combination of Midnight Nameless and the new space-time warp jutsu to keep up with my Midnight Flicker in a way clones couldn't before.

It lost out in initial acceleration, but in continued flight, it was proving highly effective since while I was riding on air currents with my wings he was actually making an additional wave of space-time to propel himself on. At these distances, I could hang in there, but at any distances longer than the island, it would definitely pull ahead unless I deliberately landed to Midnight Flicker again.

Chakra consumption was still a bit too high for my liking—it almost seemed like my clone was being a little extra wasteful, but maybe he was just showing off now—though I suspected more practice and experimentation would fix that up nicely.

With this, I now had three jutsu for mobility and I was thinking of naming the newest addition simply Warp. Because that's what it did to space-time and because the idea had originally been inspired by Star Trek's warping, if I remembered correctly.

By itself, it was still clunky thanks to its reliance on a string of handseals, but in combination with my other two jutsu and at longer distances, it was already providing very promising results. My clones could do the Warp in place of Flicker with Midnight Nameless, and I had been—carefully—combining it with the Body Flicker into a 'Warp Flicker' and it definitely worked, too, though it guzzled chakra.

But it addressed several of the Body Flicker jutsu's shortcomings.

The biggest problem with the basic Flicker—beyond the inability of clones to do it, I mean—was its scalability; you could endlessly pump chakra into it to go ever-faster, but the faster you went the more chakra you needed to expend to go any faster or further. Meaning doubling your input did not double the distance or speed you got out of it, returns diminishing the further you pushed it.

Air resistance was a real drag, as I had long since observed.

If you wanted to be fast, simply training your internal chakra control, timing, and muscles the way Gai and Lee did was just that much more effective and efficient.

Another weakness of this was that it made you predictable.

Because inertia was a real drag, too - it just kept dragging you around with it.

Newton's laws paraphrased—or rather bastardized, since I'm not even half as smart as he was—was that objects in motion want to stay in motion. In driving school, they taught us that by doubling your velocity, you quadrupled the distance it took for a car to come to a full stop when hitting the breaks.

So when you started moving faster, it became increasingly difficult to change course or stop.

Normally this was compensated for with the Tree Walking adhesion to the ground, hence Flickers tended to be short jumps from point to point.

I had originally rectified these weaknesses with my Midnight Nameless jutsu, allowing me to change my direction and bleed out speed in a more controlled manner like when I had first fought Kakashi.

And later on, I had become able to reduce my air resistance by changing my aerial profile—even further enhanced now that I could shrink my bird form down to a real raven's size—even before the Flicker started, which necessitated less initial chakra investment for faster accelerations.

Its implications for my mobility had been immense.

And now my space-time jutsu was probably going to prove just as impactful.

Because the Warp didn't actually make me move faster, even as I moved faster as I had noted while experimenting all of yesterday at the beach.

See, the property of moving space around me, rather than me moving through space, meant that I wasn't actually experiencing momentum. Basically, my personal momentum in relation to everything around me wasn't actually changing, because my time-space became uncouple from the local one.

Meaning the entire deal about air resistance and inertia—moving objects wanting to stay in motion—just didn't apply.

Because, I was making the water push me, rather than trying to wade through it.

And if I wanted to change direction, I merely needed to manipulate the space-time warps into that direction. Or then reverse them, if I wanted to stop. No need to fight with traction against the ground or try to stop before changing directions. Just full stop.

If Flickers were limited to hard stops and straight lines, and Midnight Flickers could slow down and curve, then Warp could stop instantly and curve, zig-zag, or just instantly reverse course completely.

Of course, this all cost a fair bit of chakra to set up and somewhat more to maintain, but considering the ludicrous scales and requirements used for it in the scientific journals back before, this was practically pennies on the dollar.

Seriously, I love chakra so much.

Overall though, the Midnight Warp was proving easier and more effective of the two combined jutsu, because the raven's smaller body meant that the space-time fields could be smaller, concentrating their strength, and because of the jutsu stemming from the same Transformation jutsu as Midnight Nameless originally did.

Warp Flicker was just cumbersome at this point, despite its ability to compensate for the Flicker's faults. Because in the time I had performed the four handseals for it—Ram, Dragon, unique handseal, Tiger—I could have already just normally Flickered three times seallessly.

But maybe that would change with enough training.

Of course, both of those were still just combing two jutsu. Midnight Nameless and the Warp, and the Body Flicker and the Warp.

So the question was obvious: what if I combined all three into one jutsu? The Midnight Warp Flicker, as big of a mouthful as that was.

The mere thought of trying it out terrified me as much as it excited me.

I had been holding back from trying it out just yet, having my clones practice Midnight Warping and training the Warp Flicker myself as much as possible, trying to just get all the basics down pat before I went for my first test flight.

But I had been holding back long enough.

When I left the Land of the Moon today, it would be by way of my newest jutsu.

Up ahead, I spotted the tip of the crescent moon island, with hundreds of people scurrying about.

My clone was circling up ahead and I joined him in a downward spiral onto a vanity trailer, where we could oversee the shooting in progress.

With the spatial warp allowing me to expand an internal space, my raven form was now perfectly normal-looking so long as I didn't bring up the Sharingan or talk. Well, maybe my feathers were a touch blacker than normal, but I doubted anyone would notice at a glance, making it perfect again for stealthy reconnaissance work.

Hence, Nameless as I had originally envisioned it.

No one so much as batter an eye as two ravens showed up to watch the movie set and the scene being filmed.

Forget that I hadn't seen a single actual raven on the whole island during all my time here. Ravens were just that common, so no one thought to question it.

It looked... like some kind of romance movie?

"Ah, Yuria. Why must you tear at my heart so? Have I not proven my love to you, time and again... Ah?"

At least I think so, looking at the effeminate man wearing way too much make-up swooning as he got onto a knee in front of a brunette with stunning blue eyes. They almost reminded me of Naruto's, but they were so much colder and calculating that the illusion barely lasted a second before shattering.

"Do you say such things to her, as well...? I know how this song and dance goes already, Shinichi..."

Huh, intent sensing isn't giving anything?

For the cool, scornful anger she was exuding outwardly, she really wasn't feeling anything inside?

Well, whatever.

Never did know a damn thing about acting.

My clone was already hopping over on birdy legs towards one of the other trailer cars, no doubt to snoop around.

Meanwhile, I was more interested in the cameras.

Because they didn't look digital. But they didn't look that big either. I knew next to nothing about cameras, aside from the fact that they had high-quality lenses, so it was kind of a wasted effort...

But I was just snooping around to sate my curiosity, so whatever.

The scene progressed, the lovers acting it out, growing progressively more heated, tensions rising into a crescendo, all while the complete lack of emotion continued from the woman acting as Yuria. All despite how perfectly convincing her acting was, she was feeling nothing at all from all this.

Was that how acting usually worked?

Because the male lead looked pretty into it. A little too excited, too, grabbing a handful of ass as he hugged her while declaring his undying love again.

And suddenly there was a spike of surprise and disgust.

"Director, there was no call for this in the script...!" a pony-tailed man was furiously whispering at a director, who was motioning him to back off and remain quiet.

"Keep filming, this is good stuff."

The actress had swallowed her disgust, keeping her face perfectly in character, though there was no way she had heard a thing.

And the male lead was just taking that as his cue to keep going.

Hmm, he's a little too good-looking to be needing this much effort to cop a feel on a woman.

Still, fuck Hollywood.

"CAWKSUCKER, CAWKSUCKER, CAWKSUCKER!"

The effect was immediate.

"Cut, cut! Who said that! Who the hell said that! Who ruined the scene just now!" the direction shouted, standing up as numerous aides and extras scurried around to back away.

The actor was blinking as the actress backed away from him, the cool, disinterested look back. But there was also a sense of relief.

"Sir, it was that bird over there..."

The director glared at me, throwing his megaphone thing at me and I jumped back to avoid it. "Cawksucker!"

Didn't he know not to mess with Corvids? Bloody smart birds would fuck your shit up if you got on their shit-list. I had made a point back before to be on the Corvid mafia's good side, wherever I went.

Well, I guess I could go snooping around among the stuff like my clones was, if they didn't want me interrupting again.

I hopped down behind a trailer and shifted back into my normal shape as I did, creeping forward in the shadows like the shinobi I was. Meaning I might as well put the bandages on around my shins and forearms.

I reached out into the Holding by my waist and got the reference for the good silk, and then brought my hands together in the Ram-seal. "Transform."

And then I had four rolls of silk around my limbs, like a proper ninja.

Nin nin.

Now let's see what I could find here.

After some snooping around, I found a camper van with a spare battery.

Or rather, a broken one that had been removed and tossed into a corner to gather dust. Unlike the heavy boxes from back before, it was a cylinder about the size of a fire extinguisher.

So, since obviously no one cared about it, and I had found an owner's manual for basic maintenance of the engine, I had decided to take it apart. I felt pretty safe about the whole thing, since it had a pretty thick layer of dust on it, and it didn't seem to be filled with any acid like car batteries were.

But when I opened it, peeling back the casing, I just found it to be two rolled-up spiraling pieces of very thin copper sheet with some kind of insulator sheet in-between them.

In other words, not an electrochemical 'battery', but a bloody capacitor.

Something that could very easily build up tens and tens of thousands of volts of charge...

Which should be useless for a damn car.

I had no idea how they actually turned into lower-voltage, higher-current electricity that all the appliances would need to work. Or I thought they would need to use, since in my frame of reference high voltage-low current capacitors were just too volatile for anything other than... I dunno, old radios, and telephones?

Was it those seals painted on the insulator roll between the two copper sheets? Could I use this as seal paper if I cut it into pieces?

Because electrochemical batteries were like candles; light it and you got a nice and slow output of light and heat. Capacitors were more like balloons filled with hydrogen; you put a fire near it and it went pop, all heat and light gone in one ball of fire.

Usually, that meant an arc discharge.

You know, a violent zap.

Or cracka-thoom if it was a thunderbolt. I think it was the same principle; triboelectric build-up between the clouds and the ground until it finally experienced an electric breakdown and balanced out again.

And of course, none of the terminology I knew was in use here, so the labels were next to useless to me.

Amperes, Volts, Ohms, Watts, Joules, Coulombs et cetera were named after really brainy guys who had managed to figure out some small piece of the mind-numbing complexity that was the field of electricity over the course of a few hundred years. And those units were all sort of arbitrarily defined. Not in the sense that they didn't mean something, but that they were just commonly agreed upon for the sake of simplifying things.

You know, like words usually are.

The entire thing was pretty much based on a Coloumb of electrons, from which we got Amperes as a measure of that amount of electrons moving per second, which then with... one Ohm defined the Volt, or... Was that how it went? Because they would need to define two out of three to define the third in Amperes, Volts, Ohms...

Right, right, but Volt times Ampere was a Watt, so did that mean the Watt was defined first?

Watt was Joules per second, and Joules were... Newton meters, which... I don't have either of, since I couldn't exactly figure out what a meter or a kilogram was. Were joules somehow related to raising the temperature of water—no, that was the calorie, I think.

I think I have a headache again.

Fuck, this is why we don't try to science, Sasuke.

I had zero actual frames of reference to work with, beyond what my Sharingan could see at work.

It was like the old isekai trope of wondering how much the local currency was worth in relation to their old currencies back home - Utterly Meaningless, if the two cultures weren't in any kind of contact to establish an actual exchange rate or something. Hell, there wasn't even any point in trying to compare buying power in terms of food or housing, either, since economies and prices were always in constant flux and those prices depended on a thousand other little things.

Because what was a meter in another world?

I had observed big ass tigers and snakes and toads here... But who was to say they were big and I was normal, and not just them being normal-sized and me being really small, huh?

What if I teleported back home suddenly, only to find that I was actually a hobbit now? Or a lilliput! I loved David the Gnome as a kid—and not just because he rode around on a fox or flew on a goose's back—but I didn't want to be a little person living underneath a tree.

Well, at least I still have phenomenal, soon-to-be cosmic powers...

Anyhow, points of reference like that lose almost all meaning in another world. At least in my case they did, since I hadn't kept my old body and thus height and masses for reference. If I had my old body I could derive a meter and the gravitational constant and then work my way back from there...

But here I was a growing boy Uchiha Sasuke, so none of that.

"Hmm?"

I looked up from this camper van's maintenance manual at the approaching sound of footsteps. It wasn't a casual pace, more like a determined march of someone looking for something. Not the hurried footfalls of someone running to fetch something either.

Weird.

Whatever. Maybe it was time to stop and give up.

I had been going over its specs and fuel source—which, again, were capacitors for fuck's sake how does any of this even work...?!—and now I realized I was kinda stuck in this van if whoever it was walking this way decided to enter. It wasn't really a problem, since I could do a bunch of things to avoid notice, like turn invisible, hide in a corner or shadow, use the Sharingan to make myself be forgotten...

But I wasn't really feeling it.

I had a headache from trying to place all these unfamiliar terms and schematics into something resembling familiar sense.

Time to head out. The continent and Water Country await.

I dusted my hands off, deciding to just put the 'battery' back into one piece again. I think the problem was that in the inside of the three-layered spiral the two copper sheets had started coming into contact, since the insulator sheet had somehow slipped. So if I just put it back together, it might start working properly again instead of creating a pointless circuit.

With the Sharingan, I had the whole process memorized, and there weren't even any small screws to—

The door was suddenly yanked open, light streaming in.

The brunette lead actress met my black eyes.

I blinked.

Her brows furrowed and instantly her wariness spiked. But she didn't pull back, keeping a stern countenance as she stared down at me.

I mean, I was a ragamuffin kid in a plain kimono. I wouldn't exactly be scared of myself either.

"Don't mind me, ma'am - just got called in to fix the battery," I said disarmingly, raising a hand in greeting and putting aside the manual.

She blinked, but her skeptical gaze remained strong.

"Who are you?" she asked.

Ehhh... I thought no one cared, so long as you said 'maintenance' and then kept your eyes low...

Was it the lack of a dirty overall and tool pack? Must have been. Drat.

"Just—"

"Are you another stalker?" she didn't sound impressed.

"Err...?"

"I recognize your voice from earlier – cocksucker, was it?"

I blink, utterly nonplussed.

Holy shit. Wow, okay, she's kinda good. In a weird way. Still completely misreading the situation, but okay. And already I had forgotten my promise from a week ago about not lying. Half-truths, eh, I'd let them slide since they were funny, but I didn't actually get called in.

Remember, Sasuke. Just speak the truth.

She sniffed, crossing her arms. "Did you come here to sabotage the filming? Or did you think I would be appreciative of your ruining my work in that scene?"

"Err..." I said, intelligently, losing the tempo for interjecting.

Didn't actually think about that.

Just felt good about combating sexual harassment in the workplace for all of thirty seconds before I forgot about it and went about with my snooping.

"I saw you behind the van later, so don't try to deny it. You're the only one on this set who wasn't here since this morning."

"Uh, sorry, I wasn't thinking...?"

Her eyes narrowed and she stepped inside the van, still blocking the entrance. She wasn't tall, but she was taller than I was. So she didn't appear to feel very much threatened by me.

"You should be, for wasting all of our time. We're working here."

Right, uh, okay. She's got a point there.

It's been a while since I haven't been able to bedazzle everyone with my bullshit and I've been in a conversation going this badly for me.

I need to get the rhythm of the conversation back on my side.

"Well? Who are you? And what do you think you're doing here?"

Now's my chance! The Truth is Stranger than Fiction jutsu, go!

"I'm a dimension-crossing reincarnate and I got curious about the technology level here, so I snuck in to see what you had. I'm not going to steal anything – I was just trying to fix this battery."

She scoffed, crossing her arms and now staring at me over her nose, looking very unamused and unimpressed.

I chuckle at her reaction.

Because I get it. I'm just some shoeless kid who'd snuck into her van. What was more likely, I was here to steal something valuable, or that I was actually telling the truth? But that's what made it funny: the fact that either I'm utterly insane or then I'm actually so damn right that no one will ever believe me and there's no point in me trying to fit in.

But whatever, I got my shot in and the jig was up.

"Well, time for me to keep going, then. Sorry again about ruining your scene earlier."

As I approached her, she spread her feet and put her hands on her hips.

"I don't think so. You'll be coming with me to the set security."

I chuckled again.

Somehow getting caught trespassing as a kid is so nostalgic.

When I was back in middle school, during the summer I would dress up as a ninja in my old karate gi washed black, with tabi socks I had made from normal socks, and a balaclava and my toolkit on my belt, and then go run around in the middle of the night on rooftops and other places around town. I'd sneak inside my school through open second-floor windows, or into big stores through the open-air gardening sections if they didn't have locked doors...

It was half parkour, half just me lockpicking my way with paperclips into places I wasn't supposed to go.

Oh, the thrill whenever I found a lock that wasn't an Abloy.

I got caught twice by the police. I hadn't stolen or broken anything, but I had been breaking and entering. Lockpicking is still a crime. Luckily, my juvenile record hadn't mattered after I turned eighteen, back before, but I had missed the thrill sometimes.

Even getting caught - this mixture of hilarity and embarrassment, was refreshing.

"Oh? And if I don't?"

Her eyes narrowed and she reached out, grabbing me by my kimono's collar, like I was some unruly kitten whose neck was to be pinched. I blinked and then just decided to adhese myself to the floor with chakra. I mean, I was strong enough to just resist without it, but this way I was completely immovable.

She tugged once, blinking in a double-take as I didn't so much as budge.

Confused, she looked me over to see if I was holding onto anything. I wasn't. I blinked innocently up at her.

"And if I don't?" I asked again.

The gears in her head seemed to be slowly turning as if she couldn't really understand what she was seeing.

Then her eyes shot wide.

"Y-you're a ninja?!" she exclaimed, backing away until she hit the door frame, almost tumbling out of the van and falling over.

So I grabbed her flailing hand, not wanting her to concuss herself or anything.

"Yup," I answered and pulled her back to her feet, popping the p like my clone had, smirking with pleasure at how her tone had suddenly changed.

A little bit of bullying is always fun.

I mean it's a social dynamics thing in the primitive monkey brain, releasing all the feel-good hormones because you're affirming your higher position in the pack hierarchy. But maybe I shouldn't be doing it to people for whom ninja might be actual bogeymen, because even through her wrist, I can feel her shaking now.

I was going to let go, but...

Her eyes, so blue, caught my gaze.

I blinked, swallowing as I realized that I was staring. She raised a hand to push aside her bangs from her eyes, pulling back some of her messed-up hair behind her ear, somehow effortlessly drawing my eyes with the action to her sparkling earring.

Which she then pressed and made spray my face with some kind of aerosol.

I recognized the familiar sensation of oleoresin capsicum—colloquially also known as pepperspray—immediately, managing by honed reflexes to close my eyes and exhale against the spray hitting my face to keep it from getting in my nostrils, the narrowed space making dodging impossible unless I want to go through her.

Because okay, fair, but also - are you crazy, lady? This stuff will just piss off a ninja, not stop them. Hell, if I wasn't keeping myself from reacting, I might have snapped the wrist I was still holding, or something.

Anyhow, not too strong. You'd think with the small amount she would get more potent stuff.

OC-sprays are pretty gentle once you get used to them.

I mean sure, all your nerves are screaming at you in pain, and you'll sit an hour in the cold shower, waiting for the waves of heat to just finally pass... But sprays are still gentle enough to ignore with experience. It's the streamers that suck, because they've got enough pressure behind them to push beneath your closed eyelids and get into your mucus and really make it hurt.

I had been pepper-sprayed four times back before: twice in the military—also, that time I went into a tent filled with teargas in the military, first to test our Atomic-Biological-Chemical gear and then without the gasmask, because we were macho idiots and we wanted to do a push-up contest there—and twice during training to get a security guard license.

That, and the one time I got Blair's Sudden Death-sauce in my eyes.

Now that sucked.

Because it was in school and everyone laughed at me. Everyone except the teacher who took me to the chemical lab with the specific eyewash device.

Anyway, so I was a pretty old hat at this.

Plus I was a goddamn ninja now, so my pain threshold was a lot higher than before.

Even with my eyes closed, I sense the hand coming for me, intent on slamming me beside the head with something in her hand, but even with just hearing and the kinesthesia from her wrist for senses, grabbing her arm mid-swing was pretty easy. I spin around to take her off her feet, going with waltzing steps, and drop her onto the couch I had been sitting on earlier, reversing our earlier position so now I was by the door.

"Oof—!"

"That's one spicy perfume, lady," I say and turn to exit, only...

Her breathing is heavy. Heavy and fast. She's scrambling away from me, almost like...

She's having a panic attack?

Aww, nuts...

"Hey, lady, calm down. I'm gonna leave now, I'm not gonna hurt you."

She throws something at me and I catch it out of the air—the casing for the car's broken capacitor—and set it down on the table easily enough, the whole layout still in my memory.

I kinda now know what Kakashi felt like when we first fought. It's kinda crazy how restricted I am when I don't want to break or mutilate or traumatize someone.

Civilians are so... squishy and fragile. Like wet paper, almost.

Or is it because that's the only kind of human contact I now know? I remembered back before as a teen that I used to bruise and hurt my friends a lot, on accident. I just had too much energy and it was the only way I knew to express my affection.

Throwing fake punches at their arms, tackling them, wanting to wrestle...

Dad always loved to tell about how I would come sidling up next to him on the couch as a kid, nudging him with my elbow, wanting to play fight and wrestle.

When was the last time I just shook hands or hugged someone? When did I last touch someone without inflicting pain on them? Yanami's minders earlier this week hadn't allowed any contact and I hadn't thought much of it, until now. I could have probably broken her bones with a casual hug, considering how often I had been tearing through clothes.

"You... You!" She's hyperventilating still. Apprehension, fear, resignation...

Well, I guess I'm just exacerbating it now by not leaving.

I turn around and just leave, turning around and walking around the corner of the van, where I do clear my nostrils, one at a time, by forcefully exhaling all the irritant-absorbed snot out.

"You're... You're a ninja!" the actress shouts again from the door behind me, as I'm heading towards the ocean. Saltwater is... not exactly optimal for the pores. But it would do since I had kept my eyes closed. "Didn't you come to kill me?"

Well, she got over it quickly.

Or rather, I have no idea what she's on about.

I turn around, still keeping my eyes closed, and shrug.

"Lady, I'm just on vacation, snooping around because I was curious."

She seems to take pause, still breathing a little raggedly, but slowing it pretty effectively, exasperation, confusion, and abashment intents pinging against my chakra.

Hooh, she's got pretty good breathing. Consciously doing it, too. Is that why I can sense her so much clearer than other civilians?

She wasn't a ninja, but she was on the level of some Academy Student, perhaps. Someone who had failed the Genin Exam? It wasn't the breathing pattern taught in Konoha, though.

"Wanna start over? I'm Sasuke."

"...You really have no idea who I am, do you?"

"Not a clue, lady. Just know you're kinda scary. First time I've been peppersprayed in a long while."

She snorts, still staring at me intently, now growing curious and more than a little abashed over her previous reaction.

"You're not a stalker, either?"

"Well, if I was, this would actually be a lot creepier. Because..." I pause ominously. "I'm actually completely naked."

"What, underneath your clothes?"

Oh wow, eyeroll-intent. That's new and exciting.

"Actually, yeah. But I kind of want to go wash my face now. It's already gotten into my pores, but the quicker I get it off, the better it'll be."

"...Well, come on inside. I have a water canister in the back."

"Is this normal water, or something special for finishing me off, like acid?"

She snorts again.

"You're a weird kid. How old even are you?"

"Almost thirty plus six. It's not cumulative, I don't think."

"...So, twelve? You sound twelve," she replies, coolly amused again.

Ouch.

This woman is brutal. I clutch my heart in mock pain, and I can sense another spike of eyeroll-intent again. But she's amused, too.

I kind of like this weird lady, even if she gave me a chili facial. Really improves blood flow and cleanses the pores.

She moved inside and shrugging, I decided to follow her. I mean, I still had a clone around and I was more or less capable of wiping this entire island solo, even with my eyes closed.

I'm totally not getting cocky or trying to reassure myself of anything, after almost getting decked by some actress who thought I was a stalker.

I could hear her pouring the water into something, probably a shallow bowl of some kind. The method in the military had been to fill a bucket and dip your head in, opening your eyes and shaking, repeat until you could see again. When I had volunteered to be the target for a demonstration in guard training, I had got a cold shower.

But this would work, too.

"Here..." she said, placing it on the table I had been reading by earlier and moved to guide me there.

"Thanks."

Now, let's see if this works...

Hadn't been really training my Water-chakra affinity all that much, but I had the juice to spare.

I took up a blob of water, controlling it like a miniature version of Zabuza's Water Prison jutsu. Just, without the solidity applied so hard that it was impossible to break the surface tension. That was kind of how it all worked; manipulating tensions inside the liquid, hence it would break against something solid like Earth jutsu.

I could sense her surprise even though she held back from gasping as she saw it.

Bringing it up to my face, I controlled the water and used it to pull out all the chemical irritants in my pores and creases, though the redness of skin and sensation of heat wouldn't disappear for another few hours. But I could live with a little pain.

Opening my eyes again, I spotted the actress sitting across from me on the table, resting her jaw on her crossed fingers, looking at me with those blue eyes again.

Blinking twice, I rolled my eyes to check if any irritant remained before I set back the water ball into the bowl.

"I'd say thanks, but you were the one who sprayed me."

She raised a brow at me.

"I would apologize, but you were the one intruding."

I smirk. Tit for tat. Kinda fair.

It's not like I can fault anyone for escalating to violence prematurely or anything.

"So what were you snooping around for, little ninja wonder? I thought your kind didn't care about gizmos?" she asked, still eyeing me with those ice-blue eyes. Naruto had a similar shade, but despite his exuberance, they always seemed a bit flat to me.

I looked away, never having felt comfortable with keeping eye contact for long unless I was actively hostile against that someone. I think it was a thing from growing up with so many dogs...

The thrill of amusement kind of annoyed me though, even though her face remained completely impassive. Was it normal for actors to look this stoic while normal, and to be so emotionless while acting?

"I've just been wondering about the different standards of living."

She blinked, surprised.

"...I never would have expected a ninja to care about something like that."

"Well, I'm pretty weird, even by ninja standards. I'm technically a missing-nin for a week now." I shrug.

"Missing-nin?" she tilted her head, affecting unfamiliarity. So, not an Academy drop-out?

"I ran away from my village."

There was another spike of... something.

"...I thought ninja never let anyone go."

I met her eyes again. "They don't."

She inhaled slowly, brows furrowing as she considered me again.

Seeing my sort-of shabby—well, okay, entirely shabby—appearance, the bandages and kimono, my lack of shoes, my spiky-from-seawater hair, and the way I carried myself...

The silence stretched, turning awkward. Her eyes turned murky and she looked away, becoming distant.

Guess I must have hit on something touchy there.

"So what's it like being an actress?"

She sighed, heavily.

"It's the worst job imaginable, only fit for the lowest of the low."

Huh.

Well, yeah I mean I get that. In a lot of the world in ancient times, actors were seen about as highly as prostitutes. Which they kind of are – just emotionally, rather than carnally. If you have to act out roles that are completely against your beliefs...

"We're handed lies on paper and told to breathe life into them... Ridiculous."

"...Yeah, I kinda had a realization like that recently, too."

She turns to look at me, eyes cold but intent hot. Judging. Indignant. Angry, thinking that I'm giving false sympathy now for some reason.

"Lies are like poison. If we spread them carelessly, they'll just seep right back into us. Kind of why I had to run away – had been lying to everyone and then my real self caught up with me."

It was my turn to sigh.

This honesty stuff was heavy.

"You drink? This kind of feels like a moment for hard liqueur."

She snorted. Loudly. Her disbelief at my words was obvious and in stereo - even if some of it had resonated with her on the inside.

"I think it's about time you left now, kid."

I roll my eyes. "Right, right..."

"And stay away from other people's vans in the future."

"Can't promise that. Ninja need to be able to sneak around," I throw back as a last remark, before I exit.

I spot my clone in raven form, sitting on the roof. He gives me a questioning look before his head swivels towards the forest.

Triple intents fall on me – expectant, slight bloodlust, pent-up annoyance.

Hmm, guess I've got company.

I turn to jump out, over the trailer and away from the film set. Not Flickering or flying, but intentionally keeping my pace slow enough for me to be followed.

We still have a good seven hours of light, so this shouldn't be a problem.

I landed on another beach, actually not that far away from where I had originally alit and meditated.

The three casino ninjas on my tail landed behind me a second later, wigs and voluminous clothes fluttering in the air.

"So you're the rat that has been scurrying about..." The tallest of the three—the leader, I remembered from the movie—said with a smug look. "Or perhaps, the baboon is more correct. No, my apologies, that redness was your face."

Yeah, yeah, I've been ribbed before about how red my face looks after getting peppersprayed – get it out of your system, cuz you won't be laughing for long.

I really don't know why he looked so smug. I had been running circles around their security for almost a week now. Did they think I was some stealth specialist who couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag?

Also, their hair was so obviously fake. It was like looking at an 80's glam rock band, or something. Actually kind of distracting.

"We will be taking back all of that money you have been stealing now."

Beside the leader, the pipsqueak girl I had discovered first tittered, as if the leader had said something clever, and a second later boulder-face rumbled with amusement as well.

They had a pretty good two-bit badguy routine going on.

Smug leader, chihuahua-like annoying girl, and then the muscle so dumb it had to be reminded to breathe regularly.

Why had I been putting this off again?

This was going to be fun.

"Yeah, I kinda spent it all already. Went to the casino across town and blew it on the mahjong tables. I'm terrible at it and have had to resort to this life of crime to support my addiction... Well, I did also book like fifteen rooms across the beachfront, and eat out every night, so maybe I can dig out a few receipts and we can see what they can do about refunding—"

"Enough!" the leader shouted, pointing his weird glove at me. "Take him down!"

Chihuahua tittered again, jumping to the side and starting some kind of visual distortion similar to the invisibility jutsu I had, masking her chakra and intent as well. But her footsteps were pretty obvious in the sand.

Would she mix it up and make fake trails? Or try a genjutsu to throw me off?

I didn't bother turning on my Sharingan, inhaling slowly as I looked at Boulder approaching on tottering steps. He was like a big baby, with just as much muscle as fat for body composition.

Almost wanting to try out my Warp jutsu, I held back.

That wasn't the kind of thing I felt comfortable experimenting with in a fight, just yet. Also, it had three handseals, which made it a pain in the ass to use.

Midnight Flicker 3.0, then.

That was already so fast that even jounin had a hard time keeping up with it.

I exploded into motion as a raven, razor-sharp wings slicing through a thick thigh, as I un-Transformed and drop-kicked into His Smugness with a Dynamic Entry, sending him flying into the sea with a loud yelp.

Chihuahua screamed in anger a second later, rushing me with a flurry of kunai thrusts and cuts, but I sloughed past her pitiful genjutsu, listened to the sound of swings as I back-tracked to defend. I grabbed her wrist mid-swing and then broke her elbow from the outside-in with a forearm blow of my other hand.

Now she screams in pain, invisibility dropping.

Boulder was cursing, turning around and making his way towards me again, the bleeding in the leg stemmed somehow.

Right, this guy took a beating or three from Lee and Kyuubi-powered Naruto. Not just tough, but can probably heal himself a little or something.

Well, fuck that.

Sharingan whirls to life and sinks into his consciousness, filling his peripheral vision with illusory ravens diving in and cutting at him in passing again. I turn off my eyes a second later, not wanting to rely on them for this fight, wanting to keep it strictly analytical.

Beyond the genjutsu, I mean.

See, that thing would need like... a string of thirteen handseals to work without the Sharingan. Genjutsu are annoying like that.

"Ah! Ah! Aaaahh!" he screams, his arms raised and trying to bat away nothing, spinning around in the sand.

Smug is back and he's trying to grab me with his glowing glove from behind.

Let's not test that.

I toss Chihuahua—whose hand I've still been holding—at him, his eyes growing comically wide as he retracts his arm to catch her safely, and Chihuahua despite her injury and manhandling tosses something back at me. A packet of some kind, tied to an explosive note.

I Flicker backward, out of range from the explosion, but it still sends a wave of smoke through the air that almost reaches me. A funny-colored smoke.

Poison?

Ah, I need to figure out a countermeasure for this shit, too. Once with pepperspray was one thing - my stupid hormones and those pretty eyes had just distracted me. But if this was going to become a normal thing, then I needed more options.

Now that I think about it, why am I breathing the same air as everyone else? That's stupid, isn't it?

I make a mental mnemonic to fix that later.

Right now, I reach out and expand a space within a chakra construct, creating a Holding and sucking in some of the airborne poison into my right palm and closing my fingers to seal the expanded pocket of space I'm grasping.

Okay, Boulder-face is their tank, I guess.

So he goes first, before they can free him.

I Flicker in beside him—still wildly flailing at nothing—and forearm-chop his throat with my left hand at a diagonal, rising angle with all the excess momentum of my Flicker, knocking him out almost instantly. Tough or not, neck built like a bull's or not, your brain just shuts down if it gets a sudden overpressure of blood when the carotid gets hit.

"Die!"

Leader is back, running at me and I hop around his arm, opening my right hand in his path and releasing the pocket I had made with chakra, the collapsing space spewing it all out again like a deflating balloon.

Their own poison smoke streamed right into his face as his eyes go comically wide, leaving him in a coughing mess on the ground for a second as I jump back again, with my back turned towards Chihuahua, sensing her intense hatred and pain against my neck and scalp.

It kind of tickles.

She thrusts a kunai with her lone good hand and I side-step, spinning and giving her the old Konoha spin-kick on the arse to help her make it all the way to her boss in the middle of the cloud of poison smoke.

"Aaah!" she squeaks, falling over and trying so very hard not to breathe in any of her own concoction.

Leader is looking at me with wide eyes now, scrambling away on all fours as I just stand there, arms crossed. His red wig has fallen off too, revealing a close-cropped head beneath. No weird deformations or anything to hide, either.

Just a weird sense of fashion, I guess?

"Disappointing," I declare, eyes still locked onto the Previously-Smug leader.

"Y-you...!" Chihuahua whips around, teeth gritted in pain.

They both glance at Boulder, still out cold. He'll need a few more minutes until he's ready to continue. Their formation has just completely collapsed.

My Sharingan whirl to life as they look back to me and they both gasp.

And then my killing intent hits them, like a tsunami from the deep. I've been taking pointers from at least a dozen mass-murderers at this point for my own, so the fact that they're helplessly shaking is hardly surprising.

"Do you people have any idea who I am?" I ask imperiously.

They swallow heavily, hesitating, panicking, shaking their heads after looking at each other.

"I am Uchiha Sasuke." And I drop it all, just keeping the eyes. Spin, spin, whee spin my pretty tomoe... "I was just chilling out, maxing, relaxing... Vacationing, you know? So I don't actually feel any need to kill you, since I have been stealing from you all week. That cool with you guys?"

Because right now they're filling a niche here.

Killing them would only cause some other ninja to get hired for Shakazulu's potential coup. Better to make these guys leery about pissing me off and unwilling to take a job like that.

It takes a second for my words to register, my turn from regal to ridiculous way too sudden.

But they nod, relief obvious.

"Cool. So here's what we're going to do - I'm pretty much done here now and need to get moving. But I'm going to come back here in the future, and when I do..."

They're looking ready to bolt out of the country when I tell them that.

"I am going to have some legit money of my own. And I'll be looking to spend it all here, since this is such a nice place. So this place better still be standing and running smoothly when I come for my next vacation, yeah? I'll buy you all dinner and we can catch up, again."

They both blink, confused and scared, nodding slowly.

"Will this cause problems with your employers?"

Neither answers, so I raise a brow and Formerly-Smug swallows, nodding a little.

"Well, that's your problem. Not really sorry. Just tell them something like you chased me off or whatever," I suggest, raising a hand to stroke my chin.

Or would they sell me out to Konoha the moment I left?

Actually, that would actually be pretty good for me. With my mobility, I want everyone to know I can be literally anywhere at any time, so there was no point in trying to chase me.

Because they're probably going to think I'm sending clones everywhere, meaning there's no point in chasing every lead on me.

"But whatever, take this," I say and reach into my kimono's fold, where I have my waist Holding and take out the bag with the rest of my dollars and toss it to them. "Bugger off, now. And take Lumpy with you."

I make a shoo-shoo motion in the islander way and they hasten to obey, fleeing quickly.

A second later my clone appears from the forest.

"Boo...! You didn't even need my help. I spent all day analyzing them for nothing!"

I roll my eyes. "Jackass. You set this thing up from the start. Baiting me with batteries and leading them right to me - how could you?"

"You were getting lazy and complacent. Avoiding fights, just brooding and thinking. You'd sprout roots if this went on for much longer. What better way to get into the swing of things again?"

I guess he was mindful of my traumas. Well, it wasn't much of a trauma, just a slight aversion I had been developing. Violence isn't the answer, it's just a question.

Over and done with now.

As expected, without the Sharingan or clones compounding my battle lust, it was pretty easy to stay calm and in control. Guess I was just ultra-desensitized to it by now.

"Not gonna thank you... but did you have the same thought I had, about poison gases?"

"Expand a space—or make a seal of some kind that does that—in your nostril and fill it with air with Holding? Yeah. Seems like a pretty good idea."

I nod, smirking.

I had never played DnD—beyond on disastrous attempt, where one encounter took six hours of 'So which dice am I supposed to roll?'—but the Bag of Holding was such a cool item, that I had to make my own since I no longer had sealing scrolls.

And scrolls were a pain in the ass to use anyway. All that furling and unfurling, ink everywhere... tsk, tsk.

Ninjutsu was so much cooler.

Really, now I could just expand spaces and suck things in, all Miroku-style, and then spew it back out when I wanted. Or just put things in and take them out manually. Wasn't really all that powerful, but the strict confines of a chakra construct allowed for more spatial warping than without, giving me a pretty decent volume to work with.

And the mass went somewhere else, the same way as before and with Warp, so I wasn't being laden down with all my crap. I now had an Inventory. More useful for storing all of my things without needing bags, than anything else right now.

But anime characters weren't supposed to haul around big bags all the time, except for jokes.

Anyhow, uncontaminated air supply.

"If I make it a two-mode type, I can fill one with high-altitude, low-oxygen air to stimulate hemoglobin growth, and then another, with sea-level air so I can no-sell all kinds of poisons, and improve my stamina."

Because people living up on mountains had higher hemoglobin counts, their bodies adapted to the thinner air by becoming thicker. It was like the anime thing about wearing weights, but instead just limiting your oxygen supply. I had been specifically avoiding flying too high up, because I didn't want to run the risk of blanking out, mid-air, from altitude sickness or something.

But if I could send a clone up and have him gather it for me...

Or maybe I should find a good mountain and always return there to refill my thinned-oxygen stores...

Regardless, it would probably do wonders for my stamina.

"Thing is just," my clone continues. "Do you really want to put a hundred liters of air in your nose? What if it breaks loose or is unsealed somehow?"

I grimace at the thought.

Someone punches me in the face, nose breaks, chakra construct shatters, air is released. Head go splat.

"Okay, so maybe it should be some kind of mask instead?"

Like a rebreather, or just a Kakashi-style cloth thing.

Back before, in the military, there was this one guy in the divers—essentially a branch of special ops in the military I had served in—who would do crazy things like go running with a gas mask on, using the bottleneck it caused in his breathing as a training tool.

Also, apparently for one Cooper-test, he also just shoved his fingers in his throat, puked into the mask, and then put it on, going to run some three or four-kilometer Cooper result anyhow.

Fucking special forces maniacs.

'It doesn't suck enough', indeed.

Even as a super-badass ninja now, I was still kind of feeling insecure when I thought back to those guys. Hell, even Lee and Gai had their limits. Well, whatever, I was working my slow way up to those levels, so no point in comparing myself to others.

"Alright, I guess it's time to head back to the continent, now."

"Ready to test the Midnight Warp Flicker?" my clone asked, grinning excitedly.

"No..." I croaked. "But I guess it just has to be done."

My clones could Transform and they could Warp space-time. But they couldn't really Flicker, since despite my bluffs in Konoha, that level of control still eluded me.

Which meant—that as I well knew—if I wanted to test out the full extent of Midnight Flicker 4.1: space-time boogaloo, I needed to do it myself.

"You ready?" I ask the clone.

His Sharingan had whirled to life, glowing and spinning a little.

"Yeah, meditated and harmonized my thoughts already, mnemonizing all the important points."

"Pretty sure 'mnemonizing' isn't a word," I point out.

"Is now. Anyhow, I'm ready. If it looks okay, I'll pop and give you the update, if not... Well, there is a hospital in town."

I roll my eyes.

"Thanks. Really."

He throws a thumbs up.

I guess it doesn't really matter where I fly right now, but... North I guess for the continent with the Fire Country?

Inhaling, I raise my hands and take the Ram-seal; gathering chakra around my body, overlayed and separate. Dragon-seal; coiling, twisting, entwining chakra and space-time.

And third, the just-christened Raven-seal—in keeping with the animal and my own themes, and since it was kind of a modification on the Bird-seal...—compressing, spiraling, and pushing together the pinkies, rings, and middle-fingers ahead of me and pulling the triangle of my index-fingers and thumbs apart, towards the space behind me.

And then finally, for maximum precision in the Flicker and slaving all the external Warping from the chakra to my own movements; a Tiger-seal.

Midnight Warp Flicker jutsu.

I let my chakra do its thing, kicking off the beach and—

OH JESUS FUCK THAT'S FAST—!

My vision turns to a blur, even to my panic-activated Sharingan and I loosen the hold on the space-time bubble around me. It's like the world stretching out from the sheer velocity.

Or was I compressing?

Slow down, slow down, slow the fuck down! Oh god, oh god, oh god...

Wrangling myself out of the space-time warp bubble, I look down and goggle.

I'm way too high up. I need to bring it down. Didn't I just think about how dangerous flying too high is? It must have been the initial take-off angle – I thought I compensated for it, but apparently not!

Okay, breathe Sasuke, calm the fuck down... Everything's good...

The memories of my clone popping come to me and I exhale more calmly, its analytical point of view bringing some clarity to my new jutsu that help me get a handle on things as I dive back into acceptable heights before altitude sickness of whatever can set in.

Okay...

Okay, yeah.

"This thing is fucking worthless in a fight."

I mean, I took it pretty easy on the initial Flicker acceleration...

And I still managed to fly beyond my clone's Sharingan's range. As in, beyond the horizon even while ascending.

So I did account for the take-off angle.

It was the curvature of the fucking planet that came to fuck me. I'm laughing, the absolute hilarity of it just hitting me. If I put in too much kick into the Flicker just now, I might have literally spaced myself.

How do you fine-tune something for a fight when the minimum range is measured in dozens of kilometers...?

But yeah, okay, I think I'm pretty much top-dog in terms of sheer mobility now.

Ain't no one gonna catch me in the air.

Of course, now I have zero fucking clue where I am. There's ground beneath me now, but that doesn't help me much now. The thing about normal flying was that it was pretty easy to keep distant things as waypoints and markers, because of how small and slow you were in the air.

Not much different from normal navigation on foot.

But this...

This was too fast. It was like flying on Flammie in Secret of Mana or its sequel, or worse yet, using Google Earth in VR. You think you know the world map? Wrong. You know the world map when it's square or round and oriented the right way and doesn't spin in every direction.

Put yourself on there as a flying thing, like in a VR headset, and losing your orientation is so damn easy.

Think you know how to find Japan from Africa? No you don't. You just somehow ended up in Russia. And then you think to just turn around, but nope, that's Norway, somehow. It's just one confusing mess and you end up circling the globe over and over and over again trying to orient yourself.

I am going to need some form of GPS to make this work, until I could recognize places on sight and experience.

So yeah, I had zero fucking clue where I was.

But big-brain take: if I have no fucking clue where I am, the hunter-nin can't predict my going there either.

So let's find a big town, get some directions in disguise and then make a racket as Uchiha Sasuke before getting the hell out of dodge and finding my way to Haku...